Nat Baca

“A schlemiel, a schlimazel and a schmendrik are irredeemably what they are. A schmuck can be enlightened. He can acquire, through a painful process of self-examination, the moral and social understanding that he has been missing. He can become, to revert to Wex’s dichotomy, a mentsh.”

A schlemiel is somebody who often spills his soup, and a schlimazel is the person it lands on.

The full original: 「士大夫三日不讀書，則義理不交於胸中，對鏡便覺面目可憎，向人亦言語乏味。」 If a scholar does not read for three days, righteous principles do not reside in his heart; he will find his own reflection detestable in the mirror and his speech tasteless when speaking to others.

Chinese proverb of the day — from the 11th century (!!): 三日不讀書，面目可憎 Literally: If you don't read for three days, you will become unattractive. If you are not diligent in your studies, you will remain ignorant, and nobody will be attracted to you.

“Overall, the moral of the saying is that you should choose which mood you are in – do not be bipolar or wishy-washy. Literally it is saying that you should either cry or laugh, don’t try to do both. It transcends this literal situation to imply that one shouldn’t desire to do everything in life.“

울고 웃고 그러면 똥구멍에 털이나온다. “If you start laughing in the midst of crying, you will grow hair out of your butt. Small horns will also grow out of your butt. When horns and hair grow out of your butt, it has a bad connotation.”

“Standardized giraffe unit” The standardized giraffe unit (SGU) is proposed by the European Space Agency's Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre as a standardized unit for animal size reference. A corgi is 0.05 giraffes, while an elephant is 1.25 giraffes.

“Bee’s dick” An Australian term for a very small distance, as in "he missed crashing into the truck by a bee's dick". It is derived from the small size of a male bee's penis. The entry then links to the page for the actual organ

Drone (bee) - Wikipedia

“Millihelen” the amount of beauty required to launch one ship. Because Helen had the “face that launched a thousand ships”. A negative helen is sufficient ugliness to beach ships. Very timely with The Odyssey out now.

“Bruno” the volume of the dent left in asphalt pavement after a piano is dropped six stories from the roof of MIT's Baker House. Named for the student who noticed that the rules prohibited throwing objects from windows but not dropping them from the roof.