Cape Horn

What the Urban Dictionary defines as “a mind-numbing torture device made of cheap, brightly colored plastic,” has been the focus of harsh criticism. BBC and ESPN fear that it may drown out their commentators’ voices – which not necessarily must be a disadvantage. The advantages of a cheap device able to drown out others’ voices, on the other hand, are tremendous. YouTube, for example, “has added a button - in the form of a soccer ball - on its latest video player, allowing the sound of the [instrument] to play alongside any video being watched. The results can be hilarious; try watching a speech by any major politician drowned out by the relentless blasting of the plastic trumpet“ (Peace FM).
Soccer coaches blame it for degrading the performance of their team, suggesting that the French team did not refuse to listen to their coach; they simply were not able to hear him.
However, renowned ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey finds the instrument frustrating and fascinating at the same time. Although he regrets the fact that each one has the same pitch, B flat, he believes that varying its length could create different pitches and enable the user to blow in rhythmic patterns. (Remember the alphorn?) Tracey's theory has so far fallen on deaf ears, but he really shouldn’t be surprised since even the instrument’s self-anointed inventor Saddam Maake concedes that "It's bad for the ears" (Washington Post).
But what the heck is a vuvuzela? Well, a plastic trumpet used by soccer enthusiasts. Nobody knows the word’s origin for sure, but it might come from the Zulu word for 'making a loud noise'. Maybe the vuvuzela should be incorporated in the English vocabulary, functioning as a verb that describes the common act of giving a speech without really saying anything: The speaker has been vuvuzelaing for almost an hour.

And give us our daily apology

2010 may very well go down in history as the year of the apology. This week, we already had two: Congressman Barton's and General McChrystal's. Joe Barton really needed to apologize for his previous apologizing to BP in what can only be called a run-amok-sentence: "It is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown -- in this case a $20 billion shakedown -- with the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that's unprecedented in our nation's history, which has no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for our nation's future" (Huffington Post). Although he better had apologized for "anything I misconstrued this morning," he preferred to use the passive voice, implicating whomever for misconstruing his words: "If anything I have said this morning has been misconstrued to an opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction" (Politico). While Barton tried to wiggle his way out via the passive voice, McChrystal was "extending my sincerest apology for this profile" (McChrystal), i.e. for an article instead of for his own words. What both have in common is that they offend the audience's intelligence - which would be well worth another apology.

Augustness

August is vacation month, but Tony Hayward is vacationing early. He deserves watching his boat "Bob" participate in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race since this is - pitiably! - his “first break since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20,” said Robert Wine, a BP spokesman. After all, he is just “spending a few hours with his family at a weekend. I'm sure that everyone would understand that.” Perhaps everybody would, but will everybody understand?
Wine, according to the Huffington Post(6/19), also said that Hayward will be returning to the United States, though it's unclear when. Will he return, or would he?
Could it be that it will be August before he is back at the Gulf Coast? He then could mingle with American vacationers there, maybe even with the presidential family. After all, "Americans can help by continuing to visit the communities and beaches of the Gulf Coast." With few exceptions, Obama said at a May 27 press conference, "all of the Gulf's beaches are open. They are safe and they are clean." Asked whether the Obamas themselves will – or would – vacation somewhere along the Gulf this summer, Press Secretary Gibbs admitted that he has “not been involved in their August plans” (McClatchy Newspapers via WSJ).
Since spoken statements do not indicate which word the speaker would capitalize, Gibbs could have referred here to Obama’s august plans (from Latin augustus, meaning venerable, marked by majestic dignity or grandeur and, according to the Online Etymological Dictionary, probably orginally "consecrated by the augurs, with favorable auguries"). Gibbs, whom the LATimes dubbed a “human pinata,” then would have taken Nicholas Kristof obviously too literally, who announced today that We need a monarch!