chicago: the roswell of the prairies

in case you haven’t seen this yet, click here for the Trib’s article about UFOs at O’Hare (you thought I was going to put the link on “here”, didn’t you).

highlights:

– “To fly 7 million light years to O’Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable,” said O’Hare controller and union official Craig Burzych.

-the slight public safety focus taken in the article.

questions to be answered next time:

-will the CTA start offering service to other planets? Will this still only cost 1.75 with your Chicago Card Plus? would it count as new service on existing infrastructure, or an entirely new service?

-should the UFO’s visit to O’Hare be viewed as an endorsement of Chicago’s Olympic candidacy? Or, is it better viewed as an indictment of Daley’s corruption? Yes, Virginia, they are the same thing. And the NBA East is filled with a bunch of low-rent carpetbaggers.

-will this be enough for Sufjan to record another Illinois album, or will he simply emend “Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois”?

-will TERRORISTs start using UFO’s to make it past the crackerjacks at the TSA?

-and in the dated pop culture reference of the day (the trademarked fashion of notwithabangbutawhimper), has anyone alerted Mulder and Skully?

and because I may run out of words in my vocabularly (the other only words I know are salty and judaizing)…

UFO is our word of the day!

UFO first enters the lexicon in 1953. Of course, prior to the 20th century any flying object would be a bird, or herald cherub. There are a few great gleamings to be found in the OED:

1) the word is of US origin. i guess Aliens just prefer probing some hot American ass…

2) “1956 E. J. RUPPELT Rep. Unidentified Flying Objects 13 UFO is the official term that I created to replace the words ‘flying saucers’.” This is the second quote. someone else already used the term in an official capacity 3 years prior! Is this a Beyonce “bootylicious” type moment? (for those of you who don’t know the incident to which i refer, see here. all the way at the bottom is a letter from yours truly to the Late Show in what can only be described as the Ur text for my wordblogging, or proto-lexiblography) Now, both cases are likely instances of the OED’s preference for antedating. The OED loves it when their readers send in older uses for known terms. Ultimately, however, I’m willing to absolve the pre-internet Ruppelt, and not Beyonce. Ruppelt only claims to have made UFO the official term; Beyonce claimed to have coined the word. She should have been aware of the fact that Snoop Doggy Dogg had already dropped it in an album–and, if not, she certainly should have been corrected within the 5 years that the song dropped and she appeared on Letterman.

and 2 good definitions from the urbandictionary (when or when will someone create an urbanedictionary for jane austen slang?)

1) In New York, any recent emigrant who tries to establish himself in crime over territory that’s already been claimed by local groups or gangs. (Someone who by-passes the proper tribute channels.)

Dunn that UFO there’s scheming on our turf…

2)

kitting term, stands for UnFinished object. Often used on Knitting Blogs. “i still have alot of UFO’s to work on thiss weekend”

no-one’s actually voted on that one. do no admitted knitters use the urbandictionary? perhaps there already is an urbanedictionary…