I know I swore off Palinology, so can we book this post as Shatner blogging?
Or, as Jerry used to sing: “The sky was yellow and the sun was blue.”
Also, I don’t think I’m too naive, but if you happen to know what Cheechakos are, would you please let me know?
Here’s the transcript as provided by Mudflats:
And getting up here I say it is the best road trip in America soaring through nature’s finest show. Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it’s the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime such extreme summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins. It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future. That is what we get to see every day. Now what the rest of America gets to see along with us is in this last frontier there is hope and opportunity and there is country pride.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Has anyone checked that woman’s neocortex lately? I’d say she be in deep shiizzaaa.
My husband’s comment was immediately: “Omigosh, she’s on drugs.” I tend to think psychedelics are less harmful than speed, so compared to her the press conference where she announced her plans to resign, I’d call this progress.
According to Miriam-Webster online it is the Alaskan form of ‘tenderfoot’.
And it was spelled wrong, it should be cheechakos and the reference is apparently (a line from?) a children’s book by Julie Lawson titled Generation Gold.
SPELLFAIL
Apparently, I’m the one who can’t spell. It was correct in the post, only misspelled when I retyped it! lol
Well, spellfail is better than googlefail – I could’ve looked it up myself, but I guess I assumed it had to be too obscure for ordinary research. I need to remember that sometimes Palin’s thoughts aren’t coming from another universe, they’re just coming from Alaska.
I would definitely be a Cheechako, myself. I would never survive the Alaska wilderness.
Thanks for the research, Pega!
Glad to oblige! Obscure it is! Google had only 4 links, 2 referencing the children’s story, and 2 to online dictionaries.
And as I was already in Google mode for research paper, opening one more window to see what was there at least gave me a break from “Web Form Processing and the Multitude of Alternatives Available for Web Developers”.
Yeah, I can see where you might need a break. It’s totally cool to know how to do web programming (and I wish I knew how to do more than just a few basic HTML tags) but doing the work to learn it seems like way too much bother.
Oh man, if ever there was a speech that deserved the full Major Ham treatment that only The Shat can give something… LOL!
- Badtux the Amused Penguin
Her “I Quit” speech would’ve deserved a dramatic rendering, too … but it wasn’t as poetic.
I swear it sounded like she was sitting down with Katie Couric all over again. Or a madlib.
You could start a whole new genre of madlibs with Palin’s public statements. To be bipartisan you could season it with some of Joe Biden’s gaffes.
There is this old Robert Altman movie that nobody but a few movie-geeks saw, called HEALTH…(people in the supplement industry particularly loved it and made it a cult movie). Glenda Jackson plays some kind of politician, and she endlessly babbles but actually says NOTHING of substance…
Carol Burnett is listening and suddenly looks RAPT.
“Honey, do you hear?” she asks James Garner while listening to Jackson speechify.
He looks puzzled.
“Its ADLAI!” she looks ecstatic. “Adlai!” (Carol Burnett is side-splitting, please imagine her at her very best, delivering this deadpan.)
Consequently, I always think “It’s Adlai!” whenever I hear a politician talk gibberish…
(And this might be the funniest damn thing I ever saw.)
Gosh I loved Carol Burnett. I used to refuse to go to sleep on the nights her show was on (I was 8 or 9 or 10) and then patter downstairs to watch her with my parents.
Maybe I need to dig up “Health.” Seems appropriate to the latest machinations in Washington, but even if not – did I mention I love Carol Burnett?
When it first came out I clicked on the link to the Shatner thing just for a laugh. Got to say I was totally rapt. It was actually pretty damned good. Even reads well.
Palin’s an odd one. Never could figure her out. Maybe stream-of-consciousness poetry is her true calling. Anything to distract her from public life…
There really *is* an odd poetry to the thing. I guess if she becomes a “housewife” per the latest Fox News poll (which I just posted on), she could write poetry while the kids are in school. I bet there’s be a market for it.