Rio Grande

Espanol for "Great River"

One of several rivers where the gringoes dump their shit into before reaching Mexico. All rivers that are shared by the Yanks and Mexicans flow from the EUA south into Mexico. In the case of the Colorado River, the Californians, Nevadans, and Arizonans pretty much take everything of value out of it before it flows south of the border.
Every year, thousands of illegal migrant workers wade across the Rio Grande and back for starving wages and the constant threat of being poisoned by pestacides and other leathal substances. They're the reason the Yanks can get such cheap meat and produce at the local supermarket.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 December 09, 2008
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Edge City

1)A book written in 1991 by Joel Garreau

2)A "Suburb" with a large commercial district that takes on the identity of the metropolitan center, along with all others within a particular MSA/CMSA

3)A place which is dependent on the automobile, usually growing up around a mall, freeway exit, and several office parks

4)A place which often was nothing but forest and or farmland prior to 1965, or at most a small town

5)A place where there are often surface parking lots as far as the eye can see

6)The setting of the 1994 Jim Carey box office feature presentation "The Mask." A city plagued by crime and pollution

7)A nationally-syndicated comic strip created by Terry and Patty LeBan about a Jewish American family "juggling relationships, careers and traditions at the fast pace of modern life"
The edge city as Garreau describes it is fundamentally impossible without the automobile. It was not until automobile ownership surged in the 1950s, after four decades of fast steady growth, that the edge city became truly possible. Whereas virtually every American central business district (CBD) or secondary downtown that developed around non-motorized transportation or the streetcar has a pedestrian-friendly grid pattern of relatively narrow streets, most edge cities instead have a hierarchical street arrangement centered around pedestrian-hostile arterial roads.

-Fom a certain popular online encyclopedia which anyone can edit
by Miskatonic Jack 2 January 14, 2011
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Gun Fu

Gun fu is the style of sophisticated close-quarters gunplay seen in Hong Kong action cinema and in Western films influenced by it. It often resembles a martial arts battle played out with firearms instead of traditional weapons.

The focus of gun fu is style, and the usage of firearms in ways that they were not designed to be used. Shooting a gun from each hand, shots from behind the back, as well as the use of guns as melee weapons are all common. Other moves can involve shotguns, Uzis, rocket launchers, and just about anything else that can be worked into a cinematic shot. It is often mixed with hand-to-hand combat maneuvers.

"Gun fu" has become a staple factor in modern action films due to its visually appealing nature (regardless of its actual practicality in a real-life combat situation). This is a contrast to American action movies of the 1980s which focused more on heavy weaponry and outright brute-force in firearm-based combat.
Before 1986, Hong Kong cinema was firmly rooted in two genres: the martial arts film and the comedy. Gunplay was not terribly popular because audiences had considered it boring, compared to fancy kung-fu moves or graceful swordplay of the wu shu epics. What moviegoers needed was a new way to present gunplay-- to show it as a skill that could be honed, integrating the acrobatics and grace of the traditional martial arts. And that's exactly what John Woo did. Using all of the visual techniques available to him (tracking shots, dolly-ins, slo-mo), Woo created beautifully surrealistic action sequences that were a 'guilty pleasure' to watch. There is also intimacy found in the gunplay-- typically, his protagonists and antagonists will have a profound understanding of one another and will meet face-to-face, in a tense Mexican standoff where they each point their weapons at one another and trade words.

The popularity of John Woo's films, and the heroic bloodshed genre in general, in the West helped give the gun fu style greater visibility. Film-makers like Robert Rodriguez were inspired to create action sequences modelled on the Hong Kong style. One of the first to demonstrate this was Rodriguez's Desperado (1995). The Matrix (1999) played a part in making "gun fu" the most popular form of firearm-based combat in cinema worldwide; since then, the style has become a staple of modern Western action films.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 September 02, 2010
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hamlet

smaller than a village - larger than a wide spot in the road, a hamlet usually has considerably less than 200 people and is usually tied to agriculture (although many housing subdivisions could loosely be described as hamlets, especially when incorpirated and containing a minimal number of people).
A hamlet can either be dispersed (particularly in the USA), or clustered (see urban).
It is often located at the crossing of two minor thouroughfares (at a crossroads). Most intentional communities, if not a village and and not tied into the fabric of a larger entity, could be described as hamlets.
The documentary film "Rabbit Hash - Center of the Universe" was about an old and remote river hamlet which contains a small art colony on the western end of the Kentucky portion of the Cincinnati Ohio metropolitan area (near another hamlet called Big Bone) that elected a dog for mayor, not once, but twice! The First dog was named Goofy.

Eucla is a hamlet of around 50 people that serves as a regional centre for the Nullarbor Plain of Australia.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 December 09, 2008
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builder's special

Whenever a house is built in a subdivision for the momentary gain of the evil developers and "home builders", this is what the landscaping is refered to.
Often in place of a wooded area that contains irreplacable diversity in it's flora and fauna, The builder will select a generic assortment of bushes, trees, and other plants. These will typically include the short lived Bradford Pear, Red Maple, Pin oak (both native to marshy areas), Burning Bush, Japanese Barberry (both considered invasive), various Junipers & arborvites, Korean Boxwood, and whatever other generic plants they have to choose from at places like WAL-MART, Lowes, Home Depot, K Mart and Target.
This is even the case around 2 million dollar McMansions.

This is one of the reasons why suburban sprawl is so damaging and why it disrupts the delicate ecological balance.

The builders special can also be seen around commercial development.
What a waste of land, this was 100 acres of farmland plus another 50 acres that was forested, and now we have a generic sudivision with 2 acre lots, McManions and ranch houses set all the way to the back of their lots. And whatever varity of plants that was found in the wooded portion will be lost forever to be replaced by the builder's special.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 November 06, 2008
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Asperger's

The next stage in human evolution. Highly logical and intellectual but with limited social skills.

Many Aspies are also either virgins or homosexual meaning that they prevent overpopulation by not breeding.
The character of Mr. Spock has Asperger's.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 August 05, 2010
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1900s

The period that started on January 1st 1900 and ended December 31st 1999. Often confused with the 20th century (which began and ended exactly 1 year later) as well as the 1st decade of the 1900s.
During the 1900s, many disenfranchised groups got a better life, but on the downside, the landscape was destroyed by the automobile (as well as the airplane) and all the things that followed.
by Miskatonic Jack 2 November 10, 2008
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