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Definitions by miskatonic Jack 2

childsprawl 

A widespread phenomenon which occurs when (usually) a couple will buy a house based on it's expansive lawn and one story layout because they have, or intend to have, two or more children.
One of the leading causes of suburban sprawl, childsprawl typically involves a ranch house set back from the street with a large open (read-a homogenously treeless lawn) back yard (which is often used to build another room onto the back, since zoning won't allow the front yard to be built on no matter how deep it is).
Dog Sprawl is similar to, and oftentimes accompanied by, dogsprawl, except that rather than use a public baseball diamond or other playing field, they use the yard for this purpose (which, in turn, compacts the soil and renders it unproductive.)
One need only watch HGTV to see the process of childsprawl in action.
childsprawl by Miskatonic Jack 2 February 6, 2007

melungeons 

An ethnic group living deep in the southern Appalachian Mountains that decends from 16th century Turks dropped off somewhere in the Carolinas by Sir Francis Drake, were joined by portugese pirates and others including Jews and Moors escaping the Spanish Inquizition, and intermarried with various Native American tribes as they migrated inland. They were later joined by escaped African- American slaves and others. It is also said that they partly decended from the lost colony of Roanoke, having spoke in Elizabethan english as late as the 20th century. Many were eventually assimilated into the predomminantly English/Scotch-Irish domminated Appalachian culture.
Melungeons are amongst the longest settled non-inigenous people in North America. When the first British settlers came from the Eastern Seaboard, they refered to themselves as "Portugee," which goes back to their Portugese origins.
melungeons by Miskatonic Jack 2 January 24, 2007
A small town, larger than a hamlet and usually containing between 100 and 2000 people. The population may go up or down depending on the population of surrounding areas.

Also a term used to describe the East or Greenwich Village on southeastern Manhattan Island, or for that matter, any semi-self contained community within the dense fabric of a much larger city.
South Park is a semi-ficticious village in thestate of Colorado complete with a commercial/shopping district or main street, As is Dancing Rabbit, a growing eco-villiage in Missouri.
village by Miskatonic Jack 2 December 31, 2006

urban forest

an oxymoron.

While "urban" refers to a densely developed area, the very definition of "forest" refers to an area that is undeveloped.
While Wikipedia describes the Jefferson Memorial Forest as "the largest urban forest in the United States" it should be worth mentioning that the area it covers is surrounded by open country (mostly hilly).
urban forest by Miskatonic Jack 2 December 11, 2006

Appalachia 

A mostly poor region, mostly of British ancestry (English and Scots-Irish primarily, which mostly date to the 18th century). However, multiple ethnic groups are represented in the gene pool, and people of Southern/Eastern European descent (Dating from the time of the industrial revolution) become much more common as one goes northeast
(Scottish and Cherokee in western North Carolina, the former since colonial times and the latter countless centuries before that) as well as Welsh in some areas, most notably Eastern Pensylvania, Dutch in the Catskills, and more recent arrivals of mexican, Puerto Rican, East Indian Chinese, Middle Eastern and other descent, coming from many other places in Asia, Latin America, and Africa (many of these settled there for a time at least, long ago, either employed in town labor or to work in the coal mines.) Prior to the U.S./C.S. civil war, many runaway slaves escaped into these mountains (see melungeons) making good use of their remoteness.

Coal mining has been a significant source of employment for some time, but for a generation or two, the human workforce, who still deal with deadly conditions in both the air they breathe, as well as the lingering hazard of a cave in, have largely been replaced by huge machines which destroy a topography that took hundreds of millions of years to develop. Most people are out of work and many have tried to suppliment their income by growing cannabis.

Much older than the Rockies, Andes, Alps or Himilayas, the Appalachian Mountains stretch from the foothills of the state of Mississippi's Northeast , through the northern 2/3rds of Alabama, northern and Northwest Georgia, the
northernmost and westernmost parts of South Carolina, Western North Carolina, most of Virginia to the west, the eastern 2/3rds of Tennessee, the majority of Kentucky to the east/southeast, pretty much all of West Virginia (once refered to as the State of Kanawha), the southeastern part of the state of Ohio, most of Pennsylvania, Western & northern Maryland, the northwest corner of the state of Delaware, Northwest New Jersey, most of the state of New York, New England, and into the Atlantic Provinces.
The Appalachian region, which is plagued by poverty, methmphetamine abuse, pollution from the coal mining that poisons the rivers and streams, mountaintop removal, a lack of economic activity, isolation (save for a number of metropolitan areas, which I'm not including for this definition) from most of the outside world (which has made it prey to many coal companies)
is in desperate need a renaisance.
Appalachia by Miskatonic Jack 2 October 17, 2006

what not to wear 

A fascist TV program where people who actually have the guts to have their own style and be non-conformist individuals, have all their old threads/duds tossed in the trash by shallow fashion conformists Stacy London and Clinton Kelly.

As the two fashionistas/fascists carelessly dispose of the ambushed person's wardrobe in favor of the same sort of yuppie scum clothing that they wear (this means high heels {medically proven to cause bone deformity} for women and three piece suits for men. Nothing particularly modern here folks) they barate them with insults and never even donate their old clothing to charity (how shallow and self rightious can you get?)!

The show aparently started in Britain but the version I am currently describing is based in Manhattan Island, NY
Every episode (of What Not to Wear) features an "ambush" style confrontation and makeover of a man or (more often) a woman who has been nominated by their friends as particularly unfashionable.

All the bad feelings created by What Not to Wear keep me from watching it. But I must admit, I do find Stacy London to be very attractive, in spite of her bad taste in clothing and overzealous tude.