Slang: A rose by any other name......oh yeah!

I got to thinking about slang and cultural expressions. We have terms that are terribly confusing to new English speakers.

Once at my children’s elementary school -- which had at that time about a sixty per cent ESL population -- puzzled new Canadian parents were told in a notice to bring a “brown bag lunch.”  WTF?   [And is there a Chinese or Spanish, Estonian or Tahitian expression for WTF?]

What do new English-speakers make of expressions like “cooking the books,” ... “flatliners,” ... or “bling bling?” How on earth would a new English speaker translate these into anything comprehensible?

That got me wondering what kind of things people speaking other languages devleoped slang expressions around. Ah, Google:  “slang in other languages:”

Herbert Giles on the World Wide School website has a few examples of Chinese slang. Three thousand years of creative language mangling:

·   A flowery bill:  “A flowery bill is understood from one end of China to the other as that particular kind in which our native servants delight to indulge, namely, an account charging twice as much for everything as was really paid, and containing twice as much in quantity as was actually supplied.”

·   He’s all rice-water:  “He's all rice-water, i.e., gives one plenty of the water in which rice has been boiled, but none of the rice itself, is said of a man who promises much and does nothing.”

Wikipedia says that Mandarin slang is different and “consists of many slang words and insults involving sex.”  Interesting. A few examples from the article on Mandarin slang:   

·   Bad egg:  Huàidàn (壞蛋/坏蛋).

·    jībā (simplified Chinese:)  鸡巴 (traditional Chinese: )  雞巴/鷄巴, IM abbreviation: J8/G8) = cock (used as early as the Yuan Dynasty  and 11 different slangs for penis and 12 for vagina in Mandarin in case you’re interested.

·   qù nǐde (Chinese:)  去你的) = fuck off/shut the fuck up (milder).

And this may be useful for North American youth to incorporate into their repertoire of swears. Made in Taiwan:

·   wǒ kào (我靠 or 我尻) – "Well fuck me!", "Fuck!", "Fuckin' awesome!" or "Holy shit!" (Originally from Taiwan, this expression has spread to the mainland, where it is generally not considered to be vulgar. 尻 originally meant "butt.")

And how many centuries we’ve been picking on the poor beleagured male member:

·   diǎo (屌) / niǎo (simplified Chinese: 鸟; traditional: 鳥) = cock; this was an insult as long ago as the Jin Dynasty.  Now it sometimes also means "fucking cool" or "fucking outrageous", thanks in large part to the pop star Jay Chou "鸟人" (bird man) sometimes has a derogative meaning as a "wretch", but also often used between close friends as affectionate appellation like "fellow."

This Wikipedia article is absolutely fascinating. Seems people ahve been saying "no shit" for eons, and telling others to eff-off since forever. Some very "questionable" words here at ChinaSmack. 

But I was more interested in daily usage kind of slang, the kind we use at work -- an abbreviationary type of the vernacular.  Finding that is a bit more of a challenge.

I found BuzzWhack, a dictionary of buzzwords 

• (buzz.whack.er (buz´wak er) n. A person who receives some degree of pleasure in bursting the bubbles of the pompous.)  Very interesting and amusing and like most techno/slang, to the point.

But how to find these expressions in other languages?

The Australians are pretty good at it.  Islands are a great place to grow buzz and slang, from the Australian Dictionary of Slang.  There’s  

• bludger; 
• earbash; 
• on a good lurk; 
• open slather;
• spit the dummy; 
• wanker;
• the wedding tackle;
•  and from the Aussies we also got those old familiars: cakehole, butt, chinwag and cockeyed, crapper (which they may have borrowed from the Brits) and many more lyrical mouthfuls all in “strine” (strine = Aussie English).

That’s more like it.

The Americans seem very good at generating new words, slang, buzz words, and all sorts of language playfuls. But maybe that’s only because I watch their TV and other nations are equally as creative with their languages.

Proverbs are another way at getting how a culture thinks about things.  Given the human experience is universal, you’d expect there would be crossover on proverbs in all cultures.  Here’s Spanish proverbs  and sure enough we find those old chestnuts:

·   Don't look a gift horse in the mouth - A caballo regalado no se le miran los dientes;

·   A man's home is his castle - A cada nidito le gusta su pajarito (lit.: each little bird likes his small nest; n.b.: Mexican saying)

But here’s one that’s kind of culturally specific:

·     A mule and a woman must be defeated with blows from sticks - A la mula y a la mujer, a palos se ha de vencer. (n.b.: a Mexican saying; probably not the best approach with women)

Most of them were all the same old tired clichéd proverbs, but this one was new to me:

·   Hunger is the best sauce - A mucha hambre, no hay pan duro (lit.: when very hungry, there is no hard/stale bread).

The Spanish had longer listings for slang than any other country listed.

The Italians have been swearing at each other for centuries.  The BBC has come up with some “cool” Italian slang in English. All divided into categories. The “Pulling” list (?) has all sorts of classifications of men’s and women’s attractiveness:

• Un rospo - Lit. a toad. An ugly, unattractive girl; un ciospo - an ugly, unattractive guy.  Un bel tipo - a handsome guy) and 4 lyrical terms for condoms;

then Interjections from  

• Merda! (shit; but not as rude as in English they say) to  
• boh! (I don’t know and I don’t care--you shrug with this one).

Slang evidently isn’t just generated by countries and cultures; it’s also generated by being a roadie, by subcultures, dialect, sexual orientation, military special forces [recon, civvies, black bird etc.]; crimes and prisons, illicit substances, all of which you can review at http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/links.htm

My nomination for most creative and funnest slang dictionary. Strafe’s Guide. Computer/ internet slang. Some creative self-mocking gems:

·   aardvarking - v. Having sex with an ex just because both of you have nothing or no one better to do.

·   rasterbator - n. 1. A compulsive computer user. 2. Someone who has an hyper-inflated opinion of their own digital work.

·    etch-a-sketch - v. Trying to draw a smile on a woman's face by twiddling both of her nipples simultaneously.

·   badd ass pipe - n. A high-bandwidth Internet connection. Also see riding glass, squirt the bird.

·   wankware - n. X-rated software.

·   hurl -  v. To email only URLs with no accompanying commentary.

·   Would you like fries with that? - exclm. Ironic reply to someone who asks you to do something that is a complete waste of your training, talent, education or experience. Also see I don't make the fries.

Kind of amazing how evocative and creative with language these pixel monkeys have been. And we thought they couldn’t even spell!

The ultimate compendium of worldly worldwide slang - the ForeignSlang Dictionaries online.

Language and expression, like everything else, is ultimately going to morph and change; after all, it's fúyún. 

Bah humbug Dole and Bengard

I was delighted to be able to buy cauliflowers this summer at the farmers’ market for an “each” price.  

I hate buying a cauliflower and paying really top prices like $1.99 a pound, and then I open it up and find that fully one-third of it is waste and which bumps the price up to about $2.50 a pound. For a cauliflower! C'mon, a cauliflower.

I’ve found this with Dole cauliflowers and Bengard caulies which are from Salinas CA. What a scam.

I wrote to the president of Safeway: I'd much rather you took your suppliers on, and got your customers a better deal on cauliflowers. Much better you spent your time on that, than coming up with stuff like that phony-baloney campaign where you  make your overworked cashiers pause after they print it out the bill, find our names in that weird light blue, almost unreadable, ink and say, “Thank you Mrs. So & So.  Have-a-good-one!”

Please.

They don’t have a clue who I am, and neither of us cares. You are not my friendly neighbourhood greengrocer: you're a giant multinat, so let's drop the pretense that your cashier is ever going to remember me when I go back.

I’d much rather have 75 cents a pound off my cauliflower, Mr. President. You could say: "Look here, Dole: cut some of that greenage off the cauliflowers eady. I don't want my  customers paying for greenage they have to toss in the trash."

But no.

He never bothered to write back.

The First Anniversary of Mum's Death

Even writing those words, “Mum’s death,” still feels weird. It’s been one year but time, somehow, does not seem to apply, at least not in linear terms. I feel as if, in some ways, I actually get sadder and feel more bereft at the loss as time goes by.

         Yesterday for example. Memories arose and stabbed and jabbed at me and I started crying in the car – and then again in London Drugs – then I held onto it until I got home an could let fly. I just suddenly felt her gone-ness so keenly. It is very strange to feel orphaned at sixty-four years old.

             

           I guess this is the stage at which men and women cleave more closely unto their spouses. But my spouse an I separate last year too, five months after she died. It was a year of losses and new things.

         Losing Mum.  Emotionally, as with earthquakes, it’s “the big one.” 

          We were so lucky. She was ninety-six. Almost a century. But there is no one else I will have known for sixty-three years in this life, ever, except my brother. But of course Mother and Sibling are such very different relationships. There is just nothing like your Mum, nothing that comes close to Mother, its positive or negative aspects.

         I miss her every day. 

         Long, long ago, when I was a teen and interested in the concept of reincarnation, I remember we said we’d have a sign so we could let the other know if we had come back. We hadn’t talked about it for decades. Now I can’t remember what the signal was.

        I do know I have been even more careful than always about not killing insects, though.  Just in case. I think we thought she might come back as a butterfly, because she loved butterflies. So I have even been careful about the moths who seem to colonize my closet in this new apartment.

Even if a butterfly did land on me and wink, I’m not sure what coming back as a butterfly would signify though?  That there is something more, I guess. Plus that Mum’s first-life-after was going to be pretty short.

And then what?

What is this impulse to want to know there is more?

 It’s ruled human beings and the world—through religions—for eons. Is it this desperation to think “this isn’t just it” reason enough to have let ourselves be legislated, sent to wars, imprisoned, corralled, controlled from birth to death—even crucified—throughout the ages?

And why are we prepared to believe others (priests, gurus, pastors) know the answers – the “truth” – the secrets – and that old books written by other humans (bibles, gospels, sutras, scriptures) hold the key to what our consciousness is all about?  


I don't now. But with my Mum dying, I guess I understand the impetus a whole lot more now.

The most important person alive today

I was asked: who do you think is the most important person alive today?

            For me, it’s His Holiness, the 14^thDalai Lama. And the reason he is the most important is the same reason that you—very likely not a Buddhist nor a Tibetan—know the name of the spiritual leader of a tiny, once-isolated nation at the top of the Himalayas, about as remote a place as there is on Earth. Because this self-effacing man came from absolute obscurity and a tiny country and, at 16 years old, had to grapple with the might of the People’s Republic of China and the evil genius of the legendary Mao Zedong, a world class geopolitical bully.

            Think of any 16 year old you know and you’ll realize immediately how extraordinary was that cloistered youth who had never been out of his tiny country when, at Mao's command, he went to China in 1954 to meet The Great Helmsman……..and then went on to defy Mao and China and has done so—lovingly—for 57 years since, under the most excruciating kind of pressure and terror.

›

            My mother went to hear His Holiness speak in about 1972 in Vancouver, and he filled a modest room at the University of British Columbia. Nowadays it’s hard to find a stadium large enough to accommodate all the people who want to hear him, probably 1%  of whom are Buddhists.

            So why is he so important? Because he has demonstrated that he knows how to oppose the absolute worst kind of tyranny without violence. And amazingly—with love.

            An obscure “simple monk” (as he characterizes himself) has shown us how we could, if we chose, do things in peace, with what he calls “loving kindness.”

            The other so-called important men of this age—who has done anything comparable? Barrack Obama? The Georges Bush? Tony Blair or David Cameron? Angela Merkel? Nicholas Sarkozy? the late Ayatollah Khomeini? Donald Trump or Bill Gates?  Pope Benedict XVI or even Queen Elizabeth II?

Who has done as much as The Dalai Lama to give us a living blueprint for how hard it is, but how it is done?

One guy in a wraparound robe and a pair of sandals.  He’s my nominee.

CBC Radio supporting speeders?

Many mornings on CBC Radio’s drive show, I hear warnings to drivers of police having set up radar speed traps.

Every time I hear these warnings, it jars.

Is it even ethical of the peoples’ radio to give these warnings?

I actually want the speeders to get caught. 

Long ago I read that most accidents are caused by sudden, unpredictable actions - the kind of things speeders do when they are pushing you from behind or weaving in and out of traffic trying to go faster and faster.

Now, with the news that some of those people are texting while they’re at it - I want them pulled over and ticketed. 

I want there to be a big huge financial disincentive. I’m sick of people riding my bumper when I’m going at the speed limit or when, for safety reasons, I choose at times to drive a bit below the limit.

CBC Radio, what's your point in helping these dangerous drivers slow down just long enough to not get caught at it? Please, CBC, stop giving the show away.

Why "Don't Buy Gas on [date]" Days are a waste of energy

Every time the price of gas goes over $1.25/L, emails full of exclamation points start circulating:

"DO NOT  BUY GAS ON [...fill in the date...]!!!!"

Let's think about why this is basically a waste of time and why oil company execs probably have a big belly laugh around the water cooler when they start going out. 

Select any date and say "Don't Buy Gas" -- and what are people who participate going to do?  Fill up a couple of days before or the day after.  

Gas companies know this. They know they just have to wait out the day - and it's only a matter of time before we have to guzzle up again. So why would the one-day boycott motivate them to lower prices?

Oil companies don't lose the revenue on these "don't fill up" days. It's just delayed for a day or two,  and they seem to be able to ride that out.

Losing revenue is the only language corporations speak or respond to. So what might work is a "Don't Drive Week."

Imagine a week when we all stayed off the roads.  (Should I add some !!!!!!s here?)

.....A week when the fillings-up simply stopped. 

.....A week when we would make the sacrifice we really need to make to get the attention of both the oil corporations and governments.

And then maybe make it a week every month. And then maybe…..

We don't need designated days when we stop filling up. We need periods when we stop driving altogether.  When we simply stop consuming the over-priced petrol. And it needs to be long enough that it has an impact on their cash-flow and their just-in-time inventory process. So their tanker farms start backing up, and the ships are sitting in harbours, full of product.

One day they can manage. But seven?

That would send a meaningful message. It would also help us rehearse how we absolutely have to lower our consumption of petroleum products and find other ways of getting there.

My Tribute to Palden Gyatso, amazing human being

Tribute to Palden Gyatso

by Margo Lamont

To Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, incarcerated in 1959 and tortured for 33  years by the Government of the Peoples’ Republic of China.
Released from prison in 1992, he escaped Tibet to Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan Government-in-exile and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

Nineteen Fifty-nine Lhasa, the top of the world Tibet, a country of peace       monks, nuns, lamas, nomads;       the gentle people of Tibet       their country occupied nine years       by the Peoples’ Liberation Army of China: rapes, re-education, torture, interrogation, thramzing; slave labour, humiliation, degradation, chaos, crime; Tibetan land—redistributed; Han Chinese— moved in; pawns themselves. Tibetans second-class citizens in their own country: An anti-communist occupation uprising ensues.
You were only 26 the year the Tibetan people rose up, an ill-fated rebellion against ten years of tyranny. You were arrested and imprisoned just for participating in a protest over the annexation of your country by a country three hundred times its size. That same year, 1959, HH The Dalai Lama escaped Tibet to exile in India.
We bopped in bobby sox on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand ...while you were enduring  the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution... And what you called Tibet’s “deepest hell,”    We rocked around the clock with Bill Halley & the Comets   ...while Buddhist sacred texts  were used as toilet paper, while you were woken  in the middle of the night, slapped and kicked by guards, while you endured the sick cold of leg irons in Tibetan winters, the blisters on your shins, the chafe and cruel pain. And all over the planet streams still danced downhill over river-rounded rocks We gorged on years of Christmas groaning boards, our tables laden with turkey and stuffing, vegetables, mashed and roasted potatoes, gravy, cranberry jelly, and four desserts, ... while you used your coveted spoon on the bowl of watery soup you were fed only twice a day;  …while you lay bruised and bleeding on the flat bare board that was your bed... And the ocean tides  rolled over undulating kelp beds, the waves  talking the rocks as they hit the shore We swooned over Elvis Presley, jived in crinolines and penny loafers ...while you were imprisoned and tortured for thirty-three years: hand cuffs, thumb cuffs, serrated knives, hooked knives, electric cattle prods, Electric shock guns (70,000 volts); scalding tea emptied on your arm by sadist guards. And all the while the tides went in and out relentlessly while we lived our tiny lives and you endured yours	Richard Nixon & Nikita Kruschev have their famous “kitchen debate.”  Mao Zedong declares himself  China’s “Great Helmsman.”  Che Guevara and Fidel Castro take over Cuba. Charles De Gaulle is president in France.  Vatican II is announced.  Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is released, the 16th animated film ever. Two monkeys return from space.    Canadian Government cancels the CF105 Arrow program. Hawaii becomes the 50th U.S. state. First picture of Earth from space. The brand new St. Lawrence Seaway opens. First Americans are killed in action in Vietnam. Bonanza and The Twilight Zone begin. Ben-Hur, the first “Technicolor” movie opens. First known HIV death (in the Congo). The Caspian Tiger goes extinct in Iran. Pantyhose is introduced. Magic Johnson, Kevin Spacey, and the Barbie Doll are born; Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper died. My parents got divorced.
1969:    You are 36. You have been in Chinese prison for 10 years. A third of your life:
Woodstock:  we bought bangles and bracelets, sang about freedom, gave the Fish Cheer, felt free, and unbound      ...while you were tied     with your hands     behind your back,     and suspended     from the ceiling;     interrogated I went to Cape Breton; A new sun rose over the Rawdin Hills and the Moon shone down on the sea, slicing a silver path through modest waves. Rain fell on the misty lakes  of Bras D’Or.	Woodstock. The Beatles give their last public performance. The final episode of Star Trek the original series. First Gap store opens. The Boeing 747 makes its maiden flight. UNIX is invented. John Lennon records Give Peace a Chance. He does a Bed-In in Montreal.  In Prague’s Wenceslas Square, a student, Jan Palach, sets himself on fire to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In the same year, Neil Armstrong walks on the Moon – the Mai Lai Massacre – Chappaquiddick -- the Chicago 8 trial. The first Battlestar Galactica series concludes. Diddy is born and Ho Chi Minh dies.  Sharon Tate is murdered and Dwight Eisenhower and an era pass away.

 

1979:  You’ve been in jail for 20 years for your religious beliefs.   You’re 46, it’s been almost half your life:

We drank B52s and boogied the night away in stiletos at Studio 54 and Régine’s,     ...while you wore shackles     all day as you toiled     then slept in them      all night. The mountains bore their snowstorms  and avalanches...the Sun eclipsed; ; hurricanes blew; Summers passed, Leaves fell. Autumns came, And winters: snow fell softly on the Drepung Monastery near Lhasa, your home before you were incarcerated We went to spas, cruised on ships, were pampered and overstuffed, lay luxuriously in hot tubs and jacuzzis ...while you were squatting on a plastic bucket for a latrine,  your legs in shackles. You needed people to help you walk to the bucket; you were unable to wipe yourself after defecation I drove back home to BC Water fell over Niagara Falls in a thundering cacophony  Horses galloped over the grassy plains of Saskatchewan Loons called out over pristine Canadian lakes, skies electric blue; Bears dipped into mountain streams for salmon feasts

Jimmy Carter is president of the U.S. The Iranian revolution occurs. Voyager 1 passes Jupiter.  Three Mile Island melts down. Margaret Thatcher rules Britannia.  The Unabomber. Smallpox is declared eradicated. The USSR invades Afghanistan. The McDonald’s “Happy Meal” is launched … Nobel Peace Prize to Mother Theresa. Snow falls for 30 minutes in the Sahara Desert. Heath Ledger is born; Nelson Rockefeller; Josef Mengele and “Mr. Ed” the talking horse all die.

1989:   You are 56 years old. You’ve been in prison for 30 years —  more than half your life.
We went on shopping trips. We shopped in Paris, London and L.A. We bought and bought and bought -- at Holt Renfrew, Tiffany’s and Harrod’s, Wal*Mart, PriceClub, SuperStore & SaveOn…. ...while you spent these years shivering in one outfit of rags:  locked away,  interrogated with electric prods, …while you were forced to attend thamzings after a full day’s work— twelve hour berating sessions where you and your fellow prisoners had to denounce and beat each other or be denounced and beaten yourselves – and always, always facing the prospect of execution Killer whales migrated up the BC coast, sounding and spouting; Lazy days in the Strait of Georgia	George Bush Sr. is president in the U.S. The Tiananmen Square massacre occurs – and the Eastern Bloc revolutions of ’89.  Ted Bundy is fried in Florida. Seinfeld premiers. Sim City is released. Motorola’s cell phone and GameBoy are introduced. The Exxon Valdez; An Iranian iman declares a fatwa against Salmon Rushdie.  Solidarity wins Poland. Burmese dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, placed under house arrest. Voyager 2 passes Neptune and apartheid is being dismantled. Taylor Swift is born. Emperor Hirohito, Ayatollah Khomeini and Bette Davis die. Nicolae Ceausescu is executed in Romania, Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, is murdered in Oakland.
1992:   The year you were released after 33 years at the mercy of the Chinese  Government.  You were 59 years old.
While you were imprisoned the sun rose, resplendent , ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty times And it fell into the sea deliriously as many times; and then once more again	George Bush Jr. is president of the U.S. Boris Yeltsin in the USSR. The Soviet Union falls …   Charles & Di separate. Japan apologizes for forcing Korean women into sexual slavery in WW2. The Bosnian War. The Rodney King riots.  X-Files’ pilot episode. Jay Leno takes over the Tonight Show. Dr Dre invents gangsta rap. Dan Quayle misspells potato. Albert Pierrepoint, who hung 608 people as Britain’s Chief Executioner, himself expires.
Palden Gyatso, you went to prison and torture for three decades Because you stood up for your beliefs.     Yet fifty years later     sixty per cent of us     cannot be bothered to vote. While your life was brutality and torture, ours went on; While horror was visited upon a trapped and powerless you, we went about our lives, asleep and unaware.
And what if we had known -- would we have done anything? Was it ignorant Dark Ages behaviour? Was it the communists, the Chinese? Could it ever happen here? Is that the price of revolution or reform? And now, half a century later - is that kind of confinement and torture of our fellow man a thing of the past?   Has anything changed? -- Have we evolved? Is it over? Is democracy and dissidence alive and well?
2002:      Maher Arar, Canadian citizen 2009:      Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi arrested once again,                  imprisoned under “house arrest”
And what are we doing now       …are we asleep or unaware,    …or still too busy shopping and dancing?
2009:    Canada’s Afghanistan torture scandal
Is this the Canada we want us to be? We can’t say it’s somewhere else anymore We know it’s going on…  But. what are we to do?  And what can we be expected to do? What happens after the knowing?
2010:             Aung San Suu Kyi finally released after house                         arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years                         from July 1989 until  November 2010

And 2010...2011...  Lest We Forget:

Claudina Velásquez … Guatemala Johan Teterissa … Idonesia Ronak Safarzaden... Islamic Republic of Iran The Deep Sea Settlement people … Kenya Thongpaseuth Keuakoun, Sen-Aloun Phengpanh, Bouavanh Chanmanivong, Keochay & Khampouvieng Sisaath … Laos The Me’phaa Indigenous People’s Organization … Mexico Chekib El-Khiari … Morocco The Women’s Rehabilitation Centre … Nepal Patrick Okoroafor … Nigeria MasoodJanjua and Faisal Faraz … Pakistan Comunidad Indigena Yakye Axa and Communidad Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous People … Paraguay Ibragim Gazdiev …  Ingushetia Frances-Xavier Byuma … Rwanda Petrija Piljević … Serbia Park Rae-gun … Republic of Korea Maher Ibrahim and Tarek Ghorani … Syria Ferhat Gerçek … Turkey Aleksandr Rafalsky … Ukraine Troy Anthony Davis … USA Isroil Kholdorov …Uzbekistan Le Thi Cong Xhan … Viet Nam WOZA, Women of Zimbabwe Arise … Zimbabwe Djameleddine Fahassi … Algeria Eynulla Fatullayev … Azerbaijan Khu Bedu, Khun Kawrio and Khun Dee De … Myanmar Huseyin Celil …People’s Republic of China Nurmemet Yasin … People’s Republic of China The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó … Colombia Mohamed El Sharkawi … Egypt Ernestia & Erlinda Serrano Cruz …El Salvador The beat goes on. ................................................................................................. Book:   Palden Gyatso's account of those 33 years:  Fire Under the Snow (Random House, 1998). Film:  http://www.fireunderthesnow.com/site2009/