WASHINGTON—A crippling idiom shortage that has left millions of Americans struggling to express themselves spread like tugboat hens throughout the U.S. mainland Tuesday in an unparalleled lingual crisis that now has the entire country six winks short of an icicle.
Since beginning two weeks ago, the deficit in these vernacular phrases has affected nearly every English speaker on the continent, making it virtually impossible to communicate symbolic ideas through a series of words that do not individually share the same meaning as the group of words as a whole. In what many are calling a cast-iron piano tune unlike any on record, idiomatic expression has been devastated nationwide.
“This is an absolute oyster carnival,” said Harvard University linguistics professor Dr. Howard Albright, who noted that the current idiom shortage has been the country’s worst. “I don’t know any other way to describe it.”
Albright said that citizens in the South and West have been hit by the dearth of idioms like babies bite the bedpost, with people in those colorful expression–heavy regions unable to speak about anything related to rain storms, misers, sensations associated with nervousness, difficult or ironic predicaments, surprise at a younger relative’s rapid increase in height, or love. In some areas, what few idioms remain are being bartered or sold at exorbitant prices. And, Albright claims, unless something is done before long to dry out the cinnamon jars, residents of Texas may soon cease speaking altogether.
“These people are desperate,” said Albright, gesturing with his hands to indicate the severity of the problem there. “We’ve never seen anything like it. Some are being forced to choose between feeding their family and praising especially talented professional athletes. It’s as if—it’s really—it is bad.” […]
While it has been difficult to determine the overall mood of average Americans, anecdotal evidence points to a growing discontent that ranges from trudging down the pudding skin to outright anger. In Philadelphia, 71-year-old Melvin Hatcher said he has found himself “egg-hooked” in conversation on a daily basis.
“These politicians want us to believe that throwing a few mud thrones at the problem is going to make it go away,” said Hatcher, a retired African-American boxing trainer and World War II veteran. “They can make all the promises they want, but they will always remain a collection of deceitful people, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
They end by reporting that authorities “urge citizens to skip shy the rickshaw until such time as the flypaper marigolds have a chance to waterfall,” and I can only concur.
Personally I keep a giant list of olde-timey sayings and idioms because they’re the best part of language * boy i'll slice you too thick to fry too thin to boil * silent as a mouse pissin' on cotton * he has a face as craggy as an irish cliff * By the tits of Medusa! * I got three shillings for a two shilling horse * I've been farther under the barn hunting eggs than you've ever been away from home * Like Grant through Richmond * You could pick out fly shit from the pepper * Goes over like shit on a cold biscuit * stepping high like an old war horse when he smells powder * If you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit * he could throw a strawberry through a battleship * you’re squirming more than a cows asshole at a bologna factory * I earn more before 10am than most dogs make all day! (I actually said this as a flex in a dream, then immediately woke up, hella confused) …
“I’m just going to eat it the Uyghur way,” Jewher Ilham, 31, tells New Lines as she picks up a lamb kebab and slides off a piece of meat with her teeth. Satiated, she smiles as she chews.
It’s a Tuesday evening in June, and Ilham is at the Uyghur restaurant Bostan, located in a strip mall in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington. It is hard to miss with its flashing pink neon sign: “Welcome to Bostan.”
There are several Uyghur restaurants in and around the American capital — the result, perhaps, of the estimated 10,000 Uyghurs who live in the area — but Bostan is Ilham’s favorite. “I know how to make Uyghur food myself, but when other people make it for you, it’s better,” Ilham says, taking another bite of her lamb kebab.
Growing up in the Chinese capital, Beijing, Ilham says her relationship with her father was primarily a culinary one. “We just ate a lot,” Ilham says of her father, Ilham Tohti, a trained economist. “Uyghur people care about food so much.”
Uyghurs are a Turkic, majority-Muslim ethnic group native to the region of Xinjiang in northwestern China, where Beijing stands accused by rights groups and foreign governments of committing genocide against them. Many Uyghurs prefer to call the region East Turkestan or the Uyghur Region. Uyghur cuisine is just one aspect of life that has been affected by the actions of Chinese authorities, who launched an “antihalal” crackdown in 2018.
Ilham’s parents divorced when she was young, and she was primarily raised by her father, who taught at Beijing’s prestigious Minzu University. Ilham smiles as she recalls her favorite memories with him, which center around food and cuisine.
For instance, there was the time when Ilham was about 5 years old and she managed to eat 40 dumplings at the dumpling house she and her father frequented. Another time, she and her father were hungry in the middle of the night, so he cooked a chicken. He left their apartment for a few minutes to buy drinks at a nearby store and, by the time he had returned, Ilham had already eaten half of it. “I had a reputation for my appetite as a kid,” Ilham says. “He would praise me. I thought that was a badge of honor.”
Ilham’s relationship with her native cuisine has evolved since the days when she gobbled down dumplings and kebabs alongside her beloved father. For Ilham, food was always associated with a sense of home and the happiness one derived from it. That changed after she left China for the United States in 2013, and her relationship with food was further transformed in 2014, when her father was arrested back in China and later sentenced to life in prison on charges of “separatism.” The 55-year-old is now considered among the highest-profile Uyghur political prisoners. Ilham hasn’t received any updates on his status since 2017.
Food, especially Uyghur cooking, still makes Ilham happy, she tells me. But while it makes her feel closer to her father, it also reminds her that they are now worlds apart. Eating is when his absence is most painful, she laments. After several years in exile, the aromas and tastes that Ilham grew up savoring now serve to evoke deep sorrow, underscoring her father’s imprisonment and the fact that she can’t return to her homeland because of the political situation. “I feel guilty for enjoying food,” she says.
It’s a phenomenon that other members of the Uyghur diaspora say they’ve experienced: joy turning into sorrow, the private mourning of a nation that feels like a lump in the throat.
The exiled Uyghur journalist Gulchehra Hoja knows this feeling all too well. Hoja left Xinjiang and moved to the U.S. in 2001. Her mother still lives in Xinjiang, and Hoja feels her absence most profoundly when she’s cooking in the kitchen. “The memories come back to me every time, mixed with joy and happiness and sadness, together,” she says. “Missing our family. Food does very unique stuff with our memories.”
Xinjiang was once a key region along the ancient Silk Road trade route. Today’s Uyghur cuisine combines a variety of ingredients and techniques from the Middle East, Turkey, Central Asia and China. “You cannot make Uyghur food with a machine. It has to be handmade,” Ilham says.
Laghman — chewy, hand-pulled noodles topped with stir-fried meat and vegetables — is perhaps the most famous Uyghur dish. Lamb rice pilaf, known as polo, is also popular.
Hamid Kerim, the owner of Dolan Uyghur Restaurant in Washington, told me how he often thinks back to having dinner with his big family growing up in the city of Ghulja. “When I see a big plate of polo, I remember when we were six brothers and sisters, my dad and my mom. Beautiful time,” he recalled. One of his brothers is currently imprisoned in the Chinese government’s network of arbitrary detention centers in Xinjiang.
Other classic dishes include chopped fried soman, which are finely cut noodles stir-fried with meat and vegetables; chicken or lamb kebabs; pumpkin dumplings; eggplant salad; spicy cold skin noodles called rangpiza and oven-baked buns, known as samsa, that are filled with vegetables and lamb or beef.
Even in the diaspora, Uyghur food is a reminder of the abuses taking place back in Xinjiang, Ilham says. She cites the example of tomatoes, which are an important component in many Uyghur dishes.
Xinjiang produces about one-quarter of the world’s tomatoes. But rights groups say the industry is tainted by forced Uyghur labor. In 2021, the U.S. government banned the import of all Xinjiang tomatoes over forced labor concerns.
Since her father’s detention, Ilham says there have been a few occasions when food has made her cry because it evoked painfully vivid memories of her father. Once, she ate a meal of dumplings filled with beef, carrots and onion that tasted exactly like the ones her father used to make. Ilham didn’t want to cry, she says, but the tears came down anyway. “It felt too familiar. It felt like something that I can’t have,” she says. “It wasn’t the same chef that I wished it was.”
A similar instance happened at an Uyghur restaurant in Munich, Germany, that reminded her of the last trip she took with her father around Xinjiang. The kebabs “tasted exactly the same — the texture, the size. Even how dirty the restaurant was,” she told New Lines. “I was quiet the whole time when I was eating, because I didn’t have words to express it. I was shaking.”
There was a period when Ilham even turned to food in order to push down those feelings of sadness, overeating to the point of inducing vomiting. “I realized this was not the right approach,” she says. When looking for a peaceful sense of home, she adds, “Food is very good, but it’s not always going to work.”
Uyghurs are among the few groups in the world who can’t return to their homeland and are, for the foreseeable future, separated from their family members who are left behind. Beijing’s reported abuses in the region include detaining Uyghurs en masse and forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women. As part of the Chinese government’s campaign to forcibly assimilate Uyghurs into the dominant Han group, Beijing has outlawed some cultural practices outright and turned others into mere tourist attractions.
Uyghurs in the diaspora are particularly concerned about keeping their culture alive for their children. “For my kids, I am sad they cannot taste their grandma’s food,” Hoja says. “So I’m doing my best to teach them about our food and Uyghur culture.”
What’s happening in Xinjiang means it’s even more important for Uyghurs to assert their identity in the diaspora, Ilham says, including through food. Uyghur restaurants are the closest that members of the diaspora can get to a taste of home.
“For a community whose culture is slowly being erased, you want to find a place where it’s not only existing but also thriving,” Ilham says. Restaurants, she adds, are “actively helping preserve that culture.”
In Bostan, the walls are painted the same blue as the East Turkestan flag. As in most Uyghur restaurants, a tapestry of Ghazi Ehmet’s iconic 1984 painting “Muqam,” which depicts Uyghurs playing traditional music, hangs on one wall. So, too, do Uyghur instruments and the traditional skullcaps called doppas.
In addition to educating non-Uyghurs about Uyghur culture, Kerim says that restaurants like his also serve as a place for Uyghurs to gather and, in some cases, commiserate about their shared grief. “This is like a medicinal practice,” he says.
When Ilham left China over a decade ago, she didn’t really know how to make anything besides salad. But a Uyghur journalist with Radio Free Asia, who had interviewed her father, traveled to Indiana to help Ilham learn how to make dishes like polo.
“I started having an obsession with it,” Ilham said, to the point that she even considered opening a restaurant herself. For the past several years, she has focused on improving her skills to prepare for what she hopes will be the inevitable day that she finally cooks for her father.
Ilham, whose name means inspiration, says she plans to cook laghman and polo, plus a third dish that is considered particularly challenging: a pasta soup called narin.
Ilham admits she still struggles to make that dish well and jokes that her father will make fun of her attempt at it. “He’s going to say, ‘You had many years,’” she says. She holds tightly to that hope.
Recipes:
Provided by Gulchehra Hoja
Gulchehra Hoja sprinkles sesame seeds on samsa before cooking them. (Dana Khakiyev)
Samsa
Ingredients for dough:
3 cups of flour
1 stick of softened butter
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of water
2 eggs
4 tablespoons of yogurt
Ingredients for filling:
3-3 1/2 pounds of lamb, with fat
1 large onion
1 medium-sized potato
Spices (2 teaspoons salt, 2 teaspoons cumin, 1 teaspoon dried chili powder, 1 teaspoon black pepper)
Finishing:
1 egg for egg wash
1 teaspoon black sesame seeds
2 teaspoons white sesame seeds
Directions:
Mix the dough ingredients and knead until smooth and similar in firmness to pizza dough.
Cover the dough and leave to rest while starting on the filling.
Dice the lamb into small cubes the size of corn. Dice the onions and potatoes as well. Then mix along with the spices.
Divide the dough into "golf ball" sized pieces and roll to flatten out. Fill each with one tablespoon of meat filling.
Close the pastry in half and secure by pinching inward.
Lay on a tray spaced 1 inch apart, brush with egg wash and sprinkle with the sesame seeds.
Bake at 420 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes on the middle rack of the oven.
Allow to cool for five minutes and serve with hot tea.
Polo with lamb, presented with other popular Uyghur dishes. (Dana Khakiyev)
Polo
Ingredients:
3 cups of rice
5-6 medium-sized carrots
1 cup of olive oil
3 pounds of beef or lamb, slightly fatty
2 onions
1 cup of water
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon cumin
Wash the rice three times and cut the meat into fist-sized portions. Prepare and peel the carrots and onions, then cut the carrots into crayon-sized chunks.
Start by cooking the meat. Heat the oil and, keeping the temperature high, let the meat cook for five minutes and brown. Then add the onions and cook for an additional five minutes.
Then add the carrots. Toss around the mixture in the pot and let it cook for another seven-10 minutes. Add water, reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for another 10-20 minutes.
Remove the meat only, place it aside and add rice.
Make sure the water covers the rice completely by at least 1 inch, adding more water if necessary (not too much though). After adding the rice, cook on medium heat until the rice has absorbed the water. Do not mix the pot.
Add the meat once the water has evaporated and turn to low heat to cook for 35-40 minutes.
Before serving, cut the meat into bite-size pieces. Then, mix the rice and carrots and place on a large dish with the meat chunks on top.
I trust every reader here is politically aware enough to know that a political assassination occurred last month in Minnesota when State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot to death at their home. Many of you may have missed the detail that when the gunman entered the Hortman's home he also shot their golden retriever, Gilbert.
This was not a hunting dog. Melissa Hortman was training this dog for Helping Paws, a nonprofit that provides service dogs to people with disabilities, including veterans and first responders with PTSD. Gilbert did not graduate from the program, so the Hortmans decided to keep him as a house dog. There are no living witnesses to the assassination, so it is not known whether the dog came to the front door out of curiosity or to protect his humans, but it doesn't matter. Governor Walz decided to include Gilbert in the memorial at the state capital.
There is no record of any other nonhuman ever lying in state, and Melissa Hortman, a former state House speaker still leading the chamber’s Democrats, is the first woman. The state previously granted the honor to 19 men, including a vice president, a U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senators, governors and a Civil War veteran, according to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library.
If any readers consider a dog lying in state to be trivial, please read my post five years ago entitled Remembering Sugar Rae. And if you still don't understand, please find a different blog to follow.
Meet Courtney Palmer: Housewife, aspiring TikTok influencer, and self-proclaimed princess. She’s the face behind “Princess Treatment,” a newly viral, hyper-feminine philosophy that’s equal parts self-care, submissiveness, and delusion.
Her five minutes of fame began June 21, when she posted a nearly six-minute TikTok detailing how she (a “princess”) does not speak or even look at waitstaff while dining out.
“If I am at a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to the hostess, I do not open any doors, and I do not order my own food,” she explains. Apparently, eye contact is masculine, and princesses don’t acknowledge service workers. “It’s not in any sense like, you’re better than the hostess, you’re just letting your husband lead, and be masculine.”
Naturally, the algorithm popped off, pushing the video to a whopping 6.4 million views. Cue the comments: “This isn’t princess treatment. This is hostage treatment,” wrote one user. “Are you okay???” wrote another.
People began duetting the video, many role-playing as the hostess who has to deal with her. She even scored the nickname “Princess Collarbone” for the way she dramatically pops her collarbone on camera. Palmer told The New York Times that the response to her TikTok had been “blindsiding.”My first reaction? Oh, great. Another wannabe-trad-wife being platformed by this godforsaken app. But what I uncovered after a deep psychological dive was far more disheartening.
Her magnum opus is a 29-part TikTok playlist titled “Princess Treatment,” a compilation of rambling monologues in which she defends her thesis and instructs women how to methodically manipulate their man into buying them Chanel flats.
The earliest video in the playlist was posted on February 14, but from there, the videos, which are labeled Part 1-29, are not in chronological order. Confusing, but she’s a princess, and we are her mere subjects. Regardless of when the videos were posted, they all feature bold proclamations on what it means to be a proper princess (aka 1950s housewife), eventually culminating in the now-infamous “don’t make eye contact with your server” hot take. And if you think I watched all 29 videos? You’re absolutely right.
“How you talk about yourself out loud to him, it matters. How you value yourself, how you value your space. It all matters,” Palmer explained in a video titled “Princess Treatment 101: Step One.” Negative self-talk? Keep it to yourself! A princess doesn’t have insecurities! OK, you can’t really argue with that.
She further states that if your man hears you speaking poorly about yourself, he’ll subconsciously start to follow your lead, and explains how to subtly stroke your man’s ego, reinforcing the behaviors you want him to repeat. “Thank you so much for picking up your underwear. I love when you pick up your underwear.” Is this woman Pavlov’s Dog-ing her husband? If so, I’m down.
Jumping now to Part 3, which was posted on March 11 (whereas Part 2 was posted on March 26, see what I mean?). “Say what you need to say, and then be unbothered,” Palmer says in a video titled “unbothered energy.” Princesses are calm and composed.She then adds that if you let emotions fester, they will eventually come to the surface, and then you will act out. Acting out is not princess-like.
So, this is where the guide really starts to lose its grip on reality. “I can see abundance in others’ TikTok following, therefore I know abundance exists,” Palmer repeats, while sitting in her Range Rover. (Bonus points if you repeat your mantras while wearing a Red Light Therapy LED face mask.)
Then she reveals how she manifested herself that Range Rover as well as a Birkin, and argues that you need to actually go to the dealership or the Hermes to touch the items in order to create a physical manifestin. I’m living for the delusion, so I’ll keep listening.
“Don’t just wear a dirty t-shirt and dirty shorts,” she says in a video captioned “Dress for the part” while wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and matching headband (very First Lady–era Hillary Clinton).
On March 22nd, she explains an argument she recently had with her husband, and how no matter how upset she got, she never allowed herself to become hysterical: “I was never screaming. I was never lashing out. I was never physically attacking him.” She then nervously laughs as tears well up in her eyes and vacantly stares past the camera. Or, at least, that’s what I took away from this video. Courtney? Are you still there?
She regains consciousness and goes on with her lesson, concluding that yelling=masculine, and crying=feminine. Bottom line, always be feminine. Simple.
Remember Pavlov’s Dogs! By making the man open the jar, you are reinforcing the behavior that he provides for you. Don’t allow yourself to be independent, because then you will take away his urge to be masculine. You’ll eventually be rewarded with becoming a stay-at-home mom, which is the ultimate goal. (Not stressing about work=no wrinkles=princess face).
Flowers are always in a vase. Nails are always done. She mentions that her husband usually buys her flowers, but it’s unclear if he’s expected to pay for her nails. Paying for your own nails? OK, girlboss!
Part 9: How to Make Your Husband Buy You Stuff When He Has to Travel for Work
What’s a princess to do if your husband has been spending more time away than usual? Sometimes up to three weeks at a time? Or if it seems like every other week, he’s away on business.
Courtney prefaces this part by saying that her best friend gave her the idea (princesses stick together!), and says that if her husband’s been gone a while, she’ll ask, “I would love to see how you’re going to pay me back for all the extra labor I’ve been doing.”
Lemon water, cuticle oil, a face mask—Palmer, in this eight-minute-long ramble, details how to maintain Princess Treatment as a young mother. You’re overworked, and your husband can’t even come home to dinner on time. The solve??????: Self-care. Let him witness how much you value self-care, thereby demonstrating your worth.
Now, the two of you don’t even spend time together. He watches TV while you exfoliate in silence.
Parts 11-29: You No Longer Make Eye Contact, Not With the Waiter, Not With Your Reflection. You Fear That if Someone Looks Too Closely, They’ll Look Back and See the Hollowed-Out Shell of a Woman Held Together by Lemon Water and a Birkin. Or Worse, They Won’t See You at All, Just Like Your Husband Doesn’t.
Congrats, you’re a princess.
At first, I thought I was watching a woman’s self-love journey spiral into an engagement-fueled TikTok storm. But after studying Courtney’s sunken eyes for the better part of an hour, I can only conclude that this woman’s marriage sounds deeply broken. Her obsession with princess treatment feels less like a lifestyle and more like a coping mechanism dressed up as a dopamine-fueled content strategy. My prediction in two years: How to maintain femininity while suing for full custody.
If this is what being a princess is, I’ll keep talking to my server, thanks.
At first, I thought I was watching a woman’s self-love journey spiral into an engagement-fueled TikTok storm. But after studying Courtney’s sunken eyes for the better part of an hour, I can only conclude that this woman’s marriage sounds deeply broken. Her obsession with princess treatment feels less like a lifestyle and more like a coping mechanism dressed up as a dopamine-fueled content strategy. My prediction in two years: How to maintain femininity while suing for full custody.
I am a Millennial woman and my new boss is a Gen X man. We have been butting heads a lot, mostly because I think he lacks the basic skills and competencies to do his job. My frustration has gotten to the point where I feel like screaming most days.
This past week I had to send him yet another email where I tried to politely and professionally explain that he was yet again doing something wrong. I had two people read it for tone before I sent it. This is the opening paragraph to the 10 paragraphs he sent in response:
“I think [Name] that you would benefit from learning about the unconscious and the psychological defense of projections and transferences that emanate from the unconscious of a person, especially one with a highly dysregulated nervous system. I am a human being too — I have done it and can do it (still do it at times) and that’s why I know about it experientially. It’s also why I speak to the need for grace often (as well as accountability). Believe it or not (and that is a literal statement because I really don’t think you can believe it at this point in your life), I extend a great deal of grace to you. But that does not mean I am going to take on crap that you are trying to offload on to me. Nor am I going to just be a wallflower as a director of an organization that needs to address its challenges. Because you have been working in an all-female environment for so long, it’s quite possible that you (and others) take the masculine energy that I at times emanate as a threat, when there is no threat. But you perceive it as so. I’m sorry about that and I can be mindful of behaviors but I am not going to sit in analysis paralysis while we try to adjust to the chaos left behind in the emotional wake of the Trump Train.”
The best part about this email is that he voluntarily cc’d the board chair on it. He tries to paint me as a hysterical, flakey, incompetent woman, which fell flat because I’ve worked with our chair, a man, for the last 10+ years.
A few weeks prior to this email, I had asked an external project partner if I could use him as a professional reference as he has had nothing but very nice things to say about the work I’ve done with him for the last 3+ years. The day after I received this unhinged email from my boss, that project partner called me and asked how my job search was going. I said “not great,” and he asked if I wanted to come work with him. We later had a two-hour long conversation, and I’m being offered a pay bump and an opportunity to oversee a really awesome project.
So, now I need to write my resignation letter to my boss. Due to our summer PTO schedules, I won’t actually see my boss for another 2.5 weeks, and I won’t be starting my new job until mid-August. When he gets back to the office, I would love to have a polite and professional response composed that burns this man and his “masculine emanations” to the ground. Can you offer me any advice on what to say?
P.S. I spoke to an employment attorney and because our organization has fewer than 15 employees, it’s not required to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws. I apparently don’t have a lot of legal rights in this instance. While this is bonkers, I am working to put together additional documentation for the board that will hopefully inspire them to fire him.
Eww, my skin crawls every time I try to read the paragraph he wrote to you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for not sending the other nine paragraphs.
I don’t think the issue is this guy’s “masculine energy.” It’s that he seems incapable of engaging on actual work issues and instead wants to psychoanalyze you and conclude that you just don’t know how to work around masculine men because of all that estrogen you’ve been steeping in.
I don’t have any real context for what’s been going on in your office or what he refers to as “crap that you are trying to offload on (him),” and an effective response would probably require knowing some of that.
But in this case, you really don’t need to respond at all! You’re leaving. This isn’t someone who’s engaging in good faith or in a productive way, and you’re on your way out. There’s no reason you need to work toward a greater understanding with him so you can both move forward, and there’s little that indicates that would succeed even if you wanted to try. So why bother?
Your resignation letter itself should be bland and dry, as should all resignation letters. They’re not meant to have any meaningful content at all beyond, “I am resigning and my last day will be X.”
As for responding to his ludicrous email, if you respond at all, at most you should say, “This email is inappropriate on multiple levels, and you should not be applying this sort of explicitly gendered lens to work interactions. I do not think it will be productive to discuss this further, so I will leave this with BoardChair to handle from here.”
A small reactor in Uppsala may hold the key to cutting the fertilizer industry’s massive carbon footprint—by harnessing the power of lightning. NitroCapt is a finalist for the 2025 Food Planet Prize.
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