More Random Thoughts (incomplete)

Naming the beast

I’d been trying to come up with a clever name for collectively referring to the Bush insiders (Bushco) without hitting on anything that stood out, when it occurred to me that there are some really wonderful names in the world of wildlife for groups of the the same kind of animal (‘herd’, ‘flock’, etc.).  Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a delightfully ironic or comical name for a group of some disgusting and/or deceitful/mean/nasty wild critter, like a “slither” of shitsnakes or something?  (noi to my herptophile friends)

Looking for a place to start, I turned to one of my favorite wildlife sources of info-for-idiots, the US Geological Survey web site, where I learned that in educated-speak the generic word for groups of the same animal is ‘congregation.’  So let’s see if we can’t come up with a good animal avatar for the congregation of Bush insiders whose shenanigans brought our country to a point where the jury is still out on whether it will survive in recognizable form.

Right away, I discovered that if I’m going for a name that includes the whole gaggle, the project is harder than I thought it was gonna be.  I started by excluding all the names that were too generic:  most people are turned off by snakes, but there’s no punch in the name “nest” by itself.  The “Bush nest”?  Meh.

Then the task was to find the ones that were generic enough:  A shiver (of sharks)   evokes a delicious image of Chaney and his fellow dark warriors, and while a shrewdness (of apes) takes irony into uncharted territory when applied to Bush himself and his equally clueless department heads who loaded up our federal bureaucracy with ignorant, incompetent Liberty University graduates, where’s the animal family whose name both evokes the right kind of image and is general enough to include both the slick operators and the bumbling ideologues.

I love the idea of an obstinacy (of buffalo), but the animal has zero ick factor.  On the other hand, I kind of like the (biblical) ass for political metaphor, but the Bush Pace just doesn’t do anything.  A cowardice of curs is good, but nowhere near destructive enough.  I like the idea of a bloat of something, but the animal it names is the noble hippopotamus, capable of violence when provoked but otherwise pretty mellow fellows. 

My favorites so far are a cackle (of hyenas), a sounder (of swine), and a crash (of rhinos).   A deceit is tempting but I don’t have any idea what a lapwing is about.  Also attractive but either inappropriate or too obscure are an unkindness (of ravens), a murder (of crows—too obvious?), and a prickle (of porcupines).

But I think if I had to pick the official Grumblebear nickname for the Bush insiders right this very minute, I’d  go to the creepy place and start referring to them as the Bush Intrusion. 

“Intrusion” just kind of sums up the whole Bush nightmare, and in the animal world when you’re talking about an intrusion of something, you’re referring to an intrusion of cockroaches. 

I don’t know.  What are your thoughts?  Rather than insulting our friends in the animal world, maybe we should be throwing around candidates for an original name for a congregation of Bushies.  An ignorance of Bushies?  A failure of Bushies?  An arrogance . . ?  Wait, I’ve got it!  A frathouse of Bushies.  I think one of the rules for naming congregations is to try to stick to one-word names, but it’s damned difficult to come up with one word that even begins to express the soulless, venal, depraved, corrupt malignancy of George W. Bush’s presidential team. 

Cast your vote or offer your own suggestions in comments.