Weekend Words B

What? Is it the weekend already? Wow, this week just blew by. It was very active at work and we have been sanding and painting the cabinets in our kitchen (ooh, I should post a photo!) at home, so I really haven't had a moment to ask myself, "Hmm, what am I going to do now?" But I know that you showed up today looking for vocabulary, so here is the second in the series:

BLOVIATE
This is a pretty new word (=neologism) that I came across on the internet. It means to speak excessively, often loudly, "unencumbered by the thought process," as Tom and Ray would say. You have all heard people bloviate; heck, you may have done it yourself sometimes. (I know I have.) A few weeks ago, I was gathered with the full-time religion faculty at my university. We had the task of coming up with measurable learning outcomes for our program. This got pretty tedious since some of the folks were railing against behaviorism and others were yearning to go play golf. But they still wouldn't accept my proposal: "The religion major will be able to bloviate endlessly on topics related to religion with sufficient effectiveness to thereby make a living off religion." Seems measurable to me.

Since B also stands for "blonde joke" I will pass on this one. A college guy has a date with a stunning blonde and decides to take her to a football game (hey, they get in free with their student IDs). It is the first time she has watched a football game all the way through, so on the way out of the stadium he asks her how she enjoyed it.
"Oh, the tight pants and the big muscles were great, but I don't understand all that fuss over 25 cents," she says. In response to his obvious mystification, she adds, "OK, at the beginning, they flip a coin and one side wins it. Then the rest of the time, everyone keeps yelling, 'Get the quarter back! Get the quarter back!' Helloooooo, it's just 25 cents!"