An open letter to people who use words

Dear speaker,

Just a few things I would like to call to your attention:

1. Words that start with “es” should not generally not pronounced as if they start with “ex”, i.e. it’s es-specially, not ex-specially; es-spresso, not expresso. I noted this last week, but it seems to be spreading.
   
   
2. The abbreviation “vs.” does not stand for “verse”. It’s versus, people. Two syllables. Please use them both. "FSU versus Miami", not "FSU 'verse' Miami". That’s just lazy.
   
   
3. Please stop saying “chillaxe”. Just…stop.

Thanks ever so, Zil

word verification

I seem to have gotten a lot of interesting verification words lately when I posted comments on blogs or ordered stuff online. I decided that they needed definitions:

• The person who is the second runner-up in a game of eeny, meny, miny, moe. (variant spelling: meeineman)
  
  "I wanted to be "it" in our game of hide-and-seek, so I was hoping to be moe. Unfortunately, I was just the menyman. We should have done one potato, two potato."

• The variety of awe that occurs just below the level of regular awe. (i.e. when something is awesome, but not that awesome)
  
  "That painting is beautiful. I'm awestruck"
  "Eh, it's ok. It only fills me with subawe"
  

• 1. common plumbing problem
  
  "What's the matter with the sink?"
  "The drain has a clogin"
  
  2. Type of folk dancing
  
  "What are those people with the stompy, tappy shoes doing?"
  "Clogin' "
  
  
  

• Type of person who can convince people to do things. People who posses a wheedling, cajoling personality.
  
  "Somehow Jake convinced me to drive him to the store today"
  "Yeah, I lent him $20 to spend there. He's quite the slystor"

Another excellent euphemism...

...arrived in my inbox.  I will have to add it to my collection:

"You must have this.  Your rocket will fly higher. Replace your pant snake with python!"

A rose by any other name...

So I just heard on the news this morning that we are using a new type of drone to drop bombs on suspected al-Qaida and Taliban targets in Pakistan. The old one was called the Predator.  This one is called the Reaper and the missiles it carries are called Hellfire missiles. Have we decided that our new technique to fight terrorists is to frighten them with our alarmingly named hardware?

Why the English language is awesome!

Bill O'Reilly has a memoir out called A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, which some genius has determined is an anagram for "Shameful, Bona-Fide Hypocrite."  Perfect.

Something I learned today

Check it out:

Melisma.

In music, melisma is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession.

So there's actually a word for what I usually refer to as "you know, that crappy type of singing they do on American Idol"

On a related note: leave the National Anthem alone, people. It does not need your flourishes and whatnot. Just sing the damn thing and let them start the game.

gobble gobble

For the holiday, some musings on turkey:


Of course there is the animal. Also the country.

A turkey is also:
1. a failure, flop; especially : a theatrical production that has failed
2. three successive strikes in bowling
4: a stupid, foolish, or inept person

Cold Turkey is a good one, as both a noun:
1: abrupt complete cessation of the use of an addictive drug ; also : the symptoms experienced by a person undergoing withdrawal from a drug
2: unrelieved blunt language or procedure
3: a cold aloof person
or an adverb: all at once : abruptly, without a period of gradual adjustment, adaptation, or withdrawal; without preparation

You can talk turkey: To discuss in a straightforward manner: “The time has come to talk turkey about our national debt.”

Watch out for the jive turkey, a phrase I still associate with George Jefferson.

And my favorite, the Turkey Dump: When a student returning from college breaks up with their significant other from high school. So-called because it traditionally takes place over thanksgiving break, the first time most students return from college.

Also, be sure to check out the Poultry Slam on This American Life, celebrating this season of elevated poultry consumption.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I don't know why I find this joke so damn funny...

...But I totally do:

Q: How many editors does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: I can't tell whether you mean "change a lightbulb" or "have sex in a lightbulb." Can we reword it to remove ambiguity?

I'm skeptical about their usage of the term...

Ok, so this story was on the CNN page that my work computer defaults to:

Scientists cheer atom smasher success
Scientists applauded as one of the most ambitious experiments ever conceived began today. The Large Hadron Collider -- designed to simulate conditions of the Big Bang -- was switched on this morning. Skeptics claim the experiment could create a black hole capable of swallowing the Earth.

That last sentence, while alarming, seems wrong. I don't think "skeptics" is the right term. It's like the difference between "skeptics think ghosts aren't real" and "skeptics think looking for ghosts will get them all angered-up and cause them to cross back over into the earthly realm and kill you while you sleep" See the distinction?

In the atom smasher instance, skeptics would be people who just don't think the thing will work or who don't believe the particle they are trying to find is real. Thinking that the thing could possibly destroy the earth is something else entirely. They need a term other than skeptic, although now that I think about it, I'm not sure what it would be.

And also, could someone look into making sure that black hole thing doesn't happen? That would be great.

Things I've learned: Phobos and Deimos

Mars has 2 moons Phobos and Deimos. Both were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall. Mars is the Roman god of war, called Ares by the Greeks. Ares had 2 sons by Aphrodite, named…you guessed it, Phobos and Deimos.

Phobos means panic/fear and Deimos means terror/dread. The sons were close companions of their father, always depicted as driving his chariot and assisting him on the battlefield. See for yourself:

"[Ares] ordered Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Terror) to harness his horses, and himself got into his shining armour." - Homer, Iliad 15.110

"Ares drove these [warriors] on ... and Deimos (Terror) drove them, and Phobos (Fear), and Eris (Hate) whose wrath is relentless, she the sister and companion of murderous Ares." - Homer, Iliad 4.436

It’s a little annoying that the planet has the Roman name and the moons the Greek…but I’m willing to let it slide, because I like the concept of naming the moons after the sons of the planet’s namesake. Moons are like the planet's children, after all. And I like the poetry of it all, that in life and literature and astronomy, war is always accompanied by fear and terror.

.

double duty words

I really like nouns that are also verbs, as illustrated in the sentence I just said to our receptionist whilst giving her my netflix envelope and letter for the postman: "I forgot to mail my mail this morning."

chopsticks are fun!

Here's a chop stick wrapper I got the other day:

Allow me to call your attention to the prose:

Click to enlarge

The translators did much better on the instructions on the flipside.


Click to enlarge

But, when I went back to that restaurant recently, they seem to have switched brands, offering these clearly inferior picture only instructions which are unclear at best and also no fun. Sigh...




.

Things I've Learned: Wilhelm Scream

It's been quite the educational week...

Have you ever noticed a familiar sounding scream in a movie? Did it sound like this?

That's the Wilhelm Scream, popping up in movies since 1951. Lots of movies. Star Wars seems to be responsible for its re-popularization and apparently it's a big in-joke amongst sound editors.

The suspected screamer is Sheb Wooley. (Also responsible for the Purple People Eater.) Entertaining.

Check out this Short film on it's history.

It's a totally weird sounding scream, though.

Things I've Learned: Bespoke

Bespoke is the British equivalent of "custom made". You can get bespoke shoes, or bespoke suits (ideally from Savile Row), or bespoke software. Excellent term.

The proper method for dealing with bad grammar

So I finally watched the "Lois kills Stewie" episode of Family Guy (not to be confused with the "Stewie Kills Lois" episode that came before it.) I watch Family Guy sporadically, usually on Cartoon Network rather than Fox. That show kind of grows on you, I like it much more now than I did before.

Anyway, in this ep, Stewie becomes President of the World. One of the laws he passes is that "anyone using the words 'irregardless,' 'a whole nother,' or 'all of the sudden' will be taken to work camps." I am down with this, except for "a whole nother", which I say alarmingly often. I also agree that work camps are generally a fair punishment for bad grammar.

Is it wrong that I would prefer Stewie as president to the majority of the republican candidates?

Also, every time I see the clip of Chris saying "I'm so hungry, I could ride a horse", I laugh uncontrollably. Every. Single. Time.

Where did this name come from?

Black Friday? I ask you all...have you ever heard that term before 2 years ago? I mean, it's like it sprang up out of nowhere. The same goes for "Cyber Monday" (which is today, by the way, so I wish you all the best in this, the traditional Cyber Monday season). That one I can forgive, because online shopping and merchants caring about it is a relatively new phenomenon, but people shopping on the day after Thanksgiving is a longstanding tradition. But, it was always called "the day after Thanksgiving" not "Black Friday". My issues with the term are twofold:

1. It's like giving yourself a nickname. (i.e. Micheal Jackson, he's not called "The King of Pop" as he decided he should be. He's called "the self-proclaimed King of Pop" or by the more honestly come by nicknames like Wacko Jacko...) I realize that these sobriquets have to start somewhere. I'm not opposed to coining new terms, per se. What I object to is everyone acting like this is not a new term. It's like someone using the term "bling" back in the late 90's, then being all like, "what, that's been a thing forever. You've never heard that term before? That's totally how Marie Antoinette referred to her jewelry..."
2. You can't just take something that has historically meant something bad and change that meaning to the exact opposite. Black Monday has already staked out this territory, and that is known far and wide as an extremely bad day. (I was just thinking of the stock market thing, but there are also all of these...who knew? Also, please note...all bad) Yet we're supposed to infer that while Black Monday is bad, Black Friday is somehow good? (Also note in this list, one good...many bad).

This rant actually has no purpose other than I've been hearing the term relentlessly for days now and it's been bugging the crap out of me. It's at least out of my system for another year I guess.

What rhymes with orange?

So I learned today that the term for words that have no rhyme is "refractory rhyme", which I kind of like because the definition of "refractory" is: stubbornly disobedient; unmanageable. Anyway, I always heard "orange" used as the classic example of a word without a rhyme, but there are actually a lot of others. Among the words listed, I find it interesting that silver and purple are also on the list...what's up with the non-rhyming colors? That seems odd.

I also particularly like the following sentence, used to illustrate that although there is no perfect rhyme for the word "engine", there are a number of near rhymes: "To my chagrin I said to my conjoined twin: 'the tin engine caused quite a din as the wheels did spin, screeching like a violin.'"

On another, tangentially related note...when writing the above I was once again annoyed by the issues raised when using quotation marks and commas/periods. In the first sentence above, for example, should it be "refractory rhyme", or "refractory rhyme," ? The answer seems to be that in the US, it should be the later, but the UK advocates the former. Since I have always thought that the comma/period inside the quotation marks 1) makes no sense and 2) disturbs by sense of symmetry, I am going with the other side of the pond on this one. It was their language first, you know...

google is weird

Ok, I have extolled the virtues of the Urban Dictionary Word of the Day here before. I was checking it out the other day and the word of the day was:

Undie

An abbreviation for underground hip-hop. Originally conceived as a soundalike alternative to "indie," which signifies fey boys with jangly guitars.

Undie is the straight shit, brah. The radio is wack.

basically it means "underground indie" (underground + diminutive of independent).to designate a band which works under the "diy" (do it yourself) theory."

(Please note that the random punctuation in the above is pasted straight from the site. They are not so much for the proof reading over there...)

Anyway, whatever. Not a particularly interesting entry...some days are better than others for the word of the day. I bring it up for this reason: I was viewing the entry via my gmail account. You know how uncle google is constantly montering your messages and providing you with those targeted ads (on the right side of the page) based on the subject of your messages? (and if you didn't know that, you should because that is totally what's happening.) Well, these are a couple of the ads it selected based on the message containing the above definition:

Gay Underwear-Today's Top Choices for Gay Underwear
Men's Modern Underwear

Ok, several things:

1. What makes underwear gay?
2. Modern underwear? As opposed to like union suits or something?
3. Why only men's underwear ads? Nothing for the ladies?
   

Anyway, I find the whole magically appearing topically related ads disturbing anyway. You have a password so people can't read your email, but google seems to be just kicking back browsing through everybody's business. And I realize that it's a computer recognizing words in the text, not an actual little google minion sitting in a back room hunched over a computer chain smoking and reading emails 20 hours a day, but still. Eyes on your own papers, people.

What do you mean by that?

How much do I love the Urban Dictionary? Quite a bit actually. Granted many, many of the entries seem to have been submitted by people who really only appear to have at best a passing familiarity with the English Language and may in fact be as dumb as a bag of hammers. But really, doesn't that apply to the internet, and come to think of it the world, as a whole?

My enjoyment of the Urban Dictionary is twofold. First, the word of the day feature is by far the best source for amusing new made-up words to lob randomly into conversations. Here's a smattering of my recent favorites:

Floordrobe—A form of storage for clothing which requires no hangers, drawers, doors or effort. Simply drop on the floor and you have a floordrobe.

We have a very stylish colonial-style home featuring his and hers walk-on floordrobes.

Accountabilabuddy—A friend, maybe a best friend, who you get into trouble with and who is somewhat responsible for your actions.

Dude, Kyle is totally my accountabilabuddy. Good lookin out Kyle.

Dap and Dip—Making a brief appearance at a party or social function for political purposes. Involves giving "dap" (fist-pound greeting) to the host and other notables, then "dipping" (leaving) shortly thereafter. Sometimes used to describe an event that is not enjoyable and would not be worth attending were it not for the political motive.

Matt: Are we going to Jon's party?
Darryl: Yeah, but I don't want to stay long, so let's make it a dap and dip.

Myspy—when you use myspace to spy on ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, ex-friends or even your ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's baby momma.

my boyfriend caught me myspying on my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend. busted.

couching distance—The distance one can reach without leaving the couch or sofa.

That job is too far; it's not within couching distance.
I can't reach the remote control because it's not in couching distance.

Stripsy—the post-drunken, post-tipsy state at which the removal of clothing begins.

Brian: Jen, where's your shirt?
Jen: I don't know; last night I got a little stripsy...

Hip Replacement—The process of introducing a formerly cool person to a product or idea that attempts to make them cool again. Reinventing an individuals public persona through association or action.

Joe just had a hip replacement - he ditched his 20 year old CD Walkman for a new IPod.
Quentin Tarrantino gave John Travolta a 'hip replacement' with Pulp Fiction.

I have to stop myself because there are just so very many more. I seriously recommend that you subscribe to their little service that emails one to you everyday. Quite a treat for your inbox.

The other useful aspect of the Urban Dictionary is that if there is any sort of filthy, sexual, or extremely disturbing sounding term that you may have heard in passing but weren't quite sure what it actually meant...yeah, it's in there. My my friend the Psych To Be told me that she's been known to use it to look up prisoner lingo she hears while attending to incarcerated wayward youth. Fun and educational.

Buffalo x 8 = headache

Something from my friend Rakes to jostle your brain. Conveniently, we share a love of bison and the English language.

Check it out

For some reason, this reminds me of my favorite episode of Sanford and Son. Actually, it's one of the few where I remember the plot clearly. Although I watched this show a lot in my youth, I haven't really seen it much since, so the whole thing has kind of blurred into an amalgam of Fred and Aunt Ester and Grady and Rollo and the two Lamonts and "Elizabeth, honey, I'm coming to join you" and "Good Goobily Goop"-an expression I intend to bring back into favor-and "I've got 5 good reasons right here!"-which I also need to start using more. Maybe around the office...

But I digress. In the aforementioned episode Grady thought the wild parsley he planted out in the junkyard was actually marijuana. The cops show up, I don't really remember why, and start asking Fred and Lamont about the plants. I can't remember the exchange exactly (and the internet is failing me at the moment-damn you people who don't find the same things funny that I do and therefore don't post the quoted lines I'm trying to find) but the exchange went something like this:

Cop: What's that?
Lamont: Parsley
Fred: Probably
Lamont: Possibly
Fred: Partially
Cop: It's probably, possibly, partially, parsley?


Then they made a salad and the cops ate the evidence, only it actually was parsley so I guess it wasn't really evidence. Oh, and Grady thought it gave him the "munchkins" which was also hilarious but not really so reminiscent of the Buffalo thing above.

Also, the Sanford and Son theme song? Rocks. And was written by Quincy Jones. And has a name: "The Streetbeater". And Sanford and Son is based on a British show called Steptoe and Son. And damn, I seem to know way too much about Sanford and Son. So, I will just leave you with the fact that Quincy Jones' daughter is that chick on The Office that Jim met in Stanford and that everyone hated because she was keeping him from being with Pam. Oh, and her mother is Peggy Lipton.