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.”

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…

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.

cognitive dissonance

psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously

Like Hugh Laurie on House. I know he’s British. I’ve seen him in all those period dramas with the flouncy collars and tall hats. And I know he actually has a British accent. But now I see him every week on TV chattering away in a flawless USA-ian dialect. So, when I then see him interviewed or in a movie or something when his is using is actual, real accent…it just seems fake. But again, since I know it is in fact not fake, it causes the brain to sigh and need a stiff drink. Ditto Christian Bale as Batman. Of course, he muddled things up even more by insisting on doing press for the movie in his American accent from the movie. You know, cause he didn’t want to confuse the kids with Batman suddenly sounding all different. Don’t know about the kids, but he did confuse me. So, I have something I know to be true, but I’m looking right at something that completely contradicts that belief. Hence, the resulting…well, see above.

Older American Hugh, meet younger British Hugh…