So begins the song Spotify chooses for me after it comes to the end of the album I'd chosen and as I am emerging from the overgrown forest path and looking back to see the sun has finally emerged above the smoke on the lake.
That's a little too on the nose, Spotify. If you're really following me that doggedly you ought to act more nonchalant.
The album that was my choice — the soundtrack for my sunrise walk/run — was "New Morning." I'd picked it because as I drove up there was a "rabbit runnin’ down across the road" — as Bob sings in the title song. Yes, Bob, like Chuck Schumer, drops his G's.I got back home and assembled my coffee-and-peanut-butter breakfast and then got a late start blogging because I became quite involved testing whether Grok would replicate my hypothesis about the progression of songs on the "New Morning" album. Seriously, I'm not going to bother you, the blog reader, with the details of my hypothesis about the alternating 5 themes. I'll just say I was surprised that Grok found "One More Weekend" to be "possibly... sinister." Oh, really?! We — Grok and I — got fixated on the first line "Slippin' and slidin' like a weasel on the run." Grok:
"... with everyone having a stupider, faker name than their real one. In the public consciousness, at least, Harris has had plenty of names: Laffin’ Kamala, Veep, Brat, Momala (my personal favorite).... But through it all is one clear constant, already a thorn in the sides of a lot of brown people across the world: Even when you think you’re saying Harris’ first name right, you’re still saying it wrong.... For once, I don’t blame white people for this. In 2016, while she was running for the Senate, Harris released a PSA to help people learn how to say her name. 'It’s not Cam-el-uh. It’s not Kuh-ma-la. It’s not Karmela,' say a rotation of cutie-pie kids. 'It’s Kamala.' For years, Harris has been telling people her name is pronounced 'comma-la, like the punctuation mark.' It’s common, for people with unique ethnic names, to find ways to explain the pronunciation approachably and easily. I’ve been doing this for years, so much so that in my mid-20s, I realized I had been saying my own name wrong for most of my life...."
It seems to me that however a person pronounces their own name becomes the correct pronunciation, even if that name is also a word in another language in which it is pronounced differently.
WATCH: The *very real* mayor of West Hollywood attempts to explain—to an increasingly hopeless @BenKawaller—the epidemic of “racialized” and “gendered architecture” in his city.
We see the mayor of West Hollywood trying to explain how architecture — which he pronounces "architexture" — has to do with race and gender.
He's got a tough argument explaining the connection to race, but come on, architecture is obviously gendered! I'm thinking of skyscrapers and phallic symbols, but here's something I found at The Architectural Review: "The gender of genius," by Hilde Heynen. Excerpt:
The article touts what it calls his "cache": "Diddy also used his own cache — the promise of entry into a world of celebrity — to attract investment for his projects.... [One] move gave him instant social cache. It let him rub shoulders, lucratively, with a New York social dynasty and in turn gave their decades-old brand a fresh, contemporary glamor...."
A "cache" is a hidden store of goods or ammo. Pronounced, some may be surprised to learn, "kash."
"X is so widely used and cited in trademarks that it is a candidate for legal challenges - and the company formerly known as Twitter could face its own issues defending its X brand in the future.
'There's a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody,' said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who said he counted nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries."
If it's so widely used, isn't that just evidence that it's just not trademarkable? Musk just needs to be able to use it, not to prevent others from using it.
I'm not a trademark expert. Just putting the ideas out there for discussion.
We can talk about trademark law, but — aside from law — what about the ludicrous overuse of X in naming commercial items? I think it's liked because it's close to saying "sex." Better than sex, really, because "s" is the most troublesome letter to say.
Fascinating - words can *sound* convincingly like English without being English.
Italian singer Adriano Celentano released his hit song "Prisencolinensinainciusol" in 1972, written to mimic the way English sounds to non-English speakers, despite being almost entirely nonsense. pic.twitter.com/tnLb7vDyLV
You might have noticed that for a couple minutes, the previous post had a miswritten first sentence: "I was commenting in off-blog life, so I can prove to you that I'd noticed the absence of this particular thing."
Obviously, "can" was supposed to be "can't," but I realize that it was an example of the kind of typo I find very easy to make because write by transcribing what feels like speech in my head.
That's why I, like many people, am forever writing "to" for "too" and "your" for "you're" and "their" for "there." The only problem is that you look slightly dumb until you correct it. But no one is confused.
"Can" for "can't" is another matter! I wrote the opposite of what I meant and forced readers to waste time puzzling over whether I was saying something counterintuitive or just making a mistake. But now I want to waste your time even more by asking you to look at something strange: We Americans — many of us — pronounce "can" and "can't" almost identically:
Why doesn't this cause more problems? You're saying "I can't" and it sounds like "I can." Maybe we're constantly verifying: Did you say you can or you can't?
Fortunately, I will and I do don't present the same problem. We have the irregular "n't" contraction for will. What woes were there before there was won't?
And for some reason, we pronounce the "do" in do and don't completely differently. Do gets an ooh and don't gets an oh. And do is often left out in expressions that use don't — like I understand and I don't understand.
Grammarphobia has some discussion of how the word "won't" came to be:
“Won’t was shortened from early wonnot, which in turn was formed from woll (or wol), a variant form of will, and not.”...
So etymologically, there’s a case to be made for contracting “will” and “not” as “won’t.” Nevertheless, some language commentators have grumbled about the usage.
Joseph Addison, for example, complained in a 1711 issue of the Spectator that “won’t” and other contractions had “untuned our language, and clogged it with consonants.”
“Won’t,” in particular, “seems to have been under something of a cloud, as far as the right-thinkers were concerned, for more than a century afterward,” Merriam-Webster’s says.
“This did not, of course, interfere with its employment,” the usage guide adds.
It was popular enough, M-W says, “to enjoy the distinction of being damned in the same breadth as ain’t in an address delivered before Newburyport (Mass.) Female High School in December 1846.”
Both “won’t” and “ain’t” were condemned by the Newburyport speaker as “absolutely vulgar.”
“How won’t eventually escaped the odium that still clings to ain’t is a mystery,” M-W Usage says....
"But with stakes ranging from a $1 billion breakup fee on the low end to a $44 billion acquisition on the high end, with lots of room for a settlement in between, there’s plenty of cash sloshing around to cover the lawyers’ fees....
Who will prevail in the end? I agree with the conventional wisdom that Twitter has the upper hand. It seems to me that Musk simply got a case of buyer’s remorse, especially after the stock market (including Tesla’s share price) went south.... [T]he reasons given by Musk for walking away seem pretextual.
Yes, specific performance is generally a disfavored remedy in contract law compared to money damages.... [but Delaware] Chancery has not hesitated to order specific performance of billion-dollar M&A deals in the past... [I]f Twitter v. Musk goes to trial, the spectacle will be incredible.
I’m not big on scatology, so I tuned out Amber Heard’s testimony about poop on the bed. But Elon Musk testifying about his poop emojis? I’m here for it."
When are things melodramatic enough that we feel like watching? If we are lawyers, then maybe contracts worth a big enough amount of money are enough. I will never forget the way a partner — at the "biglaw" firm where I worked before I became a lawprof — overpronounced the "b" in "billions." If it's a "b" and not an "m," you'd better stand in awe. I wanted to work on cases that had interesting issues, and for that, in that place, I got called "an intellectual."
Speaking of "b" and "m," long ago, when I was growing up, the conventional word for the substance that is now called "poop" — when speaking around children and other delicate folk — was "b.m." At least in the region where I lived, the place with the famous Chancery Court, Delaware. People would say, "Oh, no, I stepped in dog b.m." or "This place smells like b.m."
And as long as we are talking about Elon Musk and melodrama and scampering away from high finance to more lowly things, here's this new headline in the NY Post: "Elon Musk’s dad, 76, confirms secret second child — with his stepdaughter" ("Elon has not publicly commented on his father’s latest baby admission. The pair are still estranged, with Elon describing his dad as a 'terrible human being'...").
3. A man explains how "uncut gems" — which is about the way one actress pronounced 2 words — went viral and got oversaturated within a week, and he goes from distanced and rational to hopelessly infected within the space of 3 minutes.
Omega means “big O.” (Get it? O-mega?) Omicron means “little O.” O-micron. The Greek micro, or “small,” has given us “microbes,” “microscopes,” and “microminis.” Mega, Greek for “big,” has come into English in “Mega Millions,” “mega-threat,” and “megalopolis.” If the repercussions from little old omicron have been so catastrophic, what are we to expect from big bad omega?
My first call was to David Sider, an American scholar with a terrific Bronx accent, in whom I found an equally frustrated ally. “You’ve called the right person!” he exclaimed. “I was driving in a car the other day, listening to the radio, and hit two different people on two different episodes say ‘ah-ma-CRON. And that’s wrong.”
“Kind of like the French president?” I asked. “Ah, Macron!”
“Yes, yes, exactly,” he said. “I’ve been bothered.”
"'Other shows do work,' [said someone who teaches how to speak like an American]. 'Friends’ just seems to have the magic something that is even more attractive.'
Fans and educators on three continents echo the sentiment, saying that 'Friends' is a near-perfect amalgam of easy-to-understand English and real-life scenarios that feel familiar even to people who live worlds away from Manhattan’s West Village.
Kim Sook-han, 45, known in South Korea for her YouTube videos about teaching herself English, said that the show helped her understand the basics of American culture, including which holidays are celebrated in the United States, as well as how people there deal with conflicts between friends and family members."
Here's something linked in the article: speech instructor Rachel Smith using Rachel Green to demonstrate how to sound American (or, for us Americans, how much we know instinctively about how to sound like ourselves):
Smith has many videos, but that one concentrates on a few lines spoken by Jennifer Aniston. You learn how letters are dropped and stress and pitch are used. Very interesting! It's easy to figure out on your own why Aniston is used as a model. She sounds like a real American speaking normally. Imagine teaching non-English speakers how to talk like an American by using Jerry Seinfeld. That would be hilarious. And very wrong. Similarly, however, you could get in trouble talking like the Friends — especially if you handled stress and cadence like Chandler. Actually, all the men talk in a comically strange way.
As for learning the culture of America by watching "Friends," that's pretty tricky too! The Friends actually do a lot of things that are socially unacceptable — notably, sexual harassment in the workplace — and because they are all nice looking and mutually supportive — and because it's 20+ years in the past — you could get the wrong idea about how to act like an American.
And yet "Friends" models a very mainstream American view of how life should be lived. You struggle with your job and your love life when you're in your 20s, but then you find a good career that you like and that establishes you firmly in the middle class, and you find someone to marry who becomes the center of your life — a life with children. "Seinfeld" did not have that. It had outsiders who actively repelled conventional love, and the only one who had job satisfaction was the one whose job was to stand apart as an outsider and make comic observations about all those normal people whose lives he did not envy or admire in the slightest.
FROM THE EMAIL: Justin points me to this old Conan O’Brien clip that seems to embody the exact point I was making in my last paragraph:
"The trio broke into the Cheltenham Tweed Company shop in the spa town’s promenade on January 9 and drilled their way through the dividing wall in the basement to get into the adjacent antiques and jewellery shop.
Tim Burrows, for Newman said: 'They were all flummoxed by the safe. It was while they were trying to gain entry into the safe that the alarm went off.'
Judge Ian Lawrie, QC, interjected: “They behaved like three buffoons with utter incompetence in carrying out this burglary.... Judge Lawrie told Rabjohns: 'You were a complete idiot to get involved in this burglary. You need to take greater care who you mix with in future.'"
That's from England, obviously. Lots of clues, and I didn't even include the part about the "spanner" in the "boot." Notice the spelling "jewellery." In America, we laugh at people who speak as if "jewelry" were spelled "jewellery."
It's one thing to get caught committing a crime, quite another to have the judges all mocking you for how stupid you were to get caught.
Running from a tweed shop covered in brick dust!
Judge Lawrie: "I don’t think the three men visiting the clothing shop were really interested in adding tweed to their wardrobe when they went on a scouting mission in December."
Completely unretouched photo, straight out of my iPhone:
Did Trump forget to pack up all his makeup?
There's something about orange. As I was searching my archive to figure out if my tag is "orange" or "orangeness," I ran across this post from the first year of my blog, from September 2004:
So John Kerry seems to have gotten one of those dark spray-on tans.... 'All the big Hollywood celebrities, especially the female celebrities, are getting an orange tan.'... Whenever presidential debate season comes around, the one thing you can count on pundits to talk about is the 1960 debate when Kennedy looked tanned and rested and Nixon looked pasty white. ... Why don't Kerry's people remember how Al Gore was ridiculed for looking way too orange in the first debate in 2000?... 'Gore looked positively repellent with his... garish orange makeup....'"
They all do orange. Orange is the happy vibrant color of love and warmth. It always was and it always will be, except for that little time when it wasn't — the time when it was Orange Man Bad in the Oval Office.
On "Morning Joe" this morning, Elise Jordan, a former aide to George W. Bush, criticized Trump supporters for talking about symbols (slurred as "thimbles") instead of substance. The symbols in question were statues, which was the topic of discussion as a result of this news report yesterday (I'm quoting the DCist):
A new D.C. committee recommended renaming, removing, or contextualizing more than 50 different government-owned spaces in the city, after studying the history of racism and oppression behind the namesakes. The working group, known as DCFACES (District of Columbia Facilities and Commemorative Expressions), was commissioned by Mayor Muriel Bowser and began meeting in July. It identified figures like Thomas Jefferson, Francis Scott Key, Ben Franklin, and George Washington as problematic candidates for public-works dedications.
Of course, people fixate on symbols! That's why the symbols are attacked. You can't expect the pro-Trump side to refrain from engaging on what is a super-easy subject for them. Why should they?! Plus those of us who care about the traditional symbols are moved on a very deep level. I know how I've felt ever since Wisconsin protesters tore down the Forward! statue and the Hans Christian Heg statue in my town.
Speaking of superficial trivialities... I'm fascinated by Jordan's vocal slip: "thimbles" for "symbols." It underscores her point — symbols are small (compared to the big policy questions that government must decide). Now, I think some symbols are very big! This D.C. committee is recommending that the federal government "remove, relocate, or contextualize" the Washington Monument!
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