The Definitive Truth

Immigrant Song

2007-09-04T20:57:00.001-05:00

I no longer blog here. If you want to see what I am currently doing, check out Esquivaliant!

There is nothing else to this.

Consolation Prizes

2006-09-03T22:10:00.000-05:00

Things are pretty busy right now, and I don't anticipate that I will update more than once or twice a week while the school year is running. I'm not terribly busy or anything, I just no longer have the massive amounts of leisure time to read various things all day, and thus, have something interesting to post about it.

I do however have a link for you, as a consolation prize: One Man's Effort To Fight the War on Terror.

USKIXBUT

The First Week of Class: Lessons Learned

2006-08-27T16:48:00.000-05:00

It's inconvenient to live far away from class.
I really need to have the Internet in my room.
Sanskrit is hard as a motherfucker.
The DTH will not print the word "motherfucking" in Letters to the Editor, but will listen to your complaints regarding the layout of the crossword puzzle.

I can't believe they actually ran it in the paper. I was doubly surprised that they actually fixed it. Good for them. Go DTH.

Summer in Summary: An Annual Address

2006-08-18T23:12:00.000-05:00

This summer was nothing compared to last summer. Last summer I had the pleasure of Moscow and its decadent delights, and this summer all I had was Cullowhee and its enduring ennui punctuated with erratic excitement. Which was okay, really.

I worked on organizing a summit on energy independence, read a lot, hung out with people on occasion, and watched a shit load of movies.

I’m a movie junkie. Fuck DVDs, I love going to the theaters on opening night when the crowd is excited. Jackson County has the advantage of Quin Theaters, the best movie theater I’ve ever been in. A four screen affair (used to be three, but a few years back they expanded), it is the hub of all public social activity in town, putting the competition of the bowling alley to shame. Quin is one of the few places where I really feel the small town thing: you will always meet your friends or acquaintances there. Before the movies start, people walk up and down the aisles, visiting. Opening nights, there’s always a long line of people lined up to go see whatever is opening that week while crowds of young teenagers hang out by the payphones and smoke before they go home. After the movies, people hang out by their cars with the people they met there to figure out the rest of their night. It’s noisy, rowdy, and there is always a Deputy stationed with parking lot duty on the weekend.

It’s an old theater, but with new seats and a new sound system. Ticket price: $5 for an evening show with cheap popcorn and drinks. You can not beat that shit. So when I’m home (Winter and Summer Breaks: Oscar and Blockbuster Seasons, respectively), I go 2-3 times a week, often alone. As bad as it is to have to go sit alone at the movies, the employees there, embarrassingly, know me, and the ones who I recognize from high school make fun of me. Whatever’s showing, I see it. I’m a movie omnivore. I don’t necessarily like it all, but I see it all. The film is often beside the point: I just like to go to the movies.

There are some movies of course that I get excited to see, that I make a point out of seeing immediately. I spend my free time looking at trailers and movie schedules. I read dumb news sites and blogs. And since the beginning of summer, I knew it was coming. The creeping sense of inevitability and my overdeveloped sense of narrative flow led me to one logical conclusion. The summer had been building up to one thing and I knew what I had to do.

Maybe it was merely a coincidence of timing of release dates and move-in days, but there was only one way I could cap this summer.

Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane.

I saw it tonight and it did not disappoint: It was the perfect cap, doing exactly what it was supposed to do: showing us beyond horrific gratuitousness there is a sublime area of genius. Snakes on a Plane delivers everything that my expectations could have promised.

You should see it. You will have fun, I promise. I could talk about why, but I don’t want to ruin any of the movies many fun surprises. I will instead offer these few items that you may not have considered:

The music video during the credits: Stay. It has an aesthetic previously achieved only by European acts such as Gunther and his Magnificent Mustache (“Ooooo! You touch my tra-la-la. My ding-ding-dong.”).

and

“Snakes on my dick!”

My summer is complete, and now, back to Chapel Hill.

Another Confession

2006-08-15T01:36:00.000-05:00

Once, I confessed some of my Facebook sins. Now here is another confession. It is one for which I feel I must apologize in advance.

I Google myself at least once a week out of sheer vanity and paranoia. I use blogsearch, my full name, my friends names, my nick names, whatever it takes to lead me to a page where people talk about me. I have, on more than one occasion read a friends’ nominally private journal.

When I do this, it is a full invasion. They have posted it in a public forum, but they hadn’t used their own name or posted the address anywhere. While I might make a reasonable case that I was well within my bounds to read it, I know they would not see it that way.

I wish I could say I read the whole thing, because I take a deep interest in my friends’ and acquaintances’ lives. The truth of the matter is that I rapidly scan each page. Ctrl+F, type in my name, look for any mention of myself: complete narcissism. I don’t care if they are feeling down lately and I didn’t know that their uncle/dog/grandmother died: I want to know what they think about me. After I exhaust my vanity (not as inexhaustible as the legends say), I move on, and try to read everything else, hoping I can find something that they would prefer that I didn’t know.

I check the writings of my family, all my close friends, all my distant friends, and people I despise. I will never act on this knowledge, no matter how lurid, perverse, or sad. An old teacher suffers from crushing depression, an old friend has been drinking too much, and nobody knows what to do now that their father has died. I won’t tell anyone, I will keep it hidden in my hoard. I accumulate this information, only because I am greedy for other people’s secrets and I love to know that which I shouldn’t.

My own satisfaction at having stolen the secrets fills me with slow spreading warmth, an internal smug grin. The weight of secrets, however, is sometimes heavier than we can comfortable bear: a principle that enables my habit and spurred this confession:

The sin of Adam is kept alive by his sons.

How To Make An Ass Of Yourself Part One

2006-08-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been in a public situation like say, a party? Have you wanted to shame yourself and your friends and your family?

Well of course! We all have! But, how do you do this using music? Well, the answer is quite simple, with a few of these methods, personally tested by me, you will never be able to show your face around town again.

1. Sing
This sounds obvious, but to really knock this out of the park, you have to know the right songs to sing. You have to know all the words, and you have to do it with emotion. My personal recommendations for this are blowing people away with one of the following heartfelt pieces. Lip-synching is okay.

Stay – Lisa Loeb: There are a lot of lyrics, but it’s totally worth it. Wear your mid-nineties young girl dressing old for effect clothes (cardigans, plastic rims, etc.). Also, be careful to keep a straight face the entire time.

Total Eclipse of the Heart – Bonnie Tyler: This one can be done alone or with a partner. It used to be gold, but its charm has since diminished since people who love Old School have co-opted it as their own.

I Don’t Want To Wait – Paula Cole: Dawson’s Creek isn’t as firmly in people’s minds as it once was. Time this right and you catch everyone by surprise, but blow them away. More people know this song, so it has a tendency to start sing-a-longs, at least for the chorus. Know the verses, because no one else knows them. I’ve had the most success with this one.

Sometimes – Britney Spears
I think this was the second single off the first album. Everyone knows it, but the surprise factor for this movie is ridiculously high. It’s just a horribly terrific song that everyone wishes they forgot. Know all the words and astonish your friends.

2. Air Guitar
Everyone needs to have a few air guitar routines under their belt. These should be extensive, fully choreographed, and bitchin’ Mostly these should be drawn from the canon of “classic” rock that gets played on the radio ad infinitum. Don’t do a Television song: you will get tired at the five minute mark and despite how cool it is in theory, no one will like it. Your technical accuracy needs not be great for whatever you pick, but you must be out of breath by the end, and people should cheer. Singing is optional.

Pinball Wizard – The Who: You need to know how to do the windmill for the opening part of this song. I recommend standing on a table with your head down and then suddenly bursting into action. This one has won me applause. You don’t get points for originality, but done right, it’s a stunner.

Master of Puppets – Metallica: This can be challenging, but the punctuated breaks and bits of silence make this really impressive if you do it right. Jump around, keep your strumming hand a fist until the solo, and don’t be afraid to wail. If you are a girl and do this well, then you are in like Flynn.

Heartbreaker – Led Zeppelin: And Led Zeppelin song will do so long as you take the time to really nail the solos. I prefer this song because it has a really absurd solo right at the end that you can just go completely apeshit on, and then the song will end abruptly. It’s pretty brilliant.

Creep – Radiohead: You don’t really need a full routine for this. I’m just bringing it up because its embarrassing when people do the CLUNK-CLUNK at the wrong time. Seriously people, get that shit figured out.

3. Rap
This one can actually impress people if you do it well and they aren’t expecting it (you are white). This is harder than normal singing in terms of sheer amounts of lyrics as well as tongue-twisting, but to me it’s easier to remember. For the others, the track playing in the background is pretty much necessary (even for singing), but if you can bust it out without music, you get bonus points.

The Next Episode and Nothing But A G Thang – Dr. Dre and Snoop: You just need to know these, the lyrics are easy and they have been on air forever. Naturally these work best for a partner, but you can easily do them alone if you want. Also, on The Next Episode devote particular attention to the Smoke Weed Everyday closing, and you will get tons of applause.

Straight Outta Compton – NWA: Does miracles for one’s street cred.

B.O.B. – Outkast: Learn all the lyrics for this, be able to perform it at full speed, and that’s it. You win. Game Over (Flip, Flip). The song comes up often enough at parties that you can do this often and really impress everyone. It’s hard, twisty and ridiculously fun. Strongly recommended for embarrassing yourself if you can figure out when to breathe.

You Sir, Are No Chuck Norris

2006-08-03T23:46:00.000-05:00

Let me apologize in advance for the kitsch overdose. I know the SOAP Critical Reader was unnecessary and I’m sure I’m not going to win any friends with this following matter. However, I feel it is necessary that someone address this matter with all due speed.

Gawker has run a post called “David Hasselhoff: Momentary King of Celeb Kitsch” that contains the following line “Now that everyone seems to have calmed down about Chuck Norris, David Hasselhoff has re-re-re-emerged as the fleeting kitsch masculinity icon of the moment.” The article goes on to report that Hasselhoff has proclaimed himself King of the Internet.

I have a problem with this and I will now use the following moments of your time to address the pressing concern. What follows are a series of graphs showing why these claims are false and Chuck Norris is still the fleeting kitsch masculinity icon of the moment.

I wish I was kidding.

First we check out what Google trends says about Hasselhoff and we can see pretty clearly that his star is rising.

Now we plot it against Chuck Norris.

The Hoff is crushed by general traffic, though occasionally he gets an edge in media mentions. Sure Chuck Norris is falling in the public consciousness, but he is still miles above the Hoff, whose chart looks like a flat line compared to Chuck’s.

Is this just Google? Well, let’s check Blogpulse? First DH’s buzz:

He’s clearly climbing. Time to compare it with Norris.

Norris’s buzz is falling, but he still pretty much kicks the ass of the Hoffster. David beats Chuck on three separate days, but every other day, everyone’s favorite Texas Ranger remains king.

So there. Psuedostatistical proof that Chuck Norris’s reign is not over yet. QED and amen.

The Introductory “Snakes on a Plane” Critical Reader

2006-08-03T21:52:00.000-05:00

In the field of media studies, there are many pressing questions and continual crises. What is the future of Hollywood? What form will the new media take? Are record sales doomed to fall to record lows while illegal downloading and the sale of singles take over as the new paradigm? What are the implications of reality programming on the future of creative and artistic film and television?

However, there is one question that is most prominent in the minds of all those concerned with the development of the arts in these United States: What are these motherfucking snakes doing on this motherfucking plane?

I have assembled this critical reader to contain the preeminent scholarship and essays on the impact and meaning of the upcoming film “Snakes on a Plane,” starring Samuel L. Jackson.

Popshots: Snakes, Planes, and the triumph of Ironic Appreciation by Glenn McDonald details an initial appraisement of Snakes on a Plane, its history, and the history of the associated internet phenomena. It also features a number of video segments showing the fan cult of the film.

The “Snakes on a Plane” Problem by acclaimed author and memoirist Chuck Klosterman is a detailed critique of the negative implications of the film for the broader culture.

Asshole Whose Entire Career Based On Appreciating The Lowbrow Wants To Pull Up The Ladder is representative of the numerous critiques of the Klosterman article and spends its time dissecting the problems with it while defending the role of “Snakes on a Plane” in the culture at large.

Hissy fit by Aemilia Scott takes a more nuanced role to the position of “Snakes on a Plane” and the Klosterman criticism, finding a middle path that accounts addresses the Klosterman critique’s concerns and then posits a different interpretation.

Don't Worry: Commas Are Still In

2006-08-02T23:57:00.000-05:00

So there is an interesting article on Wired about Bart Kosko’s book on noise. The book shows some interesting things, like how a little bit of random noise can actually make things sound clear plus a description of what pink noise actually is (it’s not necessarily riotgrrl music). The last comment bewilders me though.

“I noticed there aren’t any commas in your book. Is this your way of cutting back on punctuation noise?

Commas are a kind of channel noise. You’re not getting to the verb fast enough. Why make us wait? The comma is on its way out. Use small words. The perfect illustration is a swear phrase: Go to hell! Screw you!”

Wait, what?

Commas are on their way out? Really? I had heard that the Oxford comma had crept out of AP style and that was gradually becoming standard, but that’s one limited usage of comma. The comma is hardly useless, and I think it serves some important clarifying roles in written language, primarily by preventing ambiguity where the sentence might be unclear.

Exhibit A: “I love fucking Maggie Gyllenhall and apple pie.” vs. “I love fucking, Maggie Gyllenhall, and apple pie.”

The latter sentence has one clear meaning: “There are three separate things I love: sexual intercourse, actress Maggie Gyllenhall, and pastry with apple filling.” The first sentence is, however, problematic. Aside from the fact which it implies that I love fucking Maggie Gyllenhall (something I can’t personally attest to, but would, in fact, probably enjoy), it also can be easily interpreted that I enjoy sexual relations with apple pie ala Jason Biggs (again, I can’t personally attest to this, but this time I suspect I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as Maggie Gyllenhall).

This whole list thing is pretty obvious and important use for the comma. I actually (mid-writing this) realized that I had used it before in the title of the post “Fuck, Mom, and Baseball: Wherein the Comma is Important.”

Exhibit B: “I’m a cowboy bitch.” vs. “I’m a cowboy, bitch”

The latter is the intended meaning: an aggressive assertion of one’s masculinity evidenced through your fulfillment of the cowboy stereotype and the subsequent belittling of the person you are addressing. Without a comma, however, there is nothing to do but prepare for the subsequent and inevitable barrage of Brokeback Mountain jokes.

I just think commas are too useful to be on their way out. As for the rest of his silliness about using small words and getting to the verb faster, it seems to run counter to his comments about the comma. He seems to be striving for clarity in writing (though I’m not necessarily sure his advice is any good). In any case, calling for the culling of clarifying commas seems to run counter to this philosophy.

With that in mind, I think it’s safe to write off his practice of no commas as a petty literary pretension. It’s like Selby using foreslashes instead of apostrophes: a gimmicky device of a mediocre writer trying to divert attention away from the quality of their work.

Not that I’m trying to say Kosko’s book is bad or that his prose is rotten. I’m just saying that his punctuation policies are a pretentious affectation of dubious merit.

My Name Is Kellen, I'll Be Your Waiter

2006-07-27T01:56:00.001-05:00

Here are your drinks. Can I start you off with some appetizers?

TV: The only thing on that still captivates me is Rescue Me. So much sex and violence that I bet Jerry Falwell would have an aneurysm if he watched it. On the surface it seems to be a pretty shallow comedy (with lots of sex and violence) but almost every episode has some amazing dramatic and heart-stopping scenes. This past week for instance, the opening scene is a stunner. Another thing I like: HeadOn (“HeadOn. Apply directly to the head. HeadOn”), and our nation’s obsession with it.

Movies: Three movies I saw recently and liked despite negative reviews in many publications: Lady In The Water, Clerks II, and Dead Man’s Chest. Lady in the Water is a terrific fantastic comedy, but everyone seems to hate it. Why? Because it was marketed as a horror movie, a thriller, by M. Night Shymawhatsit. People came expecting The Sixth Sense, and instead got something entirely different. What does exist is a captivatingly complex fantasy world blended with our world played as a comedy. The scenes with the movie critic (though they beg questions about MNS’s bitterness about bad reviews) are simply some of the funniest I’ve seen in a long time.

Clerks II and the Pirates sequel suffer from the same issue of poor marketing. These movies are for people who have seen the previous movie, and while it is possible to enjoy these movies without the background you will definitely miss things. Notably, the ending of Pirates will completely confuse someone who hasn’t seen the first movie. Critics hate this, but I don’t see a problem with this. Requiring filmmakers to have to recap and explain everything kills the pace and is a waste of time to the vast majority of the audience who has seen the original. Anyway, Dead Man’s Chest is worth seeing. The scene with the waterwheel and the chest on the island is one of the most intricate and delightful action set pieces I’ve ever seen.

Clerks II is the perfect companion to the first Clerks. Yes, it is full of disgusting jokes and pointless conversations about pop culture… just like the first Clerks. Why would this one be any different? If you didn’t like the first one, why would you expect to like the sequel? This film is different of course from the original. The first version of the first Clerks had Dante being killed senselessly in a robbery at the end, Kevin Smith drawing inspiration from the sudden violent end of Do the Right Thing. Even in the final edit of Clerks, the ending is still certainly not upbeat. Clerks II actually ends on an optimistic note and in the end, gave me the ending that I wanted. Is it a little too sugary? Maybe, but fuck it, Dante wasn’t even supposed to be here today. It's about time he got paid some overtime.

Books: Mao II is surprisingly prescient on issues of terrorism. It’s also nice and short for those who find Delillo longwinded. In some ways it reminded me of the 1980 movie Network, which not only predicted FoxNews and reality television, but also had prophetic insight on global terrorism.

Internets: People (notably the NY Times) are being dumb about Wikipedia. No one uses Wikipedia as a serious research tool. It is the internet equivalent of an amazingly thorough desk reference. You wouldn’t cite it in a paper, you wouldn’t use it to learn how to do heart surgery. You use Wikipedia to find out shit about Transformers and the story behind “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” (apparently a conspiracy masterminded by Donald Barthelme?). To paraphrase the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff: Parents, and people the same age as my parents, just don’t understand.

Rob Horning has a great article on PopMatters. More and more he becomes my favorite columnist. I will steal the teaser from their site: “Like Calvinists who stockpile life's finer things in hopes of shoring up their sense of themselves as elect, hipsters surround themselves with the trappings of creativity and trust that this substantiates their claim to being cool.”

Oh and people are going apeshit over mturk.com, a website that outsources menial tasks you can do over the Internet for a few pennies. I think it’s a really cool idea, but it is upsetting labor people, who don’t seem to understand that people don’t rely on the Mechanical Turk as a source of income, but rather just as a hobby that happens to pay. I don’t know, I think labor is overreacting but that’s just me.

Anyway, this shit should get you started. Your entrees will be out shortly.

Hey There

2006-07-12T00:10:00.000-05:00

You look great. Has it really been that long? Nice tan by the way. Where did you go? Oh, cool, I hear it’s really nice there. You have a good time? Oh? You went with him? Well, that’s great, he’s a nice guy. You guys will be good together.

Oh me? Not too much. Nah, it’s no big deal. Just a little of this and that. Pretty boring really. Why haven’t I what? Oh. Well, you know, there’s been some stuff.

Well, I have a job now. Oh no, nothing like that. Well, it’s actually more of an internship. No, it doesn’t pay. But I think it’s a good experience you know?

There have been other stuff too, I went to the beach for a week and then to see my cousin. Huh? She was in an accident. A car pinned her to a wall and crushed her. It’s a miracle she survived. She’s been floating in and out of comas and unconsciousness in the ICU. My relatives have been there every day talking to her, not really sure if she’s been hearing it or not. One of my aunt’s told her she had quit smoking. My cousin’s eyes opened up really wide and she responded “Really? Me too,” and then went back to sleep. I am not using any sort of figure of speech when I say that I wish this was a joke.

Anyway, she’s been doing better and I’ve been back here. My girlfriend came to see me for a week. I didn’t tell you I was seeing someone? Oops, well you know, yeah. Yeah, she’s great. Thanks, that’s nice of you.

Yeah I saw that. That was a fucking insane head butt. I mean, I thought it was lame that the last four teams were all Europeans, but whatever. I’m glad the Italians beat France after that bullshit, though.

Oh, and I’m going to Connecticut next week. My sister is going to this Coast Guard Academy camp-thing. Yeah, weird, but my family decided to piggyback a vacation on top of it.

What? You think this fake conversation format is hackneyed? Well, that’s fair. Actually, yeah, you’re right. I’ll wrap it up. Sorry.

So yeah, I’ve been busy. What have you been up to? Read or seen anything good lately? Yeah, Pirates is cool. Well, it’s good talking to you, but I’ve got to go. Maybe we can talk more after I get back from New England? Yeah?

I’d like that.

My World Cup Biases

2006-06-18T02:08:00.000-05:00

This will be promptly ignored by anyone with a bit of sense, but considering how much of my time it has been taking up lately; I need to talk about the World Cup.

To paraphrase John Hodgman on the Daily Show, the World Cup gives the world a way to revisit old nationalistic rivalries, a metaphor for war. He then pointed out that the United States doesn’t need a metaphor for war because we actually have wars without bothering with the metaphor.

Indeed, a lot of print and effort by all sorts has gone into discussing why the United States doesn’t care that much about soccer or even the World Cup, including an interesting piece by Dave Eggers. Whether or not the majority of America cares, I am hooked, and like Hodgman and Simon Black, author of a socialist analysis of the World Cup, I’m hooked on the geo-political rivalries.

So, what follows is an analysis of the groups, the schedule, who I want to win, and why.

Group A
Ecuador and Germany are already going to advance with two wins each. I would have preferred Poland or Costa Rica to Germany, but it is the German’s home turf. Interesting fact: Poland has never beaten Germany in World Cup Soccer. That’s fucked up.

Group B
England’s already got it sewn up, but I want Trinidad and Tobago to advance. Why? I like for former colonies to win, and when possible, to beat there former colonial rulers. At various times, the islands were controlled by the Spanish, Dutch, and French before obtaining independence from the English in 1962. There is nothing more enjoyable for me than seeing the arrogance of Imperial European soccer punctured by the post-colonial world. Now, Trinidad and Tobago lost to England, but that’s OK, because they still have a chance to advance to the next round. Here is what has to happen: They have to beat Paraguay and England has to beat Sweden. The way the point system works, this will force a tie for second place between Sweden and T&T, which will be determined by point differential. Currently Sweden leads with 1 while T&T has -2. So, for T&T to advance, their win and Sweden’s loss must be more than marginal.

Group C
Argentina and the Netherlands are already set for this, and it’s heartbreaking. The Ivory Coast was in this group, and you’ve seen the commercials: This was their first appearance in the World Cup ever, and it brought peace to the civil war. This was the perfect story, and it’s a damn shame to have to bow so early. At least Argentina is moving on, but that’s barely consolation.

Group D
This group tears me up. Portugal is a lock and the other tree teams are Mexico, Iran, and Angola. North American loyalties make me want Mexico to win, and any non-religious influence in Iran, especially one as gloriously populist as soccer is something worth cheering about. Angola of course, got to face their colonial rulers, Portugal in a match that ended with Portugal winning 1-0. However, the chance for a rematch remains. Angola can advance if they beat Iran and Portugal beats Mexico, and Angola manages to make up the three goal differential that separates them from Mexico.

Group E
This is the United States group. Italy leads, and the Czech Republic and Ghana are tied, with the U.S. in dead last. I could say that I’m a secret patriot, that the United States is the first post-colonial nation (as odd as that seems, it has a grain of truth), that it’s a good team that doesn’t get respect, or any other reason. None of it matters or would be believed: I am an American, and I want America to advance. Here’s what needs to happen: We need to beat Ghana. If Italy wins against the Czech Republic, we advance. If the Czechs win, we need to beat Ghana by a lot, or Italy needs to lose by a lot. There is a five goal differential, and so to ensure a win (because I don’t know what happens when there is merely a tie in goal differentials) we would need to win by three and the Czechs need to win by three (or any other combination that adds up to six). So basically, what I am saying is that we need Italy to win.

Group F
This group has Australia, Croatia, Japan, and Brazil. I want Brazil to advance (and eventually play Portugal?), but I have a feeling they will. For years and years, Brazil has been the best thing in the World Cup. Not just because they win, but because they always win with the coolest looking moves. As for the other team, with spots up for grabs, I’m thinking Croatia. Maybe I’m spending too much time in the Russian department, but I’m sympathetic towards the Slavs. So yeah, Brazil and Croatia.

Group G
Togo and South Korea. Togo is one of those colonies that got traded around by all the big boys in Europe, so naturally I am cheering for them. Also, they are in the same group in France, and now they have the opportunity to pull off the first defeat of a European power by a former colony in the tournament on June 23 when play against them. I picked South Korea because the World Cup should include East Asia and I already voted against Japan. Also Switzerland? No interesting geo-political rivalries can be explored by a team from a country so devoted to neutrality. That’ll teach ‘em to not take sides!

Group H
So I’m obviously going to pick Tunisia because they were colonized, but for the second pick I have to go with Ukraine. First, there’s the Slav thing. Now, obviously, I’m not going to support Spain after all my whining about Europe, so that leaves the Ukraine and Saudi Arabia. A case could be made for Saudi Arabia, but I just can’t make myself cheer for them. Sorry. So I will be cheering for Ukraine, who is technically the last place team in the tournament after their 0-4 loss to Spain. Go underdogs.

So there it is. In excruciating detail. I know no one else cares, but I just needed to get this out of my system.

Fucking Hipsters and More About Boobs

2006-06-12T01:39:00.000-05:00

Previously I have ever-so-subtly implied that media critics (particularly those writing about music) seem to be locked in a death grip of mutual masturbation with the most loathsome of creatures, the hipster. Too often hipsterdom is painted as a magical utopia smart, friendly, well-dressed, ultra-rad people are always helping each other out; recommending music, books, and movies with good-natured pluck.

Enter Rob Horning, PopMatters columnist, and author of a brilliant piece, which humbly attempts to call bullshit on this fantasy. It’s refreshing, humorous, and really goddamn resonant.

Excerpt: “In other words, the underground empire is designed to produce cliquish hipsters who finance the entire quasi-countercultural enterprise not from a sense of patronage or taste, but from insecurity over being just like everyone else.”

Right fucking on.

This is of course, just another example of the generally great coverage on PopMatters. First, they cover comics, videogames, and television, which means automatic points. It tends to be smart and earnest. Sometimes it tends toward the pretentious, like Friday’s column: Variations on a Theme: The Devil's Music: Franz Liszt's Musical Representation of Mephistopheles. However, I think we can give a pass on this: Is there any way to talk about a Liszt composition adapted from the Faust legend that isn’t pretentious?

PopMatters covers the full spectrum though. One of the strangest things that I have ever read recently is an in-depth re-examination of the place of Chesty Morgan in the history of cinema. Chesty Morgan, as I learned was an actress in a number of exploitation flicks whose fame seems to be solely derived from having breasts that measure 77FF. Yeah, I know. Anyway, the article goes over her entire body of work and is just as bizarre and surreal as anything Borges ever wrote. Also, for fun you can count the synonyms that the author uses for tits.

Updates in Television

2006-06-11T01:46:00.000-05:00

I should probably preface this by trying to convince you that I do things other than watch television and surf the Internet. I honestly read. I promise, I know you don’t believe me, but I have a big stack of books that I’m reading. Some of them even have literary merit (whatever that is). I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.

Now on to television.

Okay, so we need to talk, Girls Gone Wild. No, I don’t think you are morally reprehensible or even that tasteless. Drunk girls showing their tits: Okay, whatever, fine. Your new commercials really concern me though. Why? Because it seems that we have run out of places where girls can flash their goodies. The latest commercials feature girls revealing their boobage while skydiving and also on one of those high-altitude planes that they use to simulate no gravity environments. If you are not aware of the phrase “jumping the shark,” Girls Gone Wild, than perhaps you should look it up. Have we really run out of places for chicks to lift their tops? Is your audience really just getting bored of bars? Was there a meeting? Were there memos? “I tell you what, Phil, bars are the past. We are talking jugs in the upper atmosphere! The future, baby! Picture a fetching young broad showing her bazoombas. Now picture her in freefall several thousand feet above the earth. Even hotter, am I right?” I sincerely fear that there are meetings, taking place right now, with Eastern European space agencies (maybe in Kazakhstan) where they are trying to arrange to send girls to outer space for the express purpose of taking of their clothes. What is the world of ultra-soft exhibitionist reality skin DVDs coming to?

In other commercial news: Messing With Bigfoot is great. It’s a series of beefjerky ads. Simple, ridiculous, elegant. Maybe someone has them up on YouTube. Check ‘em out.

In terms of what’s definitely on YouTube, check out some of the latest Daily Show clips. My personal favorite is the clip that they made for the death of al-Zarqawi. Some people feel that the crowing over his death by the administration and the media has been tacky and tasteless. I’m going to have to disagree: If he repeatedly made videos of beheading innocents (a practice that even the rest of al-Qaeda thought was over the top (al-Qaeda thought it was over the top?!)), it’s only fair the he gets sent up by the Daily Show in the style of that which is most American: a goodbye montage set to Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” ala American Idol.

Also recommended: Jon Stewart’s interview with Bill Bennett.

Also, Rescue Me is still fucking good. Second episode as good or better than the first. FX at 10 on Tuesdays, be there or Uma Thurman will draw a rectangle in the air to complete the phrase in a strangely inaccurate matter.

Oh, one more thing I love: Gnarls Barkley at the MTV Movie Awards. Say what you will about Gnarls Barkley and MTV, but a performance in full Star Wars attire is top notch. If you disagree, I might have to fight you.

Admittedly, A Bit of A Hodge-Podge

2006-06-08T02:44:00.000-05:00

I don’t know if people like it better or worse when I just list a bunch of interesting things with links to other places rather than a lengthier, focused, and unified entry. For some reason, I feel like these are cheating, but my hunch is no-one really wants me to go in length about anything (Especially pseudo-statistics or “fuck”), and that the shorter entries are actually probably better.

In any event, today we have special trees, bloop, sci-fi/sf, and, of course “fuck”.

BoingBoing had a post on this originally, but the goods on this really come from the source of all things cool, Wikipedia. What am I talking about? The list of famous trees. For the most heart-breaking tree-based narrative in the world, you can read about Arbre du Ténéré. For a big tree with an unexpected former name, I would recommend General Sherman Tree. And for sheer oddity, I recommend the Tree That Owns Itself.

Bloop: What is it? A strange deep unidentified sound recorded by the Navy in 1997. What is it from? Something big and mysterious that lives in the deep.

There’s a Language Log post about replacement words for “fuck” in science fiction. However, the article touches on two things aside from this main topic which are worth mentioning. Apparently lots of sci-fi fans prefer for science fiction to be referred to as “sf.” The summary of the argument is encapsulated at the relevant Wikipedia page, however, I can’t let this pass without comment. One of the reasons listed in aforementioned Wikipedia entry is that sci-fi fans hate how the term has come to be used by the mainstream as a blanket including fantasy, horror, and other elements of nerdy fringe culture. This is ridiculous: is the complaint really that the damn trekkies are afraid the Dungeons and Dragon set is making “sci-fi” look dweebie?

Fuck that.

As a devoted D&D player throughout middle and high school and a present connoisseur of the rare delights of contemporary fantasy pulp fiction, I would like to point out that my friends and I would never have called ourselves sci-fi fans. Fantasy fans, by and large, look down upon sci-fi fiction as overblown, pseudo-scientific babble with the prose cleverly written in style of an average VCR instruction manual. I could try to explain our superior way of thought by laying out a finely articulated argument in which I compare sci-fi to modernism and contemporary fantasy to post-modernism, but I have a feeling that such an analogy would fizzle out somewhere around the obvious connections and contrasts with Tolkien, Derrida, and Borges. The sci-fi/fantasy rift aside, let me instead just say this: If even sci-fi fans don’t want to be called sci-fi fans, what does that reflect about the genre?

Anyway.

The other thing about the article is it mention Elliott using the word “frak” on Scrubs. It just made me suddenly realize how much of its own vocabulary the show has. I wonder if there is a list of Scrubsisms somewhere. Kelly Ripa, anyone?

And finally, on to the word I can’t write enough about: “fuck.” A law has just passed increasing the maximum fine for broadcasting indecency to $325,000 per incident. If the Internet were susceptible to such stringent guidelines, and if we were to only consider the word “fuck” and ignore variants and other indecency, my recent googling indicates that the FCC could potentially collect a cool $45,175,000,000,000 dollars from that single category of indecent speech. Okay, so that’s a ridiculous and far-fetched scenario. But, how about this: A network wants to show the classic film, Scarface. The FCC would be in its rights to collect $59,150,000 in fines for uses of the word “fuck” and variants alone. Counting all the examples of indecency in Scarface could results in fines in the hundreds of millions of dollars range. Am I wrong to say that hundreds of millions of dollars in fines is not a reasonable response to broadcasting Scarface?

Oh right, we have to protect the children. Well, fuck.

Fuck, Mom, and Baseball: Wherein the Comma is Important

2006-06-06T23:00:00.000-05:00

Brittany posted a comment to my entry concerning the recent legal article on fuck jurisprudence that cited a section of the article with an intriguing fact:

“One recent Internet search revealed that fuck "is a more commonly used word than mom, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet."”

The internal quotation bears a footnote directing the reader to “See Eric Vanatta, The F-Motion, 21 CONST. COMMENT. 285, 288-289 (2004) (noting fuck had 24.9 million hits compared to baseball, its closest competitor, with only 13.6 million hits)”

This is an interesting tidbit and claim, and I thought it might be fun to look into it. My guess is that if we look at the originating document we could probably find specifics about when this search took place, using what search engine, and the other details that were used to come up with this fact. Then, for kicks we could replicate it and see what’s changed, if anything. So here we go.

A small amount of research reveals that this apparently comes from a relatively famous (won 2003 Legal Document of the Year at Smoking Gun) motion to dismiss charges against a teenager who called his principal a “fucker” and a “fucking fag.” The basic gist of the motion is that “fuck” ain’t no big thang, and Eric Vanatta, the student’s public defender, goes about proving this in as many ways as possible. One of the ways he does this is by citing the number of hits he gets when he did an Internet search. The relevant part of the document reads like this:

“8. A search of internet web sites suggests Fuck is a more commonly used word than mom, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Google Search Engine at Google.com on June 25th, 2003.

9. Mr. [blacked out] is alleged to have spoken two different variations of the root word Fuck. The following table depicts the number of internet search engine hits for [blacked out] alleged “Fucker” and “Fucking” statements as compared to fuck itself and other commonly heard words or phrases. All results are approximate.

Word (Approximate number of hits)
Fuck (24,900,000)
Fucking (24,700,000)
Fucker (735,000)
Mom (9,040,000)
Baseball (13,600,000)
Hot Dogs (607,000)
Apple Pie (308,000)
Chevrolet (4,090,000)
Freedom of Speech (542,000)
First Amendment (933,000)
Unconstitutional (691,000)
Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones (7,360)”

You got to love how he sneaks these last four examples in there. The last entry in particular, the first part of a saying that ends “… but words may never hurt me,” is simply one of the most clever jabs I have ever seen in a legal document. But that’s, not my point, I want to focus on the Google hits.

I think that it is safe to assume that the hits results for the table in #9 were arrived at by doing a Google search on June 25th, 2003 as noted in #8. Also, although, nothing is specified I am going to assume that the searches were conducted by searching Google for the listed item as a phrase (in quotation marks). So now that we have a method, let’s run the phrases and see what happens when we search using Google, three years later.

Word (Approximate number of hits)
Fuck (139,000,000)
Fucking (109,000,000)
Fucker (18,400,000)
Mom (260,000,000)
Baseball (419,000,000)
Hot Dogs (14,200,000)
Apple Pie (8,270,000)
Chevrolet (81,400,000)
Freedom of Speech (24,100,000)
First Amendment (35,900,000)
Unconstitutional (23,000,000)
Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones (178,000)

Ok, so we have two big changes from the data collected in 2003. The first big change is that the original argument and quotation doesn’t stand. “Baseball” and “Mom” occur with much greater frequency than “Fuck.” “Baseball,” the most popular, has nearly 300 million more hits than “Fuck.”

Which brings us to the second big change, and perhaps the more interesting: there are a lot more hits for everything. Every single phrase got several times over the number of hits that they received in 2003. “Baseball,” on the high end, gets around thirty times as many hits as it did in 2003, while “fuck,” on the low end, gets around five times as many hits.

What caused this? Well, I know that the Internet is growing, but I didn’t really expect that it was growing so rapidly. Has Google gotten better at rounding up every site? Probably, but we still have a hard time accounting for the vast discrepancy in growth between hits for “fuck” and “baseball.” Has there been a massive boom in interest for baseball in the past three years (at least on the internet) while the interest in fuck has remained constant? I have no idea.

One idea for solving this, involves calculating a sort of base growth of Google’s reach by examining records for hits to functional words like “the,” “of,” and “an.” By comparing past and present hits for a number of these words we could come up with a base rate of increase for Google (since the functional nature of these words ensures that they only track an increase in general relative scope of Google), then zero that out from the increase we detected in other phrases to note abnormal or extra growth of a phrases occurrence within the tendrils of Google.

So if someone wants to do that, get on it. In the meantime, be content to know that “mom” and “baseball” have risen above the menace of “fuck” and its so-called progressive kin.

Things About Which You Should Know Or That I Otherwise Recommend

2006-06-06T01:00:00.000-05:00

I’m not feeling up to focusing on one thing for any set amount of time right now, so I refer to you the following array of items in various categories:

Television: I finally watched “Rescue Me.” I think it was the third season premiere. And I really dropped the ball on this one. It’s fucking great. I love Dennis Leary, but I thought that he would suck in a drama and that his comedy wouldn’t work within a narrative. The show works. It’s funny, interesting, and the drama is killer. I will be watching it this summer. It's on FX, tommorrow at ten (new episode).

Advertisements: The best ads on TV are the G4 ads for Midnight Spank. They mix cute, arbitrary, and terrifying while featuring a deer, a guinea pig, and a butterfly. You can see them here.

Books and Writing: I came upon this lengthy treatise the other day and it is worth a read. It is wholeheartedly depressing and soul crushing but should probably be required reading for aspiring writers or anyone who wants to work in publishing.

Music: In the category of things you should already be reading/listening to, WFMU’s excellent blog has a great article that does the liberty of compiling the best satanic music and video all in one place. Seriously. I, in particular, recommend Anton LaVey’s “Satan Takes a Holiday.” Yes that’s right, the founder of the Church of Satan has cut a couple albums… and they all sound like really lame circus music. If you want a particular kick, tune in to WXYC, contact the on-air DJ and ask them to play another track from that album, or, if they are feeling particularly generous, to read the liner notes to you: It turns out Anton LaVey has a great sense of humor or is otherwise more insane than I could have anticipated.

Nature: I got this little bit straight from Wikipedia and I couldn’t really explain it if I tried, so I will entice you with a direct quotation:

“Mautam (a Mizo language term), is the name given to the mysterious cyclic ecological phenomenon that occurs every 48 years, in the Northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, which is thirty percent covered by wild bamboo forests. During this period, the Melocanna baccifera species of bamboo in the state flowers, which is invariably followed by a subsequent plague of giant bandicoot rats whose actions cause devastating famine.[1]. The most recent flowering began in May 2006, and efforts are underway to prevent a famine, by the state government and the Indian Army. In the past, famines caused by this phenomenon have played a significant part in shaping the region's political history.”

Whoa.

Confessions

2006-06-04T23:09:00.000-05:00

We all got it eventually. Whether we thought it was cool, were pressured by our friends, wanted to see who was in classes, or otherwise justified it, we all eventually did it. We sat down and logged on: We made Facebook profiles.

Everyone expects you to be interested in it initially, but what happens when the interest doesn’t fade? Facebook has a pull to it, and the best of us only get distracted, the worst of us get addicted.

I am no Facebook saint, and I freely admit this. My conscience is burdened with a number of Facebook-related sins. I am not proud of these. I beg that you not judge me too harshly for how awful I am.

1. I have read your Facebook profile. I’ve read it. If you listed a livejournal or a blog, I read it. Like for several months back. I know that that’s how most of you started reading this, so don’t even think about hating.

2. I am so bad at conversation that sometimes, in an effort to get people to like me, I will read your facebook or blog and then talk about something you love and pretend like I didn’t know you liked it and isn’t it cool that we have such common interests?

3. I have looked at all your pictures. I know what everyone was for Halloween and that stupid thing you did when you were drunk. What goes for blogs also goes for flickr and webshots.

4. I have avoided friending people or accepting friendship requests for the following, shallow “problems” in their profile:
a. Favorite books: “I don’t read.”
b. Favorite books: The Notebook, DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons
c. Favorite music: obscenely long list (Who are you trying to impress?).
d. Any Field: “and many more” or “etc” (see above)
e. Favorite music: “Everything but Rap, Metal, and Country” (This tag indicates white, middle to upper class people who suck almost without fail.)
f. Favorite music: “DMB!!!!” (see above)
g. Favorite movies: The Notebook, DaVinci Code,
h. Favorite music: Mars Volta, Coheed and Cambria
i. Wall: The Beautiful Truck.
j. Anywhere: “If you want to know then ask!” (If I wanted to ask I wouldn’t be stalking you over Facebook)
k. Favorite Music: No pop music included. (Liar or boring.)
l. Groups: “We Hate Facebook” or similar. (Liar or pretentious. Probably hates television and pop music)
m. Anywhere: Lists are alphabetized.
n. Favorite Books: No fiction.

5. Sometimes I delete a comma in a random section of my profile so that people who check my profile for changes get confused and frustrated because they can’t find out what I changed.

6. I really miss the Visualize Network feature that made the cool web-like graphic.

7. I get really defensive and angry at people who think MySpace is better than Facebook.

8. I get déjà vu all the time because I will recognize someone in the flesh and not know why until I remember that I had pored over their Facebook just the other night.

9. I check your Favorite Music against your last.fm page for discrepancies.

10. I think you look whore-y in your picture.

I feel cleansed. Feel free to share your Facebook confessions below. Make use of the “anonymous” tag as needed.

Facebook Status Messages Continued

2006-06-04T02:41:00.000-05:00

This is a dead blog. If you want to see what I'm doing these days, check out Esquivaliant!

For some freakishly inexplicable reason, my post on Facebook status messages is the number one Google hit for people searching for “facebook status” or similar variants. In fact, people looking for these things make up the vast majority of traffic that visits this little corner of the Internet. So I have decided to cater to this demand by revisiting the magic of Facebook Status Messages.

I’m not good at building suspense so here is the punch line: people are using the feature very differently than they were when the feature debuted.

In the first post, I noted that only half of all messages actually detailed the person’s actual status, while the others were either jokes or comments about the advent of the new feature.

Now, out of seventeen “Recent Status Updates,” sixteen actually detail status, while only one is a clear joke. There are no references within these status messages about the status feature, itself. It seems that people are actually using the feature.

Interesting to note, is that while clearly the example features tend to indicate that status means “what one is doing at this instant,” many people don’t use it that way. Seven of the seventeen updates detail living location as opposed to activity or activity location (i.e. “at the store”), which is perhaps used more since it requires less updating to be useful or accurate.

So what happened to people being funny and making fun of the new feature? I’m not sure, but have some ideas. First thing: I think Facebook automatically clears your status if it’s been a while. I’m not sure about this, but I feel like my status (admittedly, lame jokes most of the time) has vanished a couple times. The fixed reset after a given time seems to do a good job of clearing out the lame jokes.

As for the feature resentment issue, my guess is that people got over it. While the “A Status Box? Hey Facebook, CALM THE FUCK DOWN!” Facebook group at UNC has over forty members, and the more general “Mark Zuckerberg Needs To Calm The Fuck Down” group at UNC has over thirty, neither has had any message board postings in a month. Diagnosis: they got over it and learned to ignore it.

It seems that the backlash associated with the feature when it launched has pretty much evaporated. Personally, I don’t find the actual messages all that useful, but I do appreciate knowing if a person is currently logged in or if they are accessible via their phones. It seems a logical move to keep offering any new features for a service with such a broad base where the vast majority checks Facebook once a day and a significant minority spends an amount of time on Facebook that most statisticians refer to as “an assload”.

If you are curious here is my raw “data.”

Elizabeth is watching law and order, so good! (and ridiculous, she'll admit.).
Karthik is chillin.
Julianna is trying to catch a lizard.
Janna is at the apple store!
Rebecca is makin that money in Charlotte this weekend.
Sarah is FREE! And wandering around Oxford wondering what to do with life...
Karyn is back in Raleigh!
Jon is dreaming about cock.
Maleah is at home.
Amanda is listening to drunk Jed!
Tanner is at home, now, but much more tan.
Monica is playing with chemicals.
Queenie is in class.
Chuck is finally moved into his house.
Katie is Milwaukified.
Samantha is stuck in/doing phySUCKS.

Christina is in a box.

Update on Various Things

2006-06-02T01:39:00.000-05:00

What do you do when you feel like writing even less than usual?

Make a random list of links, connect them to something I've previously mentioned and call it a day!

Fuck is always of interest. Here is a Language Log guestpost about unsual Chinglish translations that use the word fuck in weirdly inappropriate situations.

Music writing is pretentious as noted here. Go here to see dead-on satire from the only music columnist worth reading on the Internet, Dr. David Thorpe.

Pulp Fiction week is over, but Slate still has the goods on cultural detritus. Here you can read about where to get some genuine, rare, brillant unreleased in the US DVD action. You want an all sign language vampire movie (it's called Deafula)? Tarantino's unreleased, unfinished first film? Shaw Studios genius? Slate has the goods.

Oh also, on the trendspotting, Blogpulse front: Language Log's Mark Liberman points out some really cool cyclical patterns in Internet posting.

And what IS the correct adjective for Foucault?

Will I ever post any original content anymore? The world may never know.

What Must Be Set Free?

2006-06-01T00:52:00.000-05:00

I love me some “dirty” words and “filthy” language, so I am pleased to present you this seventy eight page scholarly treatise by Christopher M. Fairman of the Ohio State University - Michael E. Moritz College of Law (brought to you via BoingBoing) .

The Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies Working Paper Series No. 39 brings you Ohio State Public Law Working Paper No. 59 with one of the most compelling titles and subjects in the whole of jurisprudence.

The works name?

Fuck.

It’s a thorough overview of the word, with background on history, etymology, and social context. The paper is of course focused on the legal aspects and treatment of fuck. I am of course unqualified to say this, but it seems to me that he does a good job of seizing upon a linguistic understanding of the word (specifically the idea that there are two different words, each pronounced “fuck”) and using it to illuminate the legal predicaments in a new light. He does a great job of pointing out the history and inconsistency of “fuck jurisprudence” and ends on an exciting note with a beautiful closing line. If you still don’t want to read it (and you should (I enjoyed the footnotes, in particular), here is the abstract:

“This Article is as simple and provocative as its title suggests: it explores the legal implications of the word fuck. The intersection of the word fuck and the law is examined in four major areas: First Amendment, broadcast regulation, sexual harassment, and education. The legal implications from the use of fuck vary greatly with the context. To fully understand the legal power of fuck, the nonlegal sources of its power are tapped. Drawing upon the research of etymologists, linguists, lexicographers, psychoanalysts, and other social scientists, the visceral reaction to fuck can be explained by cultural taboo. Fuck is a taboo word. The taboo is so strong that it compels many to engage in self-censorship. This process of silence then enables small segments of the population to manipulate our rights under the guise of reflecting a greater community. Taboo is then institutionalized through law, yet at the same time is in tension with other identifiable legal rights. Understanding this relationship between law and taboo ultimately yields fuck jurisprudence.”

Legice? Seriously? I Know Right.

2006-05-30T02:19:00.000-05:00

A little while ago I posted a list of slang compiled from one of my classes and vowed that one day I would return to it for a little analysis provided by me, unqualified person extraordinaire. That day has come, and its time to address a few words or definitions that seem problematic:

BISCUIT -- deny one’s own accomplishments, be falsely modest. Allusion to the practice of old Southern women who make delicious biscuits from scratch and then apologize for them. X: “This is a terrible poem I wrote. It’s not my best work.” Y: “Stop biscuiting!”

DURB -- From Dick Durbin, Democratic Senator from Illinois. Fellatio.

I KNOW RIGHT -- I agree completely: X: “What were they doing cancelling the study group?” Y: “I know, right.” Popularized by the film Mean Girls.

LEGICE -- /ləĵaysə/ legitimate + scheisse (German ‘shit’) Positive, agreeable, excellent

SERIOUSLY -- expression of shock, surprise, or indignation: “He doesn’t call for two weeks. But he thinks he can call tonight and I’ll go over to study? Seriously? Seriously!” Popularized by television series Grey’s Anatomy.

The biggest problem about the formation of this list, in my opinion, was the mindset of a lot of contributors. While ostensibly people were documenting words they used or had heard, some of the words on the list are extremely marginal at best, or were just outright made-up for purposes of submission, as I happen to know a few of the words were. Which means that some of these words are probably just theoretical slang: someone could use newly coined term X, but no one actually has or does.

How can I tell if a word is actually being used? Well, I can always Google it. The problem being that if it is a word like BISCUIT, there will be lots of hits, just not in the sense I am looking for (even the form BISCUITING can’t be used because apparently it’s a woodworking term). So I check one of the most thorough locations for slang on the net: Urban Dictionary. Urban Dictionary is incredibly exhaustive, so I usually get skeptical if a word doesn’t show up. BISCUIT exists as a slang word with all sorts of definitions, but none even approaching the definition that was given on the list I have.

Does this mean it’s not a “real” slang word? Not necessarily. If it’s not a sort of experimental/theoretical slang word such as I described above, it could just be used solely by one small group. The folk story and complicated (for slang) allusion to old Southern women’s habits makes me think that this is probably a case of theoretical slang.

LEGICE seems to be a similar case. A half-foreign blend of the relatively common phrase “legitimate shit” or “legit shit” seems to be a very possible mutation. However, Google and Urban Dictionary turn up nothing in English, even with a variety of alternate spellings. This word, if actually used, is apparently rare. I am inclined to believe that this is one of those words that someone thought up to put on the list, though in my opinion it’s catchy enough to eventually gain some steam.

The other tricky thing about some of these entries is their supposed source or method of popularization. For example, Urban Dictionary verifies that DURB means fellatio and I found a few mentions in other sources, but I can find no connection or mention of its connection to the Senator from Illinois, Durbin. Because I didn’t find it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist or isn’t true (especially considering such successful senatorial eponyms as santorum), but if such a connection was real, my hunch is that it would be all over the Internet (Wonkette alone would have about ten posts on it, I would think). To me, the connection to the word DURB seems to be a folk etymology derived after the fact.

Likewise, it’s hard to say that SERIOUSLY and I KNOW RIGHT were actually popularized by Grey’s Anatomy and Mean Girls. I know that SERIOUSLY with the listed usage was in relatively wide use before Grey’s Anatomy and the claim that term was popularized by the show is pretty much impossible to prove or disprove as it might have been if the listing claimed that it originated on the show. Granted, it’s a hit with plenty of influence (I’m actually surprised that MCDREAMY wasn’t submitted) and the popularization claim could very well be true, but the idea that it is the cause of the wide usage of a particular term should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

It seems more likely that a group of friends first encountered the use from one of these sources and assumed that since that particular source was the source of the term’s local popularity it must be the source of its universal popularity. Again, this is all but impossible to prove or disprove.

Anyway, I promised a little bit of analysis and you got it, so I am considering my shit legice.

“Dada kraut psych mindblowing conscience expanding sublime acid oriented arcana coelestia weirdness”

2006-05-29T02:34:00.000-05:00

Well, so much for my favorite Google whacking string.*

Innocently, this all started with Geoffrey Pullum’s puzzlement over the syntactic nature of certain entrees and the in-depth report on music-discovering tools by Chris Dahlen. Then Eric Bakovic had to go introduce the two. The end result?

Ultrahypermegamonstaheavy over the top mammoth freakin mind exploding destroyer psychedelia from the deepest void of neverness and Geoff Pullum’s troubles with young people and parsing their damn Last.fm tags.

What’s my point? It’s a small one, but it boils down to this: The problem isn’t young people, it’s pretentious people who write about music.

You see, it isn’t just any sort of young person who describes music in terms like those above: It’s hipsters. Let’s not beat around the bush. The average young person, even the one’s interested in music don’t talk about songs with such ridiculous labels. It takes the gall of a twentysomething-but-don’t-call-me-a-twentysomething-creative-writing-workshopping-postmodernism-worshipping-art-school-dropout-but-ive-got-a-band-and-heres-my-zine-but-I-don’t-really-do-that-anymore-because-it’s-all-on-my-blog-self-righteous-tut-tutting-socialist-leaning-hipster to turn out the kind of ridiculous garbage described above.

This isn’t a new or unknown phenomenon. UNC has a Facebook Group that’s been around for some years called “Pre-post-modern-arkane-antidilluvian-anachronistic-semi-hardcore-quazi-screamo-joint-thinkcore-emo,” which parodies this tendency towards complex (ab?)use of attributive modifiers. I assume and pray that it is a parody at least.

How did it come to this? Overwrought music writing. Plain and simple. Hipsters, who have never gotten around to writing their Great American Novel (preferably stream of conscious), need an outlet for their unspeakable talent and so try to combine this with their cutting-edge knowledge of music to write music reviews for their local independent weekly or, more likely, their blog.

Unfortunately, bad music writing is part of an infinite feedback loop because the only thing hipsters like more than listening to music, is reading about music. They are the kids in the class who would never dare read Finnegan’s Wake, but eagerly devour all the companions and criticisms. The result is that hipster opinion and the bulk of music criticism exist in a giant echo chamber, where style is just as likely to be copied as substance (and which is really most important to the hipster oeuvre anyway?).

Perhaps at first millions were inspired by the masturbatory writing of Rolling Stone, but there is no question that the gold standard of the present day is Pitchforkmedia.com, a fact brilliantly skewered by David Cross in an article in which he parodies the Pitchfork review style. His article is clever, though undercut by the fact that his parody has a hard time measuring up to the absurdity of the actual reviews. After reading a a few samples, and appreciating the influence of Pitchfork for the young, hip, and musical, it’s not such a huge leap to see how the teeming masses (I meant the elite few) might be led into thinking that tons of attributive modifiers, literary references, gimmick formats, and arcane descriptors are not only one way to describe music, but are actually the standard conventions.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that if Geoffrey Pullum wants someone to blame, he should spare the kids and instead take it out on the guy who first described guitars as sounding “angular.”

(Google “Angular guitar”. The first hit? The Last.fm tag. The scary part? 50,000 other hits. (Fuck. Maybe this really is the standard. Someone needs to tell me what angular means in this context))

*I know that this term is not technically eligible for an "official" Google Whack, so let's assume that we are playing by the house rules.

Pulp Octopus

2006-05-26T01:45:00.000-05:00

Pulp fiction is great and the covers are the best part.

You agree, yes?

It’s Pulp Fiction week at Slate.com, and they have lots of interesting articles. What I like the best is that they commissioned artists to make pulp-style illustrations of some of the great works, and really they are fantastic.

What really caught my eye were the links to pulp fiction cover galleries: Here is a place with cool postcards based on covers and here is information and illustrations of Canadian covers. State University of New York at Buffalo has “The George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection.” If UNC had that, I think I would finally be content.

Oh, and here is a collection of covers that feature octopi and the women who love them.

College Slang in the Spring of 2006

2006-05-22T17:38:00.000-05:00

DUKEBAG -- Similar in sound and derogatoriness to DOUCHEBAG. Duke student who exemplifies the arrogance and overrated superiority of Duke University.
DURB -- From Dick Durbin, Democratic Senator from Illinois. Fellatio.
JUNK -- See PEEN.
SNORGLE -- cuddle something, pushing the nose in and breathing deeply: “I want to just snorgle that puppy.”

Dr. Connie Eble taught a lecture on slang in one of my classes this past semester. Dr. Eble, author of Slang and Sociability: In-Group Language Among College Students , keeps up with the ephemeral nature of slang, by soliciting words and definitions, such as those above, from actual college students at UNC, such as myself. She asked members of my class to each submit ten words and definitions so that she could compile and record them. She was kind enough to send the compiled list to the class, and I now make it available to you. It's interesting, and though I haven't bothered to try to comment on or analyze it yet, it's a fascinating glossary on its own merits.

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

CAMPUS SLANG, SPRING 2006

These words and phrases were submitted as examples of good, current campus slang by undergraduates enrolled in Professor Patrick O’Neill’s English 38 course in April 2006.

ATOM -- automatic teller machine (A.T.M.): “I have to stop by the atom to get some cash.”
ASSBANDIT -- lusty gay male. Said either as an insult or playfully: “You assbandit.”
ASSHAT -- someone who is ignorant, obnoxious, stupid, or just plain annoying: “My roommate’s boyfriend is such an asshat.”

BANANA -- an Asian who doesn’t have the same values as other Asians, i.e., yellow on the outside, white on the inside: “She won’t even speak Chinese, even though she knows it. She’s a banana.”
BARNEY BAG -- gigantic purse. From the children’s television program in which Barney pulled all sorts of things out of a magic bag. “When I travel, I carry a Barney bag.”
BEAST -- unusually strong, powerful, or impressive person: “Did you see that girl’s shoulders? She’s a beast.” Perform well, prevail over an adversary: “I busted that exam.” Humiliate, make fun of: “He beasted you.” Also PWN.
B.F.E. -- Bum Fuck Egypt. Far away: “I’m not dating that girl. She lives in B.F.E.”
BIA -- From bitch. Annoying or difficult person.
BILL -- one hundred dollar note: “This bullet-proof vest is only two bills.”
BISCUIT -- deny one’s own accomplishments, be falsely modest. Allusion to the practice of old Southern women who make delicious biscuits from scratch and then apologize for them. X: “This is a terrible poem I wrote. It’s not my best work.” Y: “Stop biscuiting!”
BLAST! -- euphemism for DAMN! or SHIT!
BLAST -- shoot with a gun: “That fool’s gonna get blasted.”
BLITZED -- drunk
BLOW -- fail at: “I completely blew that audition.”
BOOGIE -- /buži/ bourgeois
BOOTY CALL -- phone someone for sex, usually late at night and after drinking: “I got a booty call from Carter last night, but he was so drunk I could hardly understand him.”
BROKEBACK -- homosexual; stupid. From film Brokeback Mountain.
BUCKETS! -- expression of satisfaction after a good shot in basketball or after any good news.
BUNK -- bad, false
BURN -- third party evaluation that someone has been prevailed over: “Ooo..That’s a burn.”
BUSTA -- someone who needs to be punished or held accountable
BUTTSEX -- anal sex. Rarely used referentially.
B. W. -- Bench Warmer. Athlete who gets little or no playing time
CAN’T CALL IT -- have no idea what’s going on: X: “Hey, whatcha doin’ this weekend?” Y: “Can’t call it.”
CATCH U NEXT TUESDAY -- From c-u-n-t. Female. Derogatory. “I gotta go. The boss is being a real Catch U Next Tuesday.”
CHAPPED -- angry, extremely annoyed
CHICK -- female
CHAV -- working class boor. From British slang. “This club used to be nice, but now it’s full of chavs.”
CHIEF -- smoke marijuana
CLICK -- From clique. Group of friends that one hangs out with
CHILLAX -- chill + relax. Clam down, relax
CLOWN -- make jokes about: “You’re lucky I didn’t see it because I would have clowned you for wearing that outfit.”
CLUSTERFUCK -- unorganized group of people: “Waiting in line for the keg was such a clusterfuck. People were pushing every which way.”
COCK -- See PEEN.
COLD -- hurtful: “That remark was cold.”
CONCUSSION -- inflict a head injury: “If you keep that up , I’ll concussion you.”
CRADLE ROBBER -- older person who pursues romance or sex with someone considerably younger
CROTCH ROCKET -- motorbike
CRUCIAL -- cool, awesome, excellent: “You made an A on your Econ test? Crucial!”

DANGLES -- testicles
DANK -- of high quality, particularly in reference to marijuana: “This is dank weed.” “That outfit is totally dank.” “Dude, this Chex-Mix is so dank—I’m gonna eat the whole bag.”
DIARRHEAD -- exhausted, i.e., pooped: “I’m so diarrhead I could just pass out right here on the floor.”
DICK -- See PEEN.
DIME -- something or someone perfect, i.e., ten out of ten
DIVID -- From D.V.D. Movie on D.V.D. “I’m gonna wait for it to come out on divid.”
DODGE -- deliberately not answer a phone call
DODGER -- someone who deliberately does not answer nor return phone calls: “Jake must be playing for the dodgers.”
DOUCHE BAG -- See TOOL.
DROP -- spend money, usually a lot: “I just dropped $850 for a plane ticket to Rome.”
DROP THE F BOMB -- say the word fuck, particularly in inappropriate contexts: “Can you believe that girl dropped the F bomb on Oprah?”
DROP THE L BOMB -- tell someone you love him or her, especially before it is expected: “Sandy dropped the L bomb on her boyfriends, and he hasn’t called her in five days.”
DRUNK DIAL -- make phone calls while drunk: “I can’t believe you let me drunk dial my ex-boyfriend last night.”
DUKEBAG -- Similar in sound and derogatoriness to DOUCHEBAG. Duke student who exemplifies the arrogance and overrated superiority of Duke University.
DUMAS -- /dumas/ dumb ass
DUNZO -- incapable of winning, living, or surviving: “I’m beating you so bad—you’re dunzo.”
DURB -- From Dick Durbin, Democratic Senator from Illinois. Fellatio.

EFF -- euphemism for fuck: “ I really effed that exam up.” “Holy effing crap!”
EP -- episode: “My sister and I had a West Wing marathon yesterday. We watched, like, six eps in a row.”

FACEBOOK -- search for and/or request the friendship of a student on facebook.com: “I facebooked that cute guy in my Psychology class.” “He facebooked me and found out I was from Kernersville.”
FACEBOOK FRIEND -- list someone as a friend on facebook.com: “I barely know him, but I facebook friended him anyway.”
FACEBOOK STALKER -- someone who contacts people constantly through facebook.com: “John sends me facebook messages all the time. He is such a facebook stalker.”
FAGGORT -- exaggerated alternate pronunciation of faggot.
FAKE ‘N BAKE -- artificially tanned, with dyed hair and too much makeup. Usually applied to females. “It’s the middle of the winter, and she’s orange—way too much fake ‘n bake for me.”
FAT JUICE -- coca-cola or any other high calorie, non-nutritious soft drink
FIEND -- go through withdrawal from something one is addicted to: “Sherwin sounds upset. Maybe he is just fiending. Somebody give him a cigarette.”
FIVE HEAD -- excessively large forehead: “Look at the five head on that girl.”
FIVES. NO UNCLE RAY RAY! -- phrase called out to reserve a seat one is vacating for five minutes. If FIVES alone is called, someone else can claim the seat by calling UNCLE RAY RAY. “James, you can’t sit there. Tina called Fives No Uncle Ray Ray before she went to the bathroom.”
FISH -- have sex: X: “Where are Brice and Abigail?” Y: “Off fishing.”
FLOOZY -- female who is sexually provocative in dress, speech, or actions
FLOWER -- for females to emerge in revealing clothing when warm weather begins in spring
F.N.G. -- Fucking New Guys: “All right, everyone behave! Let’s not scare the F.N.G.’s.”
FOB -- Fresh Off the Boat. For ethnic minorities to seem strangely old-fashioned because they have not assimilated to American ways
FOOD -- eat: “You hungry? Let’s food.”
FOR SERIOUS -- expression of doubt or surprise, asking for confirmation: X: “I stayed up until six this morning.” Y: “For serious?”
FRATASTIC -- fraternity + fantastic. Exhibiting stereotypical traits of fraternity members; overly preppy, conceited, dapper
FRATTY -- typical of a fraternity member in dress and behavior: “Dan’s outfit today was so fratty. He was wearing a light purple Lacoste polo, khaki shorts, croakies, and boat shoes. It was adorable.”
FREAK OUT -- react with strong emotion: “When I told her I kissed her boyfriend, she freaked out.”
FRELL -- euphemism for fuck: “Frell it!” “That freller!” “He frelled us over.”
FRIEND -- list someone as a friend on an online website, such as Friendster, MySpace, or Facebook: “This random guy has been friending my friends. Who is he?”
FUCK ALL -- absolutely nothing: “We just lazed around and did fuck all instead of our homework.”

GANAS -- from Spanish. Desire, interest: “I just don’t have the ganas to go to class.”
GANK -- steal; “Who ganked my cashews?”
GASIAN -- gay + Asian. Someone of Asian heritage who is gay
GECK -- from gecko. Annoying person: “He hums all the time. He’s such a geck.”
GEL HEAD -- unstylish person who is not a member of a fraternity or sorority. Used by the Greek community.
GERI -- from geriatric. Old person: “This geri in front of me drives too slow.”
GET WITH -- have sex with: “I’m trying to get with her.”
GITFIDDLE -- guitar
GLOMP -- hug tightly in an affectionate but not sexual way
GOLDFISH -- someone who does not have a good memory
GOOGLE -- research someone or something on www.google.com
GRILL -- teeth decorated with jewels and metal
GROK -- /grak/ understand completely: “I wish I could grok my PoliSci class.” From Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.
G.W.3 -- Granville West 3rd Floor. Residence hall that enjoys a reputation for underage drinking and late night rowdiness

HACE -- hack, cause difficulty to: “My account was haced!”
HATERATION -- meanness: “Hey, I said I was sorry. What’s with the hateration?”
HAWNGRY -- /h ŋgri/ (pronounced with the open o of bought rather than the ə of but) extremely hungry
HELLA -- very: “That party was hella cool.” “That ice cream was hella good.”
HIGGLE -- giggle. Typographical error for giggle that attained popularity in internet conversations.
HIT UP -- contact: “Hit me up later.”
HOLLA -- goodby: X: “I gotta go.” Y: “OK. Holla.” Contact: “I gotta go, but I’ll holla at you later.”
HOOK UP -- kiss or engage in any other kind of sexual activity, usually with someone one has recently met or does not have a romantic relationship with: “I hooked up with that boy from He’s Not last night—I must have had way too many blue cups.”
HOSE -- treat in an unkind or unfair manner: “They hose me every weekend. I always get scheduled to work Friday through Sunday.”
HOT -- great, awesome: “That’s a hot shirt.”
HOUSED -- very drunk. Also LACKEYFACED, SCHWASTED.

I KNOW RIGHT -- I agree completely: X: “What were they doing cancelling the study group?” Y: “I know, right.” Popularized by the film Mean Girls.
ITE -- /ayt/ goodby: X: Later, man. Y: Ite!
I.T.M.F.A. -- Impeach the mother fucker, already: “What did Bush say? I.T.M.F.A.!”

JAP -- Jewish American Princess. Spoiled and self-centered Jewish-American girl: “Stop acting like a Jap.”
JODY -- guy your girl is hooking up with while she is studying abroad or you are in the army
JOIN THE NAKED CLUB -- engage in exhibitionist activities
JONES -- crave: “I’m jonesing for some rocky road frozen yogurt.”

KANOODLE -- waste time: “Quit kanoodling over there and do something.” Also WAGGLE.

LACKEYFACED -- See HOUSED.
THE LANES -- bowling alley
LEECH -- person who won’t leave you alone
LEET -- from elite, typed in internet conversations l-3-3-t or 1-3-3-7. Cool, awesome, great: “That movie was effing leet!”
LEGICE -- /ləĵaysə/ legitimate + scheisse (German ‘shit’) Positive, agreeable, excellent

MALFUNCTION -- problem, difficulty: “What’s your malfunction?”
MANKY -- unappetizing, disgusting: “That bread seems a bit manky—I’m not eating it.” From British slang.
MILK -- profit all you can from a situation: “Lilly is milking her mom for a new pair of sneakers.”
MILLER TIME -- the final minutes of a clearly victorious Tar Heel basketball game during which the bench players enter the game. After player Wes Miller’s role in the 2005 national championship season.
MONEY -- excellent, proficient: “You should have seen this shot. It was so money.” In good standing: “I sent her flowers, so I should be money.”
MOOBS -- male + boobs. Unattractive breasts on a male.
M.S.D. -- marijuana smoking device

NARC -- police informer
NARSTY -- exceedingly disagreeable. Altered pronunciation of nasty.
NATCH -- From naturally. Of course: “He was his usual self, natch.”
NIGHTMARE -- unpleasant
NOOB/NOOBIE -- beginner: “We pwned that noob easily.” Loser, jerk. Often used on the internet and variously spelled n-u-b and n-0-0-b.
NUTJOB -- crazy person: “I hope I don’t get a nutjob for a roommate next year.”

OOSH! -- It’s cold! “Oosh! I should have brought a jacket.”
OWN -- dominate over, show superiority over, embarrass someone: “I owned my roommate in basketball 11-2.”
OFF THE HOOK -- appealingly bizarre: “My roommate is off the hook.” Attractive, appealing: “Those shoes are off the hook.”
PANSY -- someone under the control of another, usually a girlfriend or boyfriend
PAPER -- work on a written assignment: “I’m papering right now, but I’ll call you later.”
PARENTAL UNIT -- parents: “There’s a malfunction in the parental unit.”
PAWS -- hands: “He’s got his paws all over Hansbury.”
PEACE OUT -- leave: “I’m peacing out, guys.” Goodby: “I’m leaving. Peace out.”
PEEN -- penis. Also COCK, DICK, JUNK, WANG.
PEEPS -- From people. Group of friends: “These are my peeps.”
PIMP UP -- improve something: “I’m gonna pimp up my car and put a stereo in it.”
PLAY SOMEONE’S FACE -- playfully insult or embarrass someone
PROBS -- From probably. “This exam is going to be a beast—I’m probs gonna fail it.”
P’S -- parents: “My P’s are going to be away this weekend—it’s time for a party.”
P.T.F.O. -- Peace the Fuck Out. Leave immediately: “This party sucks. We need to P.T.F.O.”
PWN -- /on/ dominate over, beat, conquer: “They totally pwned us in capture the flag” “I pwned that exam.” Now deliberately used in writing. Arose from a mistyping of own in internet conversation.

RANDOM -- unpredictable: “She told you she likes ice cream during the lecture? That’s random.” Stranger: “I can’t believe you brought home a random last night without warning your roommates.”
RAPE -- perform well, do something thoroughly: “I raped that test.”
REAL -- very
RENTALS -- See RENTS.
RENTS -- parents: “My rents say I have to home by twelve.” Also RENTALS.
RIDONKULOUS -- very ridiculous
RING -- call on the phone

SCANDALOUS -- controversial
SCHNOOGLE -- affectionate embrace, a snuggle and a giggle. From Harry Potter fandom.
SCHWASTED -- See HOUSED.
SCRILLA -- money, usually paper money
SERIOUSLY -- expression of shock, surprise, or indignation: “He doesn’t call for two weeks. But he thinks he can call tonight and I’ll go over to study? Seriously? Seriously!” Popularized by television series Grey’s Anatomy.
SEXILE -- sex + exile. Displace someone from his or her living area so that a roommate can have sex: “My roommate’s boyfriend just got here, so I’m sexiled all weekend.”
SHACK -- spend the night following a hookup: X: “Where did you end up last night?” Y: “Oh, I shacked with Rob.”
SHACK SHIRT -- item appropriated to wear home after spending the night shacking in order to avoid the appearance of the walk of shame
SHAME -- humiliate someone who has passed out drunk by drawing on his or her face or leaving some other sign: “Check out the drawings on his face. He totally got shamed last night.”
SHASTA! -- euphemism for Shit!
SHINY -- good, awesome: “Ooo, synchronizers! Shiny!” From the television program Firefly.
SICK -- impressive, original, awesome
SKALLYWAG -- promiscuous female who uses and abuses men
SKEET! -- expression of happiness or surprise: X: “I got us great seats for the concert.” Y: “Skeet!”
SKETCHY/SKETCH -- out of the ordinary, creepy, suspicious, potentially dangerous: “That old man checking you out is really sketch.”
SKURR -- from the initial /skr-/ cluster of screw. Foreplay not leading to intercourse.
SNAP! -- expression of affirmation or negation, depending on the context
SNARKY/SNARK -- witty, more clever and less abrasive than sarcasm: “During B-movies, I am the Queen of Snark.”
SNORGLE -- cuddle something, pushing the nose in and breathing deeply: “I want to just snorgle that puppy.”
SOROSTITUTE -- sorority + prostitute promiscuous female
SQUEE! -- hooray! “There’s no test today! Squee!” From Harry Potter fandom.
SSSS GOIN’ ON -- greeting: X: “Dude! Ssss goin’on?” Y: “Not much. Ssss goin’on with you?”
STAR -- extremely attractive person, the epitome of attractiveness: “The new girl’s cute, but she ain’t no star.”
STICKY RICE -- Asian who associates only with other Asians in forming romantic relationships: “Don’t bother with him. He’s sticky rice.”
STFU -- /stufu/ Shut The Fuck Up. Internet use.
STONER -- habitual user of marijuana
STRAIGHT -- acceptable, reliable: “He’ll get my money back. He’s straight.”
STUMP -- person who is not very bright or curious and accomplishes little in life: “All the stumps do is drink beer and work low-paying jobs.”

TANKED -- drunk
THAT GUY -- male whose behavior is objectionable in some way
TOOL -- foolish, stupid, or insincere person: “Did you see Tom Cruise on Oprah? What a tool.” Also DOUCHEBAG, TOOLBOX.
TORE UP -- excited, enthusiastic: “I’m tore up about Bob Dylan coming to Raleigh.”
TRANQUILO -- /trankIlo/ (mixture of Spanish and English pronunciation) smooth, calm, laid back
TRILL -- exciting, worthwhile, excellent: “That new Missy Elliot album is so fuckin’ trill!”
TRY -- plan: “Are you trying to study for the English test tonight?”

UBER -- exceptionally cool, awesome, sweet: “That movie was uber leet.”
USHER -- sing smoothly and velvety. From the singer Usher.

VEG OUT -- relax in a non-productive way

WAGGLE -- waste time. Also KANOODLE.
WALK OF SHAME -- walk home the morning after shacking up wearing clothing from the evening before: “It was a total walk of shame this morning. I had to walk through campus in that miniskirt and tank top past people going to class.”
WANG -- See PEEN.
WEAR SADFACE -- look mildly unhappy
WEIRD OUT -- disturb: “That picture of cow brains really weirded me out.”
WHALE -- beat someone up
WHIP -- car
WHIPPED -- controlled by one’s boyfriend or girlfriend
WICKED -- extremely: “We had a wicked good time last night.”
W00T! -- exclamation of triumph: “I got promoted! W00T!” Written W-zero-zero-T.
WORD -- yes: X: “Yo, Dude. You want any of this guacamole?” Y: “Word!” I agree: X: “French fries are delicious.” Y: “Word.”

YOTA -- Toyota: “I know him. He drives a little blue Yota.”

Frequency of submission
6 sketchy/sketch
4 dank
4 facebook
3 fratastic
3 hella
3 own/pwn
3 word

Connie Eble

Hapax Legomenon

2006-05-21T23:58:00.000-05:00

I like words. I, especially, like rare words. They tend to be chewy, tasty, and all around delicious. Recently, I’ve been having a fun time playing with the most delectable of uncommon lexicographical treats: the hapax legomenon.

The literal Greek translation is something like “said only once” and refers to a word that only occurs once in a written corpus. It’s popular among biblical scholars, corpus linguists, and other word nerds doing things like debating authorship and all that jazz.

Of course, every author is bound to have a hapax legomenon or two within a body of work, so that’s not really all that interesting. Sometimes, though, even author limited hapax legomena are interesting. For example,apparently some of Leviticus’s dietary restrictions involve a number of hapax legomena in the description of which birds are non-kosher, making the exact list of which birds are acceptable to eat somewhat ambiguous.

Hebrew notwithstanding, here are some English examples of language wide hapax legomenon, mostly ganked from Wikipedia like the shameless sonovabitch I am.

“nortelrye,” meaning education, is from Chaucer.

“flother,” meaning “snowflake,” is from “written English pre-1900 found in a manuscript from around 1275.” (Wikipedia gankage)

“scamels” meaning, um, well maybe a bird, is found in Shakespeare. People aren’t entirely sure what this is, and it is a fun thing to debate.

“honorificabilitudinitatibus,” meaning “the state of being able to achieve honors,” is not a hapax legomenon of English, but rather of the Shakespeare corpus. The term is a clear Latin borrowing, and is actually attested a number of other times in the lexicon (Shakespeare wasn’t the first); a fact which continues to astound me, considering the absurdity of the word. But you know what they say: the word word word, the word is absurd.

Literary Conspiracies

2006-05-18T00:24:00.000-05:00

This came out a long time ago, but you should read it. It’s intriguing and delightful. The short synopsis about this is a theory about J.D. Salinger and Vladmir Nabokov. I guess Salinger’s seclusion has led to many sorts of conspiracy theories. One of my favorites is that fellow recluse, Thomas Pynchon, is actually just a pseudonym for Salinger. This was published in Soho Weekly News (Thomas Pynchon’s reply: “Not bad. Keep trying.”). The Village Voice, however, is the vehicle of this new finding: Salinger is the secret ghost-writer of Lolita.

This is fascinating. Make sure you pay particular reference to the title, introduction, and the date at the end. Also, in case that doesn’t help: Pierre Menard.

Google Does Everything Better: Even Trends.

2006-05-17T01:09:00.000-05:00

My preoccupation with the various websites and means of tracking trends on ye olde Internet is well-known and documented. Whenever a new site or method for tracking Internet trends is created or discovered, I am usually all over it.

Well I missed this one, and everyone else has apparently been writing about it. However, this is so fucking cool that I will still fawn all over that shit.

Because let’s face it, the only thing better then trendspotting is Google, and now Google does trendspotting.

Wha wha wha wha?

Hells yes.

Google Trends is the best thing since sliced bread. What’s it do? It tracks trends in searching (culled from samples) and gives a breakdown by such awesome categories as city, region, or language. Not only does it track trends, but it tracks them with a graph over the course of several years, with a separate minigraph that tracks media mentions. This is so cool. Here are some random dumb things I have found.

Chuck Norris is big in Poland. I always check Chuck Norris on trend spotters because it is typically a good example. Sure enough Google Trends shows the rise of Chuck Norris very nicely and shows the relevant news stories. The cool stuff comes when you look at the Cities and Regions tabs. When you do, you will see that Chuck Norris is apparently inexplicably sought after throughout many cities in Poland. Weird.

Knowing this, there is one thing that I knew I must check: Is David Hasselhoff big in Germany? Well, no. But he’s big in Norway, Ireland, and Sweden? What the fuck? He’s not big in Germany but is sought after throughout the rest of Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand. This is strange.

Oh, everyone else has mentioned this, but it’s still cool: Check out “sex.” Now look at the regions where it is popular. That’s right, it’s a virtual who’s who of repression: Pakistan, Egypt, Viet Nam, Iran occupy the top four spots. Neat-o, huh? Who would have thought that in nations that suppress information about sexuality people are still eager to find out about it anyway.

Oh also, that’s another cool thing you can do with Google Trends: check out the relative status of various kinks. So, for example, take ass fisting. It’s apparently very popular amongst the denizens of Zurich. A look at languages and regions reveals that it actually most popular amongst the Greek-speaking populations of the world. Yes, that’s right.

Ass fisting is popular in Greece. Which seems fair considering how important Greece is to ass fisting.

Thoughts on the Campaign for Concept as A Verb

2006-05-13T21:58:00.000-05:00

Slate ran an article about Ray Del Salvio’s campaign to get the word “concept,” as a verb into the dictionary. “Concept” is apparently widely used in the advertising industry, but it is not included with that meaning in the dictionary. Ray Del Salvio has set about trying to correct this injustice and the article, by OED editor and Slate language columnist, Jesse Sheidlower, does a good job of explaining Ray’s campaign and putting it into the larger context of how words get into a dictionary and what might actually be the best way to get a word in the dictionary.

However, the article fails to address one very important question.

Why?

There is nothing magical or special about a word being in the dictionary. Lots of words aren’t in many dictionaries and that doesn’t mean they are less real or legitimate. It seems silly for someone to complain about professional jargon (that apparently isn’t even that widely used) not being in the dictionary.

Professional jargon is restricted slang, the in-language of a particular occupation and in any given profession there is a lot of it. Sometimes this jargon becomes widely used and significant, but most of the time it is only of interest to the people that are in that profession. Jargon is ever-expanding and continually changing. Hacker and tech culture has done a lovely job of documenting the subset of their terminology in the Jargon File, which is a massive compendium of mostly very restricted and uncommon vocabulary. What percentage of these terms are in any widely used dictionary? Not many, but that’s not the point.

There is lots of jargon in the world that is widely used in professions without being in the dictionary. Not being in the dictionary doesn’t inhibit you from using the word, a point Ray Del Salvio is surely aware of. He seems fairly confident that it’s a word, so why bother with the validation of a dictionary?

Update on All Sorts of Things

2006-05-13T20:46:00.000-05:00

I assure you that there are all sorts of things in the works, but right now please be content for updates and information about all sorts of stuff that I have previously mentioned, or that you should be reading anyway.

Update!

On the hot professor front, one faculty member makes a very practical suggestion for making for the improvement of higher education: Systematic Hottification.

On the Middle English front, Mr. Chaucer is more than happy to answer your questions on his blog. In particular, check out the third of the questions.

In the category of things you should be reading already, I point you to McSweeneys. The quarterly is of course excellent, but the website is simply the best humor website on the Internet. I always start my day with McSweeneys for the smart or smartly idiotic articles. My current favorite of their articles is "Feedback of James Joyce's Submission of Ulysses to His Creative Writing Workshop". It touches perfectly on the embarassment and indignity of peer-review. Plus it's Joyce.

John Galbraith

2006-05-10T17:24:00.000-05:00

In the back of my head I always vaguely knew who John Galbraith was; you know, the economics guy, who did the thing. Well he died last month, and I missed it. However, insidehighered.com, my new favorite reading material since their article about hot professors, has included a nice little bio piece that talks about some of the lesser known, and brilliantly hilarious things that he did.

Ayn Rand and libertarians despised him, so if you want to annoy Kris Wampler, isn’t it your duty to read as much about him as possible, and enjoy it immensely?

The write up is here.

Galbraith proves one thing that I strongly believe: liberals and academics are at their best when they embrace satire. It helps them avoid their admittedly well-deserved image of being pretentious and boring. Galbraith does a good job of getting his points across in a concise, witty way. Take for example, some of my favorite of his quotes that are attributed (and I must confess, probably unverified) at Wikipedia.

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

"It is a well known and very important fact that America's founding fathers did not like taxation without representation. It is a lesser known and equally important fact that they did not much like taxation with representation."

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought."

The Indiana Jones Effect

2006-05-08T14:54:00.000-05:00

Exams are winding down, and I should be posting more regularly very soon. Until then, an interesting article on professor rating websites.

RateMyProfessors.com is a popular website where students, as the name suggests, rate their professors on a variety of criteria. It's not all that popular at UNC, mainly because PickAProf.com also includes statistics on the types of grades a teacher gives. However, the site is used by thousands of students as well as faculty across the U.S.

This sort of massive conglomeration of statistics begs analysis and, fortunately, James Felton was on the ball. He looked at the stats and made an astonishing discovery.

Students like hot and easy professors.

Ok, so maybe that's not a huge surprise. However, it is interesting to me that professors are (slightly) more likely to get higher ratings if they are hot, rather than easy. Also, of interest, is low correlation between hotness and easiness. Apparently you just have to be one or the other.

I had no idea that being physically attractive was so important to students. I am however comforted, that "Languages" as a discipline averages both the hottest, and the highest quality.

Woldstow haue me shyfte thyne voweles?

2006-05-04T12:04:00.000-05:00

I haven’t posted anything in a while because of the phenomenon that we like to call “exams.” This is a bit counterintuitive considering that I found that I tend to post more when I have more to do, but, God forbid, I think I may involuntarily being productive. That being said, I have some fun for you. What kind of fun?

I'm glad you asked.

Chaucerian pick-up lines.

These beauties are from the excellent site, Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog. You may have already seen this once (I know BoingBoing posted on it awhile back), but I encourage regular readership to this fine example of why all blogs don’t necessarily suck.

My favorites (besides the vowel shift one, of course) are “Yf thou were a latyn tretise ich wolde putte thee in the vernacular,” and “The preeste telleth me that we aren more than VII degrees of consanguinitee. Game on!”

Esquivalience

2006-04-24T01:28:00.000-05:00

“Esquivalience” – n. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities.

That’s the definition of the word that is listed in the New Oxford American Dictionary, a respected and successful dictionary. It’s a useful word, and had I known it, I would have used it more and more often. I also think that it would make an excellent away message. Cryptic, yet funny after the other interested party looks it up.

However, there is a slight problem: It’s not a real word.

Esquivalience is a Nihilartikel, a “nothing article”. Nihilartikels are fake articles, deliberately placed in a publication for a variety of reasons. Often they are a subtle joke, and more deviously, they are a copyright trap.

Such is the case of esquivalience. The clever folks at New Oxford American Dictionary had put their dictionary into the very convenient and very piratable format of a CD, and knew that plagiarism was inevitable. So to catch less scrupulous dictionary makers who had the bad habit of stealing from other dictionaries they put in a word that was to be found nowhere else. If the word turned up elsewhere, they knew where it came from.

All of this was uncovered very cleverly by Henry Alford in a New Yorker article. What is more interesting to me is the overall and widespread phenomenon of copyright traps.

The world of indexical knowledge is often a circular place, and there is no doubt that references often must consult each other. That this ingenious form of protection would emerge is impressive, but I suppose not unexpected. Wikipedia would lead me to believe that not only do dictionaries and encyclopedias have fake entries, but that many maps often contain invented streets and telephone books contain fabricated persons, all for the purpose of being able to track and hunt down those who infringe on copyright.

I like the fact that these reference books which supposedly document the truth don’t mind indulging in the occasional white lie or misinformation. I am disappointed, however, that esquivalience is not a real word. Or is it? Google counts over 13,000 mentions of the word. This fake word is gaining a life of its own.

Etaoin Shrdlu and Asdf Jkl;

2006-04-22T18:42:00.000-05:00

Do you know what etaoin shrdlu is? Recognize it as a character name from a story or novel? Run across it in the dictionary? Encounter it in some other cryptic context?

It wouldn’t be too surprising. The phrase gets about 70,000 Google hits, which, while not huge, seems significant enough to put it into the general knowledge category.

Well, what is it?

It’s a typo. Sort of.

I won’t bother to explain it too much because Wikipedia will learn you good on this, but basically it’s the equivalent of a typist hitting “asdfjkl;”. Basically, when typesetters using the hot metal printing processors made an error, they would spend the slug by using the first line of characters on their Linotype keyboards, just because it was convenient and fast.

Carelessness meant that the letters often got put into print, instead of discarded. This happened enough that they warranted a definition in the OED as well as the Random House Dictionary. Clever souls then proceeded to use the letters as all sorts of names, jokes, and the rest. Thus marks the rise of a famous typo, though there has been no need for its accidental inclusion since the end of the hot metal printing.

However, we do have a modern equivalent: Asdf Jkl;. Like etaion shrdlu, it’s the easiest and most convenient string of characters for the contemporary typist using the standard Qwerty keyboard to hit. These random letters also enjoy the immense popularity that comes with being convenient keys, as evidenced by the Google hits.

Google Hits
etaoin shrdlu – 70,400
asdfjkl; - 70,500
etaoin – 206,000
asdf – 5,030,000

Kellen - 2,220,000

That’s right, “asdf” gets twice as many hits as my first name. Meaningless letters appear on the Internet more than my first name. Who knew that arbitrary letters were so damn popular?

Overview of the New Facebook Status Feature

2006-04-19T00:04:00.000-05:00

Facebook has tons of features and options, many of which are used in complete earnestness. Many of them aren’t. For evidence: Open Relationship, Married, Engaged, and Complicated. I estimate 90% of all these entries are by used by girls who think they are funnier than they actually are.

The new feature to be victimized by would be wise guys is the magical status thing. Implemented just a few days ago, I present a survey of how people are using it, based on a sample of my friends list.

Basically here is how its being used, based on my sample. Only a third of all the status messages are sincere, and even fewer are useful or accurate considering how long ago they were updated. A sixth of them are meta-commentary on what they thing of the new status feature, surprisingly high in my opinion. The other half of all entries, are just jokes of varying stripes.

UPDATE:What happens since the novelty of the feature has faded?

Sincere
Alex is написать расписание.
Frank is at the library.
Chloe is sweaty and smelly and sleepy and sipping water and somehow going to be alright.
Amanda is in dorm doing a paper.
Yolanda is singing along to Arthur songs!
Daniel is at home.
Laura is getting mystery rolls of film developed before heading off to the factory.
Rebecca is sick in bed.
Rebecca is surrendering sanity to Austen, Gaskell, Trollope, and Dickens.
Brett is at home.

Jokes
Julianna is drinking forties and shooting dice.
Galen is dead.
Meagan is plotting a world take-over.
Katie is walking on air.
Jeremy is choppin' headz.
Lauren is learning what it means to be pinkoh.
Tyler is good looking.
Emma is tired of Jack being a whinny butt
Tanner is zufrieden.
Jolene is Hoing out Keri and Matt...any takers?
Mandy is straight thuggin'.
Christine is building panda traps.
Whitney is in class.
Logan is smoking rock
Jenny is awesome.

Meta-Commentary
Janet is not telling you where she is HAHAHA.
Jacob is very sad that facebook is trying to supplant AIM away messages.
Becky is refusing to appease facebook by using their new features OH SHI.
Alex is not answering this ever.
Kevin is thinking that for every new thing facebook comes up with, he will drink five shots.

Spaz Is Offensive?

2006-04-13T22:26:00.000-05:00

Tiger Woods is apparently in trouble for saying "spaz" in comments about the Master's tournament. What? Spaz? That's offensive? In England, apparently it's cause for uproar.

I, of course, read about it on the Language Log, which you should already be reading anyway. They have a good entry and links to the events surrounding the controversy and they thoroughly investigate the history of the word.

One thing that they didn't mention was the offensiveness survey that I posted about recently. The Language Log post mentions that spastic is apparently more offensive than all other terms for the mentally and physically handicapped but "retard". However, the BBC survey I mentioned earlier doesn't include retard. This could simply be an oversight, but it does include spastic, and it's apparently more offensive than shit.

That blows my mind.

Why Your Gradeschool Textbooks Sucked

2006-04-11T23:47:00.000-05:00

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but hopefully this will hold you over: Why Did All My Textbooks in Grade School Blow Donkey Cock?

Ever wondered why your textbooks in public grade school were so awful? You knew it had something to do with state-mandated curriculums and out of touch policy makers dictating education instead of experts in the field but didn’t exactly know precisely why textbooks seemed so atrocious, bland, and shall we say uneducational?

Well it turns out that the answer is that evangelical Christians in Texas have a tight hold on the balls of the textbook industry and hold incredible influence over the kinds of textbooks that are made and used across the nation. But, wait there’s more and it’s even better news.

Here is the article by an individual who worked in the textbook industry for years and tries to expose some light on why textbooks suck so much. Turns out it has lots to do with money, oligopoly, and loud eveangelicals.

The Best Fucking Shit Ever

2006-04-04T17:36:00.000-05:00

Do you like to say fuck? I know I do. But have you ever stopped to wonder how offensive saying fuck actually is? I know I do. So what would you say if I told you I had a BBC commissioned study that investigated the offesiveness of naughty words and broke down in thorough detail just how offensive saying fuck is?

If you said, "Awesome!" you would be correct.

The short list of ranked words is here which comes from the larger Bad Science article here, that I only know about because Language Log posted about it here.

However, the shit you really want is right here. This is the full 64 page report in pdf format and glorious detail. It's the best reading I've done in a while.

A couple of things to note: These people are English. The report was published in December of 2000. Which would explain why bollocks is ranked so high and shit so low and why wanker is apparently more offensive than nigger. The full report breaks down types of slurs and swears and also by age and gender.

So take that shit and love it.

Trendilicious

2006-03-30T22:08:00.000-05:00

It’s back! With a new, stupid name! There’s a new music trend that is sweeping UNC, and I will only give you one hint: hackey sack. And why are all the cool kids not coming to dinner? When will partying be cool again?

Answers, ho!

Do you have greasy hair and spend all your time throwing the Frisbee on the quad? Well good news: 311 and Phish are up three ranks, and Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Counting Crows are up one! The hackey sacking laid back boring music movemtn is gaining some real momentum or it would if it ever got up to go to its 10 oclock Psych class! It’s the mid-90s all over again!

No one want to meet you for dinner lately? Well, duh! Eating and cooking are both down one rank. Will this coupled with the music changes signal a return to the heroin chic fashion of the 90’s? Kate Moss sure hopes so!

So you like having fun? Well that goes to show you how lame you are! Having fun is down three ranks, but in a weird twist of events going out is up three. So here’s the new paradigm trendaroos: You are allowed to go out as long as you promise to be miserable.

Well, that’s this week’s Trendilicious, and in closing we offer you the following advice on being cool: Watch as many episodes of I Love the Nineties as possible and seek to emulate that glorious decade past. And remember: having fun sucks!

Dark Humor

2006-03-29T23:38:00.000-05:00

My friend is an aspiring stand-up comedian and sent me a list of jokes for possible inclusion into his act. He hasn’t done much but a few open mic nights and showcases, but he’s a funny guy. The jokes he sent me were different from the stuff I’m used to hearing from him and were a little bit on the off-color and dark side. For your examination I present them.

A man walks into a bar, has a few drinks, talks to the rest of the regulars. He watches the game, and pretty contented starts walking to his apartment nearby. On the way home, a man with a ski-mask pulls a gun on him and tells him to give him his money. The man does so, slowly. The man in the ski-mask shoots him and runs away. The wallet had $20, a driver’s license, a VISA, a bus transfer, and the generic picture of a family that comes with the wallet.

A man gets off from work early and heads home to go ahead and see if he can help his wife with dinner. He comes home and sees his wife in bed with the milkman. The wife is surprised and says, “George, you weren’t supposed to be home until 6!” The man looks at her and laughs, saying, “You are horrible and there is no way in hell that I will let you keep the kids.” The milkman says nothing.

A man and a woman are in the desert, trying to get their way to civilization and they see this lamp lying in the sand. They know it’s foolish but they grab the lamp and rub it, hoping something would happen. Nothing does, and they have a laugh about the absurdity of the situation. Two days later, they die.

A man goes to the doctor because he had been feeling some pain. The doctor examines him very carefully, and says that they are going to need some more tests. The man is concerned, but the doctor insists on it, just to be on the safe side. So after the final battery of tests the man is sitting on the table in one of the examination rooms and the doctor comes in with a clipboard and a frown. “So what is it doc? Am I going to be okay?” The doctor looks at the patient and replies, “I’m sorry Mr. Peterson, but you have severe, terminal cancer. We have a few options for treatment, but the chances of them working are very small.” The man is silent and then looks at the doctor and says, “Is there a phone I can use?”

This Is GMU

2006-03-27T03:24:00.000-05:00

Of all the George Mason relates pun headlines, the one above is my favorite.

I don’t watch too many sports, but being a UNC student, I have a soft spot for college basketball. Our men lost this year to a scruffy little team that lots of people thought shouldn’t have even been there: George Mason University.

Much is being said and written about George Mason University’s basketball team this year and their amazing run to the Final Four, and I’m not going to pretend to be an expert commentator. I will, however, give you some numbers for GMU.

400 To-one odds offered by some bookkeepers at the beginning of tournament.
11 Seed.
8 Highest seed to ever win tournament.
1 Other times that an 11th seed has made it to the Final Four.
3 Number of games in NCAA tournament before 2006.
0 Number of wins in NCAA Tournament before 2006.

1 Seed of UCONN team, heavily favored to win it all that fell to GMU.
2 Number of 2005 Final Four members defeated, including champs, UNC.
3 Number of championship ring-wearing coaches defeated by GMU.

0 Chance I am going to miss the best Cinderella story in years.

Trendspotting is Too Trendy

2006-03-22T14:38:00.000-05:00

Apparently, my genius name of Trendspotting had already been taken by a very funny segment on The Daily Show. Oops. My bad. I will henceforth call my amazing, in-depth (lame, superficial) look at the fads of the day: Trend Tracking. It’s alliterative, so it has to be good. Wait, hold on lemme Google it… Yeah, apparently someone has taken that already. This is frustrating. We need a new title.

Maybe I should stop trying to be catchy and do the indie rock thing: Choose a long and unwieldy title that no one would ever think to copy, ala And You Will Know Us By The Trail of the Dead, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, and every Sufjan Stevens song ever. Okay, I am ready to unveil the new title: Spotting and/or Tracking Trends Is Something That Is Interesting and Trendilicious.

Or I could just call it Trendilicious. I think I’m going to do that until someone comes along to tell me that it is already taken.

For a lovely piece of recursive and self-referential goodness, I present to you the Blogpulse tracking of “trendspotting.” If you look at the Blogpulse graphs here and click on the peaks, you will say they are all about the Daily Show. Wah-Waaaaaah.

Trendspotting: The Next Generation

2006-03-21T23:04:00.000-05:00

In this new edition of Facebook’s Pulse Trendspotting at UNC we update you on the latest trends: Is the outdoors still lame? What’s this about partying? Is your mom cool? What about God?

The results will shock you.

The two biggest rises are a three place rise in knitting and a one place rise in cooking! Looks like your mom is the coolest kid on the block: matronly activities are in!

Hiking recovers from the loss it experienced last week and is back on the rise. Unfortunately, backpacking is still down, and the mountains are the biggest loser, down two. The outdoors is still for losers!

But, what about partying? That’s still cool, right? Wrong! The wild college lifestyle takes a hit this day, with partying down one and Greek life down four. Hanging out with friends is up, however: Looks like mellow is the new crazy! How else can we explain the two rank rise of John Mayer to the thirteenth most popular musician?

The big winner this week: Jesus. Holla! Campus Crusade is up one to the fifth most popular student organization, and is actually even more popular with the alternate full title of Campus Crusade for Christ up five ranks as well. Intervarsity remains strong, still in the top ten campus organizations. The good book, the good book, the Bible holds strong as the third most popular on campus! That’s only lower than Harry Potter and the DaVinci Code!

If you want to be cool, looks like you should look to your grandmother. All the cool kids are getting their Christ and Mom on, and eschewing parties for hanging out, knitting and cooking. Trendspotting: Always Cool.

Speculation on the Penis Size of Members of the Scottish Enlightenment

2006-03-20T03:22:00.000-05:00

The Scottish Enlightenment was a fruitful period and blossoming of philosophical and otherwise intellectual thought in Scotland that took place largely at the end of the 18th century. This event, often overshadowed by the "main" Enlightenment provides the crucial framework of many important ideas. Indeed, some of the minds behind this Enlightenment were the most brilliant of their age. So, you are probably wondering, how big are their wangs? I speculate below.

David Hume

The chief disciple of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes is best known for writing Leviathan. Is this an honest claim or overcompensation? His autocratic model of leadership does include a social contract. He had to have a pretty big one to be so confident that one man should rule. On the other hand, maybe he was just trying to fake that confidence. I mean, Leviathan is a little too obvious for me. I'm going to guess Hobbes was overcompensating, and that you could expect no less from his protege Hume. He is also sometimes considered "the first politically conservative philosopher" . If that doesn't suggest he is overcompensating, I don't know what does.

Estimate: 4 inches

Francis Hutcheson

Often considered the first major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. His critique of Hobbes is well thought out and indeed he becomes the first truly viable anti-Hobbesian. Considering what we have said previously about Hobbes, this might lead one to think that he must be well hung. However, his primary interest in moral philosophy makes him seem like a bit of a softie. On the other hand, it's often who you least suspect. Maybe he's a gentle giant? It's quite possible.

Estimate: 8 inches

Adam Smith

The father of capitalism, he wrote The Wealth Of Nations. Implications on penis size: As the inventer of economics as a serious discipline the man was certainly gifted and endowed with intelligence. Endowed with anything else? Maybe. As the foremost capitalist, he predicts the pressence of an invisible hand that guides almost all market forces to an equilibrium. So assuming, the genital market is functioning normally, we could use capitalism to assume that that Adam Smith's penis will lie at a size where customer demand intersects with ability to supply. Sadly, this result can be nothing but average.

Estimate: 6 inches

James Anderson

One of the last thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Best known for his work in agricultural economics. His work is noted for its largely scientific character as opposed to philosophical, and his work is often noted as bringing about the shift that ended the Scottish Enlightenment. Does an increased interest in science signal a larger penis size? It's certainly possible. We all know Einstein was hung like a horse. However, James Anderson's main body of work is in agricultural studies. Farming. Now, while farmer's boys may be noted for their endowment, he was just a doctor who studied agricultural economics. He wrote extensively about the Corn Laws and extensive essays on agricultural affairs and rural life.

Estimate: vagina

Trendspotting!

2006-03-18T01:11:00.000-05:00

Let’s look at the exciting trends that are listed on Pulse for UNC Chapel Hill, and try to read between the lines. Is chilling in the National Parks cool anymore? Is now a good time to buy a boat? We’ll answer these questions and more!

Backpacking is down five places, hiking is down one, and meeting new people is down two. You know what that means: adventuring in the outdoors is, in the words of Hillary Duff, so yesterday!

But, what’s this? Lacross is up three places and sailing is up two places! It’s never been a trendier time for: patrician white people hobbies!

Synergy alert: With DMB and Wedding Crashers holding strong at number one in music and movies and with Jack Johnson clocking in at a strong number three, coupled with the recent upsurge in patrician white people hobbies now is an excellent time to join a stereotypical fraternity or a sorority! It’s the popular thing!

No hablo espanol? Well maybe it’s time to learn! Spanish is up seven places in interests, and A Hundred Years of Solitude is up two and English is on its way out with its greatest work of Hamlet down two, all the way down to sixty-two. And with the number one book remaining the DaVinci Code, it’s hard to disagree: English Literature is dead!

Hope you are loaded up on trends, because that’s all for this week! Next week, we’ll bring you up to speed on all the new hot trends!

Blogpulse: Completely Awesome

2006-03-16T02:04:00.000-05:00

Blogpulse is my new favorite thing in the world.

It’s a trend tracking website that shows how often and when things are mentioned in blogs, as well as indexing all mentions of an item on blogs and the crosslinking paths of a story. It is incredibly useful if you are interested in trying to quantify hype, buzz, and other social internet phenomena.

It’s better than Facebook’s pulse feature. It seems to be even better than the Slut-o-Meter and Google barometer. It may the most effective method for me to procrastinate and call it “trend spotting and pop culture analysis” ever designed.

“What can I do with this?” you ask. Allow me to demonstrate.

You can watch the rise and fall of internet phenomena. Observe the rise of the Cult of Chuck Norris and related facts.

You can observe the times when items are talked about. Enter “Jack Bauer” and you will see the chart spike every seven days or so. If you want to see when two items are involved together, you can chart them together and look at the part where the lines match. This chart, for example, illustrates when UNC beats Duke.

Have I mentioned that when you click on the lines on points on the chart it takes you to a listing of all the citations used to aggregate the score at that point? So if there is an unaccountable peak, a little digging will explain it all. Turns out the strange peaks in the Dostoeyevsky graph are due to a blog meme about books that you have read that became popular at this time. Who knew?

Anyway, I’ll let you know if I find or notice anything interesting.

FAQ

2006-03-15T02:00:00.000-05:00

Today I announce the beginning of a new useful service: Answer-finding. You have questions and I have answers. Definitive answers. Today I seek to answer a batch of questions by Logan of Chapel Hill.

1. Where do you take a ho?
2. What is the speed of light?
3. Are we both trying to remember the same thing?
4. Who started the fire, if not Billy Joel?

Recieve knowledge!

1. To a hotel.
To family reunions.
On the bus.
Home to Momma.
Downtown. Oh yeah!
To the back room.
Aboard the Space Shuttle.
In the vagina.
Behind the Mc Donalds.
The river.

2. 299,792,458 meters/second
299,792,458 benz
1,180,285,267,716.5352 yards/hour
9,712,498.6393089 nautical miles/minute
Mach 880,991.0899527
582,749,918.3585312 knots
1,802,613,915,489.709 furlongs/fortnight

3. Yes. Or no. Depending.

4. This question seems a little naive. The song clearly states: "We didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning." This makes it seem unlikely that any human actually started the fire as the turning of the earth is a well documented phenomena that predates not only humanity, but any documented form of life on the planet. Therefore, depending on your theological outlook, the fire was caused by natural forces or some divine force, such as God of the Abrahamic tradition.

Indeed, this issue seems largely moot as "the fire" seems to be one of the few elements of the songs that is metaphorical and not referencing an actual event that occurred during the course of the latter twentieth century.

What’s In A (Slutty) Name Part II Electric Boogaloo

2006-03-14T01:25:00.000-05:00

Here we continue mildly interesting experiments with the Slut-O-Meter. Today we investigate the questions: Is a less common name sluttier than a more common name?

Well here is the theory: Dawn is sluttier than Amanda, Crystal sluttier than Emily, and Leandra sluttier than Jessica. It makes sense to me, passes the gut check, but of course is not actually backed by any sort of “facts”. Well, sense this is a thing that doesn’t have any real basis or grounding in any real quantifiable measure, I turn to my favorite instrument of pseudo-science: The Slut-O-Meter.

Here’s the data, with the names taken from the 1986 Social Security Online listing of popular baby names for girls. I used these 1986 instead of a more recent year, because the interest in determining the slut-factor of infant names is of less interest to me than determining the slut-factor of the names of 19-20 year olds.

Name	Popularity Rank	Total Number	Sluttiness
Jessica	1	52,594	20.10%
Sarah	5	28,093	2.76%
Elizabeth	10	19,038	7.35%
Rachel	15	15,423	-9.04%
Laura	20	14,159	0%
Crystal	25	12,685	0.48%
Erin	30	10,057	0.43%
Courtney	35	9,118	1.63%
Lisa	40	7,895	-0.79%
Alicia	45	7,010	15.37%
Kristin	50	5,997	0.93%
Jenna	55	5,410	46.18%
Cassandra	60	4,981	10.21%
Brittney	65	4,590	45.10%
Natasha	70	3,869	9.30%
Diana	75	3,655	-1%
Casey	80	3,421	1.98%
Leslie	85	3,223	-0.90%
Bethany	90	3,080	3.30%
Jasmine	95	2,985	-0.34%
Karen	100	2,791	-1.92%

So this data leads us to the conclusion of absolutely nothing. There is not a clear and discernible pattern with this data set, which points to the fact that maybe I scrap this idea that a weird name is a slutty name. I give my heartfelt apologies to all the Auroras, Dawns, Rains, and Leandras: It was wrong to assume that a girl with a name like that would just give it up. I apologize.

What’s In A (Slutty) Name?

2006-03-13T02:37:00.000-05:00

So my new love is the Slut-O-Meter. This is no secret. It has some pretty silly uses, but on the other hand, there is some potential for some cool pseudoscience. Theoretically it is a pretty good measure of how much a particular word or phrase is associated with obscene and explicit content. So, I sort of touched on it this the first time I mentioned the Slut-O-Meter, but the idea bears further investigation. Let’s solve this great dilemma of modern science:

What makes a name slutty?

There are a couple of traits that I can think of. The first and most obvious is the Sluts Who Came Before. If your name is Paris, Pamela, or Jenna, your name carries quite a bit of Slut currency by mere virtue of your more famous counterparts. Really, this is all the Slut-O-Meter can test: How much explicit material is associated with a particular pre-existing identity.

This is cool, but not nearly as interesting to me as the idea that certain traits of certain names are intrinsically sluttier than others. Some names just trip a slut alarm in my head. More than that, some spellings of some names trigger the slut alarm.

One of these was the “i” instead of the “y” on the end of names. My initial investigation failed to find any instance of a name where the “i” version was sluttier, destroying my preconceived notions of what is slutty. Fortunately I was able to come up with a few counterexamples to justify my ridiculous beliefs.

Jenny -3.41%
Jenni 9.74%
Cindy -0.18%
Cindi 44.6%
Brittany 10.83%
Brittani 22.68%

So I guess we can’t whether the “i” for “y” replacement makes a name slutty due to the mixed conclusions. There appears to be no definitive answer on this one yet. But there are other weird things that make a name slutty, at least in my eyes. I submit this list for your consideration.

1. k instead of c
2. y instead of an i in the middle of a name
3. uncommon variant of a name
4. uncommon name

The last two work on a scale. The less common a variant of a name it is, the sluttier it is. And as for the last one, my bet is that as the name gets reduced in frequency, that it gets sluttier. Are any of these true? We’ll test them in the coming days.

What To Do Without Me: Part I

2006-03-11T01:28:00.000-05:00

"Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated." --Alphonse de Lamartine

Yesterday was a mild catastrophe: I did not write anything. I’m sure you had a horrible dilemma, because as we all know, without the Definitive Truth, there is no media to provide you with information or entertainment. I would say infotainment but I would rather be shot in the face. Holy shit. MS Word even thinks that’s a word. Fuck.

So in the event of another emergency where I do not or cannot post anything, I will provide you with this handy guide of what to do without a new post.

Watch television. Don’t give me that snobby moral indignation about not watching television. You are going to watch it and you are going to like it. Here is a handy guide to quality programming which you may enjoy.

Lost – 9 Wednesday on ABC. Why the fuck aren’t you watching this already? That island is full of secrets and until every last one is revealed I will watch it with a scary passion.
Scrubs – 9 Tuesday on NBC. It’s a medical show about interns and young doctors working in a high stress environment and dealing with their problems inside and outside of working. “Like Greys Anatomy?” Yes, except this is funny and not filled with overblown drama and came like four years earlier. Whimsical arbitrary humor beats ridiculously bland drama anyday.
SNL – 11:30 Saturday on NBC. Just kidding. The digital shorts are the only funny thing and you can watch them pirated on the internet without having to sit through the painful rest.
Number One Single – 10 Sunday on E! It’s a reality show about Lisa Loeb looking for a man. I have not watched this show, but I can’t imagine that it is anything but awesome.
Conan O’Brien – 12:30 Mon-Fri on NBC. “Because Everyone Else On Late At Night Sucks.” Besides he is big in Finland.
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report – 11 Mon-Thurs on Comedy Central. What else are you going to watch at 11? The real news? You are not kidding anyone.
The Office – 9:30 Thursdays on NBC. Yeah it’s not the British version, but it’s still better than most other shows on television. So suck it up, whiner, and watch.

Also, apparently there are good shows on HBO and Showtime, but I’m not a rich snob, so I wouldn’t know.

Who Is the Sluttiest Member of the Supreme Court

2006-03-09T01:15:00.000-05:00

I bet you’ve always wondered. After consulting the Slut-O-Meter, we have the answer. The sluttiest member of the Supreme Court is…

Samuel Alito?!?

This defies all logic to me. I mean, we all pretty much get that he’s anti-abortion, right? Common sense dictates that being anti-abortion does not make you slutty, because let’s face it: getting knocked up puts a huge damper on getting your slut on.

In general, the results surprised me quite a bit. I mean, I thought liberals were supposed to stand for sex, drugs, and rock and roll? Or at least the rights to all of the above. All the people in Hollywood are all liberals, and I read the tabloids: they are sluts.

I guess I expected the “liberals are slutty” stereotype to hold, but instead, this is how it breaks down.

Supreme Court Justice Sluttiness
Samuel Alito 21.02%
John Roberts 14.83%
John Stevens 5.59%
Anthony Kennedy 3.17%
David Souter 2.72%
Ruth Ginsberg 2.6%
Antonin Scalia -7.7%
Stephen Breyer -39.38%
Clarence Thomas -88.07%

So apparently, here is the generalization I am going to make: the middle of the right is apparently as slutty as it gets. The two Bush appointees are apparently the sluttiest. “MODERATE, MY ASS!” is all I have to say. John Stevens, I’m looking at you too. Apparently he takes the title of swinger on multiple levels.

The liberals all have less than 6% sluttiness. This disappoints me. You guys need to work on this. How are we going to take your liberal credibility seriously. And -39.98%, Breyer? God, I know you have moderate tendencies, but show a little leg. Jeez.

The only thing that is how it should be, are the negative sluttiness of Scalia and Thomas. Because let’s face it, these are the two names that no one has ever called out while making love. It’s a fact that if you say “Scalia” five times in a row, your genitals shrivel up and fall off.

The Great Philosophers

2006-03-08T02:32:00.000-05:00

I have developed an interest in philosophy as of late, and recently read a fascinating biography of one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. The work of this individual is not widely read, but is the most interesting thing I have read in awhile. I have included a brief biography for your benefit.

Brittany’s Illustrious and Glorious Ass was born in Paris an officer of the French Navy and a cousin of Albert Schweitzer. As a teenager in the 1920s, Brittany’s Illustrious and Glorious Ass became attracted to philosophy upon reading Henri Bergson's Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness.

The conflict between oppressive, spiritually-destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, "bad faith") and an "authentic" state of "being" became the dominant theme of Brittany’s Illustrious And Glorious Ass's work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work L'Etre et le Néant (Being and Nothingness) (1944).
As a junior lecturer at the Lycée du Havre in 1938, Brittany’s Illustrious And Glorious Ass wrote the novel La Nausée (Nausea) which serves in some ways as a manifesto of existentialism and remains one of his most famous books.

1939 saw Brittany’s Illustrious and Glorious Ass drafted into the French army, where it served as a meteorologist. German troops captured it in 1940 in Padoux, and it spent nine months in prison — later in Nancy and finally in Stalag 12D, Treves, until released in April 1941 due to poor. Given civilian status, Brittany’s Illustrious And Glorious Ass then escaped to Paris where it became involved in the French Resistance, and participated in the founding of the resistance group Socialisme et Liberté. It was while engaged in the resistance that Brittany’s Illustrious and Glorious Ass met Albert Camus, a philosopher and author who held similar beliefs, and remained friends with it until Camus turned away from communism, a schism between them that eventually divided them in 1951, after the publication of Camus' book entitled The Rebel.

During the 1940s and 1950s Brittany’s Illustrious and Glorious Ass's ideas remained much in vogue, and existentialism became a favoured philosophy of the beatnik generation. In 1964, Brittany’s Illustrious and Glorious Ass renounced literature in a witty and sardonic account of the first six years of his life, Les Mots (Words). The book is an ironic counterblast to Marcel Proust, whose reputation had unexpectedly eclipsed that of André Gide (who had provided the model of literature engagée for Brittany’s Illustrious And Glorious Ass‘s generation). Literature, Brittany’s Illustrious and Glorious Ass concluded, functioned as a bourgeois substitute for real commitment in the world. In the same year it was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but resoundingly declined it, stating that Brittany’s Illustrious and Glorious Ass had always refused official honors and didn't wish to align itself with institutions.

Brittany’s Illustrious And Glorious Ass's physical condition deteriorated, partially due to the merciless pace of work it put itself through during the writing of the Critique and the last project of it’s Illustrious and Glorious life, a massive analytical biography of Gustave Flaubert (The Family Idiot), both of which remain unfinished. Brittany’s Illustrious and Glorious Ass died April 15, 1980 in Paris.

Quantifying How Much Duke Sucks

2006-03-07T17:41:00.000-05:00

Here we attempt to use the Google Barometer of Suckitude to try to quantify precisely to what degree Duke University sucks. The methodology and rigorous calculation method has already been recounted elsewhere, so let’s skip to juicy results.

Duke sucks more than ebola, Hitler, Stalin, and yes, death itself. Additionally, J.J. Redick also sucks more than those things, but less than migraines and getting hit. Duke, however, still sucks more than both migraines and getting hit.

For the record, ebola is a deadly virus that causes you to bleed out of every hole in your body, while Duke is a university in Durham, North Carolina. The Internet seems to think that Duke sucks precisely 156.462 times more than ebola. This is hard science, folks. It doesn’t lie.

List of Items in Ascending Suckitude
Ebola 0.238 (62/261)
Stalin 1.152 (501/435)
Hitler 1.952 (890/456)
Death 1.646 (23700/14400)
Redick 2.413 (345/143)
Migraines 4.275 (607/142)
Getting Hit 12.313 (197/16)
Duke 37.238 (30200/811)

More Fun With Statistics: The Slut O Meter

2006-03-06T00:47:00.000-05:00

“I am not a slut, though I thank the Gods I am foul.” –Audrey in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

As a fan of pointless statistical measures I would like to point you to the another such delightful measure of the Internet: The Slut O Meter.

It’s simple, ingenious, and of course uses Google. The equation that explains it is taken from the originating site and listed below. The gist of it is, it compares how many total entries on the entered item are blocked when Google’s SafeSearch is turned on. SafeSearch is mainly designed to keep your kids from accidentally getting porn and such when they are trying to find porn.

Of course the Slut-O-Meter does not stare deep into your heart and determine how skanky you actually are, but simply determines what percentage of sites on Google featuring your name have offensive content. So, it’s a lovely way of seeing the effective connotation weight of names, words, or concepts are.

So, naturally, I wanted to test some of my assumptions about certain names. I have always held the assumption that “stripper names” can be recognized for a few essential characteristics: one of these being the “i” replacing the “y” at the end of a woman’s name. I figured it would be reasonable that Staci would be sluttier than Stacy.

I was wrong. Here’s the breakdown:

Stacy: 8.52%
Staci: -2.87%
Kristy: 19.33%
Kristi: 9.05%
Misty: 19.23%
Misti: 18.75%
Mandy: 17.28%
Mandi -20.1%

So yeah, basically, apparently the “I” substitution doesn’t have the stripper connotation that I thought it did in the minds of the public at large. Anyway, for further discussion (and trying to figure out how you get a negative rating, which shouldn’t be possible) there’s the “About” section of the site proper, and there are a couple of posts on the Language Log about it.

Also, for the the record: Kellen Carpenter weighs in at a lovely 0% sluttiness.

Google Barometer of Suckitude and Rockitude

2006-03-03T02:42:00.000-05:00

“De gustibus non est disputandum” -- Latin saying.

There are some things that seem to me to be generally acknowledged. Now of course, this is just my perception, usually. My friends tend to be pretty similar to me and we tend to agree on the same things, and, of course, I don’t talk to anybody else.

However, I really believe that there are a few things that are just cultural givens. Kenny G sucks. It is, was, and shall always be this way. But how can I prove to someone who naively believes that they hold the widely held and accepted view? Shouldn’t there be some sort of universal standard for judging the general opinion on thing?

Using Google and the cultural theory teachings of Beavis and Butthead, I have found the solution: The Google Barometer of Suckitude and Rockitude, a revolutionary tool for finding the value of something amongst people who say “rocks” and “sucks”.

Google is a useful tool to survey the impressive corpus of human writing and opinion that is the Internet. Indeed, sharing your idiotic opinions on the Internet often seems to be its chief purpose (At this point I avert my eyes). In the words of Kevin Smith, “The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another.” And it’s not just movies people bitch about: it’s everything. Therefore a Google search should yield a ridiculously large cross-section of people’s opinions on a particular topic.

Of course, Google only actually locates the uses of particular texts and not opinions, and indeed usually returns way too many results to conceivably sift through them all. This is why we turn to Beavis and Butthead and their profound contribution to cultural criticism: The Sucks/Rocks Dichotomy. In the minds of these two scholars, things have a binary value of cultural merit: it either rocks or it sucks.

So here is the formula for calculating the degree of suckitude (degree of rockitude is the inverse of degree of suckitude) of a particular item: Google hits for the phrase “x sucks” divided by the phrase “x rocks”. If the name is plural, omit the s on rocks and sucks. You will then get a numerical value that you can use with scientific certainty.

Anyway, for reference here are some sample values (given in suckitude, and sorted for ascending suckiness) of various bands and musical artists:

Ella Fitzgerald 0.000 (0/1560)
The Beatles 0.008 (705/84900)
Linkin Park 0.039 (835/21500)
My Chemical Romance 0.042 (612/14600)
S Club 7 0.186 (67/360)
Sufjan Stevens 0.257 (18/70)
Animal Collective 0.375 (3/8)
Ace of Base 0.468 (168/359)
Bob Dylan 0.537 (245/456)
The Mars Volta 0.755 (538/713)
Slipknot 0.860 (14100/16400)
Britney Spears 1.778 (20800/11700)

Also, by scientific certainty, I meant haphazard curiosity. The method reflects obvious bias in a few areas: namely it only works for the kinds of people who say “sucks” and “rocks”. Fortunately, the Beavis and Butthead mentality as so saturated our culture that lots of people talk like this. However, people who talk like Butthead, aka highschoolers, are over-represented by their virtue of using sucks and rocks more than anyone else. I like to call it Butthead Bias. This explains the ridiculously high ranking of Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance

Also, there is something of an inherent Indie Kid Obscurity Bonus, so named because of Indie Kid Syndrome, a terrible condition which causes image obsessed young people to deride things popular and only like things obscure. This mainly manifests in that lesser known things get positive ratings on this scale, because they aren’t worth talking about to most people, but they have a few fans singing their praises around the clock. This is demonstrated by the apparent rockitude of Sufjan, and the relatively high rockitude of The Mars Volta (despite sucking beyond all common sense).

Oh also, there is the Old People Bias, which is similar to the Indie Kid bias but for things that are old as opposed to obscure, though it operates in much the same way, I suspect. This explains why Ella Fitzgerald has the highest score: the Buttheads haven’t bothered to say she sucks, because they haven’t heard or don’t care about her.

Presidential Nicknames

2006-03-01T02:09:00.000-05:00

I've been on a sort of Presidential triva kick lately, and I keep finding better and better things. Latest discovery: Presidential Nicknames. I dropped a reference to Old Hickory and the Little Magician in my last post. But, that is only the tip of the iceberg. The full link is here, but below I have some of my favorites.

Machiavellian Belshazzar
Old Public Functionary
Elegant Arthur
the Cyclone Assemblyman
Withered Little Apple-John

Excerpts from A Brief History of Western North Carolina’s Jackson County

2006-03-01T01:46:00.000-05:00

For the interest of virtually no one, I present for your edification, my transcribed copy of a book on the local history of where I was born and raised.

Excerpts from A Brief History of Western North Carolina’s Jackson County

The first major people to inhabit the lands presently known today as Jackson County, were the Cherokee Indians who were later forced out by President Jackson(1). The Cherokee Indians were only semi-hunter-gathers and spent much of their time engaged in tending to their polkberry orchards. Their currency was based on these small, generally poisonous berries and the chief of the tribe was decided by a ritual of ingesting as many of the polkberries as possible. The man who ingested the most without vomiting or dying became chief for that season(2). These people were isolated from the other Native Americans, and lived without any major societal or cultural changes to their way of life until the coming of the Europeans.

While North Carolina had been the site of a number of early colonies established by Sir Walter Raleigh, the mountains had largely been devoid of contact with the Europeans until 1708, when the Travelogue of Kristopher Krumholdter was published, sparking widespread interest in the region. The account describes Krumholdter’s travels through the region and interactions with a people he called the Horeps. His log told the tale of living for five years among the Horeps and helping them to fight the fierce giant bear-bird hybrids that nested in the mountains and guarded nests that were often filled with hoards of silk and ivory. The Horeps were pushed out of the region by these bear-birds, and eventually Krumholdter fled the region to avoid the atrocities of the increasingly bloodthirsty raids of the bear-birds. The account, though now generally acknowledged to be entirely fictional(3), sparked an interest in the mountain regions, leading to an influx of Europeans, seeking silk and ivory, to an area that had not enjoyed such luxuries since the Carboniferous Epoch.

As throngs of would-be bird-bear hunters arrived in the area, they inevitably encountered the Cherokee people in their polkberry groves. The Europeans and the Cherokee were unable to communicate due to the language barrier, and trouble was bound to ensue. While the Europeans unsuccessfully sought the bear-birds’ nests, winter came, and the new-comers finally found themselves in a difficult predicament without food, shelter, or any basic supplies. Relations up to this point with the Cherokee had been friendly, but an ill-fated exchange of the poisonous polkberries and the resulting death of the Europeans upon ingestion, led to a year long conflict that claimed many lives on both sides and the term “Indian-giver,” an English expression for “polkberry poisoner”. While a peace was eventually made and then affirmed by the Treaty of Zeke’s Bend, low-grade hostility continued until the Cherokee were finally forced out during the Presidency of Martin Van Buren, the Little Magician to Andrew Jackson's Old Hickory, and owner of the third most exquisite sideburns of the history of the United States (4).

(1)President Jackson is not the man for whom the County is named. Jackson County is actually named for Ezekiel Jackson a 19th century semi-fictional gold digger and adventurer. While he was not born in Jackson County, the giant red rock in the bend of the Tuckaseigee is named after one of the most famous exploits of the hero: Ezekiel Jackson Fights the Giant Eagles.
(2)The year was determined solely by the growth patterns of the polkberry.
(3)A number writers (all Scientologist) maintain the existence of the Horeps.
(4)As determined by the Journal for Political Facial Hair (Spring 1994).

Teeth, Conspiracy, Blackface, Pastries, and Dennis Kucinich

2006-02-27T03:05:00.000-05:00

“Trivia is a game played by those who realize that they have misspent their youth but do not want to let go of it.” –Edwin Goodgold.

I am a Wikipedia junkie. I can’t get enough. It is so convenient in format and so comprehensive in scope that it draws me back, time and time again, a moth to flame. I would estimate that a sickening proportion of my time goes to reading Wikipedia on any topic I can think of. Occasionally, I learn interesting things. You too may have an interest in such things, so I present to you the first in a series of miscellaneous trivia that has piqued my curiosity.

1. George Washington’s dentures were not made of wood. He mostly had teeth made from other teeth, including those of other humans, elk, and hippopotamus. He also had a set made of lead.

2. So we all know that Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton. We also know of his conspiracy to create a nation in the Southwest United States and in Mexico. What I didn’t know was that Andrew Jackson was ready to help him in the conspiracy, in the event that Spain declared war.

3. Cartoons are weird and apparently rooted in the old, not-so-politically correct tradition of the minstrel show. Old cartoons unapologetically have the main characters primarily in black face, and aping the plots of actual minstrel shows. This wasn’t just a fringe thing: This is Disney and Warner Brothers, Mickey and Honey Bunny.

4. So in the tradition of liberty cabbage and freedom fries, the Danish (most beloved of pastries) has been renamed in some Islamic countries. It is now known as Roses of the Prophet Muhammad. You may have gotten that from the news, but Wikipedia adds the even better fact: Danes don’t call the pastries Danishes. In Denmark, the pastry is known as Viennese bread, after the itenerant bakers who introduced it to Scandinavia.

5. Dennis Kucinich is apparently a Slovenian-American. With a Croatian father. Who knew?

The Definitive Truth, explained

2006-02-24T02:48:00.000-05:00

“I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet.” -- Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite is known as “the most trusted man in America”. If he thinks people on the Internet are defaming crackpots, then by God, they are defaming crackpots. Also, Walter Cronkite eats babies. Breakfast and dinner. Not lunch. For lunch he eats tuna sandwiches. Don’t question it.

Perhaps I should explain myself. On the other hand that’s probably a waste of time. Maybe I should explain this thing you are reading. Or, you could guess what it is.

Hints
The title may not be entirely sincere.
I may not entirely care about “accuracy”.
I like unsubstantiated, tasteless claims.
Conversely, I like my clams substantial and tasty.
I mention Walter Cronkite for a reason.
There will be sundry things here.
There will be information about George Washington’s teeth.
Recommendations as well.

Have you guessed it?
That’s right! It is “The Definitive Truth”: A completely ridiculous endeavor by a completely ridiculous person that is here to deliver shit that you might actually care about.

Oh yeah, and I mention Cronkite’s quote because of this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/walter-cronkite/.

Yeah, that’s right, Uncle Walt loves irony. But not more than me. Since you can’t trust Cronkite, I instead offer to you The Definitive Truth.

PS: Suck on it, Walter.

Facebook Statistics on Political Involvement at UNC

2006-02-24T00:44:00.000-05:00

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." --Benjamin Disraeli

In this case we are interested in the third. I’m a university student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a place that Bob Novak reportedly told Paul Begala only cares about two things: “basketball and liberalism”. However, looking at the statistics provided by the Pulse feature of Facebook for Chapel Hill, and admitting beforehand this is decidedly unscientific, I found some interesting things.

Namely that while there may be more liberals than conservatives at Carolina, the majority of both males and females refrained from identifying themselves as either liberal or conservative (59% of males and 53% of females), preferring to not list political ideology (the most popular option amongst males and females) or identifying themselves as moderate, libertarian, apathetic, or other.

The other finding deals with a census of listed clubs or organizations and Facebook groups. At Chapel Hill, the College Republicans are the sixth most listed club or organization (215 individuals), with the Young Democrats not even appearing on the top ten (171 individuals). While relatively surprising considering that more of the student body identifies as liberal than conservative, this actually is in line with national trends: the nationwide aggregated Facebook club statistics show College Republicans as the second most popular club in the nation with College Democrats coming in tenth. The interesting part deals with Facebook group membership.

UNC College Republicans has 610 members while Unc Young Democrats has 283 members, not even half the numbers of the Republicans. Maybe there are more liberals, but they don’t seem to be aligning themselves with the Democratic organizations on campus, while the Republicans seem to have been able to do a better job of getting (at least nominal) involvement from the conservative population on campus. The idea that Young Democrats is not successfully getting the involvement of even the identified Democrat population of campus is evidenced by the huge membership of other groups. Democrats are Sexy...Who Ever Heard of a Great Piece of Elephant? has 745 members, more than UNC College Republicans and ridiculously more than Unc Young Democrats.

Clearly, there are some obvious sources of error in these findings, but the general trends that are pointed at seem to have a grain of truth in them and gibe with common sense. Below is a list of the collected data for your pleasure and use.

Facebook Statistics
Taken between 12am and 1 am on Friday, February 24, 2006

Male
5% very liberal
19% liberal
18% moderate
15% conservative
2% very conservative
2% libertarian
4% apathetic
5% other

30% didn’t respond

Female
6% very liberal
26% liberal
17% moderate
14% conservative
1% very conservative
1% libertarian
1% apathetic
2% other

32% didn’t respond

Listed under clubs and organizations
College Republicans 215 listed (Ranked 6)
Young Democrats 171 listed (not in top 10)

Groups
UNC College Republicans has 610 members
Unc Young Democrats has 283 members
Democrats are Sexy...Who Ever Heard of a Great Piece of Elephant? has 745 members