Entries from October 2005 ↓
October 21st, 2005 — humor, pop culture
Golden Bowl Fortune Cookies, as provided by my local purveyor of Chicken and Broccoli, are now becoming a large source of entertainment here in Long Island City. You know, my last “message” from them was quite bossy. And a little creepy, but in a fun way. However, they’ve followed up nicely with the latest directions:
Don’t worry about the world coming to an end. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.
What’s funny is that I read those words just after watching a clip of Wolf Blitzer asking Pat Robertson if the latest natural disasters (Katrina, Pakistan Earthquake, etc.) were a sign that the end of days (i.e. Armaggedon) was near. (As the Daily Show said much more eloquently than I will, nice piece of investigative journalism, Wolf.)
I note that the people at Golden Bowl apparently have, if not a handle on the future, a sparkling way with words. Their motto?
Fortune knocks but once . . .
but Golden Bowl Brand Fortune Cookies knocks three times.
I am not sure what it means, but it makes me think.
The same company that makes these cookies, Wonton Foods, was in the news last May when 110 people won Powerball lotteries across the country after playing numbers in their fortune cookie fortunes. According to this article from Reuters, 4-5 winners is typical, so when there were 110, investigators looked around and found out they’d all got their numbers from a fortune. Apparently some folks are really compelled to obey the fortune cookie. And what’s more, they were right.
October 18th, 2005 — random rants
You know, there are some things that have been bothering me for some time, so I am just going to get them off my chest.
I hate it when people use the word “pant” as a noun. This is usually a marketing thing, but it is seeping into the usage of individuals. For example: “It’s a great pant.” I believe Express– or is it Limited Express? Someone “Express” is advertising “The Editor’s Pant” in their storefront windows. To be honest, I prefer “trousers,” but I know I am fighting a losing battle there.
I also hate it when advertisers (again) use “baby” to refer to all babies. Old Navy is the biggest culprit: “For Men, Women, and Baby.” Um, well, you see, Old Navy, just as there is more than one man, and more than one woman, your clothes are also perfect for multiple babies. So the plural is more appropriate, really. If they said, “Man, woman, and baby,” it would be a bit odd, but it would be consistent, damnit.
Those who know me know I am not one of those English teachers: you know, the ones where people are afraid to speak lest you correct their usage. Quite the opposite. I am laid back in that department.
I also realize, as an enlightened 21st century person interested in language, that language change happens. And is neither good nor bad, just the way things are. I can deal. I embrace it, in fact. My own vocabulary and usage are always shifting, hip urban media chick that I am. (Tee hee, just kidding about the hip part, oh– and the media part.)
Perhaps the thing that bothers me is that multinational corporations are changing the language, in unnecessary ways. Why should we say “Men, women, and baby?” What is wrong with “pants”? I guess what I am saying is that I embrace language change, but not for no good reason, and with no good pattern. Down with market-ese.
Pants are for babies.
October 13th, 2005 — humor, politics
No, not the finger paintings your mum taped to the fridge when you were small.
But this, politically-engaged, timely, colorful art, is popping up around New Orleans, where there is apparently a glut of flood-damaged refrigerators being tossed to the curb. Folks are decorating them. I liked the message on this one, courtesy of missbhavens.
October 10th, 2005 — cybertherapy, pop culture
Have you ever watched Jon Udell’s screencast “Heavy Metal Umlaut: The Movie”? It’s a screencast (a kind of low-budget internet movie) of the development, editing, and re-editing of the Wikipedia entry for “heavy metal umlaut” (you know, the mostly gratuitous little dots over letters in heavy metal band names?) Anyway, it offers not only an amusing glimpse at the use of heavy metal umlauts, but also a really useful case study of how one Wikipedia entry evolved. Tracing edits and re-edits in elapsed time is really fascinating. It answered a lot of my own questions about what happens when people change Wikipedia entries, and says a lot about how democratic this medium truly can be. Click on the word screencast from the page this is linked to.
October 10th, 2005 — humor, traffic and weather reports
I got the strangest fortune cookie today, the likes of which I’ve never seen. In a tone I associated with a sci-fi robot leader giving orders to hypnotized humans, it said:
Only listen to the fortune cookie;
disregard all other fortune telling units.
Fortune telling units?
You’ll note the sophisticated sentence structure, with correct use of semi-colon. What is going on? Who wrote this fortune cookie message? And will the uber-robot be coming back in another form to give us further instructions???
October 9th, 2005 — arts
I am not a fan of the boxing, you know, but I found this account of Oscar Hijuelos’s friendship with August Wilson in today’s New York Times charming, I guess because there’s nothing like an account of a famous writer’s friendship behind closed doors. Hijuelos writes of sitting down to a boxing match on pay-per-view with Wilson last May, and says of the playwright,
He loved discussing literature: Ralph Ellison, Gabriel García Márquez, James M. Cain, Jorge Luis Borges and Tennessee Williams were but a few of the writers we talked about over the years. We tried to maintain a scholarly tone about such things, especially when our wives were around, but when it was just the two of us, our upbringings kicked in and our language was riddled with scatological turns of phrase. August’s sentences blossomed with such language, especially when we came to the history of slavery and the black man in this country.
That night in May, as on so many similar nights, we ended up in my study to watch the fight, the sound turned low and some Clifford Brown on the stereo until the main event finally came on. In times past he’d sit in that room with guests ranging from my old, blue-collar neighborhood friends to Lou Reed, who, to August’s delight, played a couple of his songs one evening on a nylon string guitar. But whoever had joined us, August always remained somewhat apart from the persona of one who had received so much acclaim.
If he at all considered his creative output the product of genius, he distanced himself from such thoughts, as if the social August Wilson were the caretaker of the creator. He talked books, boxing and jazz; sometimes about his own plays, the hard work of putting them on, the vagaries of tinkering with the script. And often he spoke about his family: especially his little girl, Azula.
“Sign your novel for me, but make it out to Azula,” he’d say. “It’s for her library.”
Famous writers are just people, but we don’t often think of them that way. Thanks Oscar. RIP August Wilson.
October 6th, 2005 — general
I have a terrible cold.
But I mustered up enough energy to check my email today and
this, this made me very much more cheerful than before. I salute this young man, so enthusiastic. So much joie de vivre.
