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Slow
Law firms in San Francisco have many charms: aside from the many gilded-cage elements (how I used to sing!), nearly every firm has an abundance of quick-witted, lightning-tongued colleagues who immediately 'get' the most obscure play on words. The slightest polite dish can start a long, stimulating exchange of terse, cutting humor.
It's been a while since I was immersed in such an environment for most of my waking life, and it is showing in the worst ways. I'm not saying I regret ensconcing myself among sweet young people at a fruit beverage company; I'm just saying my wit is now dull enough to be safe for small, clumsy, unsupervised children to run down rickety stairs with, point up.
I have conversations with my colleagues that go something like this:Me: He's such a surfer.I can't just blame my young colleagues for taking me so literally that I have learned to speak that way (!), and who instead reward my completely inappropriate honesty with peals of laughter. There are other influences. My home life, for example, provides a tough schedule (being woken up at 5:20 a.m. on weekdays is not conducive to sophisticated thought) and various discouragements from reading, writing, or other solitary pasttimes which make my brain go... I've been adapting to my circumstances, but not well.
Her: Dude!
Me: [blank look]
My brain: Error 404, File Not Found.
Her: [Looks at me with concern, pulls thermometer out of her pocket and sticks it in my ear, writes prescription for a clue.]
I'm (somewhat) aware of the problem, and am trying to find new ways to remind my brain of the oddball directions it used to use to avoid banal thoughts. I might be able to get there again.Labels: words
posted by Arlene (Beth)5:04 PM
Random dinners and how pasta names can be spelled.
Spinach linguini (which blogger spells linguine, which is also allowed) with pesto sauce, and a salad of heirloom tomatoes with marinated artichoke hearts, fresh avocado, extra virgin olive oil, and freshly ground pepper.
Fettuccini (which blogger spells fettuccine, same) with spicy tomato sauce, plus a spinach salad with poppy seed dressing, black olives, and Semifreddi's garlic croutons.
I mostly bring these up because I am fascinated with the alternative spellings of pasta names. Italian uses the same letters, so I am surprised there isn't a RULE. A rule that favors an i at the end, like I like it. I mean, e is usually silent after a consonant in English. You remember the Sesame Street song about silent e, right? ("Who can turn a man into a mane? Who can turn a can into a cane?...") You were singing right along with me there, weren't you? Don't worry, I won't tell anyone.Labels: words
posted by Arlene (Beth)2:51 PM
Snowclones.
Thanks to my beloved Wikipedia's entry on "Snowclones," I now have a single word to describe comments like “X is the new Y.”
This is useful! It means I can be more concise when I tell you that I’m not sure which is sillier: my colleague T's snowclone that "staying in is the new going out" or an explanation from colleague M that the new word for THAT is “staycation.”Labels: words
posted by Arlene (Beth)12:20 AM
Censorship should not be automated. Or perhaps it should, to make itself look more ridiculous.
Totally Gay Happy Meals / It is the end of the nutball Christian right. Here is your proof. To go, by Mark Morford (sfgate.com, 7/11/08):It is this: The [American Family Association]'s Web site apparently has (or rather, had, until just recently) an auto-filter installed. So utterly terrified of anything remotely gay are these kindly folk that whenever the word 'gay' appeared in any news story on their site, their autobot automatically changed it to 'homosexual.' True.
Thus did it come to pass that many fine stories about American Olympic track and fieldster Tyson Gay become a whole lotta wacky stories about the epic struggles of some unlucky runner named 'Tyson Homosexual' to post some good numbers in the 100-meter dash. Poor guy.Labels: words
posted by Arlene (Beth)10:00 PM
Plums
Eating small black plums
The transience of summer
Drips down from my chin.Labels: something akin to poetry, words
posted by Arlene (Beth)10:09 PM
Evolve: Be Sarcastic.
A friend who knows me well sent me the article Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill, by Meredith F. Small (livescience.com), a light-hearted article about how not understanding sarcasm is a sort of pathology. The parahippocampal gyrus (wikipedia.org), which helps people recognize certain visual contexts, may also play a role in recognizing social contexts, which is necessary to recognize sarcasm (which is context-based). People with injuries to this part of the brain often can no longer respond appropriately to sarcasm.
I already think that people who don't get sarcasm have something wrong with them: it is always nice when research backs this up.
*
I’ve recently ranted to friends about how some of my colleagues fail to ‘get’ and respond to either sarcasm or any complex humor. It's not just my humor, and it's not the contexts. It’s not just the youth of my colleagues: it is… some major lack of awareness on their part.
Example: I tried to persuade a male colleague to install SuperPoke in Facebook. To paraphrase our conversation:Him: I’m not going to install SuperPoke. It doesn’t sound right. I’m a poke giver, not a receiver, if you know what I mean.I told this story to several male friends, and they all IMMEDIATELY came up with better responses than “yipes” that followed the same tone I had set. They gave comments like: my best guy friend was supposed to keep that secret between us; I’m only a receiver when there’s money involved; etc., all delivered wittily. They recognized that my comment was silly, and replied in kind.
Me: That’s not what your best guy friend said about you last night.
Him: Yipes!
I couldn’t believe this colleague failed so miserably. So I wrote again, and gave him another chance, explaining that my preposterous slander against his reputation (in the e-mail chain that was still attached) was supposed to be responded to with an equally preposterous defense.
He replied that he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
Meanwhile, within his same social network, another guy got commentary from a female friend. She wrote on his "wall" that she was bitterly offended that his girlfriend was not abundantly represented on his page, and demanded that the situation be remedied, all in an obviously over-the-top, humorous tone. Her next message was a response to an unseen reply, explaining the nature of hyperbole to him, explicitly stating that exaggeration is often used in humor. This indicates that he completely failed to get what she was doing.
Neither of these English-speaking boys is from the Bay Area, and text is a complex communications medium in which nuance requires more effort to interpret, but... But...
In contrast, my long-term friends SPOIL me with lightning fast, witty repartee. Thank you, sarcastic friends! No, really, I mean that sincerely. Really! Oh, come on...Labels: words
posted by Arlene (Beth)10:29 PM
More soon. Really. I'm trying to clean my house. Like, REALLY clean my house. That sort of cleaning that involves taking all the rugs outside, washing the inside of the refrigerator after taking everything out of it, and other things that I would ordinarily do every so often, which I am now doing ALL AT ONCE, room by room, which shows that I'm in a once-a-year, full-on, full house cleaning fit. I'm making things better overall, but much, much worse in one particular room in this phase of the process.
And I'm also experiencing something a lot like 'cat-newspaper syndrome,' a syndrome I just made up based upon my past experiences. In this syndrome, your cat doesn't want to sit on your lap when you're reading or cold or calling to it, but if you try to read a newspaper, it will not only want to sit on your lap, but will actually want to sit on the newspaper so it is impossible for you to read it. It will then spend all day with you, especially if there was something in the paper you really want to read. But it's such a nice cat, and it's pleasant to have it sleeping on your lap. It's just... what remarkable timing.
I don't have a cat. And I read the news on-line. But otherwise this is very close to my domestic life when I try to write.
Anyway, more when I can post more.Labels: words
posted by Arlene (Beth)9:20 PM
Love is the answer.
There has been a conceptual battle among vandals in my neighborhood, with each volley writ large on the canvas of our neighborhood. Literally written large: the war of words involves three dimensional, ten foot wooden letters.
The Don Chee Loop bus transfer point on Ocean Avenue, near City College, is backed by the grassy slope of one of the two old reservoirs that now serve as City's main parking lot. As part of the plaza improvements made several years back, a sign was erected in what look like old, whitewashed railroad ties. For many years, the sign peacefully kept its original message: 'LOVE IS THE ANSWER.' It is a pleasant message. There were a few rare instances of vandalism - during the 2004 elections, some joker changed it to "Bush is the answer" for a day or two, making many of us wonder what the (undoubtedly unpleasant) question was - but the sign was quickly restored.
Lately, the volunteers or other community members who watch over the sign have been off duty. A free-for-all has ensued in recent weeks. The pieces of wood are limited, but they are also not fastened to anything. The sign has taken on Christian slogans, announcements about local kids, and a wide range of very brief declarations of presence (X was here) and of love.
While I prefer the original sign, I did like last week's short-lived "squid loves you," mostly because of its charming, near non-sequiter character. (The next morning, I was disappointed that squid had been replaced by Jesus. I mean, I already know that Jesus loves me. But Squid's love was a revelation.)
The constant revisions, done stealthily at odd hours, suggest a pent up demand for a public space to shout in within our neighborhood.Labels: words
posted by Arlene (Beth)10:09 PM
Passing and Last Words. My maternal grandfather passed away on Saturday, December 29th at the age of 89. He had cancer, and had been suffering from a variety of systemic health failures for the past year or so. The past few months had been especially difficult for him, and included several strokes.
His last words were an inquiry about the state of the bathroom plumbing in the house.
He surely wasn't aware that those would be his last words. He was relying on morphine to speak over the pain he was in. Even if he hadn't had the strokes over the days prior, it's not certain he had much control over what he was saying. If he was aware, it's hard to say if he would have chosen to speak at all, - he'd said his goodbyes to most of his children already - or to say something else. Who among us who plans to die of natural causes really knows for sure when we speak our last sentence?
I've always had this abstract idea of giving a speech before I die, which I blame on Shakespeare ("O, I die. [Three page monologue.]"). But that's not a very sensible plan, and there's no guarantee that any of us will die of natural causes. This odd end of my grandfather's sentences has gotten me thinking about the end differently. While I don't know the circumstances of my hopefully distant death, and frankly do not care to know in too much detail, I hope to live with the zeal that comes from not knowing how much time you have (and wanting to make the most of all of it), and to always choose my words thoughtfully.
I'm not being morbid: it is always good to choose words, rather than just have them thoughtlessly erupt from you. It's always good to be mindful of the feelings of others. You never know when a conversation with someone will be your last conversation with them (for any reason), and you'd might as well have that conversation, and all others you choose to have, be discussions of quality.
This is a challenge, but having your words mean something is a worthy goal. On that note, the comments you are about to make about how I blog too much should be carefully considered and reconsidered before you e-mail them to me, my beloved smart*sses.Labels: words
posted by Arlene (Beth)10:00 PM