Irony, Illustrated

What we like about this photo is that the two signs—the one endorsing English and the other butchering English—were quite clearly written by the same hand. Presumably the little girl’s.

Irony, Illustrated

If you want to get technical, we will be forced to admit it’s possible that this fellow is protesting the stupidity of the Moran family, whoever they are. But you’d have to be a moran to believe that.

This is Why Your Auto-Spellchecker Is Not Enough: Special Yearbook Edition

In order to keep private citizens from unnecessary embarrassment, we’ve chosen to pixelate the face in the above photograph to protect the identity of the poor, unfortunate kid who, thanks to this little mishap, has been revealed to be a complete Nazi son of a bitch.

Your Inability to Punctuate is Making Things Worse

A word of advice: don’t ring the bell. Trust us.

This is Why Your Auto-Spellchecker Is Not Enough.

The Comma: Punctuation's Unsung Hero

Well, as Long as They're Already Dead, I Guess It's Okay . . .

If you’re too incompetent to keep them alive, then burying them
is, technically, part of the job description.

The above photograph of the office of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Bury, Greater Manchester, England, has been making the rounds of the Internet lately, even though the photograph dates from 2005, practically an eternity in terms of pointless and stupid internet fads. 

Mere months after the photo was taken, the sign in question was replaced with the more sensible “Helping Local Animals,” leaving a pun-starved public to hope, probably fruitlessly, that the RSPCA’s stateside counterpart, the ASPCA, happens to open similar offices in, say, Fishkill, Slaughter Beach, or French Lick.¹


NOTE

1. We thought about naming our all-time favorite Austrian town here, but the verb tense just didn’t quite click.

The World's Deadliest Drinking Game

About a week ago, we more or less accidentally discovered the deadliest drinking game in the history of human civilization.

We realize this is a bold statement to make, and one that requires a certain amount of qualification. We admit that it is, in fact, possible to create a drinking game more deadly than the one we’ve discovered. Some examples that we absolutely recommend you do not ever, ever try include:

1. That drinking game where you take a shot every time you breathe.
2. The game where you take a sip every time somebody writes something offensive or stupid on the internet.
3. That one that involves turpentine.
4. The one where you re-create a day in the life of Oliver Reed.

The difference here is that the above games are obviously deliberately designed to kill you, whereas our discovery, is intended to be fun and entertaining, with your unavoidable death being merely an accidental if unfortunate side effect.

The single rule of this game is as simple as it is devastasting: listen to Mike Emrick talk, and take a shot every time he says something weird.

Hockey play-by-play announcer Mike Emrick, wo earned the nickname “Doc” after having graduated with a PhD in Phraseology from Thesaurus State University in 1976, is well known among America’s six dozen hockey fans for his enthusiasm for the sport and for his unusually wide-ranging vocabulary. So when this drinking-game rule demands that you take a shot when Emrick says something weird, it doesn’t mean talking (or, God help us, dressing) like Don Cherry. It means, rather, that you should have a drink whenever Emrick uses a puzzling or intriguing replacement for some of the sport’s more mundane verbs.

Let’s face it, there aren’t that many ways to describe propelling or directing a puck with a hockey stick—not for most of us, anyway—so we tend to stick with a small, meat-and-potatoes variety of verbs: Shot. Sent. Passed. Pushed. Bounced. Deflected, flipped, tipped, fed, held, lobbed. That’s about it for most people.

Not for Mike Emrick, though. Emrick seems to view this linguistic limitation as a challenge, and throws out a cavalcade of synonyms as easily and naturally as we might down an impossibly large number of alcoholic beverages.¹

Lest you think we’re exaggerating, the following is a mostly-complete² list of words used by Emrick during his call of the March 10, 2013, NHL game between the New York Rangers and Washington Capitals. Words used more than once are indicated by the numbers in parentheses:

• Knifed (4)
• Careened (2)
• Filtered (6)
• Ricocheted
• Swatted (2)
• Kicked (2)³
• Rocked (2)
• Jammed (3)
• Sailed
• Spiked (4)
• Banked (4)
• Pushed
• Tucked (2)
• Corralled
• Speared (4)
• Chipped (2)
• Nudged (4)
• Squirreled⁴
• Floated (6)
• Plucked
• Popped/plopped (3)
• Flagged (2)
• Muscled (3)
• Cancelled (2)
• Punched (3)
• Hoisted⁵ (5)
• Reversed (2)
• Pitched (3)
• Brushed (2)
• Ripped
• Jabbed (2)
• Stymied
• Dealt (6)
• Paddled (2)
• Batted
• Blistered
• Shuffled (2)
• Shanked (4)
• Padded (2)
• Hacked
• Rattled
• Squibbed
• Lugged (2)
• Trigger-pulled⁶
• Steered (3)
• Chopped
• Scooped
• Spiked
• Slugged
• Shaken
• Twisted
• Angled

Conspicuously absent from this list is “scaled,” which we know from viewing experience is one of Emrick’s favorites. Also worth noting is that near the end of the game, a clearly exhausted and mentally drained Emrick describes a puck as going into the corner. Even the greatest have limits.

So, at the rate of one shot per oddball word,  you have now just consumed 116 shots in the span of a single three-hour game on a Sunday afternoon. Congratulations! You are now dead, unless of course you are Oliver Reed . . . in which case, congratulations! You are now dead.


NOTES
1. When we write “we” here, what we actually mean is “you.” We can stop any time we want. You’re the one with a problem.
2. For some reason, our wife and houseguests seemed to think it was appropriate to talk about hockey when there was a hockey game playing on the TV in our living room, so we were somewhat distracted and can’t guarantee that this list is comprehensive or 100% accurate. But given how little headway has been made in the scientific study of Mike Emrick’s vocabulary, we’re satisfied with our results.
3. As stated above, all of these terms were used to describe propelling or directing a puck with a stick, and not to describe any of the hundreds of other actions possible on a hockey rink, including but not limited to kicking. So in this case, the puck was not kicked in the traditional sense—that is, with, you know, a kick—but rather not-kicked with a stick, in a non-kicking motion.
4. See note 3, above. To the best of our ability to tell, enhanced by repeated slow-motion replay, the puck in question was not, in fact, propelled or directed in any way by a squirrel.
5. In some cases, Emrick may have used the word “foisted.” We are aware that the word “foisted” rarely makes any sense in a hockey context, but that doesn’t mean Emrick didn’t use it.
6. Emrick did not, in fact, use this phrase in the more conventional arrangement of “he pulled the trigger,” but rather as written, along the close lines of “the puck is trigger-pulled down the ice.”

The Horse: A Beginner's Tutorial

The Horse, Exhibit A: One (1) factory-standard horse.

To the outsider,¹ caring for creatures whose primary goals are to eat and poop can be a perplexing and mystifying experience. Horse people, like most any other group of folks absorbed by a way of life, hobby, or obsession that they’ve grown to love—or were born to love—have developed a vocabulary that can be confusing to the uninitiated, and that (probably inadvertently) makes entry into the world of horse ownership daunting and maybe even a little scary.²

The Horse, Exhibit B: Food goes in here
(at front, below dual air intakes).

We are fortunate enough to have been allowed to gingerly dip a toe into the murky waters of the fascinating world of the horse—the Latin name for which is horsus horsiis— and have gradually learned how some of its more basic terminology translates into proper English. If the following list is too much to follow, take a break partway through to catch your breath, collect yourself, and/or scribble down some notes:

• mare = girl horse
• stallion = boy horse
• gelding = very sad boy horse
• tractor = not a horse
• cow = see tractor
• brown = brown
• chestnut = brown
• sorrel = brownish
• dun = brownish
• dark bay = sort of like brownish
• bay = shitty director (see: Transformers, or better yet, don’t)
• grey = white (seriously!)
• pinto = horse, or bean
• draft = horse
• pony = horse
• quarterhorse = horse
• half-Arabian, half-quarterhorse = one (1) horse, 5/8 of normal size
• horse = crap factory
• manure = crap (literal)
• tack = crap (figurative): saddles, bridles, stirrups, horse blankets, and so forth 
• horse blanket = sort of like a blanket, but for a horse
• tack room = a place to put all your crap (figurative)  
• pile = a place to put all your crap (literal)

The Horse, Exhibit C: Thermal Exhaust Port.

Horse people—that is, horse owners, not Houyhnhnms—have spent somewhere between ten and a bazillion years cataloging different breeds of horse, in the very same way that dog owners obsess over the infinitesimal differences between a teacup poodle and a Saint Bernard. Over time, this has generated a dazzling array of breeds with names that are often region-specific, descriptive, or suspiciously foreign-sounding.

Left: a dog. Right: The exact same dog.

Established breeds of horse include but are not limited to: Abtenauer, Aegidienberger, Albanian, American Paint Horse, American Quarter Horse, Andravida, Appaloosa, AraAppaloosa, Arappaloosa, Araloosa, Arabian, Ardennes, Asturcón, Augeron, Australian Stock Horse, Auvergne, Azerbaijan, Azteca, Baise, Baluchi, Ban'ei, Barb, Bardigiano, Belgian Warmblood, Blazer, Boulonnais, Breton, Brumby, Burguete, Calabrese, Camargue, Campolina, Canadian, Canadian Pacer, Caspian, Castillonnais, Catria, Choctaw Horse, Cleveland Bay, Clydesdale, Colorado Ranger, Coldblood trotter, Comtois, Cuban Criollo, Curly Horse, Danube Delta, Dutch harness, Dutch Warmblood, East Bulgarian, Estonian Draft, Estonian, Falabella, Finnhorse, Fjord, Florida Cracker Horse, Fouta, Frederiksborg, Freiberger, French Trotter, Friesian, Furioso-North Star, Gelderland, Giara Horse, Gidran, Groningen Horse, Gypsy Vanner, Haflinger, Hanoverian, Heck, Heihe, Hirzai, Hispano-Bretón, Holsteiner, Icelandic, Indian Half-Bred, Iomud, Irish Draught, Italian Heavy Draft, Italian Trotter, Jaca Navarra, Jutland, Kabarda, Kaimanawa horses, Karabair, Kathiawari, Kazakh Horse, Kiger Mustang, Kinsky, Kisber Felver, Kladruber, Knabstrupper, Konik, Kustanair, Latvian, Lipizzaner, Lokai, Losino, Lusitano, Malopolski, Mallorquín, Mangalarga, Maremmano, Marismeño, Marwari, Mecklenburger, Menorquín, Mérens, Messara, Monchina, Mongolian Horse, Monterufolino, Morab, Morgan, Moyle, Murakoz, Muräkozi, Murgese, Mustang, Nangchen, Nez Perce Horse, Nivernais, Nokota, Nonius, Norman Cob, Novokirghiz, Oldenburg, Oldenburger, Orlov trotter, Pampa, Paso Fino, Pentro, Percheron, Persano, Peruvian Paso, Pintabian, Pleven, Qatgani, Quarab, Racking, Retuerta, Rhinelander, Riwoche, Russian Don, Russian Trotter, Salerno, Samolaco, San Fratello, Sarcidano, Schleswig, Sella Italiano, Selle Français, Shagya Arabian, Shire, Silesian, Sorraia, Sokolsky, Soviet Heavy Draft, Spanish Mustang, Spanish-Norman, Spotted Saddle, Standardbred, Suffolk Punch, Svensk Kallblodstravare, Swedish Ardennes, Swiss Warmblood, Taishuh, Tawleed, Tersk, Thoroughbred, Tiger Horse, Tolfetano, Tori, Trait Du Nord, Trakehner, Unmol Horse, Uzunyayla, Vlaamperd, Waler, Walkaloosa, Warlander, Westphalian, Wielkopolski, Xilingol, Yakutian, Yili, Yonaguni, Zweibrücker, and Žemaitukas. This is far from a comprehensive list, but you presumably get the idea.

Horse owners thus have at their disposal a wide array of specific terminology that can be used to present themselves as a member of this select fraternity—a sort of verbal secret handshake to suggest that they’re in the know and that they belong.

Of course, a thoughtful, informed answer isn’t your only option:

Your horse-owning neighbor, who you’re meeting for the very first time: Oooh, your wife has a horse? What kind?

You: [after a pause lasting roughly eighty-three seconds] . . . brown?

Even if you almost immediately change your answer to the correct one,³ rest assured that you’ve given an embarrassing, albeit accurate, impression about your horse-related stupidity.

If it’s any consolation, though, when it comes to stupidity, you’re still well ahead of many members of the animal kingdom.

The Horse, Exhibit D: The brain at work.⁴

 

NOTES
1. Or “city folk,” as they may not be called anywhere outside of movies and television.
2. It’s less scary if the horses aren’t panicked and running, and are paying attention to where your feet are. Or so we’ve been told.
3. “Brown and fat.” Also acceptable: “Arabian.”
4. Please note that we do not claim that this photo is funny in any way; we use it merely to illustrate that horses are not necessarily all that bright, at least compared to animals that don’t get their heads stuck in things. And if you happen to find it funny, well, there’s nothing we can do to stop you, but you’re probably a bad person.

A Vocabulary Lesson: Magic vs. Magick

Magic (no k) amazes.

 
Magic is one of the human race’s oldest institutions, older still than Paul Bunyan, Saint Nick, Young Earth creationism, or the yeti. Magic can be entertaining or terrifying, beloved or distrusted, but is just as undeniably a fundamental and tangible part of daily human life as the yeti.
 

Magic (no k) makes you laugh.

The uninitiated, then, may be a big confused by the difference between magic and magick, or even magicks, the latter spellings having gradually returned to the popular vernacular over the last several decades. The answer is fairly simple, believe it or not—serious practitioners of real magic(k) prefer to use the (k) to differentiate what they do from the kind of magic( ) that might better be described as stage magic or simply parlor tricks.

Magic, minus charisma,
looks like this.

 
Well-known acts like David Copperfield, Siegfried & Roy, Penn & Teller, or Criss Angel,¹
then, perform magic. Magic is an act (albeit a very skilled one), a deft mix of distraction, showmanship, sleight-of-hand, and misdirection that combine to give the impression that otherworldly powers are on display when really it’s all just humbug. The practitioners know that magic is fake, but when it’s done right, it can have a powerful effect on the imaginations of its witnesses.

Magick, unlike magic, is to be taken very, very seriously.

Magick, on the other hand, was described by noted British occultist Aleister Crowley as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.” It can seem to the uninitiated to be mysterious, deadly serious, and sometimes dark, and while it’s exceedingly difficult to find credible witnesses to incidents of magick, it nevertheless has a powerful effect on the imaginations of its practitioners.

In other words, if it’s fake, but you can actually see it happening, that’s magic. If it’s 100% real, but totally made up: magick.

You wanna see magic? Pull my finger.

NOTES
1. Assuming any of these folks are still performing, that is. We don’t really pay much attention.

Mangled English

Part 5 of a Potentially Infinite Series

As we understand it, sir, there are indeed other options, but we suspect that they wouldn’t interest you either.

Mangled English

Part 4 of a Potentially Infinite Series

 Please be quite what? Quite charming? Quite loud? Quite drunk, and singing
quite off-key in slurred German at two a.m.? Yeah, we can manage that.

And we shouldn’t even bother pointing out the redundancy of “surrounding neighbors.”

Mangled English

Part 3 of a Potentially Infinite Series

We’re pleased to see that these good folks are willing to look after their premise, and hope they’re just as willing to protect their conclusion.

 

 

You’re Quoting Shakespeare, and You Probably Don’t Even Know It

 

 

you cannot understand my argument, and declare “It’s Greek to me,” you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise—why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then—to give the devil his due—if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then—by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness’ sake! What the dickens! But me no buts!—it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare. 

—Bernard Levin, from The Story of English

Please Stop Stealing Our Fucking Signs

    

 
The tiny village of Fucking, Austria, first came to the attention of the English-speaking world when Salzburg-based Allied soldiers returned home with word of its existence after the end of the Second World War. So for nearly seventy years now, sporadic but gradually increasing numbers of intrepid American or British tourists with a few hours to spare and a taste for the risqué have drifted into Upper Austria to catch a glimpse of and, if lucky, snap a photograph of Fucking.¹ 

According to local legend,² there was no Fucking in Austria until the sixth century A.D., when it was created by a Bavarian nobleman named Focko, who gives Fucking its name. It is rumored that Focko sired some seventeen children before he quit Fucking and returned to Bavaria, leaving his progeny behind. The majority of his offspring—most of them legitimate, but some of them almost certainly Fucking bastards—remained in town and raised their own Fucking children, and their descendents have led lives of mostly quiet anonymity.

Sadly, the advent of the Internet Age—and specifically its rapid dissemination of information—threatens to raise this inoffensive hamlet’s fame to never-before-imagined heights. It’s quite likely that someday soon, tourists from all corners of the world will be flocking to Austria to see Fucking, and Fucking itself will lose its few remaining shreds of privacy and normalcy.³
 

Did you know: Google can be used to find not just pictures of Fucking,
but also directions!

Despite the impending destruction of their quiet way of life—despite the looming threat of an invasion of hundreds of thousands of Americans obsessed with Fucking—these hardy villagers have a more immediate problem:

For decades now, inconsiderate Fucking tourists have been stealing Fucking street signs.

“Initially we assumed it was the work of a Fucking local,” explains Fucking Police Constable Fritz Polizist, “but it became clear that the culprits were outsiders after we finished interviewing every Fucking resident within the Fucking town limits.”

“Frankly,” continues Polizist, “there are a lot of angry Fucking citizens out here getting tired of replacing our Fucking signs every time some Fucking visitor wants to leave with some sort of Fucking souvenir.”⁴

The Fucking mayor, Udo Bürgermeister, claims that the little town can’t afford to keep replacing the signs indefinitely: “We don’t have all that much money in the Fucking budget, you know. We tried holding a Fucking fundraiser a few months ago, but it was a total disaster. Everybody around here claims to love Fucking, but they sure aren’t willing to pay for it.”

Fortunately, after waiting for ages for Fucking City Hall to come up with a solution, some ordinary Fucking citizens have decided to take action. 

The Fucking coat of arms.

“We decided that just sitting around Fucking all day wasn’t going to solve our problems,” says dedicated Fucking resident Johannes Einwohner.

“It’s obvious that better Fucking security is the answer, so we pooled together as much Fucking money as we could get and had closed-circuit TV cameras installed near all of our Fucking signs.”

In recent years, ever-more-brash visitors have moved beyond taking simple photographs with the signs—or, of course, taking the signs themselves—and have proven themselves willing to do all sorts of obscene things near, on, and even to these Fucking signs just for a good Fucking laugh. It’s unclear so far whether any of these Fucking vandals have been aware of the cameras.

“It gets pretty disgusting,” says Einwohner. “And you wouldn’t believe the group that signed up to monitor the cameras. I’ve never seen so many Fucking perverts.”

Mayor Bürgermeister has given up trying to explain his sleepy little town’s popularity with international vulgarians. “Foreigners just love Fucking, and honestly, we can’t see what all the fuss is about,” he says. “Hardly anybody in all of Austria has ever even heard of Fucking, much less seen it for themselves. You should see how confused they get when they just happen to see Fucking right here on the side of the road.”

Still, despite its budgetary problems and the looming threat of an unmanageable influx of snickering English-speakers with Fucking on the brain, the villagers wouldn’t even dream of giving up on Fucking: “I love everything about Fucking,” says Bürgermeister. “Fucking is f______ great.” 

No way in hell are we going to ruin the fun
by translating this one for you, but we’ll
provide you a link. Trust us, it’s worth it.

NOTES

1. Occasionally, according to the London Daily Telegraph, an entire tour bus will make the trip, for those tourists who prefer to see Fucking in large groups.

2. Depending on context, the German phrase “local legend” can mean either “Wikipedia” or “stuff we mostly made up ourselves.”In this case, it’s both.

3. It’s true, you know—any fool with a mouse can find Fucking on the Internet.
4. Polizist, incidentally, cannot recall ever having heard of Dick Hertz from Fucking. So that’s one down.

Words that Changed the World V

  

“Frnxt ghrt Sony gurm?”

  

Rock n' Roll Trivia. Brought to you by Scotland.

“Hair of the Dog,” probably the most enduring song by Scottish rock band Nazareth, is one of that intriguing minority of rock tunes in which the song’s title is not mentioned anywhere in its lyrics. And unlike (for example) Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Faith No More’s “Epic,” or Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—for which the songs’ titles can be seen as describing either their style or themes—the phrase hair of the dog seems to be completely unrelated to its song, which depicts a man confronting and challenging a manipulative woman, telling her that she’s met her match.

Adding to the muddle is the fact that the phrase hair of the dog has a colloquial meaning, one that is also totally unrelated to the Nazareth song. Most everyone who has awakened to a crippling hangover after a night of alcoholic excess has thought—assuming the simple act of thinking isn’t unbearably painful—of taking a bit of the “hair of the dog that bit them.”

Novice drinkers or those unfamiliar with English-language slang will be relieved to learn that taking the hair of the dog that bit them does not necessarily involve being bitten by an actual dog—although it could be argued that a properly executed bender would, in fact, greatly increase one’s odds of being bitten by any number of species, most of them unsanitary.
 

“First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink,
then the drink bites the man and poops on the rug.”
We’re pretty sure that’s how the old saying goes.

Furthermore, hair of the dog does not involve mixing actual dog hair—or, God forbid, any other dog parts—into one’s drink. It’s fair to point out, though, that your average drunk is generally willing to eat or drink all sorts of awful things that a sane and sober person would never consider: dog food, dog hair, mat shots, bottles of Tabasco sauce, Jägermeister—the list is practically endless—and if you’ve managed to convince yourself that a tall glass of dog hair will make you feel less hung over, we won’t stop you unless you’re standing on our carpet at the time. 

No, to take the hair of the dog, in a drinking context, simply means to try to cure a hangover by getting right back up on that vomit-colored horse and starting to drink again.

To the non-drinker, this seems counter-intuitive and nauseating, even borderline crazy, not to mention likely to spiral into ever-bigger problems down the road. The experienced drinker, on the other hand, knows that the best way to undo a mistake is to continue making it, again and again and again, until coming to the partially-sobering realization that shut up, I don’t have a problem, I can quit any time I want.





Any listener with a passing knowledge of the English language will find it safe to say that “Hair of the Dog”—we’re talking about the song again now—has nothing to do with hangover cures, alcoholism, hair, bites, or dogs. How, then, to explain the title?

We’re glad you asked. Back in 1975, right around the time when Nazareth was working on the album that became Hair of the Dog (which, not coincidentally, contained the song of the same name), certain parts of human society actually were troubled by naughty language. This is why recording artists had to wait more than thirty years to truly express their musical genius through insightful song titles such as “Fuck” (Bring Me the Horizon), “Fuck” (Derrick Jensen), “Fuck You” (Cee Lo Green),  “Fuck You” (Nuno Bettencourt), “Fuck You” (Dr. Dre), “If You Seek Amy” (Britney Spears—she can spell, get it?), “Motherfuckeroos” (by a band called, believe it or not, Fuck),¹ “Shit” (Tall Tall Trees), “Shit?” (Whiskey Tango), and “People = Shit” (Slipknot), or band names such as Oh Shit! and Shit Robot.²

Nazareth wanted to name their album and the song Son of a Bitch—because, hey, they actually do say that in the song, quite a bit actually—but their record label didn’t like it. John Lennon could probably have gotten away with it, but Nazareth didn’t have quite the same clout, so instead they had to get clever. Hence, the title is a play on words, which is a kind of thing smart people sometimes do to convince themselves that they’re smart:

• A son, as you may be aware, is often an heir to his parents’ fortune or land; heir, pronounced correctly, sounds kind of like hair.³
• Bitch, as you may also be aware, is a name for a specific kind of dog.
• So, Hair of the Dog = Son of a Bitch.

And he says son of a bitch in the song! Get it?

Ha! I get it. It spells F-U- . . .
Wait, let me start over.

We’re well aware that many of our readers had probably either learned or figured out this little bit of irrelevance long ago. We ourselves caught onto it almost immediately when it was explained to us, several weeks ago. For the rest of you, though, we hope that this has provided a small but intriguing insight into the history of rock and censorship. And for any of you who seriously believe that “If You Seek Amy” is a clever title for a song, we’re quite confident that this absolutely boggled your minds.

NOTES

1. We’re guessing they bring the house down at all the junior-high dances they’re invited to play. Although the title “Motherfuckeroos” is such a bizarre combination of offensive and silly that we are forced to admit that we laughed when we first read it.

2. We suspect that they’re not very good. 

3. Pronounced incorrectly, it sounds like “tractor.”

Words that Changed the World IV

“Madda tal hadda abaga dinga zah;

Haddoo baggawns adda walashaw.
Wuli buli [repeat 4x].
Madda tal hadda lada tanachaw,
Lesna beal sava, gana lanadah.

Wuli buli [repeat 4x].”

Price on Freedom of Speech Raised to $500

Countless bumper stickers across the country remind us that “Freedom Isn’t [or occasionally Ain’t] Free,” and 2004’s Team America: World Police took this one step further by calculating the price of freedom to be precisely $1.05. Apparently, though, the good folks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have decided to up the ante considerably. On December 21, 2010, bus passenger and recent Milwaukee transplant Terry Duncan found out just how costly his freedoms were after he was fined five hundred dollars by an undercover police officer simply for speaking.¹

A few things worth mentioning here:

• Duncan was not acting in a hostile or abusive manner to the driver or his fellow passengers.
• Duncan was not threatening the president (or past presidents), which as we all know is a federal offense, even if the president in question, past or present, kinda sucks. Which he quite possibly does. Warren G. Harding, I’m looking at you.
• Duncan was not shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, which is considered a no-no if the theater is not, in fact, on fire.

What Terry Duncan did on that bus, simply put, was use naughty words. He wasn’t swearing at anybody, but rather was merely “engaged in a conversation when he let the expletives slip.” He said both “fuck” and “shit”² conversationally—perhaps as little as once each³—and received not only a ticket but also a healthy ration of smirking disdain from fellow passengers who, as accomplished legal scholars, are well aware that their Constitutionally-protected right to not be offended trumps others’ rights to free speech.⁴

We here at Bowling in the Dark tend to swear fairly often, but despite our personal flaws, we aren’t big fans of vulgarity. We’re saddened when we hear it from the mouths of children (except when it’s funny), and believe that excessive use of profanity is embarrassing and usually a sign of a limited vocabulary. But the unpleasant nature of naughty language doesn’t give us the right to control anybody’s language but our own.

An official statement from the Milwaukee County sherriff’s department addressing the matter claims that “people should be able to ride the bus without feeling intimidated by someone’s language or behavior.” Bus passengers interviewed after the incident tended to agree:

“You can’t swear. A lot of people don't like all the ‘f’ words and ‘s’ words around their kids, and there’s a lot of elderly people on the bus, and you have to respect your elders so, that’s what he gets.”—bus passenger Ebony Jett⁶

“I think he should have got [the ticket]. Kids be on the bus, families be on the bus. Nobody wants to hear that kind of language.”—bus passenger Jean Jones

“People should not get on the bus having to hear disruptive conversations. You can get a fine for that. It’s the law. You can’t do that.”—bus passenger Tiffany Coo

In the interest of giving equal time to opinions actually worth having, though, let’s hear from somebody who actually fought for others’ liberties instead of trying to whittle away the ones he didn’t like:

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”—George Washington

We admit that General Washington didn’t specifically say “and that includes naughty words, too,” so it could be argued—albeit very stupidly—that he may actually have approved of stomping on certain folks’ rights when he didn’t like what he was hearing, despite having clearly stated the opposite. Fortunately, other smart folks have chimed in on the subject over the last 2,300 years:

“Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.”—author Salman Rushdie 
  <blockquote><a href="http://www.quotecosmos.com/quotes/15909/view">Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself..</a></blockquote><br> <a href="http://www.quotecosmos.com/authors/6322/Salman_Rushdie">Rushdie, Salman</a><br> Quote from <a href="http://quotecosmos.com">Quote Cosmos</a>
“The basis of a democratic state is liberty.”—Aristotle, 384 BC-322 BC

“The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.”—U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy

Salman Rushdie, as you should well know, has more experience than most anybody at being persecuted simply for expressing himself; Aristotle, while perhaps better known for having married Jackie Kennedy, also dabbled in education, science, government, philosophy, politics, and ethics,⁷ and is known for knowing a thing or two; and it could be argued that a U.S. Supreme Court Justice with more than three decades of judicial experience has a better sense of what’s appropriate, legally and Constitutionally speaking, than the Milwaukee County Sherriff’s Department or a bunch of schmucks on a bus.

But ignore all their qualifications if you like, and instead just boil down the comments from each group to their basics, and decide which attitude sums up what this country and its citizens’ attitudes on free expression should be. In fact, skip that first part; we’ve boiled it down for you:

1. “You must be allowed to say what you want, even if I don’t like it.”
2. “You can’t say what you want because I don’t like it.”

Or, to illustrate it a touch more crudely,

Figure 1.1: the two ends of the spectrum of opinions on freedom of speech. 

Pick a side. 

(Hint: the guy on the left is very unlikely to advocate killing the douchebag on the right.)

NOTES

1. We use the word speaking here for convenience; it’s a handy way to represent the much more cumbersome phrase exercising one’s once-Constitutionally-protected right to free speech.

2. If you’re offended that we typed out the words “fuck” and “shit” instead of a more family-friendly “f___” or Beetle Bailey-style “@$#!” . . . well, frankly, it’s a little surprising that you allow yourself to have unmonitored access to the internet, but nevertheless we sincerely apologize for having troubled you with language that, admittedly, can occasionally or even often be inappropriate or offensive. You’d be well within your rights to ask us to tone it down, and it’s quite possible that we’d oblige—we may be jerks, but we don’t like looking like jerks. On the other hand, if you think you have or deserve the right to prevent us from using this kind of language, you can go fuck yourself.

3. Duncan said he used “two words,” which could mean that he swore only twice or that he swore multiple times, but used only those two particular words—the articles we’ve found haven’t been particularly clear on this point.

4. Here we’re trying to use irony,⁵ but it’s a slippery concept that we can usually recognize but can’t really define and rarely use properly. If we haven’t pulled it off correctly, and you’re not sure what we’re getting at, contact us privately and we’ll send you a copy of our extensive notes.

5. Some might say that we’re not being ironic, we’re just being pricks. That’s probably fair.

6. We here at Bowling in the Dark have no way of knowing whether this person’s name really is “Ebony Jett,” but we promise you that we weren’t the ones who made it up.

7. No real footnote here, we’re just a bit giddy to see the words politics and ethics in the same sentence. It’s like spotting a unicorn.

Damn You, Steve Martin

It may be too soon, and perhaps a tad excessive, to blame the downfall of Western civilization on Steve Martin, but we reserve the right to say “I told you so” if and when the time comes.

Steve Martin is, by any account, a tremendously gifted comedian, actor, musician, and writer, having won an Emmy Award (in 1969, for his work on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour), four Grammy Awards (for his 1978 and 1979 comedy albums Let’s Get Small and Wild and Crazy Guy, and 2002 and 2009 musical albums Foggy Mountain Breakdown and The Crow), and a best actor award (from the New York Film Critics Circle for 1984’s All of Me). His novellas Shopgirl and the Pleasure of My Company have sold pretty well and been well-received, as have his humorously offbeat collections Cruel Shoes and Pure Drivel.¹ 

His sense of humor ranges as wide as his other talents, too; he’s equally at home with goofiness (note the bunny-ears photo above, or his King Tut music video from Saturday Night Live), satire (L.A. Story, Bowfinger), or sociopolitical analysis of race relations and wealth stratification in pre-recession 1970s American society (The Jerk).² 

For all his valuable contributions to society, though, Steve Martin may eventually be best remembered—or perhaps vilified—for popularizing, if not actually creating, a hand gesture more offensive than the fig, the bird, the arm of honor, or even the legendary Belgian Elbow: 

Air quotes.

Except for Chris Farley—who is only playing a character here³—what
we’re looking at is an awful mix of smarminess, insanity, and
ill-advised mustaches. Don’t be like these fuckers.

Steve Martin, according to author David Frum, used air quotes extensively in his early, wildly successful stand-up routines.⁴ Had Martin been less funny, less famous, or less likeable, the gesture may have died a quiet and well-deserved death, but, sadly, he was not.

It was hoped that having a roundly disliked public figure of approximately equal stature adopt the same gesture could counteract Martin’s influence and kill the air quote, but, regrettably, the ideal choice for the job lacked the motor skills needed to correctly accomplish the gesture.
  

“Blast these damned arms! That’s it, you bastards, I’m putting you both on my list.”

Despite our noble Nixon’s best efforts, air quotes not only survived but thrived in post-Watergate America. More recent attempts to defame the air quote, involving increasingly despicable participants on a global scale, have met with spectacular failure for much the same reasons.

“Is this right? No? Shit. I really suck at this, but it’s Israel’s fault.
I’ll figure out why once my anti-psychotics wear off.”

It would be reasonable to worry that air quotes are here to stay. Most troubling about this is that not only do people use them too often—especially in cases where regular human voice inflection and facial expressions do a better job of conveying meaning than extraneous pseudo-punctuation ever could—but also that the damned things simply get used at the wrong times.

There is a proper time to use what are called scare quotes: when you want to change the meaning of a given sentence. Here’s how it’s done. We’ll start with a straightforward sentence, explain it, and then show how scare quotes alter its meaning. Stop us if you get dizzy:

• Billy is a smart guy. This perfectly normal sentence implies (by which we mean “states”) that Billy is a smart guy.
• Billy is a “smart guy.” This implies that Billy is actually not a smart guy.
• “Billy” is a smart guy. This implies that the smart guy’s name is not actually Billy.
• Billy is “a” smart guy. This implies that Billy is actually multiple smart guys. You’re not likely to run into this state of affairs all that often, either in grammatical or interpersonal situations.
• Billy is a smart “guy.” This implies that Billy is smart, but that we know something you don’t about “his” gender.⁵

If your aim is to imply any of the above, use the quotation marks accordingly and you’re all set. Unfortunately, though, most people use air quotes for emphasis rather than to change the implied meaning of a sentence, which means that they’re unwittingly saying something far different than what they mean.

For example, let’s say you run into your all-time favorite singer, Bono,⁶ and want to tell him that you think he’s great. What you want to say is this:

I love your CD!

But instead, because you didn’t keep your hands in your pockets, what you said was this:

I “love” your CD!

Congratulations, jackass, you just told Bono that his CD sucks, that you hate it, and that you’re willing to go way out of your way to let him know. You’re the worst fan ever. He’s going to go home and cry himself to sleep on his huge pile of money, and probably throw away the macaroni-shell portrait you sent him.⁷

So the power is in your hands. It’s up to you to choose whether to begin to undo the damage done by Steve Martin and his wacky hands, or continue to follow his most misguided footsteps—acting like a smarmy prick, an musclebound asshole with a bad mustache, or a space alien masquerading⁸ as a pop musician—butchering unoffending English and making Bono cry. It’s all on you now. Don’t screw this up.

NOTES

1. I thought they were pretty damned funny, anyway. I don’t actually know if anybody else on Earth actually liked them, or even read them.
2. That’s what that movie is about, right?
3. I realize that Mike Myers is technically playing a character as well, but I would argue that Goldmember puts him safely in the “smarmy” list, and The Love Guru suggests insanity.

4. According to How We Got Here: The ’70s: The Decade That Brought You Modern Life—For Better or Worse, 2000.

5. Did you pick up on what I was doing with the scare quotes around “his”? Nice.

6. You want us to believe it’s Bono, but it’s not. It’s actually Tiny Tim. Seriously, what’s wrong with you?

7. Yeah, we know all about that.
8. Until recently.