the blog quebecois

Conversation with a friend, who coaches his two young girls in basketball:

"So the other team comes in, and one girl points at the basketballs we brought, and says, 'We're not playing with that basketball. That basketball is so gay!' Just what the hell is a gay basketball, anyway?"

"DamnedifIknow," says moi. "Get me another beer while you're up, willya?"

Some weeks later I saw an article on the Internet (and if it was on the Internet, it must be true) that shed some light on this little mystery.

Apparently among the younger kiddikins, "gay" has become synonymous with "stupid" or "useless."

Now this is richly amusing, or tres amusant as one would say if one was very pompous and willing to trust that his readers wouldn't notice the missing accent, because it's too much trouble to look up the HTML code.

My take on this was that it was the natural rebellion of children who are hammered round-the-clock (well, at least in the schools and on TV) with the message that homosexuality is perfectly natural, nay, admirable.

At that age, heterosexuality seems goofy enough; what they make of swanning poofsters and diesel dykes could probably be summed up as: Stupid. Useless.

When homosexual activists first hijacked "gay," I objected.

First, they were robbing the English language of a vital and lovely word. Words matter to me.

Second, the word stolen wasn't as innocent and...dare I say it? gay as they thought it.

My Concise Oxford Dictionary (1964) defines it thus:

"Full of or disposed to or indicating mirth, light-hearted, sportive; airy, offhand; *(sl.) cheeky, impertinent...showy, brilliant, bright-coloured, finely dressed."

But it also lists a secondary, sad undertone:

"(euphem.) dissolute, immoral, living by prostitution"

that might more closely describe the tragic demimonde that homosexuals too often inhabit.

I was assured (...no, pedantically instructed) at the time that English was a fluid and dynamic thing that would change regardless of my hidebound fussiness.

Huh! They were right after all. There's no telling what kids will run with.

They make me madder 'n a wet hen. Cliches. I must've seen a million of 'em, and at the risk of flogging a dead horse about it, I'm about ready to go ballistic...

OK, they do creep into my language once in a blue moon (heh), but, at least in writing, I try to keep them to a minimum. It bespeaks at least laziness, if not a genuine poverty of metaphor. (Oddly, the poverty of metaphor hasn't seemed to hurt the likes of Danielle Steel or Tom Clancy much. They must have a "richness of simile" or something.)

One in particular drives me to distraction. (I know, I know.)

"At this point in time."

This usually comes from politicians, PR flacks, bureaucrats, etc., who, I suspect, are paid by the word to sound off at length and with authority, while in truth saying as little as possible.

To deconstruct: Something can happen at this "point," or something can happen at this "time," but when something happens at this "point in time" it is high time to point out that I could just plotz.

But nevermind. Another corruption of the language has crawled upon the scene, and I am dutybound to remark it.

"Just kidding!"

By which I refer to the lamentable habit that some have of tacking the phrase onto the end of whatever remotely-outrageous thing they have said, or think they might have said, or wish they hadn't said at all. An example or two:

"Women sure are lousy drivers . . . [brightly] Just kidding!"

"I say, let's kill them [insert favorite race, religion, sex] all . . . [brightly] Just kidding!"

This never works. You'd have to have the timing of Jack Benny and the chutzpah of Lenny Bruce to carry it off.

I understand what people are up against in this brave new PC world. There is a palpable floating fear that something one says, no matter how subtle or well-intentioned, will be misunderstood or torqued out of recognition by the leagues of the Perpetually Offended.

With real consequences. I recall the Washington, D.C. (city manager?) man who used the word "niggardly" in a presentation and was forced to resign when some illiterate in the audience complained. (I believe he was reinstated a few days later when the Post and Times started to rain down ridicule, always the best PC [and D.C.] disinfectant.)

This "Just kidding!" is the tic, the flinch of our age. You never know when some moron KGB-wannabe is hovering just in earshot waiting to dispatch you to the GULAG.

So like minor Soviet poets, we giggle at the edges of ideas and fire off that exculpatory flare, "Just kidding!"

Not for me, this krepnechz prutzkov. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say.

When I say, "Let's kill all the [insert favorite race, religion, sex]!"

I mean, "Let's kill all the [insert favorite race, religion, sex]!"

I am serious.

[beat]

Just kidding!

How can anybody be so bloody insensitive?

When a German lawmaker, Martin Schulz, questioned a new Italian law giving Berlusconi immunity from criminal prosecution during his premiership, the Italian leader responded by seeming to imitate Schulz's German accent and saying, "Mr. Schulz, I know there is a man in Italy producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to suggest you for the role of kapo. You'd be perfect."

A kapo was a guard usually drawn from the ranks of the prisoners.

As Berlusconi made the statement, his head cocked to one side, he broke out laughing. The chamber of the 626-member European Parliament, however, erupted in jeers.

In comparing a German politician to a concentration camp guard, and seeming to make a joke of the Nazi era, Berlusconi broke one of Europe's long-standing taboos. And by singling out a politician for a personal gibe, he violated unspoken rules of etiquette in Europe's central institutions.

Better he should have shown the exquisite nuance of, say, former German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin:

Bush wants to divert attention from his domestic problems. It's a classic tactic. It's one that Hitler used.

See, the difference is that Berlusconi was (however lamely) joking. As far as I can tell, Daeubler-Gmelin was serious (though those twinkling eyes hint at quite the mischievious little imp).

And it's not as if the sentiment is expressed all that often. A Google search turned up 251,000 hits on Bush +Nazi. Whereas Hitler +Nazi still holds the lead at 396,000.

So it's not like people are throwing this Nazi stuff around lightly. No sirree, Bob.

From the University of Arizona at Tucson's home page:

New College of Ed. Dean Sets Agressive Agenda

CESL Challenges All to Excell in English

Not that I would ever pick on spelling errors for a cheap and easy blog entry, of coarse.

From PC Watch:

GAV and Wazza, the gay couple from the hit TV reality show The Block, proved to be such nice people that any homophobia from middle Australia was quickly transformed into fan mail from families.

It's latest negative reincarnation may be a backlash by children against political correctness, suggests Sydney University's Gary Simes, who is compiling a dictionary of sexual language. "For all that society has become very [tolerant], I suspect it's a reaction against the fact they have to accept homosexuals and political correctness....."

This is happening in Canada, too. I wrote about it back in January, coming to much the same conclusion.

The thing I like about the English language is its sprawling inclusiveness. It freely borrows when it needs to -- caveat emptor; kindergarten -- but is fiercely, democratically resistant to change imposed from above. No French Academy to dictate what the proper form of "e-mail" is. (Does anyone remember what they eventually came up with?)

I suspect that "gay" is rapidly on the way out, and my vote for the next locution electrocution would be the ghastly lengths that people go to avoid the male impersonal pronoun. "S/he"? Take a hike, sister.

So you've gotten into a furious argument with a Lithuanian, but you can't come up with a crushing ethnic insult. Hold your tongue no longer, for here is the Racial Slur Database, which proves that the peoples of the world are truly united, if only in their hatred of each other.

"Lit" or "Balt" or "Litvok" should do the trick. Never let it be said that this blog isn't educational.

Update: The people, er, person has spoken. Henceforth email notification on comments will not be sent out.

Kerry: "When I was a young man, he was in the state department stationed in Berlin when it and the world were divided between democracy and communism." The silly mark, may you succumb (A desire to see the continuing fall of communism)

Kerry: "I am determined now to restore that pride to all who look to America." Bush gone with war (Implying that Bush's priorities are with war)

Kerry: "We have it in our power to change the world but only if we are true to our ideals." I found it in the hill (A reference to Capitol Hill. He believe power lies in the (Capitol) Hill.)

Some people have got way too much time on their hands. The above excerpts were taken from John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention. The bolded portions are allegedly "reverse speech," an interpretation of phrases heard when (you guessed it) you play the tape backwards. To quote from the website:

It has been called the discovery of the 7th sense. The research into this phenomenon has been described as being of "Nobel calibre". It has been featured in numerous publications around the world, and in the United States it became a household name in the late 90s. It is called Reverse Speech, the phenomenon of hidden backward messages in speech. It initially gained worldwide fame in the early 80s as those strange backward messages in rock and roll. Since that time, research has progressed significantly and it is now known to exist in all forms of human speech.

If human speech is recorded and played backwards, mixed amongst the gibberish at regular intervals can be heard very clear statements. These statements usually appear in short sentence form and are nearly always related to the forward speech. It appears constantly throughout language, so much so in fact, that it is believed to be a natural part of our speech processes.

Uh-huh. The guy deserves some kind of award, I guess what a maroon for actually listening to the entire speech backwards. Though maybe it was an improvement over the forwards version.

There's much more here. He also has "analysed" GWB as well. Bush is much more profane, and "says" things like hide the filthy nigger, but he is a Republican, so that's no surprise.

you’ve got me turning up and turning down
and turning in and turning ’round
i’m turning japanese

-- the vapors

From a guide to museums, temples, etc., in Japan. This is just a hunch on my part, but I'm guessing that English wasn't the writer's first language.

Animal Tei EDOYA
Animal residence EDO shop

Even the inside of Izu which a strange thing is abundant in, most. Suggest coming in if it gets tired of the traffic jam. Even if fatigue increases further, it isn't responsible.

IZU Andy land

The tortoise of the world, you who is familiar and whom it wants to feel. The spot which a tortoise maniac can't miss. Again, the spiritual world, to you of familiar Mr. Tetsuro Tanba fan whom it wants to feel as well.

ATAGAWA banana wani en
Atagawa banana & crocodile garden

If Atagawa is said, banana wani en. But, are you a crocodile if it is a banana in Atagawa because of what? I am about to want to go without thinking deeply. A way has prospects evil it is narrow. It is careful of the accident.

Via Bifurcated Rivets

You know when someone asks you a question and you don't know or aren't sure about the answer? So you go, "hmmm."

You know how sometimes you go to a room in the house looking for something, but all of a sudden you can't remember what it is you were looking for? So you go, "hmmm."

You know when you're looking in the refrigerator for something to eat, but you can't decide what you want? So you go, "hmmm."

I guess as a service to Canada Council-funded artists struggling to complete their illustrated novels, the department of Library and Archives Canada maintains a page of literary sound effects:

Cries of pain, suffering, terror, rage, fear etc.: AAAA, AAAAA, AAAAAAA, AAAAAAAAA, AAAAAAAAGHHH, AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH, AAAAGGHH, AAAAGH, AAAAHH, AAAARRRRGH, AAAARRRR, AAAG, AAAGG, AAAGGGH, AAAGGGK, AAAGGK, AAAIIEEE, AAAKHH, AAARGHHH, AAIIEEEE, AAIIIEEEEE, AARGH, AARRGH, ARRHH, ARRGGGGG, AARRRRR, AGGAAAAAAA, AGHA, AGHH, AGHHH, AGHHHHHH, AGK, AHH, AHHH, AHHHHHGH, AIEGHH, AKKK, AKKKK, ARGGH, ARRGHH, ARRGHHH, ARRHH, ARRRRRR, EEE-EE-EE, EEEYOWW, EEYAAA, EEYAGH, EEYARGH, EEYARGX, GAA, GARR, GRAAH, HNNNGNN, KHAKK, OOFPH, OW, OWW, OWWW, OWWWW, UGKH, UNNHH, UNNNGHH, UNNNH, UUUUURP, UUUUUUUUUUUUNNN, YAA, YAAA, YAAAAA, YAAAAAAGH, YAAG, YAGGGGHHHHHHHH, YEE-OUCH, YEEAAGK, YEEARGH, YEEEAAAHR, YEEEARGH, YEEOOW, YEOW, YOW, YYYAAHHAAAGGHH, YYYY

Crying sounds: OOOOOO, SOB: see Cries Moaning Wailing

This section was collected by bugging an H&R Block office the evening of April 29.

Yesterday was Louis Braille's birthday, and Google reworked its logo to commemorate the date:

As did Playboy:

Actually, Playboy didn't, but that's an authentic braille copy, fron November 1995. It was apparently being auctioned off on eBay (before eBay got the jitters and removed the listing).

It's just one of the many fine offerings of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, a division of the Library of Congress.

Via Banterist

"I went numb and couldn't speak for two minutes. Then I couldn't stop laughing."

Mother Shetal Patel had also failed to spot their error despite being a registrar's assistant, says The Sun.

She said: "I thought Russell had seen a ghost when he came away from the computer. We decided on the name a month before he was born - we both loved it straight away."

The couple are now concerned that Drew's name will cause him problems in later life.

Gee. Ya think?

A dictionary-maker, unless he is a monster of omniscience, must deal with a great many matters of which he has no firsthand knowledge.

So H.W. Fowler wrote in the Preface to the 1929 Concise Oxford Dictionary. (Yes, I actually read the Preface to the 1929 Concise Oxford Dictionary. Hey, I was a lonely child.) I was quite taken by the phrase, and resolved to use it every chance I got.

Which opportunities turned out to be rather rare in practice. It just doesn't lend itself to everyday conversation:

Is it raining out?

What am I, a monster of omniscience?

D'you think the Red Sox will take it this year?

What am I, a monster of omniscience?

You see the problem? You start to sound like Howard Cosell, waxing rhapsodic about Muhammad Ali:

Ali! A. Monster. A. Monster. Of. . . omniscience!

But I've finally found a use for it. It makes a perfect title for a blog post. After all . . .

Made ja look! Made ja look!

to fill my manly mug, Ma'am. (Large print on cup says, "Happy Wildness Men." Indeed.)

Via Engrish.com

Baby, baby
Stick your head in gravy
Wash it out with bubble gum
and send it to the Navy

Not sure what the Navy would do with a head encrusted with gravy and bubblegum, but I suppose they could turn it into some sort of bio-weapon. Other schoolyard rhymes from around the world (with all the childish vulgarity that you'd expect) here.

I don't know if you were around for the glory years of Saturday Night Live, when it was actually funny.* One bit that was notorious was Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtin in a "Point/Counterpoint" segment on Weekend Update that invariably included the line "Jane, you ignorant slut." (Curtin would rebut with "Dan, you pompous ass.") People were actually scandalized by Ackroyd's joke, but as I noted at the time, if the Standards and Practices folks (the networks' supervisors of legal and moral issues) raised a red flag, the writers would simply point to the standard dictionary definition (which might have had some sexual innuendo in that an unwholesome woman might also have unwholesome impulses in other directions -- but this was strictly a matter of inference).

Which brings us to the "Slutwalks" of late, which are more of an excuse for silly women to parade around in their underwear, imagining that they are making some profound statement or other. Janet Street Porter comments on the incongruity of it all:

Why are women so keen to appropriate the word slut? It’s a mystery to me. Slut, as Germaine Greer pointed out the other day, historically means ‘a woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits or appearance, a foul slattern’ — nothing to do with sex and everything to do with cleanliness.

Maybe they've hit upon it unconsciously:

This is just a guess on my part, but I'll bet a substantial number of them are unacquainted with the finer points of personal hygiene; let alone the business end of a dishrag.

(* In retrospect, I was stoned much of the time, which even made their typically interminable beating-a-joke-to-death routines tolerable.)

CBC:

Beijing's representative in Ottawa says Chinese firms are not involved in foreign espionage and he challenges anyone who says otherwise to produce evidence or keep quiet, in a rare interview airing Saturday on CBC Radio's The House.

Zhang Junsai, China's ambassador to Canada, tells host Evan Solomon, "I can assure you that our companies working in other countries are strictly doing business according to the local laws."

"If you really have the evidence, come [out] with it. If not... shut up," Zhang says in no uncertain terms.

Well, that's certainly . . . um, undiplomatic language. But maybe we should cut the ambassador some slack. I understand that the young Zhang's first real job was in the rough and tumble world of the Chinese clothing trade.