Prose and Kaa

You've no doubt heard the old expression, "as useless as teats on a boar hog." Or, as I've more often seen it spelled or heard it pronounced, "tits on a boar hawg."

I propose that we immediately throw out this standard of uselessness and replace it with one that is more timely.

"Useless as a politician."

Now, granted, absolutely nothing is ever going to be quite as useless as a politician, so the phrase would have to always be used in the negative.

Examples:

• Nothing is as useless as a politician.
• Her boyfriend may be good-for-nothing, drug-using piece of shit, but at least he's not as useless as a politician.
• That woman is almost as useless as a politician, but at least when she dies, her organs can be harvested and might save a life.

Etc!

So, let's get on this. Start using it in print. Let's do this.

Not just any word. A specific word to describe a type of distortion I hear in podcasts from time to time.

It typically happens during an interview, when, say, two or more people are recording a podcast and at least one of them is using Skype. When the computer gets a little busy, the audio processing can't seem to keep up, so there's a momentary "stretching" of the syllable the person is saying and it comes out sounding like the audio equivalent of a pixellated image.

The person might be saying "I visited Spain as a high school senior," but the processor gets a little overburdened during 'Spain' and it comes through as "I visited Spaaaaaaaaain as a high school senior."

Another time I hear it is when watching satellite TV and there's weather, the same thing happens in video as well as audio. The image will freeze on one kind of pixellated image and the sound will do that same thing.

It's so hard to find an audio clip to give you an example when I don't know the stupid word to use to look up said clip to get said word.

This, however, is what I was able to find because it's the one case I remember from a movie where the effect was used on purpose. This is a clip from The Matrix just as Neo starts to fall down the rabbit hole.



I have it cued up right to the point where the voice distortion happens. Stupid thing. It claimed to be cued up at the point. Fast forward to 54 seconds, or just before that.

So. What do you call that? Is there jargon for it?

If you read my most recent post (and I know for a fact that you all hang on my every syllable, so of course you've read it), you know that I'm all a-flutter with a new idea I'm working on for a story or series of stories involving a Fairy Tale Private Eye (FTPI).

It's flowing (like buttah!) and I keep running into a problem. I kind of want these to be in the spirit of fairy tales. But noir detectives have a certain . . . patois.

They use words like 'toots' and 'dame.' Tend to leave off nouns and pronouns. Talk in fragments. Be terse.

I got all that covered. :)

What I need, though, are some words I can use for curse words. Not 'By the Black Beard of Baldur, I abjure thee!' curses, but 'stubbed-my-toe' curses. The kind of words a person says when they get up at 3 AM to use the bathroom and jam their toe into the table that clearly wasn't there when the lights were on, or when you step in something the cat coughed up en route to said bathroom at said hour.

Something . . . fairy-tale-y.

I'm having trouble with that, for some reason. I have the voice of the character (it's basically Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade) down, but . . . I need some believable curse words for him to use.

'Rats' doesn't cut it. And 'crap' seems too . . . this world. I used 'wolf bait' in this bit:

I'm the last guy in Fairy you wanna pull that load of wolf bait on.

You can probably guess which curse word it replaces.

I'm not sure I like 'wolf bait,' but it's good enough for now.

I'm not purposefully aiming these stories at a YA audience, but I am trying for the 'film noir' feel, and I don't believe they cursed much in those, either.

I'm asking for suggestions. Hit me!

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I have several personalities, each of which I've let come out to play on my journal, from time to time.

There's Skippy the Skeptic, the personification of my inner skeptic. When he comes out, it's usually in the form of—

Really? We're going to do this again?

<sigh> Yes, Skippy.

I still loathe you for calling me Skippy, you know.

How well I do. Because you keep telling me. Over and over. And over.

So, after Skippy came Bradford, the personification of my inner child. I made a joke that my inner child is a 4-year-old brat. Later, he got a name.

WANNA 'NOTHER COOKIE!

Bradford, you can't—

BUT I WANNA!
He's just going to keep shouting until you give in, you know.

I'm nominally in charge, here, you know.

You would be if you'd ever bother to grow a pair.

Aaaand that would be Preston, the Procrastinator. Who is pretty much responsible for my epic ability to procrastinate. And who, for reasons unknown to me, insults me a lot.

I believe that a better word for what you do is 'perendinate,' which certainly describes your actions far better than 'procrastinate.'

Yes, Jürgen. As you probably already figured out, Jürgen is my inner grammar nazi.

You should capitalize 'Nazi.'
What if he doesn't feel like it, you Hitler-loving—
I'M BORED!

Shut up, Bradford!
Be quiet, child!
Waste of your time, Gentlemen.
Why did you capitalize 'gentlemen'? It should not be cap--
I did it just to annoy you.

What-evs. I'm outta here. There's, like, stuff to do. Tomorrow. Or maybe Sunday...
'Outta' is not a word!

<watches them all go> This is what it's like inside my head, some days.

You know, the days where I don't have a stuck song.

I believe you meant 'on which' instead of—

I will hurt you.

I'm altogether sure this is not an original thought by any definition of the word 'original,' but I thought it, and I laughed out loud in the men's room. Luckily, I was alone. And now, I share it with you.I'll be here all week, folks. Try the veal!

Have you ever been sitting in a public place minding your own business when, from a nearby table/grouping of people, you hear something that, taken any number of ways, would make you make this face: o.O ?

I was at my favorite Mexican restaurant, today, for lunch. (El Azteca Buckhead on Peachtree, if you care.) I was reading whilst finishing up my excellent repast of carnitas when, from a nearby table, I heard . . .

Let me pause for a brief moment to give you a mental picture before I tell what I think I might possibly have perhaps heard. Maybe.

It was a table, not a booth. When the trio were seated, the waitress tried to put them in a booth, but one of the guys requested a table because the booth was too small. (I have this same problem in a lot of places¹, so I say this only to set a mental image, not to denigrate this man in any way.) It was this man and two companions, one male, one female. I didn't get a good look at the companions because they were both seated with their backs to me. But all were well-dressed, probably in their late 20s or early 30s, and clearly on their lunch break from work.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post, already in progress.

From this table, I hear the guy with his back to me say to the big guy I can see, "So, you're planning a rape?"

<insert Scooby Doo sound and sideways head tilt here>

The big guy responded with, "Greeeeeaat." It was hard to hear over the loud Mexican pop music² and the conversations of the other diners—well, and my own brain going, "What? Hold the phone! Did he just say 'rape'?"—but I'm pretty sure that's what he said.

Of course, I played it back several times in my head, trying to make it be other sound-alike words that might make more sense, considering the addressee's response. "Rave" makes the most sense of anything that immediately popped into my head. But I couldn't picture any of them dancing at 200 bpm whilst waving glow-sticks around and popping Ecstasy.³

"Date," perhaps . . . but I couldn't reconcile that with the guy's reaction.

"Race," "raid," "rage," "rake," "rail," "rain," "rate," or "raze" make no sense in context. Nor do "tape," "nape," "jape," "gape," or "cape."

So in the interest of maintaining what little sanity I can claim to have left, I'll go with "rave." Yes, "rave." So, hey, folks, there's a rave! Somewhere . . . in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area! At, you know . . . some point.

Yay!

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1. In addition to building theater and airplane seats for 12-year-old, anorexic Japanese school girls, many restaurants seem to think Americans are getting smaller instead of bigger. I know they can cram in more seating by making the booths smaller, but . . . I like breathing. It's always been one of my favorite things to do.
2. Have you noticed how all Mexican songs seem to contain the word 'corazón,' which means 'heart'? I didn't until Hard 'n' Phirm pointed it out.
3. Yes, as a matter of fact, I am stereotyping.

I can understand The United States of America, The United Kingdom, The People's Republic of China, The Kingdom of Thailand, etc. There's an adjective or two in there. (Don't ask me why, but . . . that seems to be why.)

And The <whatever> Islands, for kind of the same reason, and I can even handle The Netherlands, because they're both kind of plural. Ish. (Again, don't ask me why. It just is.)

But what I don't understand are the following (which we don't technically use anymore, but in the past, they have all been used):

• The Sudan
• The Congo
• The Ukraine

I mean . . . what's the reasoning for them?

Am I the only person who thinks of things like this for more than a couple of minutes?

Why isn't "fora" the plural for "forum"?

A prophet is one who makes predictions for the future. Those predictions are called prophecies.

Other than 'chosen one', what do you call someone who is the target of, subject of, or instrument by which that prophecy might be fulfilled?

For instance, there is in the land of Vandelon a great prophet Grapnir the Three-Fingered. He prophecies

In the one hundredth winter of the Rule of the Deceptor, one shall arise from the Forgotten City who shall free the Enslaved of Darvon and lead the People in Revolt.

(Yes, I just made that up. Yes, it's awful. Yes, prophecies are often peppered with Random capitalized Words.)

So if Grapnir the Three-Fingered was the prophet who prophesied the prophecy, and Ted the Unobtrusive is the One Who Shall Arise from the Forgotten City, what would we call Ted other than The Chosen One? (And, of course, other than "The Unobtrusive." :)

I keep wanting it to be proph- something. You know, because of the whole -et/-ecy/-esies thing.

I've tried looking for it at Onelook.com, but have been so far unsuccessful.

[Note: Yes, this is for a writing project. :)]

Hello! Jürgen, here.

Vampire Weekend has a wonderful, catchy song called "Oxford Comma" which starts

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?

For those of you who aren't grammar Nazis, the "Oxford comma" is that final comma in a list of items separated by commas.

At the grocery story, I bought milk, eggs, flour, cinnamon, and butter.

The one before "and butter."

In most cases, it's a matter of style whether you leave the Oxford comma off or use it. As long as you're consistent within a document, do as you please. It truly doesn't matter. Most of the time.

There are a few rare cases, however, where it changes the entire meaning of the sentence if you leave it out.

For instance, the other night, I went to dinner at Bones with my friend Zach and his parents, who were here in Atlanta and graciously invited me to join them. On the menu was something called a "Mixed Grill." Under the item, the description was given as

A six-ounce fillet, lamb and pheasant sausage.

Those of us at the table talked about whether this was two items

a fillet
a sausage made of both lamb and pheasant

or three items

a fillet
lamb
a sausage made of pheasant

We asked the server, and he said it was three distinct items. I halfway expected him to say, "You know, we get that question a lot," but he didn't. Hmph. Must not be as many grammar Nazis in Atlanta as I thought.

I debated telling the restaurant that they need a comma between "lamb" and "and."

But frankly, it was so good, they can do whatever they want. :)

I just thought it served as a good example why there are occasions when the Oxford comma isn't (or shouldn't be unless you're plying the reader with delicious, melt-in-your mouth fillet mignon, lamb chops, and pheasant sausage with a cherry demi-glace) optional.