Category Archives: language

Dodging Nosy Questions

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“So, when are you and Janet going to give your mother grandchildren?”

“Why spend $300 per hour on a shrink when it’s not going to do any good anyway?

“Why do you always eat junk food when you know you have high blood pressure?”

“Are those boobs real?”

Questions you can’t answer. Questions you don’t want to answer. Questions you want to slap a person for asking. Questions that are just begging to start a fight. We all hear them, sometimes from our nearest and dearest, and sometimes from total strangers.

There is an answer – other than “Shut up and leave me alone,” which may indeed be your initial reaction, but usually isn’t the best solution. (Except maybe to the boobs question.)

Noted linguist and author of The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense Suzette Haden Elgin recommended a technique called the “Boring Baroque Response.” It’s not a skill everyone has at the ready, but with a little practice, you can expand your ability to deflect the nosy and the belligerent.

The essence of the Boring Baroque Response (or BBR) is storytelling. No matter the question, you stare off into space and launch into the longest, most rambling story you can. Here’s an example:

Idiot: “Why do you always eat junk food when you know you have high blood pressure?”

You: “That’s interesting you should ask. It reminds me of when my parents and I were visiting Cousin Jim and Cousin Addie – you know, the ones that lived near Natural Bridge and had that kitchen that was painted all black. And whenever we visited my sister and I played in the hayloft. But it didn’t have hay, it was really bales of straw. Dried-out corn cobs, too, which they fed to the animals, like the mule. I rode that mule once, bareback, and you wouldn’t believe how bony its backbone was! Anyway, Cousin Addie was making biscuits and gravy – sawmill gravy with milk, not red-eye gravy with coffee – and Cousin Jim always said….”

Keep going as long as necessary until the questioner gives up and goes away. As Elgin noted, “A response like this delivers the following message: ‘I notice that you’re here to pick a fight. Do that if you like, but it’s not going to be much fun for you, because I won’t play that game.'”

According to Elgin, the secret of the BBR is to deliver it with a straight face and a thoughtful, reminiscing tone. Sounding sarcastic or snotty will give away the game. And although the example was (vaguely) related to food, as the question was, it doesn’t have to be. The story can be about your sister and how she wanted to be a veterinarian, which she would have really been terrible at because….Well, you get the idea.

My husband had a version of the BBR that he used when he worked in community-based corrections. He would regale the “clients” with stories full of analogies – “You know when they make steel how they forge it first in really high heat and then plunge it into cold water. Well, that’s kind of like….” He could rarely get out more than a sentence before the listener would edge away, saying, “No stories, please, Mr. R. I’ll behave. I’ll be good. Just no story!”

I don’t know if Elgin ever heard it, but the best BBR I know is the monologue that Grampa Simpson produced when asked to break up a union meeting:

“We can’t bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways…. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m’shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. ‘Gimme five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say. Now where were we… oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. I didn’t have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones….”

Now that’s classic TV! Just like the episode of WKRP when Mr. Carlson had an idea for a promotion and Les was supposed to report on it live from the shopping center, but the one store didn’t want him standing in front of it because customers couldn’t get in, so then….

 

 

What’s in a Number?

etc., funny things, humor, journalism, language, , , , , , ,

The Top 5 Breakfast Sandwiches in L.A.

12 Reasons to Hire a Wedding Planner

11 Grammar Lessons From the CIA Stylebook

10 Fun Uses for Old Card Catalogs

9 Bizarre New Snacks to Try

5 Weirdest Gins and Vodkas You Can Buy

4 Words Parents and Kids Should Never Say

What do all these headlines have in common? That’s right – numbers.(1) Now read them again without the numbers. Are the headlines any better or worse? Reasons to Hire a Wedding Planner. Fun Uses for Old Card Catalogs. Weirdest Gins and Vodkas You Can Buy. What’s wrong with those?(2)

I never understand number-crunching headlines.(3) I always find myself asking, “Why 10 fun uses and not 9 or 11? And couldn’t the Wedding Planner have stopped at 10? Or bumped it up to a baker’s dozen?”(4) Someone somewhere must have done a study revealing that if a headline has a number, more people will read it.(5)

Maybe it helps people plan their day: “5 breakfast sandwiches and I’m done! That should be just about right for my morning dump. I’ll save the CIA grammar one for lunch hour.”

There are a few things I know after years of editing, and one of them is this:(6) If you mention a number in the headline, it is a solemn vow to the reader. There should be that many fun uses for old card catalogs – no more, no less. All the readers with OCD are checking.(7)

Even more annoying are the headlines that combine letters and numbers: The 3 Cs of Forklift Safety.(8) Or worse, the ones that try to help you remember the number of points with a stupid acronym: The CHILD Plan for Preventing Tantrums. Invariably, one of the letters is an Elastic Man Stretch (I – Invent something for the child to do.), or the author calls it the CHiLD Plan because she can’t think up an I any better than “Invent something for the child to do.” (9)

Maybe this fixation with numbers began with David Letterman’s top 10 lists. Maybe it was Keith Olbermann’s Countdown. Maybe it was even pop music’s Top 20 or childhood’s Ten Little Indians rhyme (or, I suppose, Agatha Christie’s mystery novel).(10)

However it started, it doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon. There are probably 5 or 14 or 600 reasons for that. I’m sure I’ll be reading about them all by next month, if not sooner.(11)

(1)  Also, they’re all real headlines, even the one about the CIA Stylebook.

(2) Nothing. Except the gin and vodka one. The only flavored gin you need is lime and the only flavor to add to vodka is more vodka. A friend once wrote a song in which he mentioned “cranapple schnapps.” He had no idea how prophetic he was being.

(3) Though I am fond of numbers. I even celebrate Pi Day, March 14, yearly.

(4) 2 Reasons No One Says “Baker’s Dozen Anymore.” No one knows that it means 13, and bakers don’t give away free cupcakes anyway, especially if they’re for a gay wedding. Plus, the bakery boxes are all made to hold 12. Oops. I guess that would be 3 reasons.

(5) There’s probably also a study that says whether the number should be odd or even, though our sample headline writers don’t seem to have read it. I know that in graphic design, odd numbers are preferred – 3 bubbles filled with text, 7 scallops in the top border, and so on. I think it’s a rule invented by the same people who insist on 3-letter acronyms: LOL, FTW, AAA, WWW, TIL, RLS, IBS, OCD, ADD, WTF? I’m just glad there’s a website where I can look up what they all mean.

(6) Another one is this: Those hyper-annoying cards that fall out on your feet when you’re thumbing through magazines? They have a name. They’re blow-in cards. No one knows who invented them, so you can’t send hate mail. The kind that don’t fall out on your feet are called bind-in cards. No one knows who invented those either, so you can’t send a thank-you card.

(7) With any luck, the editors, nearly all of whom are at least a little OCD, will be checking.

(8) Conceal the keys. Conceal the keys. Conceal the keys.

(9) Invest in a sugarless candy’s stock. Insist your spouse take your child to the grocery. Instruct your child in anger management. Increase your dosage of Xanax.

(10) Although I expect that today’s children recite more politically correct counting rhymes and no mystery editor would let such a title through these days.

(11) Sorry about all the footnote numbers. They probably made this post more complicated than necessary.

Books, etc.: Revisiting the Old School

books, education, etc., language, literature, , , , , , , ,

Sarah Seltzer recently wrote on Flavorwire that, as the title of her article says, “We re-read our favorite books as kids and why do we stop as adults?” (http://flavorwire.com/518840/why-do-we-re-read-our-favorite-books-as-kids-and-why-do-we-stop-when-we-get-older)

She says, “[A]ll the reading I do is for a different homework — the social kind. Even popular series like The Hunger Games and the Sookie Stackhouse series make my reading list at least partly to keep me ‘up on the conversation.’”

My experience has been different.

Reading is never homework for me, and really wasn’t when I was a child either. If a friend has read a book that I haven’t, I simply ask what it’s about and what they thought of it. Voilà – conversation.

I certainly did re-read more as a child than as a grown-up. My mother had to insist that when I went to the library, I take out something new in addition to Green Eggs and Ham.

But I – and many of my adult friends – continue to re-read books. Sometimes it’s books we loved as children, and other times it’s children’s literature we’ve just discovered, and still others it’s books we’ve recently encountered. Without even a book group to keep us up to date, my friends and I pass around recommendations. Right now I’m reading Libriomancer on a friend’s advice. Do I care if it’s less trendy than Grey? I do not. Will it make my re-reading list? I won’t know until I finish it.

A while back, I wrote in this blog about “comfort books” – books we return to again and again, for familiarity, for memories, for new insights, for reminders, for nostalgia, or for just plain fun.

We each have our own list of comfort books. My friend Leslie and I both go back to anything by Lois McMaster Bujold (at least yearly) and Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series. I go back to Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy and Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and David Sedaris, and even nonfiction like The Hot Zone and Angela’s Ashes None of these are beloved books from my childhood, but touchstones of my adult life. (Some of them don’t fit the usual definition of “comfort,” but it is, in a way, comforting to me that they retain that spark of awe when revisited.)

When my tastes change (as they have over the years), my re-reading list changes too, though my old favorites remain there for me. Recently I’ve grown tired of the mediocre memoirs and formulaic novels that sell for $1.99 on B&N, and gone looking for books that fill me with wonder when I first read them and are worth a second – or third or fifth – reading. And I’ve found some. Life of Pi (which I just re-read). The Book Thief. Egg and Spoon.

(Do you have any suggestions for books of similar quality? Please, please leave them in the comments section.)

Not that revisiting one’s childhood reading is a bad thing, for as Seltzer notes, there lurk new insights and a mature appreciation of the author’s craft.

Two books from my earlier reading days recently crossed my path again. These are books that endured multiple readings in my teen years – To Sir, With Love and Up the Down Staircase – both tributes to my enduring interest in education (as I would now say) or (at the time) my desire to become a teacher.

Neither book was a waste of time to re-read, and neither, although familiar, spoke to me in the same way it did all those years ago. Re-reading them was both comforting and newly challenging. They stood up to their repeat performances.

Both startled me by their references to high school students as “children.” I suppose to the school system they may be, but I think of many if not most of them as young adults, or at least kids or teens. (I also was taken aback by the word “pupil.” Is that still used in some parts of the country? To me, they are students.)

Some aspects were new to me. As a teen (raised in a lily-white suburb and attending a lily-white school), I noticed but missed the depth of the comments on race in To Sir, With Love. While I understood that Up the Down Staircase highlighted the bureaucracy of the education system in a large city high school, I was clueless about the application of that to all schools, even mine.

“Re-reading offers something that few other cultural experiences do, really: a mix of gentle stability and sharp new insight,” Seltzer says. “Taking the time to re-experience the art we loved best in our past can be a way of spending time with ourselves, and though its rewards are mostly unseen, that may make them all the more important to seek out.”

Now that I can’t argue with.

But I would add that my re-read list keeps growing longer as I grow older. It’s not just childhood favorites that are worth re-reading, but any book that has become beloved to me. And falling in love with a book is definitely not something I’ve left behind. New love can happen at any age.

Now where did I put my copy of Green Eggs and Ham? Ah, there it is – right next to the Lois Bujold.

Books, Etc.: But Where’s the Wonder?

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It Hurts When I Poop!(1) That is the actual title of an actual children’s book, though not, I’m sorry to say, the sequel to the classic Everyone Poops.(2)

No, it is an instructive children’s book meant to help youngsters through the trauma of – I don’t know – toilet training? Constipation? Hemorrhoids? At any rate, some kind of fundamental difficulty.

This seems to be the way of children’s books these days. Take a look at your local bookstore (if you still have one) or the wares at Amazon. Book after book in the children’s section are of a genre “How to Get Through the Difficulty of X.” X can be nearly anything.

In particular, The Berenstain Bears seem to have a lot of difficulties. Their books include The Berenstain Bears…
…and the Bully
…Visit the Dentist
…Learn About Strangers
…and Too Much TV
…and Too Much Junk Food
…and Too Much Teasing
…and The Bad Dream
…and the Bad Habit
…to name but a few.

And while the Bears have a bad habit of eating too much junk food and then dread visiting the dentist, other children and anthropomorphized animals cope with still other plights:
Maggie Goes on a Diet
Wilma Jean the Worry Machine
Hooway for Wodney Wat (3)
Mean Jean Recess Queen
Lacey Walker, Non Stop Talker
Olivia Acts Out (4)
The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark

Still other books seem problematic. I haven’t read Don’t Squeal Unless it’s a Big Deal, but I wonder how they expect children to differentiate. What’s a “big deal” to a kid and to a grown-up can be quite far apart on the scale of secrets.

Then there are the really problematic books. Awful Library Books (5) has singled these out for their questionable topics and premises, unpleasant underlying assumptions, and creepy illustrations:

Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy: A child’s book about satanic ritual abuse (6)
For Your Own Good (foster care)
I Know The World’s Worst Secret (alcoholic mother)
Please Come Home: A child’s book about divorce (7)

These are not issues that can be made “all better” with a quick “real-life” scenario and a flimsy moral.

Granted, issue-oriented children’s books have important uses, but they’re not kid lit. Parents choose them because they think the lessons will be helpful. But such books lack the essential qualities of literature: engaging, complex characters; adventurous or truly touching plot lines; satisfying stories. In a word – imagination. Good children’s literature is fun.

Think about the Harry Potter books, for example. They contain underlying messages about friendship, loyalty, and bravery, as well as standing up to bullies, dealing with disappointment and grief, and defying prejudice. All without titles like Harry Potter and the Dead Godfather.

Children clamored for these books, obsessed about them, mentally dwelt in them. When was the last time you heard a child say, “Oh, Mommy, please, please, please buy me Olivia Acts Out“? How long a waiting list does the library have for Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy?

Think about Green Eggs and Ham – a simple book with a simple story that does not explicitly say, “Kids, try new foods. You might like them.” It does not portray an ordinary kid-just-like-you dealing with a problem. It captures the imagination with silliness, propels the minimalist plot along with kid-friendly repetition and rhyme, and reaches a satisfying conclusion. No wonder I checked it out at the bookmobile every single time I went.(8)

There is plenty of good children’s literature for all ages, from the classics (Treasure Island, Charlotte’s Web, Where the Wild Things Are) to more modern tales (Harold and the Purple Crayon, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Gregor the Overlander).

Michael Longcor said it in his song “Imagination”:

“Imagination is a friend to help you through a friendless land.
Imagination can take you to the stars and back again.
Imagination can make you more than what you thought you’d be.
It can raise a world from ashes. It can set the spirit free.” (9)

Children’s literature crafted with imagination can free the spirit in adults as well as children. It’s something we all need.

(1) No, it doesn’t, I’m glad to say.
(2) A book I always give to new parents of my acquaintance, along with Shel Silverstein’s Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book.
(3) A book about rhotacism. Think Bawwy Kwipke. Or Rodney Rat. Now you’ve learned a new word. You’re welcome.
(4) Is it just me, or do a lot of these problem children seem to be girls?
(5) awfullibrarybooks.net
(6) No, really. awfullibrarybooks.net/satan-for-kids/
(7) Described by Awful Library Books as “Daddy left because you were bad.”
(8) It’s still my all-time favorite book. Ever.
(9) Michael Longcor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Longcor, “Imagination,” Kitchen Junk Drawer. Available at http://www.firebirdarts.com/product_info.php?products_id=147

Dancing and Sex

etc., fun and games, funny things, humor, language, music, NSFW, , , , , , , ,

Everyone’s heard the joke about the fundamentalist who won’t have sex standing up because it looks too much like dancing. In fact sex and dancing have long been linked.

Remember Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show? Well, neither do I,(1) but his appearance was famously broadcast with a picture showing him only from the waist up. His dancing and pelvic gyrations, along with the lustful rhythms of pop music, were sure, it was thought, to lead directly and immediately to teenage pregnancy.(2)

But there’s another connection between shaking your booty and doing the horizontal mambo. In popular songs, the word “dance” is often a code word for sex.(3) Or rather, the sex act.

That’s right. You can take almost any pop song that talks about dancing and substitute your favorite word for coitus.(4) I have here a modest list.

screw, boink, boff, shag, bonk, bang, fornicate with, do it, eff, copulate, hook up, get laid, get it on, bed, sleep with,(5) score, bone, nail, and the good old f-bomb (6)

Let’s try it, shall we?

“I Wanna Dance With Somebody Who Loves Me”(7) becomes “I Want to Screw With Somebody Who Loves Me.” “Dancing in the Dark” translates to “Fornicating in the Dark.”(8)

Some translations seem perfectly natural. for example, “Come Dancing” shifts easily and appropriately to “Come Boinking.” “All She Wants to Do Is Dance” becomes, quite understandably, “All She Wants to Do is Shag.”

Other combinations get a little weirder. “Boffing on the Ceiling” sounds strange and difficult, yet somehow tantalizing.(9) And “Save the Last Copulation for Me” is neither romantic nor sexy.

Of course the theory breaks down after a while. I’m pretty sure that “Dancing in the Streets” is surely not code for “Getting Laid in the Streets.” And “Land of 1000 Hookups” can’t possibly be right.

On the other hand, “Flashfuck: What a Feeling!” adds a whole new dimension to the song.

Here are a few more choice specimens:(10)

“Scoring With Myself”
“Safety Bonk”(11)
“I Can’t Stop Screwing”
“Private Boinker”
“Your Mama Don’t Fuck”(12)

On the other hand, I suppose the Beatles song would become “Why Don’t We Dance in the Road?” and Jimmy Buffett’s, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Dance?” I doubt if either would have been a big hit, but I could be wrong. At least they could be played on Top 40 radio.

(1) Oh, come on. I’m not that old.
(2) Ah, the good ol’ days, when a set of earplugs was considered a prophylactic.
(3) A little code word game: thug = _______, Hitler = _______, gun = _______, haggis = _______.
(4) A shout-out to The Big Bang Theory. Nobody else says “coitus” anymore, not even sex researchers.
(5) Which shouldn’t even be on the list. If you’re sleeping, you’re doing it wrong. (See “do it,” above.)
(6) For those of cleanly mind, just replace all these words with “freak.” There is an app that “cleans up” sexy novels. One problem: Every reference to the sex act becomes “freak.” Men’s genitals are “groin” and women’s, “bottom.” This leads to some fascinating dialogue:
“Where shall I [freak] you, Victoria? Where do you want my [groin]?”
“I want it in . . . my [bottom].”
You can read more about it here: http://www.romancenovelnews.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1167:my-clean-reader-app-experience&Itemid=53,
(7) This was an early hit for Whitney Houston, back when she’d sing things like, “No matter what they take from me/they can’t take away my dignity.” Boy, was she ever wrong on that one.
(8) Please. “This gun’s for hire”? See #3, above.
(9) “Banging on the Ceiling” could go either way, as it were.
(10) Feel free to play along at home. Send me any really good ones. Or really bad ones.
(11) Should be the theme song for Planned Parenthood.
(12) Realistically, she had to have, at least once. Unless you’re adopted. Or cloned.

Language Police and the Grammar Nazis

education, etc., language, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

For most of my life I’ve been a grammar nazi. For part of my life I was a member of the language police. At one point, my business cards even identified me as punctuation czar.

I now have regrets.

In general, I hate the language police. However, I do understand their philosophy, and it’s not wrong. The implementation of it is sometimes questionable and heavy-handed, but the theory is sound. How we speak and the words we choose to use do affect our thinking. The reverse is also true. Our thinking determines our language choices. If you want to change one, changing the other one is one of the easiest routes. You can see its effectiveness in the fact that n-word is no longer acceptable not just in polite society, but in any context. The next to go will be the r-word, a much-used schoolyard taunt in my childhood. The world is better off without both of them.

Does eliminating the terms mean that people no longer think them or think of people in those terms? That’s a tough question, but we hope the change is real and positive. If there’s a chance that it is, the effort is worth it, even if restrictions of language choices seem foolish, feel dictatorial, and are easy to mock.

Indeed they are easy to mock. Hence the term “politically correct,” now a code-word for any words or phrases you think are unnecessary, clunky, or purely propaganda. Who hasn’t laughed at the saying, “I’m not overweight; I’m under-tall”? Who hasn’t winced when nouns (“slaves”) become long phrases (“person who is enslaved”). (The point of that one is to make the hearer think of the person first, and then the condition – slavery – and realize that slaves are not intrinsically slaves and not automatically slaves forever. They may have been free in the past or will be free in the future. I’m not sure that example will be successful. But “person with dyslexia” is, I think, better than “a dyslexic.”)

Textbooks these days are rife with examples, and when I wrote for and edited textbooks, I had to police the language. We couldn’t talk about birthday parties or vacations because some kids had never had one. We couldn’t talk about dragons, even in fiction because that might imply magic and hence Satanism. I once spent hours trying to think of a breakfast food that would be recognizable in most cultures. The best I could come up with was “juice.” Our joke was that the only acceptable words in the title of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea were “the” and “and.”

Being a grammar nazi is a different matter. I used to take delight in knowing all the rules and enforcing them ruthlessly. Gradually I have gotten away from that practice. I felt it was impolite to go around correcting people unless they had asked for my help. I still corrected my family because – hey – it was mentally painful to be around people who misused hopefully or split infinitives. Or who mispronounced “nuclear” or “foliage,” for that matter. But I would keep my cringes inside when my boss mispronounced “sarcophagus,” until he finally asked me, “Is that how you say that?”

Over time, though, I’ve loosened up my standards a little bit. Before I was a prescriptivist (believing in and enforcing rules), but the older I get, the more I am moving in the direction of descriptivism (accepting the way people really talk). (Except in writing, which is more formal. And don’t tell me I just used a sentence fragment and started a sentence with a conjunction. That is the sort of thing up with which I will not put.)

I can thank linguistics for this shift in perspective. In one of my linguistics classes, I disputed with another student about whether a certain usage was sub-standard or non-standard. I was firmly on the side of non-standard. How I reconciled that with my insistence on the Oxford comma, I’ll never know.

The watershed moment in the prescriptivist/descriptivist debate came when one of the major dictionaries decided not to include usage labels like “vulgar” and “slang.” Essentially they were declaring that all words were equal in the eyes of the lexicographers. This caused quite an uproar. If there were no standards for usage, how could we prove that we were better than the people who spoke sloppily or incorrectly?

My soul was torn.

The change that came over me was due in part to a stunning revelation – that the English language and the Latin language are two separate animals. The old bugaboo about not splitting infinitive, to which I was passionately devoted, has its source in the fact that in Latin it is impossible to split an infinitive. Latin infinitives are all one word. It makes no sense to transfer that rule to English. “To boldly go” would not be possible in Latin but now is perfectly acceptable – to me – in terms of grammar as well as rhythm and meter.

I still can’t abide weather forecasters, though. “Rain shower precipitation activity”? What? Do they get paid by the word?