Attention students: the editing bug is going around. Thanks to Kim for sending this shot taken of a sign in a ladies’ room at Downstate Medical School.
The play by play as I see it:
A for effort, girls. The first step toward proper grammar is acknowledging that you have a problem. If med students in the middle of exams have time to think about usage — while on the potty, to boot! — maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.
Update: September 29. The battle rages on….
This could get ugly.
Posted in Write and Wrong
Tagged agreement, downstate medical, editing, grammar, potty, spelling
Come on Schwartz. Come on Schwartz.
The fundamental premise of the Mattel Mindflex makes it one of the coolest games ever. Seriously, ever. (Note, I didn’t say most fun, I said coolest. There’s a difference.) The object is to move stuff with your mind. Here’s the gist: You put this doodad on your head, then you stare at this li’l Nerf ball real hard, then suddenly the ball starts floating. You levitate the thing. It’s pretty trippy.
I tested this out a few months ago and wrote about it for Popular Science. The itch to try it for myself was strong enough that I actually put that ridiculous thing on my head in a public place, and tried to be the ball. The headband has a sensor — a dry contact electrode — that rests on your forehead just above the left eyebrow, over the SP-1 region of your brain’s frontal lobe. That’s the part of your noodle involved in things like problem solving, motor function, memory, language and judgment. (Clips on your ear lobes take a baseline reading as a control.) When activity in the area increases, the game runs an algorithm to translate that into a level of concentration, which then determines the level, or height of the ball. The headband and game base communicate over a wireless bandwidth similar to Bluetooth. Amazingly, you look like even more of an asshole in this contraption than the jerks with their LED-flashing earpieces. Added bonus.
This weekend’s New York Times Magazine On Language column, written by Ben Zimmer (in for Sir Safire) looks at what Zimmer calls “the age of undoing,” the preponderance of backformed words created by tacking a convenient un- to the front of everything.
The article begins:
“What’s done cannot be undone,” moaned Lady Macbeth in her famous sleepwalking scene. If she woke up in the 21st century, she would be pleased to discover that whatever can be done can be undone, too.
Or perhaps it just seems that way in the new social spaces we are carving for ourselves online. On popular Web sites devoted to social networking, innovative verbs have been springing up to describe equally innovative forms of interaction: you can friend someone on Facebook; follow a fellow user on Twitter; or favorite a video on YouTube. Change your mind? You can just as easily unfriend, unfollow or unfavorite with a click of the mouse.
The recent un- trend has also seeped into the world of advertising. KFC is marketing its new Kentucky Grilled Chicken with the tagline “UNthink: Taste the UNfried Side of KFC.” The cellphone company MetroPCS challenges you to “Unlimit Yourself,” while its competitor Boost Mobile wants you to get “UNoverage’D” and “UNcontract’D” (ridding yourself of burdensome overage fees and contracts). Even victims of the financial downturn can seek solace in un-: ABC broadcast a special report in May telling viewers how to get “Un-Broke.”
It goes on to trace the un-ing of words back to some linguistic genesis, one rooted largely in the electronic world. Forsooth, there once was a time when the “Undo” command was novel. But what interests me more than their digital-etymological rise are the cultural connotations of these words, and what they signify beyond their definitions.
Take, first, Zimmer’s advertising and ABC examples: UNfried, UNlimit, UNoverage’D, UNcontract’D and Un-Broke. What I see here is more than clever marketing, but the display of a pervading sense of dissatisfaction. Typically, branding serves consumers (that’s us) with aspirational images. Beer will make you cool and popular, makeup will make you beautiful, etcetera, ad infinitum. Buy this, become better. But these un- slogans are not about becoming what you want; they’re about un-becoming what you are and wish you weren’t.
Posted in Shoot the Messenger, Write and Wrong
Tagged ben zimmer, boost mobile, facebook, kfc, new york times magazine, nytimes, on language, un-, william safire, youtube
Engadget featured this golf-course transporter. Who even cares how dumb the product is, or how dumb you’d look riding one down the fairway? What I want to know is: Who the fuck’s idea was it to name the thing Mantys?
Mantys: Never lose track of your balls again.
A wise woman of the cloth once asked, how do you solve a problem like Maria? And as the story goes, there were in fact many problems, including, but not limited to:
While my understanding is that the convention of WWII Austria was to express your cares through song, the mother of a modern abbey might kneel at the altar of information and query Google, “Problems with uppity nun.” Because that’s what we do now. We consult the higher power that is The Net.
Today the Unhappy Mediator wonders, just what is our problem? That, as it turns out, is a rather different question from, what are our problems?
Continue reading
Posted in Google Game
Tagged blackberry storm, face, Google Game, iphone, no child left behind, problems, the sound of music, vista
Forget the hype. I don’t want to wax philosophical on the troubling societal implications of Snuggie’s ascendancy to national renown. I’d just like to take a quick red-pen look at this magazine ad:
I’m confused. Is this, perhaps, meant to say “Get Your Snuggie On”? Shouldn’t it? I’m just sayin.
I mean, those people look like they’re getting their Snuggie(s) on, don’t they? (Whatever that means.) I guess it could just be telling the reader to put on his Snuggie like a mother telling a kid to put on his coat. Though my mom probably would have said, “get your coat on” rather than “get on your coat.” Maybe it’s an instruction to get onto your Snuggie. Sit on it. Mount it. Ew, I’m done with this line of reasoning.
So, is this clever, or just awkward? Well if that isn’t the crux of the Snuggie itself.
Can’t stand ’em, can’t help by sing along with ’em, want to kill ’em or fuck ’em or both, there’s sadly no denying the thoroughness with which the freecreditreport.com guys have permeated the pop culture bubble. The latest commercial features faux frontman Eric Violette getting stuck with a crappy cell phone as a result of his crappy credit. I’ll pretend it didn’t occur to me that the slick 80s brick with the Gordon Gekko/Zach Morris pedigree doesn’t appeal to a certain late-twenties-probably-broke-ish demographic. But I barely had time to consider the fact, as I was quickly distracted by how long the singer’s hair has gotten.
Like he thinks he’s some kind of rock star. Like he is some kind of rock star. Oh my god, is this guy some kind of rock star?
sing along
or
change the channel…
quickly and quietly
or
while spitting expletive-laden vitriol about how much you hate these fucking commercials and these fucking songs and that fucking guy.
An iconic singer who compels a whole country to react, and to feel. Rings suspiciously of rock stardom to me. Shudder.
You might be thinking, “Oh please, we can tell the difference between a rock star and some TV-ad hack.” Maybe you can, but think of the children.
For the love of all things holy. For the future of this great nation. Think of the children.
Posted in Shoot the Messenger
Tagged freecreditreport.com guy, hate fuck, rock star, tv commercials
In yet another example of the foreign media unable to tell the difference between nonsense and news, Germany’s national news wire was taken for a ride yesterday by a merry band of movie makers and fake rappers. Behold:
Here’s what DPA, Germany’s national news wire reported this past September 11th:
A terrorist attack occurred in the city of Bluewater, California. The suicide bombers were German rappers, the “Berlin Boys”.
A half hour later DPA issued a correction: there had been no bombing. The “Berlin Boys” are not a rap group. The city of Bluewater does not exist.
It was all an elaborate publicity stunt to promote the satirical German film Short Cut to Hollywood. Filmmaker Jan Henrik Stahlberg and his team fooled their entire nation by creating fake websites and videos:
Here’s the fake city of Bluewater (link).
Here’s the fake local Bluewater news station, KVPK (link).
And here are the “Berlin Boys” with their club hit “Hass”:
Story from Boing Boing. More info at Wired.
Posted in Information Stupor Highway, Unhappy Media
Tagged berlin boys, bluewater california, DPA, germany, rappers, terrorists
In light of the recent post on rules of writing, how about some real life examples of what not to do?
We’ve all seen our fair share of misplaced apostrophes hanging around in plural words, like this one, here, on a note in my apartment building:
(I see another resident has his eyes on proofreading, a kindred word nerd in Alphabet City.) But this one spotted in Williamburg, BK, is truly creative in its positioning:
I’ve seen “your” for “you’re” and vice versa. But the “you’r” iteration is new to me. Clever, no?
Now allow me to pass the mic to Drew, author of my favorite web comic, toothpastefordinner.com…
Recent news reports say that in his latest crack-down Bloomberg is
aiming to ban smoking in all NYC parks. OK, so to review: we’ve got a commie president, and a fascist New York mayor looking for a third term, which I assume will be when he solidifies, once and for all, his despot foothold. I’m overwhelmed here.
With all the tumult and terror and finger-wagging going on around us, I’d like to take you back to a simpler time. A time when men were men, and women stayed home and made dinner. When prehistoric birds opened your beer for you, and popular cartoon characters smoked with abandon. Here, a montage of sponsor clips from the original Flintstones, brought to you by Winston Cigarettes.
[Found the clip while perusing this worth-a-gander post from Slashfood.com.]
Posted in Shoot the Messenger
Tagged bloomberg, commie, fascist, flintstones, smoking ban, winston cigarettes
No Happy Medium 