parlando

microtonal goofball

Posted on August 28th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians, Comedy.

A music reference book credited Ezra Sims with a non-existent work, String Quartet #2, supposedly written in 1962. So he wrote a piece called "String Quartet #2 (1962)". It's for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, and cello. And was written in 1974.

0 comments.

our upcoming releases

Posted on August 26th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Comedy, Movies.

Following this week's release of our new Kevin Kline/Busta Rhymes musical starring the great Ed Asner, SKIP TO MY LOU, Cinema Virtuel studios is proud to announce our exciting schedule of releases for the next few weeks. Hold on to your popcorn! (But not too tight or a clump will pop out the top and get grease all over you.)

FRUITING BODIES (October 2007)
A gay ghost story based lightly upon the true events in Banff last winter. Directed by Cameron Crowe, written by Roger S.H. Schulman in his live-action debut, starring Martin Henderson and Bruce Willis, and featuring William Shatner in a career-capping performance as a rhombus.

THIS TIME FOR SURE (October 2007)
Don Roos writes and directs this wacky mistaken-identity time-travel romance. Kelly Macdonald can't tell rival scientists Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt apart, and neither can Christopher Walken and Jeff Goldblum (co-starring as the scientists' older selves)! Featuring Jude Law as the guy who can tell everybody apart.

LESTAT, C'EST MOI (November 2007)
Outcast French vampire of royal lineage with paranoid delusions imagines he has returned in the form of a giant centrifuge to avenge the reign of terror. A satiric farce masterpiece from Jeff Stockwell and Peter Farrelly, starring Mike Myers as the vampire and Catherine Keener, in a tour de force reminiscent of Alec Guiness, as Robespierre, Danton, and Maurice Chevalier.

Later in November we also have a football mystery, DEEP COVER; a western historical epic romance, STETSON'S STEPSONS; and a courtroom hostage drama, JUDICIAL RESTRAINTS.

Please address all queries to publicity director Mindy the Amazing Solar-Powered Skinner Box.

0 comments.

enough already

Posted on August 24th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Words, Badness.

Cutesy citing of example is played out. Or at least come up with your own clever phrase and let last years' threadbare favorites die. ("I'm looking at you" says hi!)

8 comments.

the unpedant squeaks

Posted on August 23rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stock Phrases, Pedantry.

I'm impatient with most online pedantry, for two reasons. First, I view most online discourse as conversation, and it's rude to interrupt conversation to correct people on the fine points of usage. Second, most online pedantry is wrong, in my goddamned opinion; people are constantly making "corrections" that are based on things they were told or read and have never themselves thought about, and many of those corrections are nothing more than prescriptivists insisting on how things ought to be versus how they are, and often enough have no firm grounding either in logic or in the history of the language.

I enjoy the mutability and diversity of the English language. I like jargon and slang, and figure that history will take care of which ones belong and which are transient, and I don't have much interest in disdaining those I don't care for, or in looking down my nose at other folks' language. I use what I like, and read what I like. I'm sorry about the loss of distinction between "imply" and "infer," or "compose" and "comprise," or "eager" and "anxious"; I strive to maintain those useful distinctions on my own writing, but I don't get exercised at people who don't. I have a few eccentricities along these lines -- I'll use "ravel" in preference to "unravel," for instance, because they mean the same thing and "ravel" is a pretty word, and I'm probably a little too eager to explain that "till" is a perfectly legitimate spelling and isn't a truncated form of "until."

And there is nothing, nothing at all, wrong with using "hopefully" to modify a clause, and hopefully you won't let anyone tell you otherwise.

However. Mangling of idiom and stock phrases bugs me, for some reason, more than the misuse or misspelling of individual words. Maybe because idiom is such an elegant development, the grace notes that give language its style, and hearing idiom misused makes my ears hurt and my nerves cringe. The big three misused phrases that bug me this minute:

• Beg the question
  This one is probably misused nineteen times out of twenty. (ESPN is an especially frequent offender.) It does not mean "to raise (or urgently raise) a question"; if that's what you mean, just say, "This raises the question." "Beg the question" is a rhetorical term, meaning to assume the thing you are trying to prove; a form of circular reasoning. If you were to argue that democracy is the highest form of government because the will of the majority should rule, you would be begging the question.

  If you say "This begs the question," followed by a question, you're probably misusing the phrase.

• Sour grapes
  Okay, this one really bothers me, because it has a specific, vivid application, and it's helpfully spelled out in the parable so anyone can remember it! "Sour grapes" is constantly used to signify simple jealousy or bitterness or petulance. "'Of course the Yankees win; they're the richest team in baseball.' 'Aw, that's just sour grapes.'" "She says he only got the promotion because he's Armenian, but I think that's just sour grapes."

  Sour Grapes means to devalue the thing you want but can't have. When you say, after not getting a job, "It probably sucked anyway," that's sour grapes.

• Emperor's New Clothes
  Don't use this unless your intent is to call everyone else a liar. When you call something the Emperor's New Clothes, you are not saying you see more clearly than everyone else -- which is obnoxious enough -- you're saying you see the same thing everyone else does, but you're the only one willing to call it as it is. If that's really what you believe, it's probably the last thing you need to say in the conversation, or that anyone else needs to hear.

0 comments.

free verse

Posted on August 13th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Performance.

[I'm archiving some old weblog writing, and a few bits seem to fit here. This is from 7 november 2000]

Every couple of weeks, friends of mine from the Well meet at a bar called Revival. Monday nights there are poets performing upstairs. Though we never left the main bar area, performance poetry could not be escaped last night; we were treated to a special Ambient Lunatic show from a caved-face anger merchant who would be kicked out of your local Tourette's Society for inappropriate behavior.

I missed her opening salvo, in which she apparently overheard Betsy describing a Bush supporter in her office, and loudly asked why they didn't just throw her out the fiftieth floor window? I assume an uncomfortable silence followed.

When I arrived she was scribbling and grunting at the table behind us. I had put on some tunes on the jukebox. The Clash's "Lose This Skin" came on, and she was apparently quite taken with Ellen Foley's long growly vocal lines, and started chiming in with her own loud humming whine, not exactly on pitch but clearly attempting to follow what Foley was doing, or maybe drown it out as a toddler might. I couldn't see her, but I'm told she was also recording herself doing this.

Very well; I like Ellen Foley myself, and it's possible I express some of my enthusiasms in socially questionable ways. But when "Lose This Skin" ended and Blur's "Charmless Man" came on and her Foleyesque wail continued unabated - if anything, her keening got louder and more abrasive -- it began to be a little alarming.

In time she subsided to muttering, with occasional exclamations of a politically confrontational nature, most of them crude and childish enough to make even an east village politico squirm with embarrassment. They weren't especially coherent, though, till eight o'clock performance time neared; suddenly she declaimed in a carrying voice, "Goddess in a world of fucking assholes!"

While we were attempting to recover from this declaration, she added, muttering, "Should have seceded from the union in nineteen-fifty-fucking-five," and, "Morons with no political sense whatsoever," possible referring to us, possibly referring to her fellow poets, possibly referring to voices having a party in her head.

This was nearly the end of the show, but as it happened a couple of our party needed to use the bathrooms at the same time she did. Poor Michael was next in line and when the door opened she poetry-slammed him out of the way, explaining that she needed to fucking piss.

She emerged twenty minutes later.

1 comment.

funeral plans

Posted on August 12th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy.

When I die, I want to reserve a large field -- Kansas, say -- and I want it roofed over, because I don't want a wet funeral. I want an honor guard from all five military branches, and a new branch created for the occasion and disbanded immediately thereafter. My casket should be made from the material of the Fortress of Solitude, filled with all my possessions and those of my neighbors, and it should be shot into space at the end of the ceremony. All living Nobel laureates should be present to pay their respects. The eulogy will be wriiten and scored for five-part harmony by Sufjan Stevens and sung by the Persuasions. The St Louis Symphony, conducted by Leonard Slatkin, will play a funeral mass specially discovered among the unpublished papers of Duke Ellington. A bountiful feast of my favorite foods will be prepared and ceremonially burnt. All attendant mourners will not cease from the business of mourning, which will include (but not be limited to) wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments. The leaders of all major nations will attend and declare everlasting peace; nations whose leaders shall be present will include Russia, China, India, Brazil, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, and Burkina Faso, because I like the name. A national holiday will be declared. No business will be conducted for two weeks following. Mass suicide in the face of the hopelessness of continuing without me will be discouraged but tolerated. Toads will rain. Ice will cover the earth.

Above all, it should be dignified. I hate ostentation.

4 comments.

ayn rand and god

Posted on July 6th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy.

from The Gospel According to Nathaniel, Chapter 4, Versus 1 through 12

And he condescended to come down among them, and stood disdainfully in the plain, and in the company of his technical assistants and financial advisors, and a great rabble of common people out of Flint and Akron and all the Midwest, which came to hear him, seeking handouts. And they were vexed with unclear thoughts and low aspirations, and were asking to be slapped around a bit. And the whole multitude sought to touch him, for they felt his superiority and wished to suck it out of him.

And smelling the rabble, he went back up the mountain the better to look down upon them, turned his back, gathered his hangers-on about him, and said unto them:

Blessed be you rich, for it is but a manifestation of your worldly virtue.

Blessed are you that eat well, for if you don't someone else will.

Blessed are you that laugh, for enjoyment at the expense of others is good clean fun.

Blessed are the arrogant, for the earth is theirs and they shall hold on to it most likely.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after power, for they keep the arrogant on their toes.

Blessed are the merciless, for who said life was fair?

Blessed are the clear in thought, for they don't waste my valuable time.

Blessed are they who sow conflict, for they will reap the profits thereof.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for their greatness, for it is lonely at the top.

Blessed are you when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate themselves from your company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for they only envy you and your freedoms. Rejoice, and be excessively glad, and party hard. Now get me out of here; I hate crowds.

0 comments.

golden age science fiction readers will understand

Posted on June 20th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Science Fiction.

Every time I proofread the computer security brochure that features large pictures of machines and the prominent headline "Serve and Protect", I shudder.

5 comments.

jargon rejection pile

Posted on June 12th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.

Today's wretched neologism in my work email: webinar.

7 comments.

paired quotes

Posted on June 8th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Words, Quotes.

"My face simply serves as a place to put my palms."

--William Gass, The Tunnel

"Hands make good shelves for chins."

--Danielle Howle, "Soft White China Patterns on His Teeth"

0 comments.

mission statement

Posted on June 3rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy.

My goal when I write is to change your life forever, though I will settle for fifteen years if the change is profound. I like to "shake people up," and I won't apologize for that in these apathetic times, when the latest fad in sedatives plays to the masses while the truth-teller fiddles alone. I write for people who think, who are willing to throw off the shackles of their preconceptions and accept mine, though I am finding such people rarer in this age of television, video games, and long playing records. I have never truckled to convention or fashion, and I am not about to start truckling now. There are those who are content to take the safe, well-trodden path, but I am not afraid to say that I would rather tread the new, or even not take any path at all, maybe just wander around. I think we owe it to the world to be honest above all, and therefore I don't censor what I think, making sure to say everything exactly as it first occurs to me. Some have judged me harshly for this. I understand that it makes many people uncomfortable to be faced with a true mirror for the first time, but I cannot be less than I completely am. I know I will be vindicated by history, and the courts. In closing, I believe we were put on this planet to make a difference, and I am grateful to have found my own way of improving the world.

2 comments.

kristeen young's words

Posted on May 31st, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Lyrics.

Despite my love of words, I'm not very lyric-driven in my music taste. So I didn't imagine that when I finally got around to (briefly) writing about the still-undernoticed (but opening for Morrissey; see her if you can) Kristeen Young, it would be to talk about her lyrics, which is not by a long shot the most arresting thing about her music.

But I recently picked up her fifth? sixth? album, The Orphans, and it has passages that have made me laugh and made me bark (ha!) with appreciation:

Before the drummer can say, "It's gay"
It's my baby.
Before the producer can take parts away,
I'll play all day. Hey!
This is my song I love
It just how it is, right now.
You should call yourself "Lucky Duck"
to hear it at all.

--"Before"

Middle America can't handle this, right?
Middle America's conservative, right?
Kansas City's where the problem is, right?
But you don't even know what state it's in, right?

--"Under a Landlocked Moon"

0 comments.

who is jenkins?

Posted on May 11th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Cartoons.

Has anyone done a count of the incidence of "Jenkins" in New Yorker cartoons? Has the name become iconic for New Yorker-style captions because it was actually used a lot, or does it just feel iconic (and parodic)? Who used Jenkins first? And most? Do you personally know anyone named Jenkins?

16 comments.

language grrr

Posted on April 30th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Editing.

In Mike Leigh's overlong and intermittently entertaining Topsy-Turvy, he has W.S. Gilbert say of someone that they were probably out "gilding two lilies."

That "gild the lily" has replaced "paint the lily" ("to gild refined gold, to paint the lily") in common use is only a mild annoyance. But it was a twentieth-century development -- the earliest cite I've seen anyone give on the web is 1895, in the U.S. -- and W.S. Gilbert, an English playwright and versifier who learned his trade in the nineteenth century, would have known his Shakespeare, it seems to me.

11 comments.

fortune cookies talk back: ok i get the point already division

Posted on April 25th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Oracles.

Received with lunch today:

Success is an accumulation of successful days

and

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps

0 comments.

"complete", a continuing annoyance

Posted on April 1st, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Untruths.

We recently got a DVD player that can play discs from any region. The main immediate reason I wanted one was to get the Complete Secret Policemen's Ball box. So I looked at a couple customer reviews. You guessed it: not complete.

In particular, it is missing the single piece I wanted most: Lenny Henry's monologue as Trevor Nettleford involving cat flaps, babies, and James Bond.

Looking a bit further, I find that the "complete" Mr. Bean is also shorn of a couple crucial sketches.

I don't understand why they are allowed to get away with saying "complete". It's one thing to be misleading, but there is no wiggle room with the word "complete". It is an absolute. How can it be legal to market these products this way?

Sigh.

6 comments.

tsk tsk tsk

Posted on March 11th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words.

Can anyone tell me why we spell the admonishing tch-tch-tch noise "tsk tsk tsk"?

9 comments.

varieties of cultural ignorance

Posted on March 2nd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness, Music Criticism.

Colin Harper, the writer of the liner notes for the reissue of Bert and John by Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, begins with:

From the strangely compelling cover shot, of two young men playing some now unfathomable board game in a half darkened room on a sunny day, oblivious to the camera, to the total idiosyncrasy of the music inside, Bert and John is an album with an atmosphere all its own.

The now-unfathomable board game in the cover shot is Go.

7 comments.

fortune cookies talk back, odd verb tense division

Posted on February 11th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Oracles.

You will have a fine capacity for the enjoyment of life.

3 comments.

watsoning

Posted on February 6th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Books.

I know a few people here have read Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds, with varying reactions (hi Gavin, Ellie, Debbie). It won a World Fantasy Award when it was originally published (in the late 70s, I think), so it's not exactly obscure; but Hughart's career never progressed beyond that success, and these days I rarely hear it mentioned. It is in print (in mass market paperback).

So many modern fantasies are bloated epics. Bridge of Birds is the opposite: a compact, self-contained, perfect little gem, like Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn, Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, Pamela Dean's The Dubious Hills, Thorne Smith's Night Life of the Gods. (Sorry, lists always start to get out of hand with me.)

Bridge of Birds has a farcical comic tone and plot, but begins with tragedy and ends with sublime transendence, and somehow makes the whole mix work. When I was reading it to Velma a few years ago, she discovered that Hughart allowed the first draft to be published on the web. I don't recommend it unless you've read the book; for one thing, the farcical tone of the book is not under control in this early draft. It's far cruder and louder and not really funny. But if you've read the book, it's fascinating to see that it grew from this. There are plot elements that never made it into Bridge of Birds that turn up in the two (sadly inferior*) sequels.

More importantly, Hughart clearly made a huge jump in his writing between this draft and the final version, and the heart of the book was completely reconstructed. In the first draft, the narrator and hero is the brilliant Li Kao, who is 19 years old, while Number Ten Ox is an incidental character, the village idiot. In the final version, Li Kao is still brilliant, still the focus of the book, but he is ancient; Number Ten Ox is the narrator, a humble young man of virtue and strength and unextraordinary brain, and the perfect Watson for Li Kao. This change, I think, allowed the book to happen as it did: a character like Li Kao needs to be presented from outside, like Jeeves.

* The first time I wrote about this, I got a comment from someone who read one of the sequels first, and prefers it to the first book. So maybe it's just the order one reads them in. It's hard for me to credit, though.

5 comments.

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