Friday, August 21, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Million-Dollar Idea #2
Leprechaun VII: The Green, The Bad, and The Ugly. A spaghetti-western spoof as the next installment of the Leprechaun series. The leprechaun, some Chinese-American mobsters who kidnapped but then lost it, the Irish whiskey priest who's come to America to recapture it, a Confederate general trying to fund a Southern last push, and a Mexican bandit-revolutionary named Quisto (short for Conquistador Guerrero) all vie for the pot of gold. Gunplay, supernatural horror effects, jinks both high and low (well, mostly low). "Where's me gold?" you ask? It's at the box office, baby!
Million-Dollar Idea #1
An adult-sized Big Wheel (or Green Machine). It would cost only pennies more to manufacture than a regular Big Wheel, yet you could charge several hundred dollars for it. Every forty-something with a garage will want one.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
The Most Horrible Thing
So many things upset me. Indeed, one of the reasons that TWM and its readership are so very dear to me is that blogging is a means by which I am able to get the issues that bother me off of my chest. I find it quite cathartic to air my grievances, which are numerous and varied.
For example, it drives me up the wall when people mistakenly use phony words such as “beastiality” or “conversate” when they mean to say, respectively, “bestiality” or “converse.” I wish oral conversations had a spellchecker so that folks could see the gibberish they spew underlined in red as it leaves their ignorant pie-holes. When I hear such bogus words bandied about, it takes everything I’ve got to resist the urge to correct people, to tell them that the things they are saying are not words and that they are blathering. Also, I can’t stand it when people use the phrase “begs the question” to mean raises or poses a certain question. To beg the question means to take for granted the matter in dispute, to use a restatement of an argument’s conclusion as a premise leading toward that very conclusion. Over the last decade I’ve heard the term “begs the question” misused so often that I’m worried that the term will soon start to actually mean what these fools think it means. I’ve even heard Conan O’Brien say it, and he went to Harvard. It’s maddening how the language can be hijacked by those who care so little for good diction.
While the bastardization of our lexicon is certainly one of my pet peeves, there are plenty of other things that irritate me, things that have nothing to do with language. For instance, I hate it when people put the toilet paper in so that it spins back and under rather than up and over. It’s so awkward. I realize that the former method helps prevent cats from making a mess, but why would anyone without cats do it? It’s insane. And it’s extremely frustrating when record stores sell used cds in shrink-wrap but they nevertheless put the price stickers directly onto the cd jewel cases rather than onto the shrink-wrap. Those damn stickers leave a gooey residue that takes at least 20 minutes to get completely off the jewel case.
But the most horrible thing, the absolute worst, is when your supposed friend who’s hanging out surfing the web casually asks, “Hey, you wanna see a horse-fuck video?” and you say, “Sure,” not realizing what you’re getting yourself into. A minute and a half later your psyche has been permanently scarred, and you realize that you will never recover from the depravity you’ve witnessed. It's as though you'll forever be trapped in that dark barn, watching appalled as that thousand-pound beast with a penis the size of a man’s leg pounds into that sorry-ass pervert. It's totally fucking mind-boggling. And then you find out that, unsurprisingly, the dude ended up dying a few hours later from internal injuries, so you’ve essentially been watching a snuff film (although no one was ever prosecuted because in Washington state there are no laws against bestiality). You think about the guy holding the camera, recklessly encouraging the victim to go through with it, and how utterly evil he must have been to facilitate such atrocious business. But mostly you think about the victim. You can see from his face that he is on the verge of some sort of sexual ecstasy, and this makes him seem unfathomable and inhuman. But you can also see from his face that he is terrified and that his trepidation is interfering with his twisted sense of erotic gratification, and you can understand his fear so thoroughly and so intensely that it connects you to him and it makes it impossible for you to deny his humanity.
Oh, God, this scary, profoundly filthy clip is truly the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. I often claim to be a staunch opponent of censorship, and yet I find myself thinking that this footage ought to be banned from the internet. It's a terrible and disturbing testament to the wretched depths to which the human spirit can sink, and it just gets weirder and more sickening every time I watch it.
For example, it drives me up the wall when people mistakenly use phony words such as “beastiality” or “conversate” when they mean to say, respectively, “bestiality” or “converse.” I wish oral conversations had a spellchecker so that folks could see the gibberish they spew underlined in red as it leaves their ignorant pie-holes. When I hear such bogus words bandied about, it takes everything I’ve got to resist the urge to correct people, to tell them that the things they are saying are not words and that they are blathering. Also, I can’t stand it when people use the phrase “begs the question” to mean raises or poses a certain question. To beg the question means to take for granted the matter in dispute, to use a restatement of an argument’s conclusion as a premise leading toward that very conclusion. Over the last decade I’ve heard the term “begs the question” misused so often that I’m worried that the term will soon start to actually mean what these fools think it means. I’ve even heard Conan O’Brien say it, and he went to Harvard. It’s maddening how the language can be hijacked by those who care so little for good diction.
While the bastardization of our lexicon is certainly one of my pet peeves, there are plenty of other things that irritate me, things that have nothing to do with language. For instance, I hate it when people put the toilet paper in so that it spins back and under rather than up and over. It’s so awkward. I realize that the former method helps prevent cats from making a mess, but why would anyone without cats do it? It’s insane. And it’s extremely frustrating when record stores sell used cds in shrink-wrap but they nevertheless put the price stickers directly onto the cd jewel cases rather than onto the shrink-wrap. Those damn stickers leave a gooey residue that takes at least 20 minutes to get completely off the jewel case.
But the most horrible thing, the absolute worst, is when your supposed friend who’s hanging out surfing the web casually asks, “Hey, you wanna see a horse-fuck video?” and you say, “Sure,” not realizing what you’re getting yourself into. A minute and a half later your psyche has been permanently scarred, and you realize that you will never recover from the depravity you’ve witnessed. It's as though you'll forever be trapped in that dark barn, watching appalled as that thousand-pound beast with a penis the size of a man’s leg pounds into that sorry-ass pervert. It's totally fucking mind-boggling. And then you find out that, unsurprisingly, the dude ended up dying a few hours later from internal injuries, so you’ve essentially been watching a snuff film (although no one was ever prosecuted because in Washington state there are no laws against bestiality). You think about the guy holding the camera, recklessly encouraging the victim to go through with it, and how utterly evil he must have been to facilitate such atrocious business. But mostly you think about the victim. You can see from his face that he is on the verge of some sort of sexual ecstasy, and this makes him seem unfathomable and inhuman. But you can also see from his face that he is terrified and that his trepidation is interfering with his twisted sense of erotic gratification, and you can understand his fear so thoroughly and so intensely that it connects you to him and it makes it impossible for you to deny his humanity.
Oh, God, this scary, profoundly filthy clip is truly the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. I often claim to be a staunch opponent of censorship, and yet I find myself thinking that this footage ought to be banned from the internet. It's a terrible and disturbing testament to the wretched depths to which the human spirit can sink, and it just gets weirder and more sickening every time I watch it.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
...out of the worm-hole, into the fire!
Hey Worm,
What qualifies you to offer people advice? If you have any credentials as a therapist or counselor (which I seriously doubt), you might want to post them. You’re a worm. You crawl around in holes. What would you know about anything?
Signed,
an anonymous seeker of competent, professional advice
The Worm sez: Sticks and stones can’t break The Worm’s bones (it has none), but your cruel words can make it cry and feel ashamed of itself. Is that what you want? The Worm does not think that that is what you really want. Perhaps if you try then you can learn to love The Worm and to be loved by The Worm. Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with you that you can’t fix yourself; maybe you do not need the help of any trained therapist. The Worm recommends that you discontinue your search for professional advice, that you isolate yourself at home, and that you derive your psychological and emotional wellness from a steadfast refusal to communicate with anyone, especially The Worm, by means of the internet or otherwise. As Doctors Freud and Jung both said, “In silence lies the power to heal all wounds,” and as Dr. Phil once said, “Be your own physician, and in silence heal yourself." The Buddha taught us that our happiness falls softly as does a pin. The Worm suggests that you sit quietly and listen for it to drop. Sshhh.
********************
So sayeth The Worm.
What qualifies you to offer people advice? If you have any credentials as a therapist or counselor (which I seriously doubt), you might want to post them. You’re a worm. You crawl around in holes. What would you know about anything?
Signed,
an anonymous seeker of competent, professional advice
The Worm sez: Sticks and stones can’t break The Worm’s bones (it has none), but your cruel words can make it cry and feel ashamed of itself. Is that what you want? The Worm does not think that that is what you really want. Perhaps if you try then you can learn to love The Worm and to be loved by The Worm. Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with you that you can’t fix yourself; maybe you do not need the help of any trained therapist. The Worm recommends that you discontinue your search for professional advice, that you isolate yourself at home, and that you derive your psychological and emotional wellness from a steadfast refusal to communicate with anyone, especially The Worm, by means of the internet or otherwise. As Doctors Freud and Jung both said, “In silence lies the power to heal all wounds,” and as Dr. Phil once said, “Be your own physician, and in silence heal yourself." The Buddha taught us that our happiness falls softly as does a pin. The Worm suggests that you sit quietly and listen for it to drop. Sshhh.
********************
So sayeth The Worm.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Lightweight and Hardcore
Grandpa had come over for dinner, and I asked him what was the most amazing thing he’d ever experienced in all his life. He proceeded to tell me about the time he’d seen Lightweight Larry and Hardcore Harry fight.
For those of you unfamiliar with America’s mid-century wrestling scene, Lightweight and Hardcore, as they were known, were a famous tag-team duo throughout the forties and into the very early fifties. After they split up, Lightweight, going by the name Evan Vanderpick, was on the verge of a successful transition to Hollywood stardom when he got caught up in a McCarthy-era scandal involving some Lithuanian prostitutes with alleged ties to a shadowy anarchist group supposedly popular at the time among people of eastern European descent. He was black-balled, never worked again, and died in 1968 of a heart attack while playing roulette at an Atlantic City casino (he reportedly keeled over as the wheel spun on what would have been the biggest winning bet in both his and the casino’s history). Meanwhile, Hardcore (whose real name was Arnold Fournbach) spent the fifties and most of the sixties drinking himself to death in obscurity.
Anyway, Grandpa told me that when he was twelve his Uncle Gerard had taken him to New York City for the weekend. Grandpa’s dad had died when Grandpa was just an infant, and Uncle Gerard had been the steadiest father figure in Grandpa’s life growing up. They were going to have a porterhouse steak at Kelly’s, they were going to stay at a Manhattan hotel, and, most significantly, they had tickets to see Lightweight and Hardcore match forces with El Bombardo and Punchy, tag-team wrestling’s most reviled villains du jour.
It was early 1942, and professional wrestling’s villains would shortly be almost exclusively portrayed as being German or Japanese, the industry’s nod to the war effort. But for the moment, even with Pearl Harbor less than six months fresh in the public’s mind, the heavies that everyone loved to hate were El Bombardo and Punchy. Of course, nationalism and xenophobia -- albeit in less focused, less passionate forms than those that would soon come -- were definitely key ingredients in the audience’s distaste for this swarthy duo of ambiguously foreign grapplers. In real life, El Bombardo was a second generation Greek-American (and the son, incidentally, of a rather well-respected archaeology professor from Cornell), and Punchy was a Palestinian émigré. However, despite the “El” in Bombardo’s name, which would seem to indicate Spanish or Latin American roots, both he and Punchy were characterized by wrestling’s promoters as being vaguely Italian, sort of commedia dell’arte-esque, maybe with a dash of gypsy thrown in for extra mysteriousness. At any rate, they were clearly the bad guys.
And Lightweight and Hardcore, Grandpa told me with an affectionate gleam in his eye, were as good as El Bombardo and Punchy were bad. They were billed as solid Yankee types, both from New England, both respectable but working class. Hardcore had been a whaler as a youngster, and Lightweight, a renowned ladies’ man, had been a dancer before enlisting in the rough and tumble world of wrestling. The press liked to say that, while Lightweight was clearly too tough to be a dancer, maybe he was too pretty to be a wrestler. That was the thing about Lightweight and Hardcore, Grandpa explained, they were everybody’s darlings, everyone’s favorite team, but they somehow managed to remain perpetual underdogs. The commentators always predicted that they would lose badly. And, in fact, they would always be losing very badly when, just at the end of the match, they would manage to pull a victory out of nowhere, much to the crowds’ delight. They were the lovable losers who always seemed to win.
Grandpa described the action of the match for me, round by round. It was the usual shtick. Bombardo and Punchy came out smoking cigars and ignoring the audience with casual boredom and mild disdain. Hardcore, who took his craft quite seriously, came out stretching and hopping, warming up for battle. And Lightweight, always the dandy, came out in a resplendent white robe, his name embroidered in gold across the back, strutting and preening for the crowd. Before the match had even begun, Bombardo (who, like Hardcore, was his team’s big man) managed to ash his cigar all over Lightweight’s beautiful robe, thus establishing Bombardo as a bully and setting the bout up as a grudge-match straight from the get-go.
Most of the fighting was between the two heavyweights. When Bombardo had the upper hand then Punchy would dance and cheer, egging him on from the corner of the ring. If Bombardo was on the ropes but not quite in need of tagging out, then Punchy would boo and hiss at the crowd and make mock punching gestures at those people who were constantly insulting him from their seats (there was an abundance of such spectators). Over in his corner, Lightweight would comb his hair lovingly with his oversized mother-of-pearl comb and gaze at himself in his silver-handled mirror, his signature props, featured at every fight. Lightweight would get so immersed in his grooming that he wouldn’t notice that his friend and teammate was getting mercilessly hammered and desperately needed to tag out. But always, just in the nick of time, Lightweight would dive in to relieve Hardcore. While Hardcore recuperated in the corner, Lightweight would dance around the ring, evading Bombardo’s blows while constantly fixing at his hair and winking at any women who might be seated up front. Lightweight did have a few crushing (and very acrobatic) moves, but he always saved these for the end of the bout; much to his opponents’ frustration, he invariably spent the early rounds clowning for the ladies and doing a great job at avoiding any actual combat.
Grandpa told me that as thrilled as he was to see Lightweight and Hardcore in action (they were, after all, his heroes; he spent most of his allowance on wrestling tabloids so as to follow their exploits, and he listened to their matches no matter what else might be on the radio), it was really the entire ambience of the event that made this his most treasured memory. It was the biggest, most raucous crowd he’d ever seen. There were peanut shells and overturned chairs everywhere, the cheers were deafening. Gorgeous women in bathing suits introduced every new round by carrying numbered placards back and forth across the ring. Uncle Gerard had even let him drink a beer. It was absolutely overwhelming, Grandpa said, and when Lightweight and Hardcore, hopelessly down points-wise, managed to pull it out in the twelfth round, it made it seem like anything was possible. It was as though everyone in the auditorium was triumphing along with them. Even as a twelve-year-old boy and a devoted fan of wrestling, Grandpa understood that Lightweight and Hardcore were merely entertaining athletes (or, perhaps, athletic entertainers), but it felt that night as though they were holy men, prophets of a gospel so promising, so full of energy and hope, that it inspired one’s heart not only with a joy at being American but with a pride at simply being alive. Indeed, when Grandpa had finished talking, he had tears in his eyes. He sat there holding his fork absent-mindedly, lost in nostalgic contemplation.
“Jesus Christ, Grandpa!” I screamed in Grandpa’s face, pounding my fists on the table in front of him. “That’s it? That’s what you’ve got?! What are you, fuckin’ 80…79? 79 years old, and the greatest thing you’ve ever seen is a couple of pansy-ass wrestlers in New York City? Some peanut shells and shit?! Jesus fuck, Grandpa!”
“I don’t see what is so pansy-ass about two men fighting,” Grandpa replied.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “The tights, maybe, Lightweight’s preening. It just seems gay. And it was four men fighting, not two…kinda makes it seem gayer somehow.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grandpa said dismissively. “Superman wears tights; is Superman gay? And Lightweight was a ladies’ man, I told you.”
“Okay, Grandpa, whatever; that’s not the point,” I explained. “My point is that you’re 80 years old and you’re telling me that the most exciting thing you’ve been through is some stupid wrestling match? Come on! What about V-J Day or the Cuban missile crisis, you know? How about the fuckin’ moon landing? You weren’t impressed with the goddamned moon landing?! What if they’d wrestled on the moon, would that’ve done it for you? For Christ’s sake, Grandpa! You’ve lived through so much, my God! What about the moon? What about the fucking moon, Grandpa?!"
Grandpa shrugged his shoulders and gave me a look as if to say that he wasn’t particularly upset by the fact that his answer had been disappointing for me. He went back to his mashed potatoes. I sat finishing my coffee and wondering why we even bothered inviting Grandpa over.
For those of you unfamiliar with America’s mid-century wrestling scene, Lightweight and Hardcore, as they were known, were a famous tag-team duo throughout the forties and into the very early fifties. After they split up, Lightweight, going by the name Evan Vanderpick, was on the verge of a successful transition to Hollywood stardom when he got caught up in a McCarthy-era scandal involving some Lithuanian prostitutes with alleged ties to a shadowy anarchist group supposedly popular at the time among people of eastern European descent. He was black-balled, never worked again, and died in 1968 of a heart attack while playing roulette at an Atlantic City casino (he reportedly keeled over as the wheel spun on what would have been the biggest winning bet in both his and the casino’s history). Meanwhile, Hardcore (whose real name was Arnold Fournbach) spent the fifties and most of the sixties drinking himself to death in obscurity.
Anyway, Grandpa told me that when he was twelve his Uncle Gerard had taken him to New York City for the weekend. Grandpa’s dad had died when Grandpa was just an infant, and Uncle Gerard had been the steadiest father figure in Grandpa’s life growing up. They were going to have a porterhouse steak at Kelly’s, they were going to stay at a Manhattan hotel, and, most significantly, they had tickets to see Lightweight and Hardcore match forces with El Bombardo and Punchy, tag-team wrestling’s most reviled villains du jour.
It was early 1942, and professional wrestling’s villains would shortly be almost exclusively portrayed as being German or Japanese, the industry’s nod to the war effort. But for the moment, even with Pearl Harbor less than six months fresh in the public’s mind, the heavies that everyone loved to hate were El Bombardo and Punchy. Of course, nationalism and xenophobia -- albeit in less focused, less passionate forms than those that would soon come -- were definitely key ingredients in the audience’s distaste for this swarthy duo of ambiguously foreign grapplers. In real life, El Bombardo was a second generation Greek-American (and the son, incidentally, of a rather well-respected archaeology professor from Cornell), and Punchy was a Palestinian émigré. However, despite the “El” in Bombardo’s name, which would seem to indicate Spanish or Latin American roots, both he and Punchy were characterized by wrestling’s promoters as being vaguely Italian, sort of commedia dell’arte-esque, maybe with a dash of gypsy thrown in for extra mysteriousness. At any rate, they were clearly the bad guys.
And Lightweight and Hardcore, Grandpa told me with an affectionate gleam in his eye, were as good as El Bombardo and Punchy were bad. They were billed as solid Yankee types, both from New England, both respectable but working class. Hardcore had been a whaler as a youngster, and Lightweight, a renowned ladies’ man, had been a dancer before enlisting in the rough and tumble world of wrestling. The press liked to say that, while Lightweight was clearly too tough to be a dancer, maybe he was too pretty to be a wrestler. That was the thing about Lightweight and Hardcore, Grandpa explained, they were everybody’s darlings, everyone’s favorite team, but they somehow managed to remain perpetual underdogs. The commentators always predicted that they would lose badly. And, in fact, they would always be losing very badly when, just at the end of the match, they would manage to pull a victory out of nowhere, much to the crowds’ delight. They were the lovable losers who always seemed to win.
Grandpa described the action of the match for me, round by round. It was the usual shtick. Bombardo and Punchy came out smoking cigars and ignoring the audience with casual boredom and mild disdain. Hardcore, who took his craft quite seriously, came out stretching and hopping, warming up for battle. And Lightweight, always the dandy, came out in a resplendent white robe, his name embroidered in gold across the back, strutting and preening for the crowd. Before the match had even begun, Bombardo (who, like Hardcore, was his team’s big man) managed to ash his cigar all over Lightweight’s beautiful robe, thus establishing Bombardo as a bully and setting the bout up as a grudge-match straight from the get-go.
Most of the fighting was between the two heavyweights. When Bombardo had the upper hand then Punchy would dance and cheer, egging him on from the corner of the ring. If Bombardo was on the ropes but not quite in need of tagging out, then Punchy would boo and hiss at the crowd and make mock punching gestures at those people who were constantly insulting him from their seats (there was an abundance of such spectators). Over in his corner, Lightweight would comb his hair lovingly with his oversized mother-of-pearl comb and gaze at himself in his silver-handled mirror, his signature props, featured at every fight. Lightweight would get so immersed in his grooming that he wouldn’t notice that his friend and teammate was getting mercilessly hammered and desperately needed to tag out. But always, just in the nick of time, Lightweight would dive in to relieve Hardcore. While Hardcore recuperated in the corner, Lightweight would dance around the ring, evading Bombardo’s blows while constantly fixing at his hair and winking at any women who might be seated up front. Lightweight did have a few crushing (and very acrobatic) moves, but he always saved these for the end of the bout; much to his opponents’ frustration, he invariably spent the early rounds clowning for the ladies and doing a great job at avoiding any actual combat.
Grandpa told me that as thrilled as he was to see Lightweight and Hardcore in action (they were, after all, his heroes; he spent most of his allowance on wrestling tabloids so as to follow their exploits, and he listened to their matches no matter what else might be on the radio), it was really the entire ambience of the event that made this his most treasured memory. It was the biggest, most raucous crowd he’d ever seen. There were peanut shells and overturned chairs everywhere, the cheers were deafening. Gorgeous women in bathing suits introduced every new round by carrying numbered placards back and forth across the ring. Uncle Gerard had even let him drink a beer. It was absolutely overwhelming, Grandpa said, and when Lightweight and Hardcore, hopelessly down points-wise, managed to pull it out in the twelfth round, it made it seem like anything was possible. It was as though everyone in the auditorium was triumphing along with them. Even as a twelve-year-old boy and a devoted fan of wrestling, Grandpa understood that Lightweight and Hardcore were merely entertaining athletes (or, perhaps, athletic entertainers), but it felt that night as though they were holy men, prophets of a gospel so promising, so full of energy and hope, that it inspired one’s heart not only with a joy at being American but with a pride at simply being alive. Indeed, when Grandpa had finished talking, he had tears in his eyes. He sat there holding his fork absent-mindedly, lost in nostalgic contemplation.
“Jesus Christ, Grandpa!” I screamed in Grandpa’s face, pounding my fists on the table in front of him. “That’s it? That’s what you’ve got?! What are you, fuckin’ 80…79? 79 years old, and the greatest thing you’ve ever seen is a couple of pansy-ass wrestlers in New York City? Some peanut shells and shit?! Jesus fuck, Grandpa!”
“I don’t see what is so pansy-ass about two men fighting,” Grandpa replied.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “The tights, maybe, Lightweight’s preening. It just seems gay. And it was four men fighting, not two…kinda makes it seem gayer somehow.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grandpa said dismissively. “Superman wears tights; is Superman gay? And Lightweight was a ladies’ man, I told you.”
“Okay, Grandpa, whatever; that’s not the point,” I explained. “My point is that you’re 80 years old and you’re telling me that the most exciting thing you’ve been through is some stupid wrestling match? Come on! What about V-J Day or the Cuban missile crisis, you know? How about the fuckin’ moon landing? You weren’t impressed with the goddamned moon landing?! What if they’d wrestled on the moon, would that’ve done it for you? For Christ’s sake, Grandpa! You’ve lived through so much, my God! What about the moon? What about the fucking moon, Grandpa?!"
Grandpa shrugged his shoulders and gave me a look as if to say that he wasn’t particularly upset by the fact that his answer had been disappointing for me. He went back to his mashed potatoes. I sat finishing my coffee and wondering why we even bothered inviting Grandpa over.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Rubrics: Cubes Without Depths and FILE Under FILLS-In-The-Box
ACROSS: /// DOWN:
1. – Eliot /// 1. Drudges
3. Ready /// 2. NBC comedy
7. Ratio /// 3. Tivoli attractions
9. Atop /// 4. Perfect
11. Thirteenth or fifteenth /// 5. Bombarder
12. Mr. Pufnstuf /// 6. Medium’s acronymic medium
13. “17. ACROSS”, to Washington /// 7. Takes
16. – Duce /// 8. Levin or Gershwin
17. Capital /// 9. Cheerful
18. – Dorado /// 10. Goliath’s company
19. Holly /// 14. -- I Lay Dying
21. Frame on runners /// 15. Masculine subject
23. – Yeah /// 19. Condition
25. Walking gets you there /// 22. Govt. lawyer
27. Homonym of “36. DOWN” /// 24. This place
29. Mr. Himmler’s unit /// 26. Spelling or Amos
30. Decide /// 28. Namesakes of Simpson’s judge
33. Crag /// 31. Emergency
34. Breakfast -- Tiffany’s /// 32. Until
35. Sugarloaf Mount site /// 34. Upon
36. Riata /// 36. Antonym of “27. ACROSS”
37. Habitual contraction /// 38. Grant
39. Successful politician /// 42. Lush
40. Clinker /// 44. With it
41. Five’s change, oftentimes /// 45. Freddy’s street
43. At the house of /// 47. ETO commander
46. Unorganized repository of needs /// 49. Letters of afterthought
48. Von Aschenbach or Humbert
50. Mr. --
51. Circles
52. Gladstone, e.g.
53. Teenage novelist, -- Hinton
...out of the worm-hole, into the fire!
Wormmeister,
I'm in need of advice on the etiquette of tipping the man who does my hair. My hair-dresser owns the salon. He gives me cut & color at 70 beans per service -- that's 140 bucks for the whole shebang. He does a spectacular job. Now, my father taught me that you should never tip the owner of an establishment: after all, he's pocketing 100% of the profit. But, when it's time to pay up, the gal at the register always asks me if I want to add a tip for Tony. In the past, I've done so, but then I feel a little resentful -- I mean, I just gave the guy $140! Isn't that enough?! So yesterday, for the first time, I did NOT tip him. Then I felt guilty -- I mean, he's a great guy and he actually charges me LESS than he charges a lot of his other clients, because he knows I'm comparatively poor (he does the hair of some wealthy Beverly Hills businessmen and Hollywood types.) So -- what's the RIGHT thing to do in this situation? (Oh, I'd like to add that I always tip his assistant, who puts the color in my hair and shampoos it out. Yesterday I gave her $15.)
Thanks!
Troubled Tresses
The Worm sez: Your father’s doctrine against tipping proprietors initially rubbed The Worm as it apparently does you – that is, in all the right intuitive places. However, your father’s precept, if scrutinized closely, might turn out to be cheapness masquerading as some more noble principle. It would seem that the rationale behind the dictum is that a service business’ owner enjoys the cream of the enterprise’s crop and so, unlike an employee, does not need his/her income augmented with gratuities. But 100% of a business’ profits might equal nothing, and it is entirely conceivable that a business owner might pay his/her employees so generously that it causes the owner severe economic hardship even while his/her employees live quite comfortably. Surely, in such a case, the rationale underlying your father’s rule has evaporated, and so the rule itself ought to vanish in such case as well. Of course, the consumer of services is not often privy to a business’ books and, even if she/he were, performing accountings with every transaction in order to determine a business’ financial health (or lack thereof) and/or how well the employees are paid (or how poorly) would be a huge inconvenience, and so your father’s position might be that his assumption(s) that the business is profitable and/or that the owner is not overpaying her/his employees is/are the wisest fall-back(s). Again, perhaps your dad is a cheapskate. But let’s not approach this issue as an inquiry into what’s right for Tony, the hairdresser (or other service providers who own their own businesses). Let us instead analyze this question with an eye toward what is best and right for you, the consumer. The Worm assumes that the primary reason that one tips a service provider is not altruism but, rather, to provide an incentive for them to do a great job. You say that your guy has been doing a spectacular job, and so your past practice of always tipping him seems to have been performing its function. Also, although you say you feel resentful when you tip, you also make it clear that not tipping made you feel guilty (and understandably so…after all, you say Tony is a great guy and that he’s giving you a discount because he knows of your comparative poverty). Guilt doesn’t sound any more pleasant than resentment in The Worm’s book. The Worm suggests that you think long and hard about how much a color and cut by Tony is worth to you considering the prices of other salons of comparable quality, and if Tony still seems like a good deal even with the tip you’ve traditionally given him then you might consider going back to the status quo ante. (By the way, it sounds a bit like the assistant, rather than Tony, might be the one actually coloring your hair (The Worm cannot imagine what a colorist’s job description might be other than “puts the color in [the] hair and shampoos it out”); however, if the assistant’s job requires little or no finesse then you might consider stiffing her and giving Tony that 15 bucks.) Most importantly, The Worm recommends that in the future you ask funnier questions that call for advice of a more humorous nature. Ideally, your questions should be amusing in and of themselves and they should also set The Worm up for further laughs. Your joke-proof question about tipping etiquette is so dry it makes The Worm thirsty. A question like this doesn’t do anybody any good except you (and, The Worm supposes, people with problems almost identical to yours). TWM is here for everyone; The Worm is not your personal answers machine. You may look fabulous, but you’re being selfish, and The Worm is not at all surprised that you’re trying to get it to help you as you attempt to rationalize shortchanging poor Tony.
********************
So sayeth The Worm.
I'm in need of advice on the etiquette of tipping the man who does my hair. My hair-dresser owns the salon. He gives me cut & color at 70 beans per service -- that's 140 bucks for the whole shebang. He does a spectacular job. Now, my father taught me that you should never tip the owner of an establishment: after all, he's pocketing 100% of the profit. But, when it's time to pay up, the gal at the register always asks me if I want to add a tip for Tony. In the past, I've done so, but then I feel a little resentful -- I mean, I just gave the guy $140! Isn't that enough?! So yesterday, for the first time, I did NOT tip him. Then I felt guilty -- I mean, he's a great guy and he actually charges me LESS than he charges a lot of his other clients, because he knows I'm comparatively poor (he does the hair of some wealthy Beverly Hills businessmen and Hollywood types.) So -- what's the RIGHT thing to do in this situation? (Oh, I'd like to add that I always tip his assistant, who puts the color in my hair and shampoos it out. Yesterday I gave her $15.)
Thanks!
Troubled Tresses
The Worm sez: Your father’s doctrine against tipping proprietors initially rubbed The Worm as it apparently does you – that is, in all the right intuitive places. However, your father’s precept, if scrutinized closely, might turn out to be cheapness masquerading as some more noble principle. It would seem that the rationale behind the dictum is that a service business’ owner enjoys the cream of the enterprise’s crop and so, unlike an employee, does not need his/her income augmented with gratuities. But 100% of a business’ profits might equal nothing, and it is entirely conceivable that a business owner might pay his/her employees so generously that it causes the owner severe economic hardship even while his/her employees live quite comfortably. Surely, in such a case, the rationale underlying your father’s rule has evaporated, and so the rule itself ought to vanish in such case as well. Of course, the consumer of services is not often privy to a business’ books and, even if she/he were, performing accountings with every transaction in order to determine a business’ financial health (or lack thereof) and/or how well the employees are paid (or how poorly) would be a huge inconvenience, and so your father’s position might be that his assumption(s) that the business is profitable and/or that the owner is not overpaying her/his employees is/are the wisest fall-back(s). Again, perhaps your dad is a cheapskate. But let’s not approach this issue as an inquiry into what’s right for Tony, the hairdresser (or other service providers who own their own businesses). Let us instead analyze this question with an eye toward what is best and right for you, the consumer. The Worm assumes that the primary reason that one tips a service provider is not altruism but, rather, to provide an incentive for them to do a great job. You say that your guy has been doing a spectacular job, and so your past practice of always tipping him seems to have been performing its function. Also, although you say you feel resentful when you tip, you also make it clear that not tipping made you feel guilty (and understandably so…after all, you say Tony is a great guy and that he’s giving you a discount because he knows of your comparative poverty). Guilt doesn’t sound any more pleasant than resentment in The Worm’s book. The Worm suggests that you think long and hard about how much a color and cut by Tony is worth to you considering the prices of other salons of comparable quality, and if Tony still seems like a good deal even with the tip you’ve traditionally given him then you might consider going back to the status quo ante. (By the way, it sounds a bit like the assistant, rather than Tony, might be the one actually coloring your hair (The Worm cannot imagine what a colorist’s job description might be other than “puts the color in [the] hair and shampoos it out”); however, if the assistant’s job requires little or no finesse then you might consider stiffing her and giving Tony that 15 bucks.) Most importantly, The Worm recommends that in the future you ask funnier questions that call for advice of a more humorous nature. Ideally, your questions should be amusing in and of themselves and they should also set The Worm up for further laughs. Your joke-proof question about tipping etiquette is so dry it makes The Worm thirsty. A question like this doesn’t do anybody any good except you (and, The Worm supposes, people with problems almost identical to yours). TWM is here for everyone; The Worm is not your personal answers machine. You may look fabulous, but you’re being selfish, and The Worm is not at all surprised that you’re trying to get it to help you as you attempt to rationalize shortchanging poor Tony.
********************
So sayeth The Worm.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Reverse Dictionary
About a year ago I learned -- or, at least, I thought I’d learned -- this word the definition for which was “smeared with porridge.” It was such a great word. I forget the context in which I came across it, but I remember being so happy, thinking about what might qualify as porridge (oatmeal, grits, cream of wheat) and planning to use the word as often as I could. Anyway, now I can’t remember the word (which is absolutely maddening!), and so I guess I never truly learned the word at all (or, at least, to the extent that one thinks of knowledge as a lasting thing, I guess I never really learned the word at all).
Damn! Seriously...it’s totally driving me crazy; it was such a wonderful word! It didn’t have the word “porridge” built into it (nor “gruel” nor “soup” nor anything like that), and so you’d have never guessed what it meant to have simply heard it out of context (although, once you had learned it, it really did sound like a big, sloppy mess all over you; I suppose this would make it onamanopaeic, I guess…but I could be imagining this part (and, besides, maybe onamanopaeic words have to sound like what they mean before one knows what they mean)).
At any rate, it really is making me nuts, honestly. I swear, just hearing this word was funny. I don’t think that I read it in the context of orphans, but I remember that after I'd looked it up it made me think of orphans – grimy, little alley urchins, all covered in muck...raggedy, Oliver Twisty little bastards moving back and forth from the filthy streets to the bleak, cruel institutions (for the free porridge dinners, I suppose). Nasty, grubby little fuckers (and malicious, too…vicious little bastards, every last one) but with smiles on their greasy faces and joy in their rascally hearts ‘cause they knew how to turn dire circumstances into good times. It was a very picaresque word.
I had a whole bit that I was planning on doing with this word. Really, it was that funny, laugh-out-loud funny. But I guess time and unfaithful brain cells have robbed me of my fun (and you, dear TWM reader, of yours). It would’ve been truly delightful, I’m totally sure of it. There was absolutely no way that one could use this word without being entertaining. It was just the greatest fucking word.
Damn! Seriously...it’s totally driving me crazy; it was such a wonderful word! It didn’t have the word “porridge” built into it (nor “gruel” nor “soup” nor anything like that), and so you’d have never guessed what it meant to have simply heard it out of context (although, once you had learned it, it really did sound like a big, sloppy mess all over you; I suppose this would make it onamanopaeic, I guess…but I could be imagining this part (and, besides, maybe onamanopaeic words have to sound like what they mean before one knows what they mean)).
At any rate, it really is making me nuts, honestly. I swear, just hearing this word was funny. I don’t think that I read it in the context of orphans, but I remember that after I'd looked it up it made me think of orphans – grimy, little alley urchins, all covered in muck...raggedy, Oliver Twisty little bastards moving back and forth from the filthy streets to the bleak, cruel institutions (for the free porridge dinners, I suppose). Nasty, grubby little fuckers (and malicious, too…vicious little bastards, every last one) but with smiles on their greasy faces and joy in their rascally hearts ‘cause they knew how to turn dire circumstances into good times. It was a very picaresque word.
I had a whole bit that I was planning on doing with this word. Really, it was that funny, laugh-out-loud funny. But I guess time and unfaithful brain cells have robbed me of my fun (and you, dear TWM reader, of yours). It would’ve been truly delightful, I’m totally sure of it. There was absolutely no way that one could use this word without being entertaining. It was just the greatest fucking word.
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What Makes A Subaru?
“Love. It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru.” That’s the Japanese automaker’s current motto. “The ultimate driving machine” has long been BMW’s perennial slogan, but a few years back the Bavarian giant was going with “BMW: it doesn’t just satisfy your need for motion, it satisfies your need for emotion.”
There’s a VW ad in which a couple, maybe with their kid in the backseat, drive their new VW whatever into a picture-perfect suburban neighborhood, almost Twilight Zone-ish in its calm serenity. They are apparently lost. (The man driving asks, “Where are we?” The woman in the passenger’s seat might be looking at a map, and maybe the kid in the back, if there is a kid, is anxiously looking from side to side out the windows of the surprisingly roomy VW’s rear interior). The couple is driving past a small park amid the well-kept houses and yards. There are pedestrians walking dogs or pushing strollers in the park, all with beatific smiles on their faces, and they’re waving idyllically at each other and at the drivers of the many cars that are driving slowly past them up and down the streets that surround the park. The drivers wave back pleasantly, but the weird thing is that all of the cars (except for the VW that the couple is driving) are cardboard boxes. They all look the same, the cars: generic, automobile-sized cardboard boxes on wheels.
Our driving couple and the kid in the back, if there is a kid in the back, drop their jaws and crane their necks as they drive along so as to better stare at all the slowly passing cardboard-box cars. But their confusion and disbelief quickly turn into bemusement that people would be willing to actually drive around in cardboard boxes, that an entire little community could fail to realize how bizarre and ridiculous it was to drive these nonsensical cars, so odd and yet simultaneously so dull. They (the couple, that is) shake their heads to dispell their wonder, shrugging their shoulders condescendingly to show their live-and-let-live sense of tolerance for those who drive tasteless cars; then they hit their accelerator and speed away down the block. Meanwhile, all the pedestrians and cardboard-box drivers have stopped in their tracks, and they watch the VW as it drives off. They’re taken aback by how great and stylish the VW looked, and their happy smiles all dissolve, replaced by horrified expressions of crushing disappointment with their own boring car choices, tragic dissatisfaction with the bland automobiles for which they’ve allowed themselves to settle. Their peaceful complacency has been utterly shattered. The commercial’s narrator comes on and says something to the effect of “why drive a generic box when you could drive the distinctive new VW whatever?”
(I suppose it’s important to note that in the commercial there’s nothing functionally wrong with the cardboard-box cars. They operate perfectly fine, they don’t fall apart. There’s no suggestion that they break down or get bad mileage or spew pollution or can’t go fast enough or anything like that. Also, the cardboard cars are all very clean and new looking. Their only defect is their supposed aesthetic shortcoming – namely, that they all look like plain cardboard boxes.)
This VW commercial is supposed to be funny, I guess, but I find it extremely disturbing. The ad presents the neighborhood’s residents as very happy, physically healthy, sociable people. They are clearly comfortable, affluent even, and they are obviously enjoying a very high standard of living. They are well fed, they have leisure time, and they live in nice homes on beautiful, sunny green streets. Their lives are peachy-keen, and they know it. Or, rather, they thought that they knew it, thought so until they realized that the cars they were driving were all pieces of shit. (By the way, the whole premise is a bit confusing to me because, personally, I’d love to drive around in a cardboard-box car -- or, for that matter, any car of great novelty.) Anyway, I find the commercial disgusting not so much in how it openly encourages us to keep on keeping up with the Joneses as in the way that it insidiously tells us to not assume that we’re successfully keeping up simply because we feel satisfied with our lot and good about ourselves. It’s a sick and twisted ad that teaches us to distrust our own happiness.
Roberto M. Unger, a social theorist and law professor at Harvard (where, incidentally, during the 1980s he once served as Barack Obama’s teacher), places the objects of all human desires into two categories, that of “comfort” and that of “glory”. Comfort comprises both needs (e.g., food, blankets) and wants (e.g., stereos, yachts), and glory includes our natural tendency to seek respect and admiration, to be loved as individual personalities. Modern consumer culture, of course and without doubt, is a terrible thing in the way that it exploits those that toil on its periphery (the sweatshop workers, the coffee bean pickers, etc.), but it is also a terrible thing in the way that it warps the values of those who dwell at its center and enjoy its fruits. For so many Americans (and other “westerners”, I presume) the longing for comfort and the longing for glory have been entirely conflated. We so often seek honor from our peers based on the products we purchase and on the reputations of those products’ brand names. The esteem in which we are held by both strangers and acquaintances can be so heavily influenced by the choices we make as consumers, the merits of our choices frequently judged in direct relation to the status attached to the things we’ve bought. We are encouraged to identify so strongly with our material possessions; we are measured (and we measure ourselves) in terms of the quality and quantity of the stuff we can afford and do afford. Our ambitions become our Christmas lists and vise versa. Identity and possessions have merged to the point where many people seemingly express themselves and perceive each other largely through the cars they drive, the clothes they wear, the trappings and luxuries they have acquired.
I’ve never fully subscribed to Unger’s clean distinction between comfort and glory, never really believed that the one category could be completely divorced from the other. I think that, irrespective of whatever socio-economic or cultural models that society might adopt, the quantity and quality of the stuff to which one has access and the level of respect at which one is held by oneself and others will always be, to some extent, interrelated. Moreover, I am as apt to glorify comfort as many. A Timex keeps near perfect time, but, were I to win big at lotto tomorrow, I would likely be sporting an extremely expensive wristwatch the day after tomorrow. If given vast resources, I would almost certainly eventually get around to investing my capital in some sort of project to further the general welfare or to promote social justice, to somehow make the world a better place for humanity, but certainly not until after I’d fully tired of showing off my shiny new watch. And I’d probably also buy a motorcycle or two before I ever got around to sending out any philanthropic checks. Indeed, I find that my excitement and lust for material niceties have compromised my integrity in the past and continue to do so on a fairly regular basis. However, I have fortunately not yet reached the sorry point at which I derive my spiritual and emotional wellness primarily from the nice things that I have or could afford to have. Once comfort and glory have become entirely indistinguishable, then we've lost our souls to bourgeois commercialism and brain rot, the gospel of the mundane. When the dichotomy between comfort and glory is totally abolished, that is when we become our Subarus.
There’s a VW ad in which a couple, maybe with their kid in the backseat, drive their new VW whatever into a picture-perfect suburban neighborhood, almost Twilight Zone-ish in its calm serenity. They are apparently lost. (The man driving asks, “Where are we?” The woman in the passenger’s seat might be looking at a map, and maybe the kid in the back, if there is a kid, is anxiously looking from side to side out the windows of the surprisingly roomy VW’s rear interior). The couple is driving past a small park amid the well-kept houses and yards. There are pedestrians walking dogs or pushing strollers in the park, all with beatific smiles on their faces, and they’re waving idyllically at each other and at the drivers of the many cars that are driving slowly past them up and down the streets that surround the park. The drivers wave back pleasantly, but the weird thing is that all of the cars (except for the VW that the couple is driving) are cardboard boxes. They all look the same, the cars: generic, automobile-sized cardboard boxes on wheels.
Our driving couple and the kid in the back, if there is a kid in the back, drop their jaws and crane their necks as they drive along so as to better stare at all the slowly passing cardboard-box cars. But their confusion and disbelief quickly turn into bemusement that people would be willing to actually drive around in cardboard boxes, that an entire little community could fail to realize how bizarre and ridiculous it was to drive these nonsensical cars, so odd and yet simultaneously so dull. They (the couple, that is) shake their heads to dispell their wonder, shrugging their shoulders condescendingly to show their live-and-let-live sense of tolerance for those who drive tasteless cars; then they hit their accelerator and speed away down the block. Meanwhile, all the pedestrians and cardboard-box drivers have stopped in their tracks, and they watch the VW as it drives off. They’re taken aback by how great and stylish the VW looked, and their happy smiles all dissolve, replaced by horrified expressions of crushing disappointment with their own boring car choices, tragic dissatisfaction with the bland automobiles for which they’ve allowed themselves to settle. Their peaceful complacency has been utterly shattered. The commercial’s narrator comes on and says something to the effect of “why drive a generic box when you could drive the distinctive new VW whatever?”
(I suppose it’s important to note that in the commercial there’s nothing functionally wrong with the cardboard-box cars. They operate perfectly fine, they don’t fall apart. There’s no suggestion that they break down or get bad mileage or spew pollution or can’t go fast enough or anything like that. Also, the cardboard cars are all very clean and new looking. Their only defect is their supposed aesthetic shortcoming – namely, that they all look like plain cardboard boxes.)
This VW commercial is supposed to be funny, I guess, but I find it extremely disturbing. The ad presents the neighborhood’s residents as very happy, physically healthy, sociable people. They are clearly comfortable, affluent even, and they are obviously enjoying a very high standard of living. They are well fed, they have leisure time, and they live in nice homes on beautiful, sunny green streets. Their lives are peachy-keen, and they know it. Or, rather, they thought that they knew it, thought so until they realized that the cars they were driving were all pieces of shit. (By the way, the whole premise is a bit confusing to me because, personally, I’d love to drive around in a cardboard-box car -- or, for that matter, any car of great novelty.) Anyway, I find the commercial disgusting not so much in how it openly encourages us to keep on keeping up with the Joneses as in the way that it insidiously tells us to not assume that we’re successfully keeping up simply because we feel satisfied with our lot and good about ourselves. It’s a sick and twisted ad that teaches us to distrust our own happiness.
Roberto M. Unger, a social theorist and law professor at Harvard (where, incidentally, during the 1980s he once served as Barack Obama’s teacher), places the objects of all human desires into two categories, that of “comfort” and that of “glory”. Comfort comprises both needs (e.g., food, blankets) and wants (e.g., stereos, yachts), and glory includes our natural tendency to seek respect and admiration, to be loved as individual personalities. Modern consumer culture, of course and without doubt, is a terrible thing in the way that it exploits those that toil on its periphery (the sweatshop workers, the coffee bean pickers, etc.), but it is also a terrible thing in the way that it warps the values of those who dwell at its center and enjoy its fruits. For so many Americans (and other “westerners”, I presume) the longing for comfort and the longing for glory have been entirely conflated. We so often seek honor from our peers based on the products we purchase and on the reputations of those products’ brand names. The esteem in which we are held by both strangers and acquaintances can be so heavily influenced by the choices we make as consumers, the merits of our choices frequently judged in direct relation to the status attached to the things we’ve bought. We are encouraged to identify so strongly with our material possessions; we are measured (and we measure ourselves) in terms of the quality and quantity of the stuff we can afford and do afford. Our ambitions become our Christmas lists and vise versa. Identity and possessions have merged to the point where many people seemingly express themselves and perceive each other largely through the cars they drive, the clothes they wear, the trappings and luxuries they have acquired.
I’ve never fully subscribed to Unger’s clean distinction between comfort and glory, never really believed that the one category could be completely divorced from the other. I think that, irrespective of whatever socio-economic or cultural models that society might adopt, the quantity and quality of the stuff to which one has access and the level of respect at which one is held by oneself and others will always be, to some extent, interrelated. Moreover, I am as apt to glorify comfort as many. A Timex keeps near perfect time, but, were I to win big at lotto tomorrow, I would likely be sporting an extremely expensive wristwatch the day after tomorrow. If given vast resources, I would almost certainly eventually get around to investing my capital in some sort of project to further the general welfare or to promote social justice, to somehow make the world a better place for humanity, but certainly not until after I’d fully tired of showing off my shiny new watch. And I’d probably also buy a motorcycle or two before I ever got around to sending out any philanthropic checks. Indeed, I find that my excitement and lust for material niceties have compromised my integrity in the past and continue to do so on a fairly regular basis. However, I have fortunately not yet reached the sorry point at which I derive my spiritual and emotional wellness primarily from the nice things that I have or could afford to have. Once comfort and glory have become entirely indistinguishable, then we've lost our souls to bourgeois commercialism and brain rot, the gospel of the mundane. When the dichotomy between comfort and glory is totally abolished, that is when we become our Subarus.
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