Art Imitating Life

Indeed, it is true! I am writing a science fiction comedy book, and it is coming along well. I’m not going to talk alot about it, but I will share with you a paragraph that will not be appearing in the book. Think of this as a teaser that gives away nothing.

He is also a Star Wars fan–and aggressively so. He goes to Star Trek conventions to piss off the Trekkies. But not just to razz them with quips and zingers; he buys the $1500 platinum seats that get you the private dinner with William Shatner just so he can ask jackass questions and fart loudly. He is a motherfucker.

Please enjoy these ringtones, as narrated by local artist Jasper St. Fancy. And look for Mr. St. Fancy in an upcoming radio production.

An introduction from Jasper St. Fancy

Ra ha, ra ha!

Number one

Friend

Final Song

Dingus

The closest I’ve ever been to genuinely thinking “Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder” came last week while watching the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season four special features with Emily. This is Emily’s first viewing of Deep Space Nine, so every changling that is revealed, every new character, every anything is new to her. (It was especially entertaining when she watched The Next Generation for the first time.) She really likes to watch every episode in order and gets mad at me when I suggest we skip a terrible episode, even though she agrees how terrible the episode was after the fact. She also likes to watch the special features for every season immediately after the season ends.

Now, I’m no special features expert, but as a human being with a fucking brain it is so obvious to me that you limit the content in your special features to what has already happened. You don’t reveal in the season four features that Worf and Dax get married at the end of season five.

Maybe that shit flies in the mirror universe, but here in the regular universe you’re just assholes.

Dammit, English! will be an occasional feature on this blog, in which I discuss annoying, lazy, confusing, unnecessary, and otherwise wrong bits of American English. Additionally, you can find the full collection of these posts at artallen.net/dammit-english.

Maybe you’ve gone to a bar and told the bartender you want a drink of six (or five, or seven, or eight) parts vodka to one part dry vermouth. Though I find this drink unpleasing, I do not judge you for this. I do judge you the moment you call it a Vodka Martini.

According to The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948), vodka and vermouth together become a Bradford. Now that’s a drink name. It’s not a Vodka Martini. It’s a Bradford. There is no more need for question or argument; the issue has been resolved.

But the “Vodka Martini” is indicative of a much broader phenomenon in this age of 19-year-olds (and many women of all ages) who want to feel like they’re drinking but don’t actually enjoy liquor, wine, or beer. I blame Applebee’s, Chili’s, and TGI Friday’s.

These three restaurants have taken real drinks and named them incorrectly to make women (yes, women) feel sophisticated. For example, from the TGI Friday’s online drinks menu (in the “Girls’ night out” section):

What they describe is a Mudslide made with quality ingredients, served in a cocktail glass instead of the traditional tumbler. Just because it’s in a Martini glass does not make it a Martini! When I drink wine out of the skulls of my slain enemies, does that mean I’m drinking brains? It absolutely does not. The drink in question is called a Mudslide, up (the “up” indicating that it is in a Martini glass instead of the traditional tumbler).

Listen. When you watch The Jeffersons, you are not watching All in the Family. They’re related; they come from the same place; they are both great. But they are not the same. People would judge you if you referred to The Jeffersons as All in the Family.

Maybe you think I’m being snobby and picking on Martinis because of the disgusting (both to my sensibilities as an English speaker and to my palate) proliferation of “Martini” drinks that are made with vodka and fruity flavoring. This is a lot of it. But there’s more.

If we continue to look at the menu at TGI Friday’s, we find things like the Pomegranate Margarita, the Tropical Berry Mojito Shaker, etc. They have taken real classic cocktails and sweetened them for the aforementioned 19-year-olds and all women. This is fine! They are a business. But when you change one ingredient—say, adding pomegranate to a Margarita—you must give the drink a new name. That’s the rule.

Here are just a few drinks pairs that have very similar ingredients but something is different, so each has a different name:

Manhattan: whiskey, sweet vermouth, bitters
Rob Roy: Scotch whisky, sweet vermouth (NOT A MANHATTAN)

Margarita: tequila, orange liqueur, lime juice
Matador: tequila, pineapple juice, lime juice (NOT A PINAPPLE-RITA)

White Russian: vodka, Kahlua, cream
Colorado Bulldog: vodka, Kahlua, cream, Coca-cola (NOT A WHITE RUSSIAN FIZZ)

Dammit, English! will be an occasional feature on this blog, in which I discuss annoying, lazy, confusing, unnecessary, and otherwise wrong bits of American English. Additionally, you can find the full collection of these posts at artallen.net/dammit-english.

It is probable that you are a normal person. Considering that you are reading a blog post about English language usage, maybe you have taken some language arts classes or maybe you were even an English major in college. I was not. In any case, chances are very good that you are not a writer for television. And that’s fine! Few of us are. This blog post is not directed at you.

But to you television and movie writers (especially those in the science fiction genre), I have this to say:

IT IS YOUR PAID JOB TO BE A KNOWLEDGEABLE WRITER. WOULD IT KILL YOU TO USE THE PROPER FORM OF MILLENNIUM? Sheesh!

If I fall into any grammar camp, it is definitely descriptivism, but COME ON. Television writers are paid to write. I can forgive an idiotic “honest to blog” as a sign of the times, but when writers for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine write,”Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago,” what am I supposed to think? These are writers who were educated and actually wrote before the advent of the Popular Internet. They were supposed to be the asshole writers! They were the ones who were supposed to be picking all the goddamn nits and judging others for misspelling words and splitting infinitives.* And here I am, in 2010, with every teen boy who has just been dumped starting a blog, trying to set some sort of usage example. YOU ARE UNDERMINING ME.

Let me be clear: I really do tend towards descriptivism. If “millennia” is now the way we’re all saying “millennium,” fine. I don’t like it; I am just one (grumpy) man. But be consistent! Let the change come from mass incorrectness due to an acrane confusion, not because “a millennium” sounds–less badass? “A millennim” sounds baddass, guys; and Worf needs to be badass.

*Ironic choice of grammar example was intentional.

Dammit, English! will be an occasional feature on this blog, in which I discuss annoying, lazy, confusing, unnecessary, and otherwise wrong bits of American English. Additionally, you can find the full collection of these posts at artallen.net/dammit-english.

Hyperbole is a sacred, even hilarious institution of the English language–when it is used effectively. While we all grant that Frank Sinatra very likely did get a kick from Champagne, cocaine, and (while he may in fact not get much thrill from a plane–who does any more?) flying too high with some gal in the sky, we also see that he is making a grand overstatement to win the affection of a woman (Luck, perhaps?). We begrudgingly accept its use in everything from chicken sandwich commercials to, now, nearly ever political campaign ever.* But what about whiny Internet assholes?

I won’t begin to try to attack all hyperbole on the Internet. Much of it does bother me, but really, when you say “fuck my life,” you had better mean it. In the context, we can take “fuck” to mean “destroy irrevocably,” the idea being that a problem was so unsolvable and life-consuming that no refuge could be found in any other, more positive aspect of the fuck-sayer’s life. I find this to be exceedingly whiny and unnecessary in almost every instance.

Don’t misunderstand me here: this is not a rant against saying “fuck my life” in any situation. But let’s be selective! Some major life-fucks deserve FML; others deserve less severe fucks. I will illustrate scenarios and accompany them with appropriate fuck/subject combinations:

• Today I farted in the conference room and everyone knew it was me. Fuck me.
• Today I needed to clean out fifty port-o-johns at the spiciest chili competition. Fuck that!
• Today everyone in the world died. But somehow all the radiation from all those H-bombs doesn’t give me radiation poisoning! I was finally able to read all the books in all the libraries in the world. But then my glasses broke. Fuck my life.

*I said “nearly;” therefore it is not hyperbole! Also, that the statement is a goddamn fact makes it not hyperbole.

See for yourself:

A favorite pastime of mine is to contemplate the thing I am using in the current moment in time and to consider its history and its future. This may sound profound (pretentious), and maybe it is (it isn’t), but that’s not the hook for me.

What entertains me about this consideration is the ability to postulate absolute statements. For (a crude) example, as I lie here in bed writing this, I can see hair on my belly. I don’t know how long those specific hairs have been there—perhaps three months. I know they will fall out within another three months to be replaced with indistinguishable other hairs. Knowing this, I can say with almost 100% certainty that not one of the hairs that I can see on my belly right now is ever going to be the cause of my death. I am also 100% certain that they will never ever make it as far as Africa and that they will not ever be used as an intended ingredient in a dinner (or breakfast, for that matter. Lunch—we’ll see).

The other major source of amusement in this exercise is then testing these postulated absolute statements and trying to construct a scenario in which they are proven false. An example, using the first example from above, is:

As a belly hair is shed, as happens every day, it drifts into my cat’s water bowl; she laps the hair up, causing it to tickle her throat. As she is momentarily confused, she jerks backwards, directly obstructing my walking path into the kitchen, tripping me, and causing me to flail somewhat clumsily onto some sharp knives, which Emily has inadvertently placed point-up in the dishwasher, which she has (uncharacteristically) left open. One impales my eye! Instant death. Thanks a lot, belly hair.

It works for other things, too.

Number of knowings where I live. There is a finite number of times coitus will be achieved in the apartment I’m living in—by me, by all previous tenants going back to the 1920s, and over the entire span of this building’s existence as a habitable domicile. (Counterexamples: is penetration without ultimate satisfaction considered coitus? Does oral pleasure count in this tally? What if the oral pleasure did not achieve ultimate satisfaction? What if it did, but was a prelude to bigger things?)

Places where I will ride my bike. I will never ride my bike underwater. (Counterexample: oh god! What horrible scenario must I have gotten myself into so that I am riding a bike underwater? Surely some sort of gangster has forced me to flee from him and this, in a state of panic, seems the best, most logical course of escape.)

You get the picture. This works on literally anything you can think of. (Counterexample: some badass temporally-independent thing whose fundamental characteristics change in order to prove jackass amateur philosophers wrong.)

*Please do not read this as bragging. This is a complaint, at best.
**Probably facts, as far as anyone knows.

For as much fun as summer can be with all its semi-nude women, patio beers, and “summer hours” (also known as skipping out early on Fridays), its lameness cannot be overstated. You see, I have a fall birthday, and that means after Christmas I go an entire ten months without presents.

Don’t get me wrong, having a fall birthday as had its advantages: I was among the first of my friends to turn 16, 18, and 21, and that carried with it extreme gloating rights. But, like time itself, gloating rights are fleeting; presents last forever.

This lack of gift giving in my direction isn’t really a problem in the first months of the new year, as at that time I am sufficiently satiated, for a while anyway, from the appetizer of my October birthday and the feast of Christmas. But now that the summer months have arrived I remember fondly the days of anticipation and hint dropping, and I miss them like one misses a discarded half-hotdog that was too much to eat at the time but would taste so good right about now.

The great expanse of presentlessness might be dealt with by simply getting things for myself without tribute to my birth as the stimulus. But I can’t be expected to buy a season of The Simpsons on DVD or an iTunes gift card on my own; if I did, what would other people get me? I must think of others before myself.

I have tried putting it out of mind, hibernating the desire for presents by distracting myself with the fleshy, naked things of summer. However, one tormenting factor stands in the way of this and all other possible solutions: my sister’s birthday. It falls on June 28^th, three days off from being on the exact opposite side of the year from Christmas. It just sits there, smack dab in the middle of summer, taunting me with its even distribution of presents for her.

But no! Not only does she get presents, I have to give her one! Imagine being a starving homeless man, cursed by destiny to sit in front of Burger King begging for whatever pittance the passing fat business executives will throw at you. Now, imagine being forced to go into the Burger King to order a delicious meal with the money you have scrounged together after many hours of begging in the hot sun. But this is not a meal for you. This is a meal for the fat executives, which you are then expected to hand to them personally with a smile on your face as they unwrap and enjoy their bounty right in front of you.

Yes, an October birthday is a wonderful yet cruel, cruel fate.

Since September of last year, Emily and I have participated in a handicapped bowling league. The premise is that everything is super laid back. You come, bowl three games with some friends, drink a pitcher or three of beer, and have something to look forward to every week. We play for modest cash prizes at the end of the 14 weeks, but otherwise there is nothing at stake, aside from (very unimpressive) bragging rights. It’s not even a sanctioned league!

My point is this: it’s supposed to be fun.

But there are some who seem to take no joy from this weekly recreation. There are a few people we bowl against who are paying $13 a week (plus $2 for shoes, if the don’t bring their own) to do nothing but scowl. They bowl a strike, and it’s a straight face: no jump, no arms raised in victory, no fist pump. They feel no joy.

DUDES! It’s bowling. You’re paying money to enjoy yourself. Smile one goddamn time. You’re bowling!