The musings of Skullturf Q. Beavispants

More outdated lingo

2009-08-30T10:52:00.001-04:00

There are a lot of words related to dating and romance that I'm familiar with, but that people don't really say very much anymore, it seems.

Courting
Suitor
Jilted
Divorcee
Singles bar

We're all getting older

2009-01-20T12:08:00.003-05:00

The President of the United States is younger than the following people.

Carl Lewis
Boy George
Michael J. Fox
Dennis Rodman
Eddie Murphy
Henry Rollins
Vince Neil
Wayne Gretzky
Joan Jett
Sean Penn
Chuck D
Kyle Gass
Bono
Prince Andrew
Greg Louganis
Nigella Lawson
Val Kilmer
Judd Nelson
Bryan Adams
Weird Al Yankovic

Words you don't hear any more

2009-01-07T14:08:00.001-05:00

I remember sometimes encountering these in old movies or old novels.

"Dick" -- detective
"Hack" -- cab driver
"Screw" -- prison guard

User Names

2008-12-16T14:09:00.002-05:00

According to my browser's auto-complete function, the following are all examples of user names I have used when posting comments on the comment boards at the Onion AV Club.

Or more precisely, these are all things I've typed into the "name" field, but I do remember that in some cases, the user name I tried had actually been reserved by somebody else, so I couldn't comment under that name. I remember specifically that this was the case with "Comic Book Guy"; there are probably others as well.

I'm amazed at the number of different names on this list. However, I know that many of them I only used once, often as part of a one-time joke that probably made a bit more sense in context ("FBI guy" and "Leslie Nielsen" were both examples of that).

A 96 percent heterosexual man
A British Columbian
A Canadian, so why do I even care?
A mildly buzzed contrarian Canadian
A semi-regular who doesn't wanna log in
A west coaster who now lives in Toronto
A young socialist-leaning hipster
An aspiring academic
Anonymoooose
Anonymouse
Another Obligatory Simpsons Reference Robot
Aspiring Jay Leno writer
Barbara Hershey Squirt
Boo-urns
Borat Sagdiyev, Esq.
Bucephalus Winterbottom
Burns and his PR guys
being slightly more serious than I usually am
Comic Book Guy
Comic Book Guy Jeff Albertson
Daniel NES-tor
Danitra Vance
Dorky Canadian
doesn't matter
don't wanna log in
FBI guy
Fay Wray
Fissure Stevens
Floyd Bent Son
Fox Television
Fuhrman, pushing the boundaries of taste
Grape Frougape
Guy who stretches things
Guy who uses broad ethnic stereotypes
Himsel
Homer J. Fong
Homer Jay Simpson
I stole these jokes (can you guess the source?)
Jerome Allen "Jerry" Seinfeld, standup comic
Kang or Kodos
Lenny Leonard
Leslie Nielsen
Leslie Nielsen, again
Lolsfercatu
Lou Costello
Man nostalgic for seasons 4 through 8
Mathlete
McBain, hosting a late night talk show for some reason
Mitch Hedberg
Mitch Hedberg, Esq.
Mr. Peter Griffin of Quahog, RI
Nameless maneless salesmen
Non-clever name
Norm MacDonald
Not logging in right now because the web is slow because I'm multitasking
nonuple dash
Old man
Paco von Sourcream
Prinskipple Skipper
Scarface Q. Pinkington the 8th
Seinfeld and Carlin's less talented cousin
Skullturf Q, too lazy to log in
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
Slobmeister Q. Funnyface
Snare-ah Impalin'
Snorfgasm Q. Publicpants
shitass petfuckers
TV-watching guy
Tha Revverrennnd Chah-aunceee Grizz Leigh
That Russian guy whose name I forget
The Barenaked Ladies
The Liger
The dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you
The guy who posts Onion headlines at the AV Club
Those hippies from the film "Herbie the Love Bug"
Too embarrassed to say
Two Harry Shearer characters
uninformed
white male
Yeenoghu, Demon Lord of Gnolls
You Know Who

Alcoholic, hamburger, Watergate

2008-10-28T12:59:00.002-04:00

Those three words have something in common.

People have coined words like "chocoholic" and "shopaholic" that mean addiction to chocolate and shopping, not chocohol and shopahol.

People have coined words like "cheeseburger" and "mooseburger" that don't mean a food item originating from the cities of Cheeseburg or Mooseburg.

People have coined words like "Nipplegate" and "Strippergate" that refer to scandals that aren't related to a hotel called Nipplegate or Strippergate.

I'd be amused to learn of other examples. I'm not sure if there's much more to say in terms of what's going on behind the scenes. I guess in each case, after the original word became common, it got reanalyzed in the popular imagination. "Alcoholic" got reanalyzed as "alco" + "holic", "hamburger" got reanalyzed as "ham" + "burger", and "Watergate" got reanalyzed as "Water" + "gate".

So then people associate the suffix "-holic" with addiction in general, people associate the suffix "-burger" with patties on a bun in general, and people associate the suffix "-gate" with scandal in general, even though doing so isn't "true" to the etymological history.

And by the way, it would be kind of silly to say that therefore coinages like "chocoholic" are illegitimate or wrong. It would be a little like saying the expression "the algorithm" is wrong because the "al" in "algorithm" historically comes from a definite article, making the "the" redundant.

Or, at the very least, the time to object to "chocoholic" would have been when the word was first being used. Now that it's caught on, it's too late.

MS Word and dangling modifiers

2008-10-18T12:58:00.002-04:00

I'm currently using Microsoft Word (gasp, shudder) to co-write a textbook (or "textbooklet"). Today, I typed the following sentence:

"Quite often when using statistics, our data will involve more than one variable."

It promptly got underlined in green by Word's "grammar checker". Usually I don't trust the grammar checker, but in this instance, once I looked back at my sentence, I realized that it does commit one of those "dangling modifier" type of boo-boos. So I changed the sentence to

"Quite often when we use statistics, our data will involve more than one variable."

The grammar checker didn't object at all.

So I guess my question is, is that really what the grammar checker was objecting to? The dangling modifier? But how would it know? Isn't that more a question of semantics than syntax? Suppose you type a sentence like

"Raised in Arizona, it is easy to miss the open land."

How would you program a computer to try to recognize that "raised in Arizona" doesn't really modify the "it"?

More grammar oddities

2008-10-04T17:14:00.001-04:00

Why can we say

"A bird with red wings was observed."
"A bird with red wings was seen."
"The observed bird had red wings."

but not

"The seen bird had red wings."?

Thoughts on Sarah Palin

2008-09-19T15:26:00.001-04:00

Like many others who've been watching the news in the past three weeks, I'm fascinated by Sarah Palin. I disagree with her politically on a number of issues, and I'm not thrilled with the Bush administration, so I won't be cheering for the Republicans on November 4th. But I think that selecting her to be McCain's running mate, although it may have seemed like a surprising choice at the time, may turn out to be a stroke of genius. This small-town mother of five has potential to resonate with a lot of people. I also think there's a portion of the criticism directed at her, when it gets personal, that can begin to come across as classist or condescending, and this style of personal criticism can sometimes backfire.

I could rattle off many areas where I disagree with Palin's politics. She opposes abortion even in the case of incest, and would support a constitutional amendment banning abortion in such cases. She's open to the idea of altering the Alaska constitution specifically to deny state health benefits to same-sex couples. She's opposed to stem-cell research. She's signed proclamations declaring a "Christian Heritage Week" and a "Bible Week" in Alaska. She also gives the impression of being a little glib or cavalier on environmental issues -- maybe people from large and resource-rich states are more likely to take certain things for granted. She is young and may be a little in over her head with respect to national and international issues, with war and national defence. Furthermore, you don't need to be that much of a cynic to think she was picked as McCain's running mate largely for reasons of image, and not necessarily because she was the most knowledgeable or experienced among the five or six leading candidates.

So if I was an American citizen, I'd be pretty unlikely to vote for her. But despite all of that, there's this weird part of me that wants to "root for her" in some abstract way. Maybe part of it is a sympathy thing: although I disagree with her politically, I also sense some condescension or classism or sexism in some of the things people say about her. Some folks seem a little too quick to dismiss her as "white trash" or make disparaging remarks about how small her town is, how remote her state is, or how large her family is. (Maybe I'm slightly guilty too; I've had a bit of a laugh at the names of her kids.) But actually, I think it's kind of cool that it's possible for a woman to have five kids under the age of 20 and also be a contender for one of the most powerful political positions in the land. It doesn't negate that I have serious disagreements with her and her party on a large number of issues, but there does remain a small part of me that thinks it's kind of cool that a woman born in the 1960s, who's a hockey mom from a remote Northwestern state, and who's closer to my age than to my parents' age, can have reached the position she's in.

I guess part of what bugs me is when political disagreements turn into full-on "culture wars" where people express not-very-veiled disdain for the sociocultural group that political candidates belong to. Both the left and the right can be guilty of that. Even if everyone takes the "high road" and makes it just about the issues, there's obviously still going to be much disagreement about "big" topics like abortion, or war, or crime and punishment, or church and state. So it bugs me when on top of that, you have people (and it can come from either end of the spectrum) sneering at a political candidate because of who they are and where they come from. It could be "Ha ha Sarah Palin, you have five kids and your town is small and you eat moose." Or "Ha ha Barack Obama, you're an overeducated city-dweller who probably watches PBS and attends wine tastings."

My mother's father, who lived in Calgary from the age of 34 until his death at 81, was a supporter of the Reform/Alliance party after they became a political force here in Canada. As for me, they've always been my least favourite of the major parties, both before and after their merger with the Progressive Conservatives. I loved my grandfather, but we were from different generations and I guess we just had different priorities for what we think government should do. But even though I never liked Reform, it has always bugged me when people from other parts of the country dismiss the party and their voters with an attitude of "Oh, there go those angry Westerners again." With U.S. politics too, in people's conversations and on internet message boards, I sometimes encounter a dismissive attitude about Red State voters, almost like "How sad that a bunch of rubes in Dayton, Ohio, and other flyover places get a voice in choosing their next leader."

The educated metropolitan Left really needs to watch these sorts of remarks and not dismiss people like Sarah Palin as being "white trash". Politics today, for better or for worse, is very leader-driven, image-driven, and personality-driven. And I gotta tell you, if there were only a 44-year-old Alaskan mother of five -- even one who ate moose and talked with a Joan Cusack accent! -- who was pro-reproductive rights and pro-science and not a religious zealot, and who was also a wise and skilled negotiator with a thorough and nuanced grasp of world affairs, well, I'd not only want to vote for her, but I'd damn near wanna marry her. (Well, except for the part about helping to raise five kids.)

Data is!

2008-09-08T20:25:00.002-04:00

Some style guides insist that because "data" comes from the Latin plural of "datum", we are therefore required to treat the word "data" as plural, and we should write things like "These data are".

I disagree, and consider it completely appropriate to treat "data" as a "mass noun", like "milk" or "mud" or "information". The IEEE agrees that this is permitted, and defers to author preference in their published materials.

My main reason is a simple one: the word "datum" is not used in everyday English, nor is it used in statistics or computing science. It is an obscure word almost never encountered, even in professional or academic contexts, and it thus seems a little strange or perverse to insist that "data" is "really" the plural of "datum".

Moreover, the word "agenda" comes from a Latin plural whose corresponding singular noun, "agendum", is virtually never encountered in English. Nobody objects to the linguistic reality that in contemporary English, "agenda" is a singular noun.

Data is stuff. Data is information. I hope this data convinces you. Live with it.

Names for musical genres

2008-09-04T14:02:00.001-04:00

The following can be names of musical genres:

Rock & roll
Rock
Rhythm & blues
Blues

The following cannot:

Roll
Rhythm

An album for each year you've been alive

2008-07-07T17:52:00.003-04:00

Here's an idea for a music-related list I got from today's Steve Hyden post at the Onion AV Club. Hyden apparently got the idea from Idolator. The idea is to pick one album from each year you've been alive. Sounds simple, but it took me the better part of an afternoon to compile my list.

I imposed the following rules on myself: No double albums, no greatest hits compilations, and no using the same artist more than once. Others may decide not to be so stringent.

Here's my list.

1974: Crime of the Century, Supertramp
1975: Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
1976: Fly Like an Eagle, Steve Miller Band
1977: Little Queen, Heart
1978: Van Halen, Van Halen
1979: Rust Never Sleeps, Neil Young and Crazy Horse
1980: Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, Warren Zevon
1981: Tattoo You, The Rolling Stones
1982: Thriller, Michael Jackson
1983: Eliminator, ZZ Top
1984: Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen
1985: Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits
1986: Raising Hell, Run DMC
1987: Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses
1988: Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, Traveling Wilburys
1989: New York, Lou Reed
1990: Shake Your Money Maker, The Black Crowes
1991: Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Red Hot Chili Peppers
1992: Automatic for the People, R.E.M.
1993: In Utero, Nirvana
1994: Wildflowers, Tom Petty
1995: Fight for Your Mind, Ben Harper
1996: Plays Metallica by Four Cellos, Apocalyptica
1997: The Virginian, Neko Case and Her Boyfriends
1998: Ophelia, Natalie Merchant
1999: Reload, Tom Jones
2000: Fragments of Freedom, Morcheeba
2001: I Get Wet, Andrew W.K.
2002: American IV: The Man Comes Around, Johnny Cash
2003: Elephunk, Black Eyed Peas
2004: Back to Bedlam, James Blunt
2005: Devil's Playground, Billy Idol
2006: Loose, Nelly Furtado
2007: La Cucaracha, Ween

Soup

2008-05-10T17:04:00.002-04:00

What do you do with soup? The answer may depend on where and when you're from, I suppose.

"I'm going to eat my soup."

"I'm going to drink my soup."

BOTH of these sound a little strange to me, and not quite right. I suppose the first sounds less awkward to me, though, so that's the one I would probably say. But neither of them sound all that great, and I think I'd be most likely to just say "I'm going to have my soup."

Acid

2008-02-13T19:24:00.003-05:00

It was pointed out to me today that one can distinguish between the two different meanings of the word "acid" as follows:

(1) "Argh! My skin is melting!" acid

(2) "Whoa, dude, my skin is melting" acid

Canadian pessimism?

2008-02-08T17:20:00.000-05:00

There are two songs by Canadian groups about Superman being deceased, and two songs by Canadian groups about major world cities sinking.

Citrus

2007-12-14T13:26:00.000-05:00

"What did you think of that lemon candy?"

"It was sub-lime."

Socks

2007-12-13T19:49:00.000-05:00

I had to throw out a pair of socks the other day.

Normally, when a sock has a hole in it, and you want to get rid of it, you have two options.

(1) Throw away the other sock as well. I feel a little weird doing this; it seems somehow wasteful to throw away a perfectly good sock.

(2) Keep the other sock. This can be annoying, though, because then you have an odd number of socks, and the sock that you keep might almost, but not quite match some of your other socks.

Fortunately, though, this time around, both socks in the pair happened to develop holes in the toes at the same time, so the decision was made for me with no unpleasant consequences! Isn't symmetry wonderful?

Top U.S. ancestries by county

2007-11-20T23:47:00.000-05:00

This map is really interesting.

Oh I, yeah, I'm still alive

2007-11-17T00:07:00.000-05:00

Who are the greatest rock and pop groups of all time, if we restrict ourselves to those groups whose members are all still alive today?

If duos count, then we can include the Everly Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel, and Ike & Tina Turner.

All four founding members of the Kinks are still kicking.

We've also got Cream, who famously reunited for four 2005 shows in London.

Sly & the Family Stone were a large group, but Wikipedia seems to think all of their original lineup are still alive.

All four of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are still with us.

Whatever you may think of Michael Jackson's strange personal life, or his brothers' lack of successful solo careers, all of the Jackson Five continue to live and breathe.

Fleetwood Mac had several different lineups over the years, but I don't think any of the members are underground.

Of course, the nearer we get to the present, it becomes easier to name bands who haven't had a member die, but harder to agree on who the most "classic" or "biggest" acts are. But a few more who qualify are Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, Talking Heads, Blondie, ABBA, the Police, ZZ Top, Van Halen, U2, and R.E.M.

More on yesterday's lame cartoon

2007-11-03T12:35:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Herre for sending me these cartoons that are every bit as hilarious and cutting as the cartoon I linked to yesterday.

Lame-ass political cartoonery

2007-11-02T20:01:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Biiirdmaaan at the Comics Curmudgeon for this one. This has got to be the least specific political cartoon in the history of the universe.

An anagram

2007-10-20T10:45:00.000-04:00

It's Tom Petty's birthday today. His full name,

THOMAS EARL PETTY

is an anagram of

HOARSELY ATTEMPT.

A homophone

2007-10-19T23:43:00.001-04:00

"Eyebrow raiser" sounds just like "Eyebrow razor".

Now THIS is real-life comedy

2007-10-19T14:47:00.000-04:00

My friend recently went on a first date with a woman he met on the internet. They were talking on the phone shortly before this meeting, and even though they had already seen some pictures of one another on the web, the young lady provided my friend with a brief description of her appearance to make it easier for them to recognize each other. Specifically, she told my friend, "I'll be wearing a camouflage jacket."

My friend replied, "Oh, so you'll be easy to spot."

Fashion mistakes

2007-10-19T01:38:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, one person or one unfortunate incident can ruin a fashion choice for everyone. For instance, November 22nd, 1963, was probably the nail in the coffin for the pink pillbox hat.

Also, no matter how much of a film comedy buff you are, you aren't going to wear a Hitler mustache and refer to it as an "Oliver Hardy mustache". "What? Why are you looking at me like that? I just enjoy Laurel and Hardy! What's wrong with that?"

Last of a breed

2007-10-18T21:38:00.000-04:00

Joey Bishop died yesterday. He was the last surviving member of the Rat Pack.

Some other famous "lasts":

Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow, was the last surviving main cast member from the Wizard of Oz. He died in 1987. (However, Meinhardt Raabe, who played the Munchkin coroner, is still alive.)

Tommy Ramone is the only surviving member of the Ramones' orginal lineup.

It remains to be seen who will be the last surviving member of the Beatles or the Who -- both groups have two members remaining.

Twelve men have walked on the moon, three of whom are now deceased. Since all of them were born between 1923 and 1935, I suppose that means that sometime perhaps about a decade and a half from now, there will be a last surviving moon-walker.

Meow beats woof

2007-10-17T22:39:00.000-04:00

Or so it would seem. (At least in terms of number of artists.)

Meow:
Pantera
Def Leppard
Cat Stevens
Cat Power
Glass Tiger
White Lion
Nashville Pussy
Pussycat Dolls
Kittie

Woof:
Snoop Dogg
Ferlin Husky
Wolfmother
Bloodhound Gang
Pointer Sisters

Sure as shit

2007-10-16T22:22:00.001-04:00

I've decided that instead of saying "sure as hell", which is a common expression that flows out my mouth quite easily, I'd like to start saying "sure as shit".

The alliterative factor is a big part of the reason. Furthermore, "sure as hell" doesn't necessarily make a whole lot of sense if you take it literally. Many halfway religious people who have not-super-well-defined spiritual leanings might believe in some kind of afterlife, but a lot of them wouldn't think of hell as any kind of certainty. I think people nowadays are probably a lot more skeptical about the existence of hell than they are about some vague kind of afterlife or some kind of sentient superhuman force that can guide our lives.

Obviously, though, an expression like "sure as hell" shouldn't be taken so literally. When people say it, they aren't actually saying that the existence of hell is something they're more sure of than anything. It's a bit like when people say "What the fuck?" They don't actually mean "What in the name of sexual intercourse?" It's more like saying, "What in the name of [strong word for emphasis]?"

Language in general is fascinating, and so is swearing in particular. I could talk about it all day (for instance, it's interesting that "shit" is a stronger word than "hell", even though the former is merely a perhaps unpleasant daily reality, whereas the latter is punishment until the end of time). But at any rate, yeah, "sure as shit" rules.

Clocks are running late

2007-10-15T22:44:00.000-04:00

Let's say I tell you that the clock in my kitchen is five minutes late. When my clock says that it's 8:00, what time is it really?

This is a sincere question. Check the comments for elaboration.

On the 14th of October

2007-10-14T19:25:00.000-04:00

Those words are spoken at the beginning of the 1985 song "L'Affaire Dumoutier" by Montreal band The Box. If you're not Canadian and/or don't remember the 80s, then you're probably unfamiliar with the song -- and even if you are a Canadian who remembers the 80s, there's no guarantee that you remember the song. I had a vague recollection of it, and thought it had a trippy video, and hence was pleased to have recently tracked that song down.

Anyway, that song got me wondering: what are the most famous examples of songs that mention a specific date? I'm thinking specifically of "name of month" + "number" -- there are plenty of songs containing the words "Halloween" or "Christmas" or "New Year's Day", but fewer that say "October 31st" or "December 25th" or "January 1st".

The three best-known examples that occur to me are:

"Pride (In the Name of Love)" by U2 (Early morning / April 4 / Shot rings out in the Memphis sky)

"September" by Earth Wind And Fire (Do you remember / The 21st night of September)

"Saturday In The Park" by Chicago (Saturday in the park / Think it was the 4th of July)

In support of the serial comma

2007-09-20T10:58:00.000-04:00

One more argument in favour of the serial comma:

I was reading somebody's Facebook profile, and she listed her favourite TV shows as:

"Sex and the City, Seinfeld, Friends and the Nanny".

A puzzle

2007-09-11T16:40:00.000-04:00

What does this map represent? Why are some areas blue, some red, and some orange?

Tuesday, September 11th

2007-09-11T16:19:00.000-04:00

Daily newspaper comic strips are, not surprisingly, composed a few weeks in advance. Occasionally, this can lead to coincidences of timing that can be unfortunate or ironic or poignant.

Perhaps not many of you are aware that Dick Tracy is still being produced as a daily comic strip. This is the Dick Tracy strip that appeared in newspapers on the morning of September 11th, 2001.

Music Trivia

2007-09-09T11:35:00.000-04:00

Question 1

What do the following artists have in common?
Missy Elliott
Tupac Shakur
Kanye West

Question 2

What do the following artists have in common?
Pink Floyd
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Foo Fighters

Question 3

What do the following artists have in common?
George Michael
Peter Gabriel
the Beatles
Foo Fighters
Beastie Boys
the Traveling Wilburys
Warren Zevon

This post is another test...

2007-08-21T18:57:00.000-04:00

Click here for the video that I can't figure out how to embed into the page.

This post is a test...

2007-08-21T18:48:00.000-04:00

Who would play God?

2007-08-02T02:23:00.000-04:00

If you were making a movie, and money was no object, and you wanted to hire a celebrity to play the role of God, who would you choose?

My choices can be seen in the comments, but don't click there yet, if you first want to try to decide for yourself.

Akitas and huskies and cats? Oh my!

2007-07-28T17:51:00.000-04:00

If you want something with that "Awww!" factor, you've come to the right place. Check out the touching story of Hachiko the faithful dog, or these three videos featuring husky-cat interaction.

Another rant I wrote

2007-07-18T20:51:00.000-04:00

A blog I spend an inordinate amount of time on is the Comics Curmudgeon. On Easter weekend 2007, Johnny Hart of B.C. fame passed away. Even casual readers of the funny pages may be aware that for the later part of Mr. Hart's life, he was an evangelical Christian and sometimes displayed this fact in his comic strips.

Naturally, in the comments at the Comics Curmudgeon, a few different opinions were expressed about Mr. Hart's work. In response to some of the comments, I posted a little rant of my own. I admitted in the rant that I was concurrently angry for unrelated reasons, and I haven't really looked back at my rant until now. And you know what? Although I might have been angry at the time I wrote it, I totally stand by my rant. And since this is my blog, I thought I'd post a link to that rant.

Felines on film

2007-07-15T21:18:00.000-04:00

Which music videos have big cats in them?

Like a Virgin by Madonna
Maneater by Hall & Oates
Island in the Sun by Weezer

Others?

Bars shouldn't have bathroom attendants

2007-07-03T00:44:00.001-04:00

The Brunswick House in Toronto is a bit of an institution. Founded in 1876, for some time it's had a reputation as a fun hangout for university students, not only from the nearby U of T, but also from other universities in southern Ontario in places like Guelph, for instance.

I moved to Toronto eleven months ago, on August 2nd 2006. For the month of August, I was subletting a furnished apartment that was literally less than a one-minute walk from the Brunswick House. Naturally, I started going there pretty frequently. In particular, I used to go there on Mondays for their karaoke night.

Karaoke night at the Brunswick stopped sometime in the fall, but it started again sometime in June 2007 or thereabouts. Tonight, I decided to go back to the Brunswick to check out the karaoke again after a long absence.

Anyway, to get to the point of this rant, I discovered when I went to the bathroom at the bar that there was someone there working as a men's room attendant. I think, as far as I can remember, that this is the first time I've been in a bar that hired such a person. It seemed almost hard to believe, because part of the appeal of the "Brunny" (as folks sometimes call it) is its "dive" character. The furniture is wooden and no-frills, and the beer and the decor are cheap.

So it's not exactly the place you'd expect to see a bathroom attendant. More to the point, though, I don't think there should be bathroom attendants at ANY bar. Now look, I understand that there are a lot of people out there who need a job where you just have to hand paper towels to people and get to collect a fair number of tips. I hesitate slightly to indulge in this rant because I know there are people who need these kinds of jobs. But still, I DON'T WANT TO FEEL OBLIGED TO SHELL OUT MONEY JUST BECAUSE I WANT TO PEE.

There is NEVER ANY NEED for a bathroom attendant. I can turn on taps by myself, and I can grab paper towels by myself. (By the way, part of what made it so incongruous to see a men's room attendant at the Brunswick is that we're not even talking about little white cloth towels, we're talking about an attendant who rips a piece of brown paper towel off of a roll.) But my issue is not just the lack of practical need for a bathroom attendant. It's also that I find it inherently intrusive that an establishment hires someone whose job is to basically hang out while I pee.

I wouldn't shop at a grocery store who hired someone to walk around with me along the aisles helping me to pick out products. I'd find it annoying. I can decide what food I want with no help from anyone else, thank you. It's kind of a personal choice, anyway. And what could be more personal than peeing or pooing, or washing your hands afterwards? Look, I know how to do this stuff, I don't need any help at all. And I don't want to feel obliged to tip somebody for doing something they don't need to be doing in the first place. It's just stupid. Stop hiring bathroom attendants. I don't want to go to your bar if you hire them. And if I do go to your bar, I'm going to seriously consider pretending I'm going out for a smoke (even though I don't smoke) and just pissing in the alleyway. DO NOT HIRE BATHROOM ATTENDANTS. IT IS STUPID AND ANNOYING AND WRONG. I'm not going back to the Brunswick anytime soon.

Stanley Cup Finals

2007-06-24T20:35:00.001-04:00

Today, June 24th, is the anniversary of the latest the Stanley Cup Finals have ever ended. (1995 was the year.) This year, Vancouver was eliminated in round 2 by Anaheim, who went on to win the Cup.

If you're a Vancouver fan, you can find some solace in that fact. It's like, "We might have been defeated, but at least we were defeated by the best."

It seems to happen fairly often to Vancouver that the team that eliminates them from the playoffs goes on to win the Stanley Cup. It's happened in 2007, 2002, 2001, 1996, 1994, 1989, and 1982. (Of course, 1994 and 1982 are kind of cheats -- in those years, it's not quite accurate to say the team that defeated Vancouver "went on" to win the Cup.)

There are a couple of other NHL teams who can make similar claims.

"Whoever defeats St. Louis wins the Cup." This was true in 2002, 2001, 1999, 1998, and 1997. Five of six consecutive years!

"Whoever defeats Boston wins the Cup." This was true in 2003, 1995, 1992, 1991, 1990, 1988, and 1986.

I have a cold

2007-06-21T16:55:00.000-04:00

I went grocery shopping today while recovering from a cold. While standing in line, it occurred to me that it would be pretty funny if the following musical artists from disparate genres decided to go on tour together.

Oran "Juice" Jones
Vitamin C
Pulp

Best of Craigslist

2007-06-19T19:47:00.000-04:00

I just discovered the Best of Craigslist and man, is it ever funny. The next time you take a day off because you have a cold and want to find something to read on the computer all day, check it out.

Palindromes

2007-06-08T17:55:00.000-04:00

At the subway station near my apartment, there's a door with the word "SIGNALS" written on it. I see that door pretty much every day, and so at one point during the academic year, it occurred to me that the following is a palindrome:

SLANG IS SIGNALS

The nice thing about this palindrome is that it's reasonably meaningful. "Slang can function as a linguistic cue that you belong to the same in-group as someone", or something along those lines.

After discovering this palindrome, I decided to Google it, since I was sure other people must have independently discovered it in the past. Sure enough, some people had, but there seemed to be surprisingly few.

One member of that small list is someone by the name of Dean Blehert, who has a long list of palindromes titled Light Verse.

Hamster Sudoku

2007-06-06T22:10:00.000-04:00

Behold: Hamster Sudoku.

"Maven"

2007-05-31T15:50:00.000-04:00

What do you think of when you see the word "maven"? What kind of image does it conjure up in your head? What does a typical "maven" look like?

L.M. Squires, at Polyglot Conspiracy, points out a tendency of which I was previously unaware.

Illeism

2007-05-31T14:07:00.001-04:00

What do Rickey Henderson, Julius Caesar, Bob Dole, Duffman, and Elmo have in common?

They are all illeists, a word I didn't know until today.

Bunnies vs. Accountants

2007-05-23T22:55:00.000-04:00

Just before Anaheim defeated Detroit in game 6 of their series, I remarked to my friend Adam that if Anaheim were to win that game, then the Stanley Cup final would be between two teams with notably non-macho-sounding names: the "Ducks" and the "Senators".

I said something to the effect of "It might as well be between the Doves and the Bureaucrats."

He replied with "Yeah. The Cleveland Aspartame vs. the Albany Douche."

Infinite Monkeys

2007-05-16T21:52:00.000-04:00

From the Wikipedia page on the "Infinite Monkey Theorem":

"In 2003 a humorous experiment was performed with six Sulawesi crested macaques, but their literary contribution was five pages consisting largely of the letter S, besides attacking and defecating on the typewriter. Researchers concluded that the infinite monkey theorem does not apply to real monkeys; despite their entertaining methods, they make poor random number generators."

Joe Mathlete's Band Name Mashup Rodeo

2007-05-12T17:45:00.000-04:00

The very amusing Joe Mathlete has a blog entry introducing a game where you have to make up hypothetical band names by combining two or more band names that overlap.

He starts off with a bunch of amusing examples, and then a bunch more amusing examples were suggested by others, including me. Here, assembled in one place for your convenience, are some of my suggestions. (I can't take full credit for all of them, because a few of them come from me tweaking someone else's suggestion.)

Taj MaHall and Oates
MatisyaHoobastank
You Say Party! We Say Dido!
Li'l Kim Mitchell
Fountains of Wayne Newton
Vince Neil Young M.C.
R.E.M.F. (best known for their hit "Everybody Hurts? Unbelievable!")
R. Kelly Clarkson
Aimee Manfred Mann
Yoko O-No Doubt
Talk Talking Heads
Weensryche
Genesister Sledge
The Grateful Dead Kennedys
Al Green Day
Iggy Pop Will Eat Itself
Lionel Richie Valens
Loverboy George
Al Green Jello Biafra
Electric Light Orchestral Manoeuvres in The Darkness
Ludacris Kristofferson
Mr. Mister Bungle

I then typed "Weensryche" into Google, to see if anyone else had previously thought of it, and I found something which I suppose shouldn't be a huge surprise: other people have previously played this game. Some of their suggestions (some of which coincidentally duplicated some of mine) can be found here and here.

A rant I wrote

2007-05-12T13:02:00.000-04:00

Today, May 12th, is the two-year anniversary of a rant I posted on the web about people who like their names to be written in lower case. This rant is one of the first things that comes up when you type my (real) name into Google.

Worst. Lyrics. Ever.

2007-05-11T00:31:00.000-04:00

A British radio show has compiled a list of "Top 10 Worst Lyrics", and this list was also discussed over at the Onion AV Club. Then some folks at Rolling Stone also compiled a list of their own.

There are tons and tons of comments following the Rolling Stone list, and I haven't had time to look at them all, but I enjoyed the following comment from someone named "David", especially the last sentence.

It’s more interesting when a good artist gets mentioned. We don’t expect much from Fergie or Sisqo and they probably don’t expect much of themselves lyric wise. My Humps is lyrically stupid but yet one of those guilty pleasures. So bad its fun type songs.

The bands that really try, are where it seems more sad and more of a failure. Isn’t Bernie Taupin regarded for his lyrics with Elton John? And he wrote that Starship song!!? White Rabbit and Somebody To Love vs. We Built This City. Its hard to believe its the same people (more or less)

Love Hurts by Nazareth, is a great example of a truly bad lyric, because it is totally serious.

His friends should have taken him out for drinks to get over his breakup or something, but not told him to write a song in his condition.

Bill Clinton creates crossword clues

2007-05-08T15:18:00.000-04:00

This is really cool. Bill Clinton created the clues for this crossword from the New York Times Magazine. I knew the ex-prez was a crossword buff and had seen him in the 2006 documentary Wordplay.

Happy May 8

2007-05-08T10:15:00.000-04:00

Today's the birthday of one of my favourite fictional characters on the internet: The Onion's Jim Anchower.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

2007-05-04T23:48:00.000-04:00

This could easily be one of those silly meaningless coincidences, but I've noticed in the past that a common bond connecting several famous popular music personalities is losing their mother at a young age.

Madonna lost her mother when she was 5

Bono lost his mother when he was 14

Paul McCartney lost his mother when he was 14

John Lennon lost his mother when he was 17

Elvis Presley lost his mother when he was 23

This is awesomer

2007-05-03T13:27:00.000-04:00

This is even more awesomer.

This is awesome

2007-05-03T13:21:00.000-04:00

This is awesome.

Ohhh... NOW I get it!

2007-05-02T20:55:00.000-04:00

Have any of you ever had weird misunderstandings from your childhood that you don't figure out until years later? Or maybe a joke you hear as a kid, and you laugh to be polite even though you don't understand it, and then one day, about a decade later, your mind is wandering and all of a sudden you're like "Oh, wait! NOW I get it!"

I think there are a few band names and song names that are puns, or have double meanings, or stuff like that, where I wasn't aware of the secondary meaning until long after I had first heard of them. For instance, I'm pretty sure the first time I heard of Adam Ant, I was about 8 years old. It probably wasn't until many years later that for whatever reason, I happened upon his name again, and I was like "Ohhh! Like the adjective 'adamant'!"

Similar things happened with the name of the band who did the song Funkytown. Their name is Lipps Inc. I think it wasn't until sometime in the current millennium that I said their name out loud and realized "Oh! Like 'lip sync'!"

In addition, I'm sure it took a long time before it dawned on me that the title of the reggae-influenced Led Zeppelin song D'Yer Maker, if said with the appropriate accent, sounds like "Jamaica", and that that was the whole point.

And I can also remember, as a small child, being vaguely confused and frustrated by the nursery rhyme about Solomon Grundy. The puzzle worked on me at that young age; I was honestly under the impression that Solomon Grundy must have been some strange otherworldly character who inexplicably led life at a magically sped-up pace. I guess it just so happened that it wasn't explained to me when I was very young, and then of course, nursery rhymes being what they are, I probably never encountered the story of Solomon Grundy again for years and years afterwards. I think I was about 14 or so when one day, for whatever random reason, I happened to encounter that nursery rhyme again, at which point it clicked. "Oh! I get it! Not necessarily the very next Wednesday!"

I'm sure everyone has examples in their own life. This is somewhat reminiscent of the very entertaining website I Used To Believe, which is about childhood misconceptions, but I'm talking about something slightly more specific: not just a weird idea you have as a kid, but something that escapes or eludes you as a child because it's just a little bit too subtle, and then literally years later, you happen to be thinking about the topic again, and then it clicks. Do you know what I mean?

Vintage videos

2007-04-26T20:15:00.000-04:00

Surely anyone of my generation will enjoy browsing this user's videos on YouTube.

Random Celebrity Resemblances

2007-04-25T02:00:00.000-04:00

I think the recently deceased Boris Yeltsin somewhat resembles an older version of former Late Night sidekick Andy Richter.

Superlatives

2007-04-21T23:42:00.000-04:00

Among all the human beings who have ever lived:

1. Who has been photographed the most?

2. Who has been caricatured the most by cartoonists?

3. Who has been on television for the greatest number of hours?

4. Who has been physically seen in person by the greatest number of people?

Obviously, it might be difficult or impossible to give precise definitive answers to these questions, but here's what some folks have claimed:

1. Princess Diana

2. Richard Nixon

3. Regis Philbin

4. Pope John Paul II

I have a hard time believing Regis beat out Johnny Carson, but apparently in August 2004 the Guinness Records people officially recognized Reege for "most hours on camera".

As for #2, probably George W. Bush is giving Tricky Dick a run for his money. For #4, I imagine Queen Elizabeth II puts up some respectable numbers -- and come to think of it, so would any entertainment personality with a long career performing in front of very large crowds -- e.g. Bono, Elton John, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Paul Simon, etc.

Mashups, get your mashups

2007-04-20T20:02:00.000-04:00

In the mood to hear some genre-jumping mashups built out of pieces of disparate popular songs? Well, here you can find quite a few by Smash-Up Derby, and a bunch more by Party Ben.

One of Smash-Up Derby's that I've been digging on is She Sells White Weddings, and, for the sake of singling out one by Party Ben that I like, check out Somebody Rock Me.

Go Kermit!

2007-04-19T01:49:00.000-04:00

Watch the 20th century's most famous frog sing:

Once In A Lifetime as performed by Talking Heads

Creep as performed by Radiohead

Hurt as performed by Johnny Cash

Pandora Internet Radio

2007-04-15T20:57:00.000-04:00

It's possible that I'm behind the curve on this one, but I've just recently found out about Pandora Internet Radio. Basically, this site allows you to customize your own user-created "internet radio station" -- if you suggest artists or songs that you like, then the site will play songs from its database that are supposed to be similar to what you suggested. The idea, of course, is that you can discover new (to you) performers with similarities to those you already like.

Having only discovered Pandora this weekend, I haven't spent much time learning all its features, but it looks like over time you can "tweak" your user-created stations by giving either a thumbs up or thumbs down to the different tracks that come up.

I started one customized station based on the band Ween, and two of the tracks that the website chose to play for me were by a guy from Vermont who I'd never heard of before, James Kochalka. The two of his songs that Pandora played for me were "Bad Astronaut" and "Magic Finger". I found them very entertaining. His compositions struck me as funny, tightly crafted, and indicative of an offbeat sense of humour mixing the adult and the childlike.

On Youtube, you can watch videos for the James Kochalka songs Monkey vs. Robot and Wash Your Ass.

"Skull turf"

2007-04-14T20:41:00.000-04:00

If you're reading this, then I suppose you must be either a real-life acquaintance or a through-the-internet acquaintance. And if you're in the latter category, there's a good chance you know me through my many comments over at Josh Fruhlinger's Comics Curmudgeon site, where the daily newspaper funnies are mocked, praised, critiqued, and deconstructed in the most thorough and humorous way one could ask for.

Whichever of those two categories of acquaintances you belong to, you may be wondering where the name "Skullturf Q. Beavispants" came from. Well, I got "Skull turf" from a daily comic strip called They'll Do It Every Time that debuted in 1929 and is now on its third author, Bronx native Al Scaduto who lives in Milford, Connecticut. Curious readers can find out more about this strip at the appropriate entries in Wikipedia or Toonopedia. You can even see a few panels from the 1930s and 1940s here.

I consumed newspaper comics religiously as a child, and continue to do so today. TDIET, as the comics cognoscenti abbreviate it, didn't appear in the local paper where I grew up, so I only discovered that strip as an adult. These days, my morning routine starts with coffee, oatmeal, and the ridiculously complete Houston Chronicle comics page.

All comic strips have their good points and their bad points, their on days and their off days. My fellow Curmudgeonites like to mock TDIET for being anachronistic, but I suspect the mocking is largely affectionate. It certainly is in my case -- and in fact, lately while reflecting on the topic, I realized that among all the Houston Chronicle's strips, TDIET may be the one I look forward to most each morning! I just find something so appealing about the offbeat language and the level of background detail.

I'm also fascinated in general with anything "old-timey American", to borrow a phrase colleagues use to describe Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder. For instance, I absolutely adore that sort of nasal stacatto accent you hear in movies from the 1920s and 1930s. Where did that accent go? Sometime in the twentieth century, we stopped sounding like Abbott & Costello and started sounding like Val Kilmer.

If you want to see some more old-timey comic strips, you can check out this selection of 1940s and 1950s slang from Mister Kitty's Stupid Comics pages, as well as a selection of installments of The Outbursts of Everett True, dating from the 1900s and 1910s, at Barnacle Press. Great entertainment, if you're at all like me.

So, in conclusion, what about the expression "Skull turf"? Where did it come from exactly? Well, it came from the TDIET of September 25, 2006, and it just means "hair".

My new blog

2007-04-06T22:20:00.000-04:00

I used to have two blogs, and then I stopped updating them. Since September, I've been too busy for this kind of thing, but now I have some free time again.

The main purpose of this blog is to discuss random crap.