Bloggenfreude (definition)

Taking joy in adding to the pain of others via exaggerated and even ridiculous online comments.
A portmanteau of “blog” and “Schadenfreude”

Consider:

• Whatever the latest Apple story is, the “Apple haters” dogpile on, tearing things down with increasingly ridiculous claims and theories.
   
• Right-wing pundits jumping on the birther “Obama was born in Kenya” bandwagon, even though probably none of them really believed the concern was legitimate.
   
• People ripping into Rebecca Black’s song “Friday”.  The lyrics might be simplistic and the Auto-Tune-ing a little bit obvious, but did it deserve that level of attack?  (Kudos to Glee for salvaging the song!)

Sure, when you feel compelled to comment on the latest trend or meme, you have to have your own spin, but if there’s truth in the Thumper Rule (“If you can’t say something nice… don’t say nothing at all.”), then there needs to be a corollary: “If you must say something mean, you don’t have to be meaner than everyone else.”
 

Prhyme (definition)

Any word which has no known rhyme (in the same language).  A portmanteau of “prime” and “rhyme”.

A “prime number” is a number whose only divisors are 1 and the number itself: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 23, 101, etc.

Thus, a “prhyme” is a word whose only rhyme is the word itself.  (Maybe there should be a word-equivalent of the number 1, which rhymes with everything?  I guess it would be <whitespace>.)

(Looks like Prhyme is also the name of a metal/ska band and a rap/hip-hop artist.)
 

Adobe Reader Needs to Build Its Confidence

Poor Adobe Reader.  There, there.  It's okay.  Stand up straight and just try.  You can do it!  I know you can!
 

Coined Phrase: “xxx Tourettes”

iPod Tourettes

The way someone grooving on their iPod or other music player will spit out random bits of whatever song they are listening to, sharing them with the world.  Usually the worst bits and probably out of tune.

Several years ago, when I was commuting by bus — on the glorious MT 7 route up Rainier Ave. — a teenage boy in the back of the bus was suffering from this.  Swaying slightly in his seat, he suddenly sang out “Fuck you!”, then a second later “I’m gonna fuck you, girl!”  Presumably the song by MITCH.

Bible Tourettes

Randomly inserting Bible verse numbers into your speech, especially by Christianists promoting their agenda on the news.  The verse numbers usually do have contextual meaning, but only to people who already know the referenced bits by heart.

In computer programming terms, this is “indirection” — pointing to something that points to what you means.  Used to be that they would include the actual verse, but with sound bite news these days, there’s no time for extraneous words, so they just spit out “Ephesians 2:8” in the middle of a sentence and go back to their talking point.  This Victoria Jackson video on CNN inspired the phrase; you can read her followup blog posting and see that Bible Tourettes populates her writing, too.

Show Quote Tourettes

Blurting out quotes from show tunes and TV and movies and comedy sketches in the middle of conversation.

Visit gay bars, you’ll hear it.  Or visit science fiction conventions and hang around the Trekkers and the Whovians; same difference, different source.  As with Bible Tourettes, there is contextual meaning to those who know the quote, although rather than indirection, this is bonding over shared cultural touchpoints.

(With apologies to those who suffer from genuine Tourette Syndrome, and to drag performer Pussy Tourette, who frankly looked better in drag than when backstage preparing to dress.  You can catch some of her music on Rhapsody.)
 

Dolly Parton, the Coat Check Girl

This was my coat check ticket a couple weeks ago.

For the three people out there who don’t quite get the reference…
 

JJ CC MM SS UU PP

The streets in downtown Seattle (north of Yesler) are Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike, and Pine.  Note the duplication there:

JJ CC MM SS UU PP

When I moved to Seattle ten years ago, I was given a handy mnemonic for remembering the order:

Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest

This mnemonic even shows up in Wikipedia, and my mention of it got on the New York Times website’s Schott’s Vocab blog.

It doesn’t help for “Which ‘S’ street is next?”, but it’s great for figuring out roughly how many blocks you have to go.  But I was thinking this week that maybe this mnemonic would be offensive to non-Christians and maybe even to Christians who consider it to be taking the Lord’s name in vain.  So here are some alternate options:

We voted several years ago to make marijuana usage the police department’s lowest enforcement priority:

Just ’Cause Many Seattlites Use Pot

Why you should either go commando or wear a Utilikilt:

Jeans Can Make Some Underwear Pucker

Or maybe a recipe for consuming our most notable beverage:

Joe: Coffee, Milk, Stir, Uncover, Pour

(Geez, the things I come up with riding to work on my scooter on a soggy day.)
 

Overheard at 5th & Pike

Last Wednesday morning, as I was getting to work, a guy got off the bus as I walked by and loudly proclaimed:

“I love having sex with older women!”

Mind you, the Sweet Adelines International competition was happening late last week at the Seattle Convention Center, just a couple blocks away.  There were more women than usual around that day, shopping an sightseeing, many in their 50s and 60s.

I doubt it got him any, but hey.  More power to you, guy.
 

Satispassion

Cribbed from Schott’s Vocab blog at the New York Times website:

“Satispassion” is a word meaning “atonement by an adequate degree of suffering”.

I find this a great word, because it matches up with a concept for which I haven’t had a word before.

Think about the times when you (or someone else) does something bad or stupid.  You profusely apologize to the person you hurt or insulted or whatever, but their forgiveness is not enough for you (or maybe there was no actual injured party to forgive you).  You have to mentally beat yourself up and generally cause yourself to suffer until you feel that you have atoned for the bad deed.  Or perhaps the other person technically forgives you but reminds you frequently and pointedly of what you did, causing you to relive the issue until he/she feel you have suffered enough for their tastes.

“Satispassion” — we experience it quite a lot, I think.
 

Overheard at Portland Pride

Crossing the Burnside Bridge, from a guy in a a t-shirt that read "HOMO" with a red circle/slash on it:

“It’s such a devastating lifestyle.  It makes people cry.  It brings shame.”

(That’s what you’re claiming these days that is wrong with being gay?  It makes you cry?  And you’re saying this on Pride day?  What planet do you live on?)
 

Pets

“There can be no greater reward in life than to come back as a gay man’s pet.”

(author: Peggy Drew — my mother)
 

Gay Phone (definition)

An iPhone.  Every gay boy in the bar has one.

(Android phone?  Please.  There might be 1 of them in the bar for every 25 iPhones.  A faux gay phone.  But I’ll accept that five years from now, some other phone will be the trendy everyon-has-one, everyone-cruises-on-one device.  Then that one can be the “gay phone”.  But today, it’s the iPhone.)
 

Tongue Twister #3

Pan panned the paladin’s pangolin palanquin.
 

Tongue Twister #2

The sadder satyr sat her for seder Saturday.
 

Wordplay #1

What is a sexy Egyptian teen supposed to do in Kansas during the summer?

When it’s hot in Topeka, a hot Coptic eats a Hot Pocket and shops at Hot Topic.

Tongue Twister #1

Took’s task: take the tacky tiki to Tahiti.
 

The 2004 Presidential Election (joke)

Dr. Seuss wrote a children’s book about the 2004 Presidential Election:

One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State

Winnie the Pooh (joke)

You heard that Winne the Pooh came out of the closet?

He’s a silly willy nelly little bear.

Original to me, circa 2002
 

Sondheim and King (joke)

You heard about Stephen Sondheim doing the music for the new Stephen King Broadway musical?

It’s called Misery Loves Company.

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Original to me, circa 2002
 

Gay Marriage: Choose Your Words Carefully

One of the surprising side-effects of the push for same-sex civil marriage that I’ve found is a revision of the words I have to (or am willing to) use about same-sex relationships.

As I wrote in “Letter of Comment — Spousal Equivalent” on January 21 (and expanded further here), there has long been a list of terms that people would apply to their same-sex relationships: roommate, boyfriend/girlfriend, lover, partner, life partner, longterm companion, fuck buddy, daddy, boy, master, slave, sugar daddy, mate, soulmate, chew toy,…

In particular, we (the gay community) would often in the past use “husband” or “wife” to describe a partner.  Sometimes this was quite serious, with couples who had lived together in a “marriage-like” relationship for several years, possibly including a commitment ceremony and an exchange of rings.  Often, though, this was used as (ironic?) shorthand for a gay or lesbian person’s “boyfriend / girlfriend / lover / partner / whatever he or she is”, so long as it was perceived to be a serious, ongoing relationship.  Except for those who had had actually religious ceremonies, the use of the term was not accurate (and even when accurate, was not “legal”).

Now, though, we have people who hold actual marriage licenses from various jurisdictions, making the use of “husband” or “wife” fully accurate and, to varying degrees in varying places (and hopefully soon less varying and in more places), legal as well.

This makes the use of the terms in non-accurate scenarios distasteful to me.  We are not married, so Rusty is not my “husband”.  I’m not sure what term we should use — we’ve been dating each other exclusively for almost eleven months, using the “L” word (no relation to the TV show) for much of that, and living together for three, including my acting as a step-parent for his teenage daughter — but we’re not married, and we haven’t really discussed getting married beyond that we aren’t ready to do so yet.

If we (as a community) are going to value the actions of same-sex couples who have taken the marriage leap, treating them like the pioneers they are, then I think we have to consciously avoid ironic and joking casual uses of the terms in order to avoid lessening those other relationships.

(Of course, intentional ironic and joking uses are another matter.)

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Updated on January 3, 2011
 

Tortured Phrasing

Want to really torture someone who is from the end of the Baby Boomer generation through Generation X?  (Roughly age 30–45.)

Ask them to say the letters of the alphabet… without singing it.  Without using any of the standard Sesame Street phrasing.  No slurring together of “LMNOP”, no grouping of “QRS” and “TUV”.

Not cruel enough?  Make them recite the Preamble of the United States Constitution, but not sing it, a là School House Rock.  “We the people / In order to form a more perfect union / Establish justice / Ensure domestic tranquility-ee-ee / ….”

Have them do a dramatic reading of the theme songs of The Brady Bunch or Gilligan’s Island.

It’s amazing how ingrained these bits of pop culture are in our psyches.  I can almost manage these stunts, but I inevitably get tripped up by the meter around the word “and” (“Do ordain… and establish” or “the Professor and… Mary Ann”).

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Added video links on January 4, 2011