Category: Language

I’ve gotta know: How do your pronounce “artisanal”? Is it even really a word? Is the accent on the second syllable, “arTISanal”, in which case it sounds like it came from the mouth of Benjamin Disraeli? Or is it on the third syllable, “artisANal”, in which case it describes, when hyphenated with retentive, a good number of people for whom this is an important characteristic of their food?

I don’t know why this word bugs me, but it does. It conjures images of proud craftsmen with beards, carving the perfect cheese with a chisel. Artisans make things at historic villages that sit on living room mantles in colonial houses. Dowdy, rough, built to withstand another cold New Hampshire winter. Is that what you want in a cheese? Can’t we think of another word? Micro-cheesery? Loca-cheese? Udder-iffic?

(And before you ask, No, I don’t know what’s going on in the picture on this card either, or why it’s included in a children’s card game.)

1. I was very upset this summer, while reading an excellent piece by Alex Kotlowitz in the NYT Magazine, to see a glaring error that had passed through their proofreaders’ fingers. In an article about the gee-not-racist-and-xenophobic-at-all efforts of the people of Carpentersville, IL, to make themselves an English-only city, Kotlowitz interviewed a woman heading up the efforts to pass such a resolution, even though, basically, some of her best friends are (or used to be) Mexican. Describing the difficulties of her quest, at one point she mentions she didn’t want to get her “things caught in the ringer.”

What “ringer”? An alarm clock? A doorbell? Quasimodo? Is it a reference to horseshoes?

Of course not. She meant to say, “tits caught in the wringer,” a phrase made most famous by WashPost publisher Katherine Graham. (For all you Gen Xers, we’re talking about a hand-cranked clothes wringer that would pinch laundry dry on wash day.) But by getting all Midwest prissy and trying to craft a PG version of this vulgarism, she confused the copy editors (and possibly Kotlowitz) and gutted any meaning from it. Hell, woman, if you spend your time rousing up your neighbors because your Mexican neighbors aren’t “American” enough, saying “tits” in a national magazine is the least of your worries.

2. On Monday, I was having lunch in Heaven on Seven on Ontario Street for the first time in a long time. Mmmm-mmmm, so good. On the way out I used the washroom, which was tucked in a very quiet corner of the restaurant. The room was silent when I entered it, but the ambient music soon kicked in and gave me a start. A snare drum started popping away, and a chorus of voices started chanting, “Feets, don’t fail me now, feets don’t fail me now….”

And I began to realize how much I love that phrase. “Feets, don’t fail me now.” Just the concept of taking time during a moment of imminent danger to talk to your feet and counsel them, abjure them, BEG them to do their duty and rescue the body they’re attached to. Apparently in the past, the feets had in fact “failed” this person? The instinctive fight-or-flight reaction is short-circuited just long enough for the speaker to address his appendages and confer on a plan for survival. Do the feet argue the point, or do they do their duty quickly enough? Does the man thank them later and apologize for his lack of faith? Do the feet resent the pressure being put on them?

When was this phrase first used? I have no idea–probably in some old movie full of Stepin-Fetchit stereotypes. How nice for a Cajun band to use it as a refrain in the song and reclaim it from its racist origins. I look forward to the day when I can use such a loaded, inherently-contradictory phrase without worrying about getting a punch in the mouth.

While strolling through fabulous Lincoln Square yesterday with my wife and daughter, we passed by one of the new gift shops springing up like mushrooms around here. (Sure signs that you can’t afford a new neighborhood: gift shops, baby clothes shops and real estate offices.) It was a beautiful day, and the streets were filled with young people and middle-aged pregnant women. (That seems to be another sign that the place is “hot”.) We passed by one shop that seems to specialize in crap that you’d buy for someone you don’t know anything about but who would expect a gift at some holiday or party. The store has a whole lot of crap for colleges, like ceramic chip and dip bowl sets with the Illinois or Notre Dame logo, and the Monopoly sets customized to display kooky landmarks on campus. “Oh-oh, you landed on McGreevy’s Grog Shop! You gonna buy it, or DRINK!?!?!?”

The store had put out a sandwich board to entice passersby to waste their money buying affection from people they don’t know. And yesterday in big letters, we got to see in bright letters the words: “Play CORNHOLE with Sox/Cubs/Bears.”

Now, I know what they mean by “cornhole”, that stupid beanbag toss that people play when they’re tailgating. But I’m also of a generation that thought that “cornhole” was something prison inmates did to each other to while away the lonely evenings. It made me sad to think that this fun-loving, homegrown euphemism for sodomy had been stripped of all its nastiness by a bunch of drunken sports fans. Now, when “gangbang” ceased meaning orgy and started meaning drive-by shootings, I wasn’t happy but I could accept it. Language evolves, and slang especially so, and after all, how can you argue with 20-year-olds who’ve already been in prison? Let ’em call it what they want. But “cornhole”? That’s the best name beanbag afficianados can come up with for their game?

And there in the window was a custom made Cornhole set. A plywood box with a hole cut in it, painted with the Chicago Bears logo. Price, $65. Talk about a cornholing.

Tossy-targetty games are all the rage, I guess. On our camping trip this month, we saw more than a couple families hanging around the RVs, sitting next to what appeared to be bull testicles hanging from a step ladder. This is of course the Bolo Game, and it doesn’t really use bull testicles (although if the set was made in China, it could contain anyone’s). You’re supposed to sling the faux testicles at the ladder and keep score over which rung your testicles hang from. And over the course of two weeks, I didn’t see a single person playing it.

A friend in St. Louis told me of a regional variant to Cornhole a few months ago. Down there, people toss heavy metal washers at a board, trying to land them in certain holes for points. Sounds exciting, right? “X-Treem Gamez” exciting, right? I asked Jim what they called the game. Surely, in a city as rich with history and ethnic influence as St. Louis, they’d come up with a name with flair and mystery.

Jim said, “It’s called ‘washers’.”

A few weeks later, my wife found the picture below in a mail-order catalog specializing in inflatable palm trees and funny napkins for your backyard parties. It proves that indeed the game of Washers doesn’t need a fancy name to be marketed. It also shows that marketers think Americans will buy anything, including a competition-level traveling kit made of two boxes, two frosting cans, and eight metal washers.

So maybe Cornhole isn’t such a bad name after all.

Girder.
Birder.
Sheep herder.
Frankfurter.

Not a hell of a lot. Tough luck, R.

A guy asked for this yesterday at the counter of the Euro-style apothecary in my neighborhood. Have you ever heard of it? It’s a homeopathic remedy for baby colic. But I just like the sound of the name. “Gripe Water.” It sounds like a euphemism for liquor, but then again, to me, most things do.

Considering the geographic mobility of most Americans and the homogenization of the culture, I’ve often been concerned that our regional accents have become less pronounced in recent years. Of course, I’m not a linguist, just someone who wants to get cheap laughs talking like a Southerner. But my concern may be misplaced. This page has a quiz designed to identify your regional accent. And it looks like it hit my nail on the head. Or something. Is there a bad metaphor quiz I can take?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak “Standard English straight out of the dictionary” but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like “Are you from Wisconsin?” or “Are you from Chicago?” Chances are you call carbonated drinks “pop.”
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

The term “Inland North” has come up in my reading in the past few years. I really like it. Majestic and remote. No one thinks the Great Lakes are all that great anymore. Reminds me of “Inland Empire”, in Southern California. Almost as good as “Hermit Kingdom.”

And listen. Nobody’s ever asked me if I’m from Wisconsin, or I’d give ’em my full blown Nort’ Woods act. I was born in Detroit and got my accent during my years working in the Merchant Marine on the big lake they call Gitchi-Goomee.

Via Cynical-C blog.

As a homebound basement scrivener, I take any and all opportunities to get out with people in the neighborhood. Being self-employed is great—no bosses, no shaving, I can watch “The Office” and laugh instead of cry—but it has many downsides, one of which is the isolation and the voices it tends to breed in your head. The voices that say that everyone you meet on the street is a robot except one, and that person must be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

Fortunately, I’m surrounded by people in like circumstance (except for the voices, I think), and also by people who love to drink. So just about every Wednesday, a group of neighborhood dads jump on their bikes after the kids are in bed and hit a local gin mill for a couple hours. (Actually, now that everyone’s kids are basketball-playing preteens instead of toddlers, it’s harder for most of us to get out.) I’m fortunate because it’s just like being a member of the Dad’s Club at the local parish without actually being Catholic and everything that entails.

Last night was a smallish group. A professor of Middle Eastern history, a trust specialist, an importer of car parts, and a basement scrivener (me). Here’s what we talked about, in rough order:

• heating bills, including a $12K bill for the church this month
• insurance, with horrible medical stories accompanying
• Olympic sex scandals and figure skating (one guy knew WAY too much about this for anyone’s comfort)
• Foreign toilets
• The word dickshine

I must take credit for the last topic, since that was how I described a local TV reporter showing all us dopes about the ins and outs of curling. To my surprise, no one at the table had ever heard of it. Is this truly some regionalism from southern Michigan, or a dated term that expired after I got out of high school?

An incredibly useful perjorative, dickshine refers to a useless yet self-important stooge of some kind, too insecure to be mean (unless in imitation of someone meaner) and too inconsequential to worry about. By this definition, just about every television journalist you’d ever meet would be a dickshine.

Comparing it to a Chicago regionalism, a dickshine is similar to a jagoff in many respects, except that a jagoff has enough initiative to make your life miserable if necessary, while a dickshine can only succeed in bringing annoyance.

I’m not sure that dickshine is related to the term dickweed. It might just be a city/country variation.

Dickshine definitely does not have any connection to fellatio, either giving or receiving. In fact, since one of the qualifying factors of being a dickshine is annoyingness, this might preclude sexual success altogether.

Closest synonym: piss boy. See Brooks, Mel, History of the World, Part II.

Etymological insights from readers are welcome.