Kablammo!

Two years and two weeks after I began this job, I got a phone call that ended it. Well, I mean, it hasn’t ended yet but the end is very clearly in sight.

“Be careful what you wish for,” they say, “because you just might get it.” I think I was careful—despite leaving everything to the last possible minute and doing it sort of on a whim to begin with—but I suppose I’ll find out soon. Now I “just” need to figure out how to pay for that.

I haven’t felt this eager/giddy/anxious/paranoid in, oh, about 7 months. That turned out great, so I’m cautiously optimistic at the moment.

To this point, I have read one of Dostoevsky’s novels and started reading another. Both have been thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

No, the theme of today’s discussion, as you may have noted from the title of this post, is man. In each of his books I’ve read, Dostoevsky has had the narrator define man. The definitions are different from one another, but both are quite interesting.

The narrator of Notes from Underground provides these thoughts:

Gentlemen, let us assume that man is not stupid. (Really, you know, it is quite impossible to say that he is, if only because after all, if he is stupid who can be clever?) But if he isn’t stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful, all the same. He is phenomenally ungrateful. I even think that the best definition of man is: a creature that has two legs and no sense of gratitude.

And here is what Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, narrator of The House of the Dead, has to say:

When it got dark we used all to be taken to the barracks, and to be locked up for the night. I always felt depressed at coming into our barrack-room from outside. It was a long, low-pitched, stuffy room, dimly lighted by tallow candles, full of a heavy stifling smell. I don’t understand now how I lived through ten years in it. I had three planks on the wooden platform; that was all I had to myself. On this wooden platform thirty men slept side by side in our room alone. In the winter we were locked up early; it was fully four hours before everyone was asleep. And before that—noise, uproar, laughter, swearing, the clank of chains, smoke and grime, shaven heads, branded faces, ragged clothes, everything defiled and degraded. What cannot man live through! Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

Both definitions are true to a certain extent, and they’re certainly not exclusive of one another. Both apply to me, for example, so I can’t really disagree with either. I’m wondering whether this is a theme repeated in Dostoevsky’s writing. Does every one of his narrators reduce man to a pithy phrase like this? How would Fyodor himself have defined man?

Song of the Moment: «Med en gong eg når bånn» — Kaizers Orchestra

Wired’s Threat Level is reporting on a list of street gang slang compiled by law enforcement officers. I am reminded of that one part of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where dude is at the drug conference. Hilarity all around.

Before I get to my main point, here are some [verbatim] entries I’ll comment on:

ACETISM…..(Satanists)…..Sacrifice of self comforts, finances and personal effects for the “Cause”
BEES KNEE’s…..(Latin Kings)…..An extraordinary person, thing, idea, The ultimate
CATS MEOW…..(Latin Kings)…..Something splendid or stylish.
CAT’s PAJAMAS…..(Latin Kings)…..Same as “Cat’s Meow).

Not only can’t the makers of this list spell or use apostrophes correctly, they evidently can’t recognize regular English words and idiomatic phrases. Webster’s defines ascetism as “asceticism; the condition or practice of self-denial.” It would appear the Satanists are using a word according to its standard dictionary definition; does that really count as slang?

The bee’s knees, on the other hand, is slang: “the bee’s knees, Older Slang. (esp. in the 1920s) a person or thing that is wonderful, great, or marvelous: Her new roadster is simply the bee’s knees.” However, this is also a standard usage, and certainly antedates the Latin Kings. Wikipedia says the gang was founded in 1940; but the bee’s knees dates from 1923. There was “a fad around this year for slang terms denoting ‘excellence’ and based on animal anatomy” that was also responsible for such phrases as the cat’s pajamas and the cat’s meow. Wait, where have I seen those before?

Anyway, the main reason I bring this up is to note that the Aryan Brotherhood apparently uses Cockney-style rhyming slang. Here are a couple examples:

APPLES and PEARS…..(Aryan Brotherhood)…..Stairs; Tiers also.
BARKLEY HUNT…..(Aryan Brotherhood)…..Vagina; cunt
BURT and ERNIE…..(Aryan Brotherhood of Texas)…..A lawyer.
CANDY WRAPPERS…..(Aryan Brotherhood of Texas)…..The Crapper (bathroom).
DAPPER DAN…..(Aryan Brotherhood)…..Can
EAGLES NEST…..(Aryan Brotherhood of Texas)…..One’s chest.
FIELDS of WHEAT…..(Aryan Brotherhood of Texas))…..Streets/outside.
GAG and CHOKE…..(Aryan Brotherhood of Texas)…..To smoke.

You get the idea. Some of those are hilariously appropriate (GAG and CHOKE, in particular), but it’s interesting to note that the Aryan Brotherhood allegedly uses a slang term based on the name of a region in Gloucestershire, England. No way that one wasn’t borrowed from some Cockney. Do they have prisoner exchange programs between the US and the UK, to allow for the cultural growth of convicted felons? Why should university students get all the fun and opportunities for self-improvement? If not, how did this spread?

Anyway, I can’t get enough of rhyming slang. Once I learned that a famous anti-apartheid activist was code for an awesome beer, I was hooked. So it’s kind of heartening, I suppose, to see it in use in the States.

I have no idea how to even begin researching these questions, so I’m just throwing them out there.

• You hear about plenty of clinical trials where Drug X is shown to be no better than a placebo in treating Condition Y: patients are told they’ll get medicine, but they’re randomly assigned to get either medicine or sugar pills. How about a trial to see whether Drug X is any worse than a placebo? Run the test like normal—but then run it a second time, telling all the participants that they’re getting a placebo, even though half of them are getting Drug X.
• If the placebo effect depends on the recipients beliefs about the treatment, does the type of belief and the type of treatment affect it? Do Southern Baptists respond better to placebos that have been blessed by an ordained minister?

Thank you, Dennis. Fight the good fight.

One of these days, or weeks or months or years, I’m going to remember that there are people who are more than willing to help me, and who don’t want me to fail horribly. And one of these days, it is to be hoped, I’ll let myself be helped before it’s too late—even if it means asking for help. I swear.

Note: I’m not too proud to ask for help, I just really really hate bothering or inconveniencing people. Which sometimes makes me end up inconveniencing people a thousand times worse down the road, when something eminently preventable spirals or festers or snowballs out of control.

So, yeah.

In other news, I saw The Tallest Man on Earth yesterday, and he put on a great show. He briefly forgot the words to one of his own songs, but these things happen. Plus, he covered for it pretty well, and it was a very friendly & appreciative crowd. Also, Mr on Earth himself is quite a friendly and good-natured guy. A+++, would see again.

I noticed yesterday that the victor of the most recent video format war might be considered extremely unfortunately named.

See, I saw an ad yesterday promoting the home video release of a movie. The voiceover for the ad said the movie was “now available on DVD and blurry high-def.” I thought I must have misheard it, so I was (for once) relieved when the ad was repeated 30 seconds later and I got a chance to listen to it again. But it still sounded like “blurry high-def” to me.

I think that’s how I’ll refer to it in all contexts from now on: “Oh, I see you have one of them blurry video players!” “Do you have a lot of blurry movies?” “I don’t think that blurry stuff is worth the cost of upgrading.”

People I know:

• Bruce Greenspan
• Butterflynn
• Critical
• EstonianPunkCat
• Fire_Hazard
• Hille
• Manganese
• PBones
• Scarlett1304
• Spine Porridge
• Supachump
• SushiDeJaneiro
• Tomahagne
• Vaarikaisand
• WordToKyle
• Zepsub
• Zot

Things I read:

• badscience
• BillMon
• CommonDreams
• DailyKos
• Dan’s Data
• ebalogaalne
• Hullabaloo
• I, Cringely
• In These Times
• Ironic Sans
• Language Log
• Literal-Minded
• MediaMatters
• Paul Graham
• Salon
• Slacktivist
• The Economist
• The Gadflyer
• The Grauniad
• The Nation
• The Onion
• The Register
• The Superest
• Unclaimed Territory
• Wikipedia