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.

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.

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.”

All things considered, my life is going extremely well. And I’m lucky enough that I don’t even know how lucky I am. I will try to allow myself to enjoy it.

…

And I’ll try to focus on how good I have it, even though I’ve screwed myself over again at work. So it goes.

According to the Associated Press, the world has gone topsy-turvy:

High gas prices drive farmer to switch to mules

MCMINNVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — High gas prices have driven a Warren County farmer and his sons to hitch a tractor rake to a pair of mules to gather hay from their fields. T.R. Raymond bought Dolly and Molly at the Dixon mule sale last year. Son Danny Raymond trained them and also modified the tractor rake so the mules could pull it.

T.R. Raymond says the mules are slower than a petroleum-powered tractor, but there are benefits.

“This fuel’s so high, you can’t afford it,” he said. “We can feed these mules cheaper than we can buy fuel. That’s the truth.”

And Danny Raymond says he just likes using the mules around the farm.

“We’ve been using them quite a bit,” he said.

Brother Robert Raymond added, “It’s the way of the future.”

As Thomas Edison once said, “We will make mules so inexpensive that only the rich will use tractors.” Or something to that effect, at least. I wonder what else the future has in store.

Again, none of these seemed to justify an individual post:

• As much as I’m opposed to the “Economic Stimulus Payments” as a policy decision—which is severely—I will confess that I’m giddy with the anticipation of getting my $600 check. I know full well that it’s not free money, and in fact I think Americans are actually undertaxed. But I already have my heart set on buying something to stimulate the economy. (I’ll be the German economy I’m stimulating, but at least that’s better than stimulating the Chinese economy, right?) And so it is that I’m somewhat miffed to learn that it will be weeks before I see a dime.
• At 3:30 A.M. today, I was awoken by the pungent smell of cabbage. I gleefully went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, then tasted the concoction I’d left cooking in the Crock-Pot™ brand slow cooker. It was absolutely delicious. Being an idiot, I then went back to bed, leaving the Crock-Pot™ plugged in and turned on. By morning the concoction had become a disgusting, inedible mess. I’ll chalk this one up as a learning experience, and I’ll try to remember to pick up another jar of sauerkraut on my way home so I can try again.
• So it turns out that my favorite cafeteria cashier lady is Ethiopian. I’m going to look up how to say “Thank you” in Amharic.

There must be a bird’s nest on the window-ledge of my apartment. It’s the only explanation I can come up with for the remarkably loud pre-dawn cheeping this morning. Unfortunately, the most likely place for a nest would be a corner of the building that would be pretty hard for me to get a look at from inside. I’ll have to try taking the screen out of one of my windows or something, because it would be pretty rad to get a nice photograph of some baby birds. Especially if they’re going to keep waking me up at 6 in the morning.

In other news, I remain unaddicted to WoW. Take that.

• I have acquired a newfound appreciation for, and understanding of, that one scene from that one Naked Gun movie and that one scene from that one Seinfeld episode.
• What’s been stuck in my head recently is a mash-up or juxtaposition of “I Do” by the Marvelows with “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. The combination as I’m imagining it doesn’t quite sound fantastic, but it does at least sound coherent, and the parts of the two songs do seem to complement each other pretty well. This is more than can be said for my ill-fated mash-up of Coldplay’s “The Scientist” and Radiohead’s “High & Dry” a few years back, which nearly got me stabbed by a group of my friends.
• I’ll be attending a hearing in Federal court on Friday. Later, I should be getting my cookie supply replenished. I am looking forward to both.
• My mp3 player (well, one of them at least) smells like spices.

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