McSweeney's Internet Tendencies: More Lists

Here's part one. Alrighty then, I'll just jump right in here. There have been some updates since last year's post. Notable among them are:

• Band Names That, When Announced From The Stage, Elicit The Most Tepid Responses
• Categories I'd Be Sure To Win In On The Show Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?*
• Dance Dance Revolution
• Footnotes, Endnotes and Parentheticals That Cost Me Marks On My Thesis*
• Jokes I Came Up With While Recovering From Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus
• Phrases I'd Rather Not Be Used At My Funeral*
• Planned Sequels To Nicolas Cage's Upcoming Film Bangkok Dangerous*
• Rarely Used Parenthetical Statements
• The Final Standings In A Contest To Create An Emoticon For The Most Seemingly Impossible To Depict State Of Being
• Text Messages That Would Have Been Helpful
• Top Ten Best Ever*

Umm. I guess that's about it. Here, have some highlights from the World Juggling Federation's 04-05 season, set to a fairly decent and sadly unfindable (I guess you'll just have to buy it, you cheapskates) Fatboy Slim song, That Old Pair Of Jeans.

Weasel Words

You know those Bathroom Readers? Those things are handy. Not too long ago, I read an article in one detailing the prevalent use of "weasel words" in advertising. Weasel words are phrases that carefully use language to force the viewer's mind into a particular conclusion when in fact, they said nothing of the sort. A good example is the common usage of "better" or "best" in application to parity products, products which are essentially the same. Soap, fruit juice, cigarettes and soda are all parity products, so legally, any corporation can say "Jones Cola is the best" and be completely correct, since all they are saying is that Jones Cola is pretty much the same as Coke or Pepsi (honestly though, Jones Cola is straight-up delicious). Interestingly, they cannot say "Jones Cola is better than Brand X". Why? In a world where "best" means "the same as", the term "better" means "best". Another cool little technique is the "weasel claim", where a weasel word is slipped surreptitiously into a claim so as to basically negate the actual claim. An example is "fights plaque buildup and bad breath." Well, yeah. Rinsing your mouth out with water will help fight plaque buildup. I don't want to spend ten dollars on a bottle of mouthwash that just fights plaque buildup. I want something that will stop plaque buildup. Of course, that would constitute a guarantee, and thus open the floodgates for thousands of frivolous lawsuits (a recent poll shows that Americans consider this to be the best kind of lawsuit). Another claim is one that makes you scratch your head and go "And... what?" It leaves you hanging with claims that are true but do not necessarily constitute a better product. An example is "Kellogg's Corn Flakes, now with twice as much fiber." Sure, there's more fiber, but there no real reason that more fiber equals a better product. Related to this is the technique of using a "scientific" or "statistical" claim to sell the product. Fans of Jerry Seinfeld may recall his riff on cough medicine "now with an extra drop of Retsyn." What is this magical Retsyn and why should we be happy that we're getting more of it?

Anyway, I decided to track down this article, and I have! And at no extra cost to you, I located a related article that examines weasel words and other word phenoms that both advertisements and average people use in everyday speech to trip you up. My favorite is the "complex question", which goes something like this: "Are you still killing small animals for fun?" Now, if you answer yes, you've obviously just admitted to killing small animals for fun. Shame on you. However, if you're a sane, non-sociopathic human being, you'll say something along the lines of "No! Dear God, no!" and I'll say "Oh. When did you stop?" You see, the above question is actually two questions, "Have you killed small animals for fun," and "If so, are you still doing so?" There is no logical way to answer this question except not to respond, which makes it look like you're answering yes. Tricky.

Also, I just saw watched Brick. It's good. Watch it. 8/10.

We Now Return To Our Regularly Something Something

Whew. Okay, so I'm back! Keep in mind that updates will NOT be every day.

So, as I understand it, there's a new term floating around certain circles, one of those new vocabulary words that I'm so fond of. "Greenwashing," apparently a play on "whitewashing," is the term for when a company decides to label a new project or promotion "environmentally friendly" so all the hipsters can feel a little less guilty; especially when the project in question seems green on the surface but is less than sturdy when pushed. A good example of this is the hybrid vehicles that everyone loves to point at, to somehow prove that corporations have the best intentions at heart. I like to think that some do, but never forget that every single money-making enterprise is fueled by people who look out for number one. Specifically, many hybrids are doing far more damage than you might think. Another thing that's really irking me is this sudden dependency on biofuel. While at first glance the idea seems good, you have to consider how much nitrogen is needed to grow corn (it's a lot). What's worse, now farmers are growing corn solely for fuel puposes, ignoring other crops. Crops like wheat. In my area alone, bread prices have rocketed up an extra two dollars a loaf. Here's the kicker: Almost every major revolution in history was sparked by the cost of a comparatively simple commodity. Like tea. Or oil. Or bread. Yeah.

Cryptic Crosswords

A while back, a friend introduced me to Harper's magazine, a wholly average monthly digest in every respect, with the exception of the very last page, where you would find the jumbles and word-searches in a normal magazine. In this particular publication, however, a new kind of puzzle was to be found, and it ABSOLUTELY BLEW MY MIND. It was a crossword puzzle, but the clues didn't make any sense. I mean, look at this: "Pe(9)rish ground; a wild type of music"? How did that yield "dixieland"? Even after knowing the answer, it took me almost two hours to find the reasoning behind it. The puzzles were called "cryptic crosswords," and having a good vocabulary wasn't near enough to finish one. Every clue in the larger puzzle hides another, tinier puzzle.

For example, "Returned beer fit for a king (5)". Anyone? No? The answer is "Regal". The answer to the puzzle is right there at the end, "fit for a king". But how to know what word it is? There are a couple of five-letter words for that; royal, noble, grand; just off the top of my head. The trick is, the word "Returned" in this context means that the word is spelled backwards (also used are the words "backwards", "reversed", and once I caught "mirrored"). So the final piece of the puzzle is "beer". Another word for the word "beer" is "lager", which, when reversed, gives us "regal". Of course, just when you get the hang of it, I regret to inform you that that is far from the extent of the confusion. In addition to reversed words, there are anagrams, word searching, and a whole mess of other stuff.

For another example, try "Chaperone shredded corset (6)". The trick to this one is to know that "shredded" indicates that one of the words is an anagram. Which one? "Corset" (You can tell because the answer is only six letters). So what's a six-letter word for "chaperone" using the letters C, E, O, R, S and T? It's "escort". Case closed.

Another good one to look out for is anything involving initials. Often times, you'll see the words "Initially", "For starters" and "At first". These are all indicators. Try "Initially amiable person eats monkey (3)". The clue for this one is the word "monkey". The first letters of the remaining words "Amiable Person Eats" are A, P and E, for the answer "ape".

The fourth most commonly used technique is hiding words inside other words, a clue often called a container. "Make a change and put me in last (5)". The clue is probably "make a change", so when the clue states "put 'me' in 'last'", it means to place the word "me" somewhere into the word "last". As far as I can tell, there is no word spelled like that, so find a synonym for "last" and try to work it that way. The word "end" as a replacement for "last" yields the answer "emend". Every single clue is at least that tricky.

So I guess that's it. there are some other tricky clue types, but you can read about them here. You should be able to solve some of the easier ones simply with the four techniques above. If you want to try some of your own, pick up a copy of Harper's (tell 'em I sent you) or you can just go here. They're pretty tough, so you can also try the so-called beginner's puzzle here.

P.S.: If you can figure out the reasoning behind "Pe(9)rish ground; a wild type of music", post it in the comments.

EDIT: I just found this site, where it explains how to solve a cryptic clue. It also offer dozens of examples for practice, giving you two hints before telling you the answer. A+, good sir.

Food For Thought

So, I was just sitting there, grooving on life and all, and I remembered a passage I read once in Gödel, Escher, Bach (written by the extremely competent and previously mentioned Douglas R. Hofstadter) regarding the nature of onomatopoeia. Specifically, if certain words are written like they sound, is there a precedent to create a word that means the opposite of "onomatopoeia"? Words that sound like the exact opposite of what they mean? He brings up the words "awkwardnessful" and "pentasyllabic" to illustrate his point. While not strictly onomatopoeia (I believe it has to be a "sound" word), these words describe themselves. In that case, would there be a words to describe the opposite category? "Non-self-descriptive"? If so, is "non-self-descriptive" a non-self-descriptive word or a self-descriptive word? The entire subject of antonyms raises some profound philosophical and linguistic questions. Is there an opposite for every word? Certainly not; to assume there's a word to describe the opposite of "milk" is nothing short of ludicrous. How about an antonym for every adjective? That makes sense, given that (almost) every antonym pairing are adjectives in the first place: "wet" vs. "dry"; "up" vs. "down" and so on. I say "almost" because there some nouns that have what many consider to be opposites, like "day" and "night". However, these are two arbitrary terms based on the rotation of the Earth. Are they truly "opposites"? We consider them to be so, because humans don't deal in the concrete when it serves us to deal in the abstract. "One time of the day is light, the other's dark, so they must be opposites." Who makes the final verdict on whether a word gets an antonym or not? The adjectives "hot" and "cold" are opposites, so who's to say whether the nouns based solely on their respective adjectives ("heat" and "cold") are not?

But you didn't come here for that. You came for EXPLODING SAND CASTLES... IN REVERSE!

PHEEEEEWWWWW! BOOOOOM! AWESOME! Also, I realized that using the word "competent" to describe a writer is faintly offensive.

The Newspeak Dictionary

I'm in the middle of reading George Orwell's classic 1984 for the first time, and I'm seriously intrigued by the idea of language that's designed primarily to rid the English language of original thought. Everything that can possibly be said can be said using a number of suffixes, prefixes and modifiers in the fictional Newspeak language. For instance, if something is good, it's simply "good". There are no alternatives. If something is great, it's "plusgood", indicating a slightly elevated level of enthusiasm. If something is excellent or spectacular, it's "doubleplusgood". It's not specifically mentioned, but I think it's safe to say that "doubleplusgood" is about as twice as great as "plusgood". The worst possible descriptor is, of course, "doubleplusungood". Also, any word can be turned into an adverb simply adding the suffix "-wise" while any word can be turned into a adjective by adding "-ful". This presumably leads to such confusing sentences as "I'm fullwise doubleplusthirstful" meaning "I'm really thirsty". It can get a little hard to read sometimes. One of the more interesting concepts is that of the "unperson", a phrase used when someone is not only killed by the state, but effectively erased from history. What's creepy about it is that it actually happened in the Soviet regime. Here's a picture of Uncle Joe "I Killed More People Than Hitler" Stalin standing next to Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, a senior figure in the Soviet Police (1984 parallel: Thinkpol), and then a picture that could be found later after Yezhov fell from grace.

Old-school Photoshoppin'. So anyway, here's The Newspeak Dictionary, which not only lists and describes Newspeak from the book and movie but also what the proprietor of the site considers to be real-life Newspeak used by politicians and the media. It can get a little critical of those of you who may be politically correct, so it's best just to read the 1984 stuff. Also, if you haven't read the book, you can here.

Googlewhack

I first heard of this little trend on some news show. It must have been a slow day, because they had a man in the studio who claimed to have invented a grand new pastime; that of the Googlewhack. Quite simply, it's a game where you type two words into the Google search bar with the hope of getting only one result. As surprisingly hard as that might sound at first, it gets a good deal worse. The rules stipulate that a) the words must both be actual words as defined by Google's dictionary, and b) it CANNOT BE A WORDLIST. This rule is shockingly hard to accommodate. You'll think "Yes! Finally! After hours and hours I got one!" only to see that the page is just an alphabetical listing of words. Who does that? Why would you ever just list hundreds upon hundreds of words? Anyway, In the hours and hours I put into this project, I only managed to get one. It's slightly slack because Google recognizes "pan-dimensional" but not "pandimensional". I ask you, is it so hard to just be happy for me, Google? Can you make an effort? Anyway, the beauty of me putting it up here ("Pyroclastic Pandimensional") is that it now has two hits on Google, rendering it unusable for anyone but me. Ha.

Anyway, should you happen to find one, you can submit it here. That list is effectively a graveyard for these little Internet wonders; for in a twist of Hemingwayesque tragedy, their discovery is their death.

Wordlustitude

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great ado that I unveil an entirely new category for House of Oddio! Noting the trend of me liking new words and writing about them, I have decided to add Words as a label for posts like Unwords and my personal favorite: Cab Calloway's Hep Dictionary.

Okay, so the reason I bring this up is due to the fantastic new blog Wordlustitude. Instead of acting as a wiki-like compendium of some word you just thought up, Wordlustitude collects words actually used at some place online, usually words like Vikingologist or human-esque-ish-like. These are words you should fill your head with.

English To Engrish

Remember the post I did on Engrish? Well, now you can ridicule language on your own with the Engrish Translator. It translates your text to Japanese, then back to English using Babelfish. You can obviously do this on your own, but it's a lot faster here. And now for some choice song titles.

Baby Of Ice Of Ice
Lucy Of The Sky Where The Diamond Has Been Attached
That Is Not Nice (Wouldn't It Be Nice)
We Did Not Begin The Fire
Hat Of Pillbox Of Skin Of Leopard
Soldier Of Water Buffalo
Rear Of Blue Eye

Start to notice a pattern, don't you?

The Double-Tongued Dictionary

Remember Unwords? Remember Rinkworks? Remember Inherently Funny, or the Hep Dictionary? Continuing in my fine tradition of learning you all some good vocabulary, I present The Double-Tongued Dictionary, where you'll find such grand new catchphrases such as the slightly sexist but nonetheless funny

Tampon Rock: This genre is girls or women with guitars or a piano, singing poetically about their emotions and their inner worlds. Jewel, Aimee Mann, Tori Amos, Peaches, Liz Phair and their queen Sarah McLachlan are excellent examples of this. This is the kind of music that makes you believe you need a uterus to have real emotions.

Good stuff. The Doubled-Tongued Dictionary: A Lexicon of Fringe English, Focusing on Slang, Jargon and New Words.

Trigger-Happy Pandas: Never Boring

A few years back, I ran across a little book called "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", which was titled after the old joke that goes a little something like this:

A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down and enjoys a meal. After picking up the check, he stands up, pulls out a gun, fires a round into the ceiling, and walks out. The patrons are understandably upset, but the staff attempt to calm everyone down. "That's normal panda behavior," a waiter says. "He eats, shoots and leaves."

HAHA! Oh, that's good! The entire premise of the book is, of course, about punctuation. The punchline depends on the fact that if the comma is removed from the waiter's comment, an undeniable fact becomes apparent. A panda's diet is composed mostly of the shoots and leaves of the bamboo plant (cue mute trumpet: "wanh-wanh-wannnnnh").

I do so love wordplay of this nature, and I'll share with you my personal favorite sentence in this form, "Hide the cows outside." In this form, it's a demand to hide the bovine animals in a location exterior to where you are currently located. However, the simple addition of a comma, an apostrophe and an exclamation point yields: "Hide, the cow's outside!" a sentence that conjures up a terrifying image of a cow possessed, an animal who has had enough and intends to do something about it (and of course, the petrified inhabitants of the house, equally funny). There are many sentences that share two definitions based on punctuation placement, but this one is my favorite, for there is a third meaning to it: "Hide: the cow's outside." Indeed, the outside of a cow is called "hide".

After doing some searching online, I came across this BBC article/contest that asks the reader to draft a whole letter that has two entirely different meanings. This is much harder than you think (I like the last one best).

P.S.: I was watching Predator last night, and about halfway through I realized it was actually Beowulf (the poem, not the film). Think about it.

Unwords

Many of you, no doubt, have seen or at least heard of that Urban Dictionary thing. I don't much care for inebriated halfwits posting their "funny" definitions of words that don't deserve definitions. It's an entirely different thing, however, when someone comes up with a clever word for, say, the level of hardness in fruit when squeezed. Firmth. As in "That peach was really good. Had firmth."

Or maybe "rampriot", a word described as "the free-for-all that erupts as soon the flight attendant utters the phrase, 'Please remain in your seats until the plane has come to a complete stop.'"

These can all be found at Unwords.com. It's pretty radical.

GLOWING ENDORSMENT AHEAD.

Unwords. Changing the English language, one word at a time.

Calloway's Hep Dictionary

Here's a little blip for all you hep cats and mellow chicks. A real hummer. Cab Calloway came on like a test pilot in the Thirties, singing and leading a band. His name now adorns an online dictionary where any old gate or queen can get their boots on regarding the jive language of the solid jazzmen of yore (Yore isn't one of the words). Enjoy, Jack. I gotta collar me some cups.

Engrish

For those who don't know, Engrish is the unique style of writing English words as found on (mostly) Japanese products and advertising. In the same way that Americans get tattoos of Asian characters on their skin with no real idea (or proof) of what it means, many Japanese companies put English on their products to look edgy or cool. Because it's mostly just for looks, nobody spell-checks or edits, ending up with results like these:

Other times, the writer is genuinely trying to provide a translation for English-speakers. Either way, it's hilarious, and you should go see some more at Engrish.com.

"Raccoon" Is The New "Monkey"

It's Inherently Funny. No explanation needed.

Rinkworks: Fun With Words

Ever wondered how frequently the letter "R" appears in the English language? NO? How about collective nouns (the correct way to identify a group of animals)? Yeah? Ever wondered what a group of gnus is referred to as? Still no? Alright. If you're ever wondering, stop by here.

P.S.: It's an implausibility. Yep. An implausibility of gnus.