Don’t Stare, It’s Rude
There has long been a running joke about the ‘Fashion Police’. There’s even been the occasional TV comedy skit dedicated to the premise . . . these go all the way back to the ‘Candid Camera’ days. Women’s magazines bring on the Dos and Don’ts and even black bar the eyes so that supposedly no one recognizes your fat ass in the too-tight clothing. Now, in the days of the internet, no one is so kind. Faces aren’t blurred, and ‘Only at WalMart’ – which features the ‘Oh, my God!’, mouth-agape kind of fashion blunders – has posts from all over. Unfortunately, the thing most wrong with the ‘Only at WalMart’ site is that those things aren’t only at WalMart.
Another great place to find the faux pas is at amusement parks. I know that upper crusty folks would never do something so plebian as to play on roller coasters and such. But my family loves it. Still, these places are bastions of safety for the fashion challenged crowd. If you want it to get even worse, go to a water park. Yes, come see the masses in their bathing suits . . . oy!
My friend Jason says when he looks around an amusement park he is reminded of why he doesn’t have female friends. Who can trust a woman? Look at the groups of girls that go out. It was their ‘friends’ who told them they looked good. Clearly, there are too many cases where the ‘friend’ wanted to look better than the girls she was out with, so she says, “oh yeah, wear your jeans three sizes too tight like that. It looks great.” Jason points out that the alternative is that women are just stupid, and in spite of everything men say, they think it’s better to squeeze into a size 4 and bulge around the edges than to wear what fits regardless of that tiny little number on the tag . . .
Sadly, Jason has a point. On the upside, the websites are freakin’ funny. I’ve been to WalMart (doesn’t everybody sometimes have a day where you realize you are out of paper towels AND bacon?) . . . and I’ve seen what’s there. When you add in the frequent amusement park trips, I’ve got quite the collection . . .
I just wish I had known about the website when I was staring at this one girl’s butt. I was so stunned that it didn’t even occur to me to snap a photo . . . (who thought of that one anyway?) But she was wearing skin-tight legging things and she had panty lines . . . running at angles up her butt. There was something weird about them . . . so I stared. I felt really bad, but I couldn’t stop staring. It took a few minutes to realize what was wrong . . .the panty lines weren’t panty lines, but a series of tiny holes that had been worn into the fabric from previous panties . . . this explained how she also had panty lines from the thong she was wearing.
I love telling that story. Everyone, man and woman alike, says ‘you’re kidding’. Oh, no, I’m not. Even I can’t make that up. And, yes, it was at WalMart.
Another bad clothing trend is wording. Juicy Couture started this with their workout clothes with “Juicy” across the butt. Though I don’t consider myself a prude, in most places this is inappropriate. Places like: the park, the grocery store, anything associated with K-12 schools, and particularly on children’s butts. I have seen each of those things. (And I’ll add that the “Juicy” across the 5th grade girl’s butt was less disturbing than the playboy bunny that was on the thong doing more than just peeking over the top of the Juicy pants.)
It’s not just Juicy that has done this. Though they led the way, tons of generics have popped up. You never know what words you’ll see plastered across a butt. Add in that the trend is to write in a calligraphy font, and now you have to actually stop and read people’s asses.
My personal favorite is this one that Jason and I saw at Six Flags. (Anyone who has been to a Six Flags in the past eight years won’t be surprised by this.) A large woman was wearing a green velour jog suit that was several sizes too small. It would have been fine if it had fit, but no . . . Across her butt where the words ‘Feeling Sucky’. Jason, of course, pipes up with, “I’d be feeing sucky, too, if I squeezed myself into something that tight.” I replied with “At least her ass is honest.”
We ran into her at least three times during our visit that day. Only on the third time – as she picked her pants out of her butt! – did I realize that the calligraphy print had led us astray . . . her ass actually read “Feeling Lucky”.
I had more respect for her when I thought she was advertising feeling sucky. But I have decided, if I find myself without a job, I’m going to go into business making jog suits with words on the butt. Mine will read “Mmmmmmuffin Top” and “Lumpy” and “2 sizes 2 small”.
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AJ v HFCS
A new study was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine that today’s children have a shorter life expectancy than the previous generation – us. This is the first time that a parental generation of Americans has a longer life expectancy than their children. Pretty sad. There are two main reasons for this prediction: 1) obesity. We’ve seen this one coming at us for a while. Luckily, like most fat things, it doesn’t come at us too quickly! And 2) poor diet. Yeah, chew on that.
We live in a time and place where food is so plentiful that we can even claim we are allergic to it – you won’t hear any Ethiopians complaining about gluten! Surprisingly, despite this abundance, we have relatively poor diets.
If you’re a Smart Chicken, and you’ve been following this blog, then you know I’m one who leans to the green. I was shocked when ninety percent of my 7th grade science students didn’t recognize a whole, raw chicken. (These were private school kids from Southern California, too!) But I sat with my mouth open for about half an hour after watching a snippet of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. I wasn’t surprised that some inner city kids didn’t recognize the eggplant . . . but when they guessed it might be an apple or a pear, I was . . . appalled.
The problem is that so much of what we eat isn’t so much food as it is plastic. I think it starts as food, but then gets so hybridized with preservatives and guar-gums, that it’s edible, but isn’t really food by the time it’s done. It’s really more of a ‘food type product’.
A kid at my son’s karate school once asked why I wouldn’t let my kids eat the cheez crackers (with a peanutbutter-colored substance in between). I said “I had two years of graduate school biochemistry, and I can’t identify half these ingredients.”
This has all been building up for a while into a battle royale – known in my house as AJ v HFCS. (AJ being me, and HFCS being my mortal enemy – high fructose corn syrup.)
I am NOT a fanatic! (I know, famous words usually spoken by fanatics.) I eat HFCS. There are sometimes Pop-tarts in my house. Or Ho-Hos. (mmmmm Ho-Hos.) On the food-to-plastic scale these rank right next to margarine, which is only one small step below eating Legos. But the vast majority of our household food is actually FOOD.
Where I have issue with HFCS, is that it gets snuck into things where it isn’t needed or wanted. Like bread. Bread is bread. It isn’t dessert. But I stood in the aisle at Kroger one day reading the ingredients of loaf after loaf and constantly finding HFCS. As I got more frustrated, I slammed each package back into place and grabbed the next one. (Yes, that was me, and I’m sorry your bread was flat that week. My bad.) I checked the bakery bread, but it’s just as bad. Go figure. At last, I found one – a bread without HFCS! I went home, triumphant. I showed everyone the bag, so they could buy it the next time without reading all the ingredients. As I was making everyone recite the brand name, it was pointed out that no one would have to read the ingredients, because there was a big banner across the top of the loaf reading. “No High Fructose Corn Syrup.” (Again, I’m really sorry about your flat bread.)
The other one that just kills me – any may be killing kids now, too! – is applesauce. Did you know that it’s sweetened? Really? Really?!?! Who needs their applesauce with added corn syrup? Do you take a bite of that Snickers bar and stop, then pour sugar on it? Do you use Mrs. Butterworths instead of milk on your Cocoa Puffs? Why is it SO HARD to find applesauce without HFCS?? And when you do find the HFCS-free version . . . it has Splenda! Holy crap! This is why our kids are fat.
Did you know that Splenda and Aspartame are actually not on the food-to-plastic scale? They have a ranking on the ‘food-to-poison scale’. The next time you get ants in your house, put out a trail of Equal . . . in the morning, dead ants! If your car battery corrodes, pour a regular coke over it. Corrosion, gone!
Bread isn’t supposed to last for three weeks. And it isn’t supposed to be sweet. Neither is chicken, nor corn.
I may not be allowed back into my neighborhood Kroger after I started reading the spaghetti sauce labels. Most have HFCS as the second or third ingredient. I was so stunned that . . . um, it looked a bit like a murder scene.
My mortal enemy – whom I thought was only in treats – has been laughing at me all along. I thought spaghetti and applesauces were safe foods. Real foods even. I am in shock.
I need a Ho-Ho.
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Government Issue
When I was a kid, my main concern was whether or not the cafeteria was serving ‘government cheese’ that day. I have since grown up and found out that the government public service sector has their hands in a lot more than just a sketchy American cheese food product.
One of the US government’s big points of interaction for every American over sixteen is the DMV. In our culture of too much, too often, a crowded visit and a brief, underpurposed exam is considered a right of passage. In other cultures you have to kill an animal, shave your head, or get a tattoo . . . and those are just the girly ones. Nope, here you have to visit the DMV.
The California DMV (which I have had the pleasure of personally visiting) is, and has historically been, one of the worst on record. When Schwartzenegger came into office there, his first public act was to fire all the DMV managerial staff, thus earning him the hearts of millions and the title of ‘Governator’. Sadly, though this kept already astronomical registration fees from getting worse, it didn’t change the average experience at the centers . . .
If you look up the Cali DMV site, there is supposed to be a picture of a man and a woman using online services to register. Um, what does it show them doing when the page doesn’t load? And when you do go online, there are about a billion questions, starting with ‘do you want to register your boat?’ Just for fun, I tried logging in but it kicked me out. Not because I’m no longer a resident of that state, but because the answers to my security questions were wrong! I kid you not. Apparently the Cal DMV knows where I went to elementary school and I do not.
When I did go in and visit in person the first time, I was woefully underprepared. I’ve taken numbers to wait at places before. But this time it wasn’t 23 or 18, it was B76. I waited and waited. I read the material flashing by on the TV monitors and learned a few fun facts about the DMV. Apparently the first person to use the California DMV was a sugar magnet. Yes, a sugar magnet. Though I am sure they meant “magnate”, it brought to my mind a very sticky rich man always trying to outrun white grains coming from sugar bowls and pour spouts alike while small white packets chase him down the street. One of the facts I learned about the DMV from those tidbits was that they can’t spell, or have bad vocab or both. I was so bored and irritated that when they finally called B76 I jumped up and yelled “Bingo”. It was the only thing that cracked a smile on any of my fellow visitors’ faces. And not on any of the employees. Maybe they’d heard that before . . .
When I got to the DMV here in Tennessee (after being led miles astray by my GPS), I let myself in the front door with a messenger bag. I had work papers to look at, a magazine and a half-finished novel. The employees looked at me like I was nuts. And I was. They smiled at me and said ‘just come over to this open desk’. Ten minutes later, I didn’t have the appointment I expected, but my picture had been taken and my warm license was already cooling in my hand. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll carry that license with seriously stunned look on my face.
Things are different here – as I know I’ve said many times before. The public offices are neat and clean. And the people behind the windows are . . . well, they don’t resemble refugees from depression era America. They smile and they try to be nice. I’m not really sure what to do with them.
Just this morning, I called the social security office. I was given directions by an actual person who can string words together with the right cadence. She told me: you just come on in, mornings were relatively slow if you got there before nine. And don’t miss them when you drive by, they’re right next to “Dos Margaritas”.
I wondered if that meant something. If that was a sign from God that there was a margarita joint right next to the social security office. Would I need dos margaritas after I was done?
It turned out it didn’t matter. Maybe the staff was so nice because they shared a building with “Guns and Stuff”. The two shops’ entry doors were adjacent and one had a sign that read “This is not the door to the social security office”.
Yes, Social Security Checks, Guns and Margaritas all in one place. Tennessee sure knows how to treat its citizens!
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Interview with AJ: A Book and a Chat
Check out my radio interview on A Book and a Chat here:
A Book and a Chat – AJ Scudiere
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Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!
Lord of the Dense
We’ve all said stupid things. It happens. Something just rolls out of your mouth and it isn’t what you meant to say, or it IS, but it’s somehow out of context or you realize too late that the wording is just bad.
Since I’m going to make fun of other people, I will pony up and start with one of my own moments of stupid. And I must admit it is spectacular.
When I lived in LA, my sister came out to visit me often. On one of these occasions it was decided that she needed pet mice. She would get them in sunny Cali and take them back to Tennesssee. This was the plan (though I cannot for the life of me remember why!) . . . but we thought we were being smart, and we wanted to check everything out first.
We knew airlines flew dogs and cats all the time, but were mice okay? They’re so tiny, would there be an air pressure issue? Would it hurt their inner ears? We needed to know! So when we were in PetCo looking at the mice, I remembered to ask! How smart was I? Yes, I looked the sales clerk right in the eye and expectantly asked him “Can mice fly?”
He, of course, looked at my sister like ‘what am I supposed to tell the retarded kid?’
Yes, I explained. He realized I wasn’t retarded. I hope. But I like to look at that as an honest mistake. I did want to know if they could fly, I just didn’t mean under their own power. A minor grammatical issue, really.
It seems, however, that I’m not the only one afflicted. One day last week a bolt of stupid hit my town. It started like this:
I called the school to ask about the new lunchroom schedule. My son’s class was posted from 11:45 – 12:15 and the same set of tables was slated for the next class to start at 12:05. Do you see the problem?
As both my kids are big talkers (surprised?) I was concerned about a shortened lunch period. I was told this is to allow the students time to pass. I guess it was me? I wasn’t clear enough? As we can see from the ‘mice’ example, this wouldn’t be the first time. So I tried again, but was told the schedule was just fine, the gap was to allow for one class to leave and the other to come in . . . After several attempts of ‘there’s no gap, there are ten minutes missing’, I gave up trying to explain the time-space continuum. I would let it go. Lunch would work itself out, I would be at peace.
It would not be so.
It seemed I needed gas for my car, a common occurrence. The next part is kinda my fault. We’ve all walked away from the pump at one time or other. Really? I’ll bet you five bucks you have. (I’d owe some of you, but I’d come out far enough ahead to be rich, so no wagging fingers at me here!) Anyway, I got a coke so I could get some caffeine to combat the headache brought on by the attempted violation of the basic tenets of physics at the elementary, and as I’m paying the clerk says “Is that your SUV?”
Here’s the rest of the conversation (verbatim):
Me: Yes
Clerk: Oh, ‘cause it’s been spilling gas all over out there.
Me: EEEAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!
(not only was there a nice, fuming gas puddle, but there was a sixty-nine dollar charge! I put things to rights, warned the other people at the pumps about the spill and went back in to pay for the soda that I should have gotten in bathtub size, apparently)
Clerk #2: Oh, that pump’s been broken a while now.
I left before I inflicted real harm on someone. Isn’t there some law about knowing just a modicum of gasoline safety to work at a gas station? Apparently not. I half expected to see the crew out there having a Zoolander-esque gasoline fight the next day.
But no. I went on my way (still smelling the fumes that seemed to be cycling through my AC) telling myself that all was okay and the day couldn’t go on like this could it? Surely it couldn’t!
But wait. It got better. I did get some jollies out of relating the story to my sister and brother-in-law who came over to go out for dinner that night. (I wouldn’t say I got sixty-nine dollars of jollies, but at least I got some.) I was met with several ‘they did not say that!’s. I assured all that ‘yes, they did’ before I had the bright idea to call ahead for the restaurant since we had ten of us that night.
I was told ‘no problem, ten was fine’ (I later found out they can’t seat more than 8 people together, but looking back maybe the girl just thought that as long as we were in the same restaurant we’d be happy). I was told that, no, they did not do call ahead seating.
Me: Since we’re a big party can you give me an idea? Are you on a wait now? If we got there in fifteen minutes would we wait long?
Her: That would depend on when you get here and how many people are in front of you.
Me: Thank you, that clears it right up.
Her: Oh, anytime!
*sigh*
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Prose and Cons
As a writer, I travel to a bunch of cons every year, where I have a table or booth and folks come by to chat and check out the books and AudioMovies. Right now, you may be nodding, or you may be saying to yourself ‘what’s a con?’ When I entered MidSouth Con, just this last Thursday, one man was welcoming folks to what he called “the biggest gathering of freaks, geeks, nerds, gamers and psychopaths in the South”. I can’t say as I have found the ‘psychopaths’ part of that to be true, but the rest of it is spot on.
‘Con’ is short for ‘convention’, and you can have a ‘convention’ for any number of things. Doctors have them, teachers have them, leaders of business do it, and so on. But when it’s the geeks and freaks, it’s just a ‘con’. Cons often have a theme (duh, it’s run by nerds!) – they are often anime, scifi, fantasy, or gaming, etc. The biggest in the business is ComicCon in San Diego, with over 100,000 in attendance. Yes, this is either your best dream come true, or a freakin’ nightmare! And I mean the ‘freakin’ part literally.
DragonCon in Atlanta is the next biggest with 60,000 folks. Most are smaller, and in order to compete with the big guns, they have to distinguish themselves. Many go for the fun con names. A few of my favorites are: ConStellation, ConGlomeration (I’ll be there!), LepreCon, ConClave, ConDuit, ConFusion and my favorite the Wrath of Con.
Most Cons have dealer rooms (where I am with all the other vendors). But they all have something else, too. It may be art shows (all the multi-hued ink drawings of fairies and dragons you could ever wish for). Or games (D and D with about 500 other folks). Or seminars (The future of SciFi, how to sell your novel, what’s next for Joss Whedon). Or any combination of those.
Because of this, each of the Cons has its own feel. And for me, this changes how my booth fits. Some are more literary (oooooh books!). Some are more SciFi and tech oriented (ooooh Audiobooks on a Flash Drive!). Some are more Fantasy oriented (bronze age materials only! If it isn’t a sword or chain mail, they aren’t interested.) And some are more anime oriented (now, you call these black marks on the papers ‘words’? and you say if I turn the pages I could get a whole ‘story’? Well, I don’t know about this ‘book’ thing.)
What doesn’t distinguish any of the cons is the costumes. Folks come dressed to the hilt as their favorite characters. Or as someone that might have been found in their favorite movie or book. Or they come in a storebought Halloween costume. You name it, it’s there. And it’s everything from a pair of ears, to the full nine yards.
I’ve seen SuperMen and WonderWomen. Tons of Jedi Knights and Storm Troopers – a really high quantity of which are surprisingly overweight! There’s a full scale, remote controlled R2D2 that makes the rounds of all the cons. This guy just built it, and enjoys walking around about 20 feet behind it and watching people interact with the droid. He makes it turn, bleep, you name it. It’s pretty cool, even if you aren’t a die-hard Star Wars junkie.
Horns and elf ears are about a dime a dozen, but even at the small cons, there’s at least one person who goes all out. A great recent one I saw was Spy vs Spy. You have to be old enough to have read Mad Magazine to get that one. But the two guys stalked each other around the con for the day and stopped for photo ops along the way. I’ve even made friends with a full-costumed Darth Maul. He ended up buying one of my books. With credit! Who knew? (See pictures on my Website.)
But my favorite con story (so far) is when two Indiana Joneses met in front of my booth. Actually there were three – one of them had a son, also dressed as Indiana. They started having a conversation about where to get the whip and the hat and the jacket. Apparently, there’s a website. Or several. You aren’t limited to Indy-wear either. There’s a “Golden Fertility Idol Pencil Holder” and a “Holy Grail Magnetized Paperclip Container”. But the best part of the conversation was when the two Indys finished, shook hands and walked away. After a second, the one Indy realized his son wasn’t following. The kid was checking out an action figure at the next table. So the dad chided him. “I told you not to touch the toys, Harrison.”
Ah! Now, that’s dedication. See you at the next con!
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Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!
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All Y’all’s Vernacular
There’s just something about living . . . well, anywhere. You start to talk the way they do . . I’m talkin’ to you, wicked smart Bostonians! and a solid ‘ya’ served up with some hotdish to my Wisconsin and Minnesota friends.
We can all laugh about Southerners and their speech, and why not? Southern twang is the one most often associated with ‘stupid’. Though southern states do not help their cause by routinely coming in the bottom quarter of public school rankings, the fact is, this just ain’t so. It’s just a vernacular like all the others.
Try it out! Give us your best New Yawk accent, or what about Bawston, where the cahs ah wicked good in the cold wethah. You can lilt like a Suthonah or even drawl and crawl like they do in NewAhlins (yes, that’s all one word to the locals). But what about the Westerners? Give me a good Oregon accent? Wyoming? California? Yep, I can’t do it either.
What’s really interesting is the fact that Western American dialect is only just now beginning to diverge, and my own imagination believes this will be stifled by the use of facebook, texting and all things internet and cellular. If you look at a dialect map, it really resembles the old 13 colonies map (lots going on over in the east, some in the Midwest, then just a big block with some handscrawled lettering saying ‘western territories’). The two are so similar that it makes me wonder if this isn’t part of the issue.
This may go back to the whole territory thing; the South was settled in large part by the Irish. The New York area had Irish but also lotsa Italians. The West had . . . well, a lot of those people were already Americans. It seems the Westerners (particularly Californians) don’t so much give us an accent to make fun of, but they do give us lots of great terminology. Who can forget “gag me with a spoon” and “totally”? And the cursed ‘like’ is still part of our vernacular. And if you drive in SoCal (yes, another of their phrasisms) you don’t take I-5 to 101Freeway. You take THE Five to THE one-oh-one. You could take that to THE four-oh-five, but you’ll just sit there. That road is a parking lot.
Many thanks to the “American Dialects Links” page
But seriously, no matter where I searched, there’s only about 1/3 as many dialect links for anything in the Western HALF of the US as in each of the 5 other regions (New England, Mid Atlantic, Midwest, Southeast, Mid South). Crazy huh? I guess you westerners just don’t talk funny do you?
It also seems that the stronger the twang, the more people assume the speaker is uneducated. Growing up with an East-Tennessee physicist for a father (yes, you can read that phrase again if you need to. In fact there is more than one East-Tennessee physicist out there!) I heard the craziest stuff around the dinner table. Yup, phrases like ‘them there quarks’ ‘would you carry me up to the lab? I gots to run the reactor experiment tomorrow.’ (Oh, did I mention these were nuclear physicists?) and ‘Them missile payloads we done designed might could be comin’ in tomorrah’.
Though a strong Minnesota bent toward ‘ya umm-hmm’ or even the complete inability of a Bostonian to pronounce an ‘r’ will lead the listener to believe he’s talking to someone who didn’t make it through the SATs, that would be a mistake. Humans survived by imitating, and language is no exception.
When I first moved back to Tennessee, I had a good friend ask if I was going to start using ‘y’all’ now that I lived in the South. I laughed. Of COURSE I was going to start using ‘y’all’. This led to phrases like ‘but you don’t really have an accent’ ‘you’re a bit of a grammarian’ and some general disbelief. Why would anyone choose to use y’all?
I pointed out that Southerners had the only reasonable distinction between ‘you’ the singular and ‘you’ the plural. What are the other options? You guys? Yous? Yous guys? The South not only tames this trouble with ‘you’ and ‘y’all’ but goes above and beyond with a third option. When addressing the whole group (especially if it might have become confused with a sub-group – i.e. all the workers and not just the female ones) we have the following: all y’all . . .
It’s even better when it’s possessive, ‘pick up all y’all’s plates when y’all’re done eating.’ Nothing beats the word with not just one, but TWO apostrophes. I am all in.
So all y’all shut down your computers when y’all’re done reading this. Don’t want to make a big carbon footprint, now do ya?
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Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!
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Dam Beavers!
One day, while driving through my then new neighborhood, I saw a fallen tree. I know, really? Wow? And who cares? But this tree was chewed to matching points at the spot where it had fallen. It looked like a cartoon drawing – and it meant that there were Beavers nearby.
Most folks have never seen a wild beaver, because – really – where are they? And because, even if they are nearby, they aren’t much for the public eye. True to form, the beavers stayed hidden from me for the next two and a half years.
When I finally saw one, I thought at first that I’d seen a groundhog, because everyone has groundhogs, but it was the tail that gave it away. Well, that and the fact that this thing ran like a fast-moving, grayish puddle. Try it: imagine a puddle running. That’s what a beaver looks like.
So I was all excited – I’d seen a wild Beaver! Four of them in fact: a huge mother and three babies. I spotted them in the same place several times and the next week when I drove over the hill with my friend Alex, I mentioned it. Okay, ‘mentioned’ is a little bit of an undersell, I was really enthused.
On a side note here, though you could say ‘a group of beavers’ you could also refer to the plural as ‘beaver’. I wasn’t sure why I thought this was the right way, so I looked it up, and the collective is ‘beaver’. This is important because what I said to Alex as we approached the location was “I have to show you where I saw beaver yesterday!” Needless to say, Alex was as excited as I was. We approached the empty field and . . . Alex looked at me weird. It seemed he was not expecting fuzzy rodents, he thought I’d seen ‘beaver’.
Though I know the term, I never really think of girl-parts when I hear it. At least not at first. Though apparently, that’s Alex’s go-to meaning. While Alex is not alone, neither am I in thinking of the mammal.
I showed the beaver to the kids (doesn’t that sound bad!?) and they in turn showed it to my mother-in-law, who then cheered about seeing beaver every time we took that route. Alex was driving during one of these excursions and nearly killed us all because he was trying so hard not to laugh.
I find myself in dire need of another term for buck-toothed, dam-building rodents with flat tails. My daughter had a school assignment to build a shoe-box habitat for a mammal. We had just discovered the beavers in the empty lot, so she chose them. It seems a report was also due, and my then seven-year-old jumped up and announced “I’ll google ‘beaver’!”
I haven’t run that fast since . . . well, maybe ever. I know there are parental controls on the computer, but they tend to block out things like NPR because of the words ‘gender’ and the occasional ‘sex’ or ‘sperm’. Mine blocked the WHOLE NPR site for this and was a huge pain in the butt. And seriously, where are these actually dirty sites using ‘gender’? and ‘sperm’? Aside from one incidence with googling ‘hello kitty’, we’ve been fine. So I volunteered to do the googling while she went outside to gather sticks and rocks. Once I realized that ‘beaver’ and ‘tail’ weren’t going to yield anything appropriate to a second-grade report, I printed out the generic info about beavers and told her that was what we had.
Clearly, given the wealth of internet hits on the term ‘beaver’ that had nothing to do with buck-toothed rodents, Alex isn’t the only one who uses the term this way. Even if there isn’t another good word for the creatures, everyone needs to be aware that it also means girl-bits. You don’t want to be clapping and saying “I hope we see beaver!” when Alex is driving. He might kill you.
Sadly people are either ignorant or . . . well, you decide for yourself.
Our local radio station is having a contest to win Justin Beiber tickets. (Yes, you know this is going to be bad. You can see it coming, can’t you?) The contest is to decorate something (car, yard, dog, whatever) with Justin paraphernalia and send in a picture. Given the subject matter, you can figure out that it’s aimed at tween girls, which just makes the name all that much worse/better. Guess what the contest is called!
No, guess. Really.
It’s called: “Show us your Beiber”
I kid you not.
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Too Hot to Handle
Just three short little letters, and yet so very problematic. It wasn’t as if the word hot didn’t have a lot going for it already. It means high temperature and spicy. It can also mean that a computer is on or that electronics have current. In theater it means the set is ready for the production. Hot has mean passionate – as in steamy or blatantly sexual – for a long time.
I’m sure that I’ve missed a good number of alternate uses here, too – that just about every profession has something that’s ‘hot’ that means something unique to the job. I bet you probably haven’t ever sat down and tried to come up with all the different meanings of that silly little word, but sadly it’s the kind of thing my brain latches onto and won’t let go of. And it got stuck on this ‘hot’ track when my daughter was in the backseat of the car waiting for the AC to kick in, so she exclaimed “I am smokin’ hot back here!”
No, not ‘hot’, not ‘boiling’ ‘frying’ ‘about to vaporize’ or any of the other phrases us adults had been throwing around in the Ninety-plus heat that week. And she didn’t even say ‘smoking hot’ with the ‘g’ – no she gave it the kind of inflection that calls to mind just about anything Jim Carrey is in. She said she was “Smokin’ Hot!”
It’s really hard to tell an eight year old why she isn’t smokin’ hot. Should you explain what the phrase she just yelled out means? Reassure her that one day she will be smokin’ hot, but not at eight. You can’t tell her that you just don’t say that! Because then it becomes mysterious and forbidden and suddenly she’ll be saying it all the time. I decided for distraction.
Though this was funny (kindof!) adults are doing it, too. As parents we had to recently do the ‘dance recital’ thing. This means a backstage, a swarm of little girls in fluffy, sparkly, shiny multi-hued costumes. Out in the wings, where the girls gathered after they were dressed and waiting to get their hair artfully done (maybe in an attempt to distract from the dancing?) one mother was complaining that her little girl couldn’t keep her costume straight, or her hair up or her makeup on. I was biting my tongue to say something about the reason four year olds shouldn’t be dressed like that, when the mother exclaimed that her daughter was just a ‘hot mess’.
Um. Ew.
I don’t think she meant that, though her daughter was smokin’ hot, she was an emotional wreck . . . I hope not. I always hear this term used for pretty girls with binge drinking problems or the girlfriend with issues that she just has to share with everyone else. I really hope she didn’t mean this about the four-year-old.
But how is my kid supposed to know that she’s not smokin’ hot if this Mom isn’t even paying attention?
I used to think that adults should keep up with the latest phrases . . . but now I may be changing my mind. If you can’t use them right maybe you shouldn’t be using them at all. I mean you wouldn’t want to mistakenly tell people that your four-year-old may be really attractive but she has drinking problems and probably daddy-issues when all you really mean is that she’s a mess.
This mom didn’t seem to have a clue that she’d said something inappropriate. But even when you know the wrong thing can come out your mouth. As a teacher for adults, I am often starting up a new class with new students, and my boss likes to come in and introduce us teachers when possible.
I was recently introduced as ‘Your super hot teacher’. Um. Ooops. My boss at least had the wherewithal to be embarrassed by this slip. The students no longer cared if I was a good teacher, all heads cranked around to the back of the room to see if I was indeed ‘super hot’.
Later he sat in his office with his head in his hands as he tried to apologize. “I was trying to say ‘super great’ or ‘super cool’ or something.” Yeah, when adults get their hands on the latest lingo only bad things can happen. It hasn’t worked well since the grandma started talking Jive in the movie Airplane and that was a long long time ago.
My boss apologized several times more before I finally said ‘Look, I know it was a slip. The only thing you really need to apologize for is doing it halfway. Couldn’t I have at least been ‘smokin’ hot’?”
Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS
Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!
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