innocence (n.): the state of being not chargeable for or guilty of a particular crime or offense

I was issued a parking ticket today for being parked on my block during street cleaning hours. This is illegal, and I admit to having done it.

However, the ticket I was issued alleged that I was parked in front of 203 11th St. I was in fact parked in front of 203 18th St. The probata does not match the allegata and thus, as a matter of law, I am not guilty of the offense I have been charged with.

Only problem is, a) I can’t prove I wasn’t parked on 11th St, because there is no photo I could have taken that would have demonstrated that I was parked on 18th St at the time in question, and b) it was just as illegal to be parked on that particular block of 11th St at the time in question. Therefore, since it’s my word against the officer’s, and I’m relying exclusively on the procedural technicality, I’m almost definitely going to lose.

This irritates me.

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staycation (n.): a vacation on which one stays home and enjoys the pleasures of one’s home and environs

I was introduced to this word at a party last night, in reference to my plan to stay in New York more or less by my lonesome during greater Christmas. It’s more or less perfect, as slang terminology goes. My plan was to chill in NYC…well, forever, really, but I started thinking about how long this stretch of vacation was going to be, how few other Jews I know in New York, and how I didn’t have anything resembling a plan for the weekend since everyone else had skipped town. So I jumped in the car and drove to Baltimore. My parents were pleasantly surprised.

The drive from New York to Baltimore is a no-nonsense, business-like drive across interstates, turnpikes, and massive bridges. Driving in New York City, one is obligated to develop a serenity with regard to traffic: the cars are plentiful, sometimes the streets are narrow, someone’s always double-parked, and these are simply facts of life that you work around. The bottom line is that most of roadways in New York were built between the ’30s and the ’60s and they reflect the demographic realities and driving customs of their era. So be it.

The horror show of the drive to Baltimore, though, is when you discover that the entire eastern seaboard has faced similar demographic changes to New York, only at a different scale. Consequently, even in smooth traffic, there are bottlenecks and clogs and goofy anachronisms all along the route. The New Jersey Turnpike goes from five lanes to three. The Delaware Memorial Bridge starts as a four-lane highway whose speed limit is 45 MPH, and then degrades into a confusing series of windy two-lane ramps at 55 MPH. Construction is endless and unchanging. If anything should put to rest the theory of intelligent design, it is this drive.

And still it’s the best option. The curse of Delaware is that to pass through its miserable fifteen miles southbound costs a driver $7.00. I took it upon myself to dodge the second, $4.00 toll today, which meant a detour along Maryland state highways through (or near) the towns of Elkton and North East, which I was once told were notorious for their KKK membership levels. It was only one highway exit’s worth of distance, but it took me twenty minutes. To avoid the dreary highways of the Atlantic corridor is to add countless hours to your trip, and not pleasant, scenic hours — the alternative to the drab interstate drive is a crawling, hand-over-hand trip through the endless suburban sprawl of chain enterprises and tract housing that all of the East Coast, from Boston to Washington, has become.

I have a fearsome attachment to the East Coast. I grew up in Baltimore, I was schooled in Providence, I live in Brooklyn. I am firmly convinced that people who grow up in California are hippies or wusses or frauds or all of the above, and that the rest of the country is what people like me fly over to get to the places that matter. (Don’t try to dissuade me — you’re wasting your breath.) But I really fear for the East Coast’s future. I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, but it feels to me like the population density of the megalopolis has increased at an alarming rate over the past fifteen years or so since I’ve been somewhat sentient. What was once forest and cornfield is now terribly ugly, sloppily-designed housing further and further from urban centers, merging nightmare suburb into nightmare suburb until eventually the entire region will have been painted into a corner by its own poor planning.

I know this is hardly a novel realization, but it’s worth screaming and shouting about again, I think. I like living in New York in part because in the city I don’t have to be exposed to this inexorable march of progress. Our grid is set. The only way to go is up, and while I do shudder to think of brownstones being demolished in favor of frightfully unsightly high-rises, I don’t see this much. What I see is big apartment buildings being thrown up along arterial avenues, or dilapidated rowhouses being replaced by six-to-twelve story doorman buildings. I question the business sense of these structures, but as long as they’re reasonably aesthetically pleasing, they don’t bother me, because they don’t have that stench of consumption the way suburban McMansions do. They may replace older construction, but they don’t chew up wilderness and turn it into architectural corn syrup. And the influx of people is no inconvenience — New York is built for critical masses of population and feeds off the density like an organism.

Anyway. What was I talking about? I can’t remember anyway. Best finish up and get to bed — I’ve taken on a challenge to write and record a Christmas song by midnight tomorrow and I’ve never heard of a “song” before.

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cuss (n., v.): curse

I’ve recently taken to watching Gunsmoke, a western that ran on CBS from 1955 to 1975, making it the longest-running drama in television history. It’s fuckin’ great — before my first episode (which I DVRed more or less arbitrarily), I hadn’t realized that TV dramas had once been so strictly episodic. Today’s dramas often focus on long, gradually unfolding plotlines that extend over the course of the serial. Virtually every drama I can think of fits this mold, everything from hospital shows like ER and Grey’s Anatomy to soap-like shows like The O.C. and its ilk all the way to esoteric dramas like Dexter and Big Love. Even cop shows like Law & Order, which introduce a new case every week, like to incorporate longer story arcs about their characters’ relationships. But in the first episode of Gunsmoke I ever saw, one of the male leads named Newly met a woman at the beginning of the episode. He convinced her to stay in the town of Dodge City, they fell in love, they married, and she died. All within an hour. This rocked my world — you can’t just fucking DO that! — but it appears to be part of the show’s M.O. to introduce a story and wrap it up all in one episode.

Anyway. I realize now that mentioning all this has actually led me astray, because the show I really wanted to talk about was Bonanza, and one of its male leads, Hoss Cartwright. Hoss’s name is Hoss, as you may have noticed, which is a variant of “horse,” a fact which became clear when I saw part of this one episode where an inventor from Boston moved to town and referred to the big man as “Horse.” The funny thing about Hoss being named Hoss, though, is that the characters speak in a rhotic accent, the show being set in Nevada.

In fact, “hoss,” like “cuss,” is one of the few words where the southern, non-rhotic pronunciation has found its way into the general lexicon even among rhotic speakers. From a prescriptivist point of view, the word “cuss” doesn’t exist. There is only the word “curse,” and American Southerners with non-rhotic drawls pronounce it /k?s/. This r-dropping occurs in literally every word where the r is not followed by a vowel, yet, so far as I can tell, the only words where that pronunciation has become common among rhotic speakers are “curse” and to a far lesser extent, “horse.” Imagine Foghorn Leghorn saying, “I say boy, don’t you bark at that hearse from the porch!” Have we seen English words “bock,” “huss,” or “pautch” represented in the lexicon?

I was in a class once at Brown with a girl who objected strenuously to the casual use of “cuss” and insisted that the offender say “curse.” I was mildly surprised by this, though it’s not something I cared about enough to mention. As long as I’m on the subject, though, I figure I might as well address this: If saying things like “The past is gone, hoss — what you need now is some motherfucking pussy” is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Oh, P.S.: I decided to name my sack “Marshall Darling,” after the dad on Clarissa Explains It All:

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scronym (n.): a name given to a man’s ballsack

This, shockingly, began as a typo by a dear friend, but the opportunity for a portmanteau was just too delicious to pass up. I’m frankly surprised that a word like this hasn’t already been coined. Though I’ve never seen figures, I would assume that hundreds of millions of men on this planet have named the ol’ beanbag at some point or another. I’m not among them, but the fact that I’ve recently created a label for such a thing makes me think I should be. I’m gonna have to brainstorm and sleep on it, though — this isn’t the kind of decision a man should make lightly.

Tags: coinages
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bougie (adj.): characteristic of the pejorative sense of “bourgeois,” i.e. concerned with….ah, fuck it.

I can’t actually define “bourgeois” any better than Merriam-Webster Unabridged, which goes into startling, sparkling detail:

characterized by selfish concern for material comfort and well-being, by preoccupation with moneymaking or property accumulation, by anxiety about social respectability, and by a tendency toward safe mediocrity in matters of thought, feeling, and artistic taste : PHILISTINE — usually used in disparagement

Golf clap. Tuesday was my final day of work at Stank & O’Nia LLP. I’d been thinking about quitting the paralegal job since…about my second month of working there, and in the past six months it had been growing more and more urgent that I wash my hands of the place. What started out as a way to get a high-paying taste of the legal profession had become a seemingly endless Odyssey of boredom, mood swings, overcaffeination and wasted talent.

When I first interviewed, my employers talked about a “two-year commitment” (scare quotes mine). Obnoxious little college boy that I was, I remarked to my interviewer that I had read the agreement they were asking me to sign and I saw no mention of a commitment period. What, praytell, did they mean by a commitment? I was informed that while I would be an at-will employee, free to leave whenever I saw fit, there were certain unspoken policies of reprisal in place — poor recommendations, neutral references, etc. I smirked, assuming I would be on my way to stardom in one field or another in the next nine months.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up last month and realized that twenty-seven months had elapsed and not only had I not been promoted and given the fat raise I so richly deserved at this job, but that I had no exit strategy, having shrugged off the prospect of law school in favor of whatever rock’n'roll lifestyle I could get my hands on. I needed a swift kick in the ass that would lead me to some combination of creative output, vacation, and a new work path.

Which leads us to two weeks ago Tuesday, when I ran off the cliff, looked at the camera in shock, waved bye-bye, and began my plummet towards glorious unemployment, a plummet that seemed to take much longer than was, strictly speaking, necessary, and which didn’t kick up quite the cloud of dust at the foot of the mesa that I was expecting. But no matter — you say a national law firm will manage without their most brilliant paper-pusher? Fine, fuck it.

Jesus, how the hell did I get onto this vitriolic little tangent? I’ve been writing a song all night, and I’ve recently started drinking, so my focus has strayed somewhat. I’m also supposed to be leaving for a party any minute now, so naturally this is the perfect time to start a stream-of-consciousness ramble about my tumultuous three weeks past.

Anyway, I’ve taken this break in employment as an opportunity to become an adult and get my shit together. This has thus far taken shape in two main ways: vigilant gym-going and a concerted effort to economize, particularly by eating at home. This brings us to the glorious event of the day: my first trip to Fairway, the strip club of grocery stores.

Fairway is a great store. I can’t deny this. Their produce is excellent and reasonably priced. Their selection is unparalleled. Their salesclerks are knowledgeable and helpful. Their cashiers are efficient. On a Friday afternoon at 2PM, at least, it’s a friendly, nice place to shop for groceries. What’s not to like?

Well, the best part of Fairway, its selection of bougie-ass gourmet deliciousness, is also the primary issue for me. I managed to get out of their having only splurged on a pound of fresh pasta and a six-dollar hunk of Parmesan, and that, frankly, is a fucking miracle. If you like to eat (which I do) and if you have no willpower to speak of (which I don’t), it would be pretty dang easy to find yourself out five or six hundred dollars with only modest portions of imported cheeses, cured meats, olive oil, and seafood to show for it. This terrifies me, because someday I’m going to go in there in a much pissier or hungrier mood and I will return home to find myself bankrupted for the rest of the month, staying in and assuaging my buyer’s remorse by gorging myself on all the frou-frou yuppie bullshit I’d acquired. I smell a shame spiral on the horizon, and it smells delicious.

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neoplastic (adj.): of, pertaining to, or having the characteristics of tumors or other useless newly grown tissue
pleonastic (adj.): of, pertaining to, or having the characteristics of superfluous iteration or repetition in speech or writing

I don’t have much to say about this pair of words, actually, other than this: Never in my many years speaking English have I seen two four-syllable words with wholly different meanings wherein two consonant clusters can be interchanged. I think it’s truly remarkable that these two long, contrived words both exist. We’re not talking about a pairing like “vase” and “save,” where the limited number of phonologically acceptable letter combinations in a single-syllable, four-letter word means that some reciprocity is statistically (more or less) inevitable. There are, I’m sure, dozens of examples of that type (rite/tire and late/tale come to mind). But in what other instance does a ten-letter word demonstrate this kind of pairing? It’s so rare as to seem almost an error, a Spoonerism or malaprop of some kind. If you can think of any other examples that fit into this mold, please, gentle reader, let me know.

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culturesmart (v.): to surprise, impress, or stand out by expressing unexpected knowledge.

The Brooklyn Public Library has launched a very limited subway advertising campaign that has plastered billboards in Brooklyn subway stations with ads that feature the above definition. It is accompanied by the following usage guidance:

e.g., Uncle Mel wanted to choose the best quality time with his niece, so Shirley culturesmarted, “The names for Snow White’s dwarves were chosen from 50 possibilities; rejected titles included Awful, Flabby and Loser.”

And now, with your kind indulgence, I will enumerate the reasons this is an absolute embarrassment, a black eye and swollen lip to the otherwise stout reputation of the proud Brooklyn Public Library system.

1. The nonce word “culturesmart,” which the ad genii cut from whole cloth, is a compound of a noun and an adjective that are being unceremoniously impressed into service as a verb. There’s nothing inherently wrong with writers appropriating certain parts of speech to function as others (though, as Calvin once said, “Verbing weirds language”), but to create a new word, cram a definition down our throats, AND force us to bend our minds around non-standard grammar is uncouth and reeks of hubris, particularly because…
2. “Culturesmart” goes against compound creation norms. It is borne out by the lexicon that compound words take on the part of speech of the latter word; thus “minibike” is a noun, “streetwise” is an adjective, and “skydive” is a verb. This is a pretty basic rule, and “culturesmart” sounds as though it could be a fairly natural adjective; were little Shirley to have demonstrated how culturesmart she was by listing rejected dwarf names…well, she would fail, but at least the description would not be so surprisingly jarring. I say surprisingly because…
3. This is an advertisement for a LIBRARY. It’s one thing if this campaign had gone up for, I dunno, an immigrant assimilation class or a handheld device made by a company with a capital letter in the middle of its name, but no — it’s marketing for a place where people go to check out and (hopefully) read books. Books written in English, mostly. A library’s clientele consists of smart, literate people, and while the point of the ad is to draw in a larger market share of (presumably) less smart, less literate people, it’s important that the institution stand as an exemplar of high standards. This faux pas is only further heightened by the fact that…
4. The definition is wrong. The admen who represent the BPL were at liberty to define this atrocity however they see fit, and they managed to screw it up. If “culturesmart” really meant “to stand out by expressing unexpected knowledge,” then why would the word “culture” be a part of the compound? Why not just appropriate “smart” as a verb and have done with it? No no, what the writers of this troubled copy meant was “to stand out by expressing unexpected knowledge about culture,” and that omission, right at the top of the sign, begins the inexorable march towards tragedy, seeing as…
5. The whole ad doesn’t even make any (fucking) sense! “So” in the context of “so Shirley culturesmarted” means either “with the result that” or “therefore.” In what universe and under what horrific family conditions does Uncle Mel wanting to choose the best quality time with his niece cause little Shirley to spout some stupid fucking bullshit fact or factoid about Snow White’s goddamn dwarves? What has Uncle Mel (or his truly terrifying alter-ego, Aunt Melinda) done to Shirley to cause her to blurt out such nonsense merely because he has a want? And even if we give the copywriters the benefit of the doubt and grant that Shirley was probably dropping Mel a little hint on what she’d like to do,
1. (a) what kind of a crappy hint is that? “Hey, that’s wonderful, sweetie. So, you want to go…dwarf tossing?”
2. (b) how does this lead people to the Brooklyn Public Library? To be fair, I don’t really remember what the rest of the ad said — it wasn’t terribly interesting — but the takeaway message from all of this is clearly “Brooklyn Public Library: For All of Your Fictitious Dwarf Needs,” which, quite frankly, in an era in which grown men and women wait in line at bookstores to buy novels about teenagers in wizardry school, would be pretty damn effective. Brooklyn Public Library, call me. Let me take you away from all this.

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escutcheon (n.): 1 a : a defined area on which armorial bearings are depicted, marshaled, or displayed usually consisting of a shield or something made to resemble a shield — see DEXTER 2, SINISTER; compare BASE, CHIEF, FESS, LOZENGE, NAVEL, NOMBRIL, POINT

Escutcheon is a word that comes from heraldry, a bizarre, obscure subject that I happened to wander into on Wikipedia a few days ago. Heraldry is the art, science, and practice related to coats of arms, and it’s so much more complicated than I could possibly have imagined. Apparently, all coats of arms are defined by their “blazons,” the formal description of the coat which uses a specific sequence of terms and technical verbiage used to define each color (of which there can be only seven, and each of which has its own French or faux-French name), each “charge” or image on the shield, the animals or what have you that support the shield on each side, the motto, etc. etc. The idea is that from the blazon, the image of the coat of arms can always be produced by someone who knows how to interpret the description. For a simple coat, the description is basic: For example, “Azure a bend Or” produces this coat:

“Azure” being the heraldic code for “blue,” “bend” meaning “a line from top left to bottom right,” and “Or” being French for “gold.” Easy enough, right? Well, the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom looks like this:

Which is blazoned as follows:

Quarterly, first and fourth Gules three lions passant gardant in pale Or armed and langued Azure (for England), second quarter Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland), third quarter Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland), the whole surrounded by the Garter; for a Crest, upon the Royal helm the imperial crown Proper, thereon a lion statant gardant Or imperially crowned Proper; for Supporters, dexter a lion rampant gardant Or crowned as the Crest, sinister a unicorn Argent armed, crined and unguled Proper, gorged with a coronet Or composed of crosses patée and fleurs de lis a chain affixed thereto passing between the forelegs and reflexed over the back also Or. Motto ‘Dieu et mon Droit’ in the compartment below the shield, with the Union rose, shamrock and thistle engrafted on the same stem.

Shit is fucking ridiculous. Anyway, the escutcheon is the shield part of a coat of arms, specifically, without which there is no coat of arms. What’s so fascinating about this word, though, is that it’s been generalized to refer to other things shaped like a shield — most specifically, “escutcheon” is a medical term meaning “the configuration of adult pubic hair.” Apparently, the male escutcheon comes to a point at the top, near the navel, whereas the female is flat at the top. A diagnosis of hirsutism in women can be determined in part by a woman having a male escutcheon — at least, that’s how I interpret this. I can only assume the Queen is thrilled.

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Freudian (adj.): of, relating to, or in accordance with the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud

I had a dream last night that I was on tour with the band last night and we were staying in a pretty crappy motel in a backwater town, most likely in upstate New York. Singer Tom and I were, for some reason, watching baseball on a gigantic (think 128″) traditional TV set up in the parking lot of this motel, facing the street.

I realized I had to pee with some urgency, and rather than going into the motel room to use the bathroom there, I decided I was going to hobble a couple of doors down to the run-down restaurant down the street. The place inside was about the size of a small train car, decked out in dark wood paneling with cream-colored formica countertops and wispy magenta drapes — it felt throwback, though to an era I couldn’t quite identify.

Everyone in the restaurant, including what appeared to be the owner, her husband, and a younger hostess type, were huddled around the front door, either watching a TV that must have been situated just behind my right shoulder or playing some sort of party game I didn’t recognize. I spoke to the people who appeared to be in charge and asked if I could use their bathroom. The hostess and the husband nodded yes, and the owner said no.

“Please?” I begged. The owner shook her head.

I turned to the husband and asked, in my most lawyerly tone, “Is this restaurant a public accomodation?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then by law, you have to let me use the restroom.”

The owner frowned so hard her face looked like it was about to shatter and fall to the floor. The husband smiled, but said, “you certainly are greedy, son.”

I laughed. “Sorry, I really have to go!” And I did.

I went to the back of the restaurant, found a fixture that was a cross between a urinal and a full toilet, and I started to piss. I continued to piss for, no joke, the next three minutes of perceived dream-time, while the toilet slowly migrated all the way across the wall from left to right, as if trying as hard as it could to escape my relentless stream.

I don’t know what was going to happen next, because I woke up. I had to pee.

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autological (adj.): describing oneself (as an adjective) or exemplifying one’s definition (as a noun)

Old friend, former bandmate, prodigious talent, and all-around good guy Seb Roberts commented recently on my “warmthiness” post with the following:

One of my favourite words in the English language is “factoid.” Y’know, the word so commonly used as a synonym to “trivium” or “anecdotal knowledge.” Well, dig this: it actually means…

A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition.

That’s right – it actually satisfies its own definition!

“Factoid” is an interesting example of a noun that belongs to the set of autological words, those words that describe themselves. The vast majority of, shall we say, “canonical” autological words are adjectives like “short,” “polysyllabic,” “fifteen-lettered,” “Brobdingnagian,” etc. etc. But of course, nouns can be included in the set too — “noun” itself is the most obvious example, but Henry Segerman, a young math professor at UT-Austin, has come up with a clever and extensive list of nouns as well as adjectives, including “buzzword” and “identifier.” (I should point out that he does make one error, in that “iamb” is heterological, because it’s pronounced /’a?æm/, with the stress on the first syllable. The autological word he should have included is “trochee.”)

Heterological (see previous) is the opposite of autological — heterological words do not describe themselves (e.g. “long,” “French,” “monosyllabic,” etc.). The pairing of autological and heterological yields the Grelling-Nelson Paradox, which Wikipedia sketches out succinctly:

Is “heterological” a heterological word? If the answer is ‘yes’, “heterological” is autological (leading to a contradiction). If the answer is ‘no’, “heterological” is heterological (again leading to a contradiction).

Anyway, I’m really glad Seb brought up “factoid,” because it’s one of very few words that are, for lack of a better term, semantically autological, rather than merely self-descriptive. The vast majority of autological nouns, certainly, are words having to do with words — “word,” “noun,” “signifier,” “lexeme,” etc. etc., — and many autological adjectives are the same way — “adjectival,” “pentasyllabic,” “writable,” “unphonetic,” etc. etc. “Factoid,” though, doesn’t have to do with the phonic or orthographic properties of the word; rather, its definition describes an elaborate process having nothing to do with linguistics, and the word itself is an example of that process coming to fruition. I’ve given some thought to finding another word that is semantically autological in that kind of way, and I haven’t yet come up with one, so, gentle readers and guest genii, if you can come up with something else, please do send it my way.

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