Back of the Cereal Box

I Saw a Boat, and I Liked It

2008-10-06T07:50:00.000-07:00

In case you didn’t watch this weekend’s Saturday Night Live — and you should have, because it’s been especially good lately and because everything, everything has never deserved mocking more than now — I have taken it upon myself to give you a second chance. Here are three of the best.

Anne Hathaway can do a decent Mary Poppins, it turns out.

And here’s Hathaway and all of SNL’s current female cast members doing a less-than-timely but nonetheless amazing Lawrence Welk Show parody. Kristen Wiig does a good job filling the void left by Rachel Dratch.

And here’s the best: Casey Wilson mocking Santa Barbara-bred pop tart Katy Perry. Perhaps because of licensing fees, the sketch doesn’t appear on Hulu. Watch this YouTube clip of it while you can, for it will doubtlessly be yanked soon.

Here’s to improving your Monday with less-than-live sketch comedy — especially the kind that involves singing ladies.

Stray Puffins and Ponies

2008-10-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

I’m happy to report that I’m not the only one who found Vergina beer sniggerworthy. The below photo, which I originally snagged from my cousin Melissa’s blog when she wrote about the Monterey Greek Festival, now appears on the site of name and brand name expert Nancy Friedman.

She manages to one-up Vergina, however, with an even more terribly named beverage. It’s a British product, so it can’t even blame translation errors for this bummer of a handle, as Nancy points out.

There’s a market for it, I suppose.

A small note: The above image, which also appears on Nancy’s site, comes directly from the official site for the energy drink in question. I tried to find a better image of the container — perhaps one that wasn’t weirdly cropped at the bottom — but, upon seeing what my Google image search turned up, I instantly regretted this attempt. I won’t link it, but you could imagine ways in which this all went very wrong.

Perhaps That Fire Should Be Extinguished

2008-10-05T08:25:00.000-07:00

A slight variation for the song of the week: exploring one song in the form of its original version and two recent covers. “I’m on Fire” was first released as the fourth single from Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., but I’d not heard the song until I downloaded Electrelane’s 2006 cover. Being neither a Springsteen fan nor especially familiar with Electrelane’s sound, I had no idea their track was a cover, but then I heard the original while riding in my friend’s truck some months back. A quick reenactment:

“Who is this?”

“Springsteen.”

“Bruce Springsteen covered Electrelane?” I asked, before I realized the inherent silliness in that question.

If you’re not familiar, check out the video — a YouTuber, but posted by Sony BMG, with embedding disabled by request. If you don’t mind a live and therefore sonically inferior version of the song, here’s a video of Springsteen performing the song at a 1985 concert in Paris. (Forewarning: He monologues at the beginning. It’s not so great.)

Just recently, I downloaded a second cover of “I’m on Fire,” this one by Bat For Lashes — or, as Aly aptly but not-so-subtly calls her, Batshit Crazy For Lashes. It was only with her version, which plays much more slowly than the Springsteen and Electrelane versions, that I realized how very fucked up the song is, catchy though it may be.

Here are the lyrics:

Hey little girl, is your daddy home?
Did he go away and leave you all alone?
I got a bad desire
I’m on fire

Tell me now, baby, is he good to you?
Can he do to you the things that I do?
I can take you higher
I’m on fire

Sometimes its like someone took a knife, baby,
Edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul

At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the
Middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I’m on fire

A good little pop song, as long as you don’t choose to interpret the sentence “I’m on fire” with “I’m a pedophile.” Some do. No doubt that Springsteen didn’t intend for the song to sound this way, but after having heard it sung repeatedly in the past few months, I have to admit that the lyrics “Hey little girl, is you daddy home? / Did he go away and leave you all alone?” smack of a very wrong sort of perviness. It all gets worse when you think about the speaker giving the object of his affections something to make her “higher” and then waking up in bed, feeling awful, possibly because he realizes how wrong his feelings are. I’m not the only one to make this connection. The Wikipedia entry for “I’m on Fire” basically says this much in the “interpretation” section. I’m not sure whether I feel better or worse than other people have performed this reading of the song.

I guess I chose to wrote about “I’m on Fire” this week to show that a great, well-known and oft-covered song can darker implications than a superficial listen-through might indicate. I think it’s funny when people don’t really consider their words and consequently have them interpreted in ways they didn’t intend. And then its even funnier when other people repeat those words, bad implications and all.

Here’s a video of Electrelane’s cover, which I think is my favorite version.

And here’s Bat For Lashes doing it.

One additional problem with the song, specifically with the Bat For Lashes cover: the gender switch. Those opening pervy lyrics get slightly altered to “Hey little boy, is you momma home? / Did she go away and leave you all alone?” It’s quite strange, when you think about it, and a little shallow. For anyone who knew the song previously to this version, this slight lyrical substitution seems pointless. Was Bat For Lashes frontwoman Natasha Khan worried that people would hear her addressing a female object of affection and think she’s a lesbian? Should that be something she should even concern her, since she dresses, sings and acts like some kind of whackjob space princess and these tendencies might go a lot further in eliciting a negative reaction from people? And even if she decided to change the songs addressee from a girl to a boy, why did she also have to change this person’s parent from a father to a mother? I mean, she didn’t change the “baby” in the second verse to “masculine baby,” which would have made about as much sense.

As a point of comparison, Tori Amos’s cover doesn’t switched anyone’s gender, and Tori Amos is not a whackjob space princess.

For those who’d like to give these various versions a few spins and come up with their own interpretation, here’s where to download Springsteen’s original (on iTunes and on Amazon.com), the Electrelane cover (on iTunes and on Amazon.com), and the Bat For Lashes cover (on iTunes and on Amazon.com).

Previous songs of the week:

The Lady or the Poisonous Witch?

2008-10-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Despite the absence of a word of the week last Saturday, you’re only getting a short one for today, mostly because there’s not all that much written about it. Why rush it, I figure. Strange words abound.

veneficial (ven-e-FISH-el) — adjective: 1. acting by poison, or poisoning. 2. acting by, or used in, witchcraft or sorcery. 3. relating to the doings of Venus, the goddess of love.

The value of this word, of course, lies in the fact that it’s pronounced almost identically to beneficial, even though veneficial would be most often used in a negative context. (Witchcraft isn’t necessarily bad, I suppose, depending on what side of the hex you’re on, and the more venereal of the three meanings could easily turn out badly, as anyone who’s hit puberty can attest.) Most dictionaries that include veneficial — which is not many, by the way, though it does appear in the 1913 edition of Webster’s — note that it’s a variant of the more-common-but-actually-all-that-common veneficious. I found it in Peter Bowler’s The Superior Person’s Book of Words, which doesn’t include an etymology, though it would appear to come from a combination of the Latin venenum, “poison,” and the verb facere, “to do, make, perform or cause.” The linking of poison and sex struck me as strange, initially, since I never associated Venus and venereal with venom, but Derrida’s Dissemination notes that the concepts may be connected, even “double-faced” if explorations into Indo-European and Proto-Indo-European are any indication

Previous words of the week:

What Is It That You Do Well, Exactly?

2008-10-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

Yet another entry in my “Ha Ha — This Person’s Name” series, courtesy this time of Spencer: the little known director Fracaswell Hyman, who tragically isn’t some Laszlo Kovacs-era dude whose unwieldy name might be just a little more understandable. No, he’s way contemporary.

You should feel bad for Fracaswell Hyman.

Someday Monkey Won't Play Piano Song

2008-10-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

I understand the concept behind Gmail’s “sponsored links” targeted ads, but they amuse me more often than they motivate me to buy the various goods and services that they’re hocking.

For example, when I get an email from my friend Hutch, I get these ads:

This makes me think whatever internal compass these ads use to find their targets might need some recalibration.

Then there’s what I see alongside the email I got from Shannon.

Even worse, the email I sent myself from my work account gets this:

Which could possibly be explained by the fact that the subject of the email was Hans Moleman.

And finally, most strangely, there’s what I see alongside the email I got from my mom on the subject of whether Sarah Palin deserves to hold public office.

Absolutely nothing. Strange, no?

V for Vacation

2008-10-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

I stumbled onto this image and remembered how much I liked this latter-day Simpsons episode. Surprisingly good, and with the added benefit of guest starring Alan Moore himself.

This may be even funnier after the Watchmen movie comes out.

What's Wrong With Swimming?

2008-09-30T23:15:00.000-07:00

The best of September 2008, according to the Back of the Cereal Box:

Okay, so it was a slow month.

Twenty-Two Was Twelve

2008-09-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

More links of interest. Click and enjoy.

The Thsrs, the program that gives you shorter synonyms (Ironic Sans)
Nineteenth-century ghost scrolls. Amazing. (Pink Tentacle, via Bri)
Theory: Ice cream is an igneous rock (Boing Boing)
Why it's remarkable that Maureen McCormick protested Ben Stiller (Culture Kills... Wait, I Mean Cutlery)
Best of grotesques and gargoyles (deputydog)
Lightning in slow motion (Quiddity)
All about ligatures and their role in type (P22)
Captain Rainbow investigates Birdo's gender issues. (Nintendo Wii Fanboy)
Sabrina the Teenage Witch apparently takes a crash diet. (Easy Fiend)
A theory about why HAL sings "Daisy" in 2001. (Fanboy, via Neatorama)

And to finish this one off, here's a video of Morgan Freeman's appearance on The Electric Company as Easy Reader, the man who makes reading cool. (Quiddity)

As always, you can see my Google Shared clips or even subscribe to the feed if you so desire.

Levitate Me

2008-09-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

A note to readers: Yes, the country is in a sad state now. I’m expecting the government to tell me any moment now that money doesn’t exist anymore and there’s a terrifying chance that the logical choice to be the next American president won’t get elected and in his place will be a very old man who doesn’t know how to use the internet and whose his second-in-command would lead the country like a babysitter would a daycare full of five-year-olds. (“Because I said so” as presidential policy. Expect it.) Sometimes, I wonder if people who read this blog note that I don’t really talk about anything of consequence, unless it’s something-of-consequence couched in terms of something-not-of-consequence. (Comparing Sarah Palin to a robot mermaid would be a good example of this, I suppose.) But please understand: My job, generally, forces me to care about serious things. Some of them I’d care about on my own, some of them I only care about after I force myself to learn about them. I read news, frequently and often, and, when I decide to take time to write here, I’m more inclined to unload my mind and enjoy the verbal equivalent of a milkshake instead of a wheatgrass shot. I am worried about the United States and my place in it. But I’ll in general be expressing that emotion elsewhere. I care, but I also intend to keep this the type of sugary and frothy that I need from time to time.

Go Soak Your Head City

2008-09-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

What’s bad: Trader Joe’s makes a moisturizer called A Midsummer Night’s Cream.

excuse the almost illegible cell phone photography,
performed in the dry-handed birthday girl’s dimly lit bathroom

What’s worse: Trying to Google said product will only result on pulling up the porno of the same name. The tagline? “What (horny) fools these mortals be!”

Oxidized or Just Out of Use?

2008-09-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

Another entry in the “Ha Ha — This Person’s Name” series, this one from Co-worker Chris, who tells me that the world of professional sports is an untapped natural resource of the unfortunately named.

Meet Rusty Kuntz, professional baseball player from 1979 to 1985 and member of World Series-winning 1984 Detroit Tigers team.

Rusty’s Wikipedia profile is careful to note that his last name is pronounced with an “oo” sound. I’m sure both Rusty and his fans have to make this correction often. It also notes that he is sometimes known to fans as “Kuntoooo” — just like that, with four O’s at the end. It seems to me that if I had the last name “Kuntz” I’d try for a nickname that didn’t include any form of it.

The Princess Screams

2008-09-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

Below is a reproduction of an actual interaction that occurred on the comment boards of my newspaper’s website. Not only does it epitomize the level of discourse that our paper’s readers engage in, it also occurred beneath an article that Roommate Aly wrote. It was for last week’s issue, which focused on the Santa Barbara music scene. That makes it even better.

Every time I think about this, I start laughing. That’s probably because I read the bottom comment — the “stinky Binky” one — in a quiet, high-pitched simpleton voice.

The weird thing is that I think they both have a point.

Massive Luxury Overdose

2008-09-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

I don’t watch America’s Next Top Model, but I do read the blog fourfour, which recaps episodes of the show in a way that makes me happy. Blogger Rich also makes some kickass animated GIFs from the show. The most recent post had the best of them so far: Tyra Banks, wearing a princess crown and dribbling apple bits out of her little model mouth.

Just keep watching it. Let the dribble bits draw you into Tyra’s world.

Link Submits

2008-09-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

Years of following video game blogs have have taught me that some people perceive Link, the protagonist of the Legend of Zelda series as gay, not so much as a result of his pretty boy elfin appearance as for his apparent disregard of the vast harem of viable female characters who seem to be in love with him. (Foremost among them, Princess Zelda, followed my Midna, Malon, Marin, Saria, Ruto, Medli, and quite a few others lady characters with names that sound like nice cities to live in, not to mention that obvious tranny Impa.) Idly browsing about online and stumbling upon a scan of the instruction manual for the Nintendo Entertainment System title Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, I saw the below piece of official Nintendo concept art, which illustrates Link’s fate after having succumbed to too many attacks by the bad guys.

Not to be crass or anything, but it at least seems that Nintendo is directing the viewer’s attention to a specific area. Good advice, really, in the text above: “We know how you feel. You want to go quickly to your goals, the palaces, and the lands you haven’t been before, but hold back. Take it in stride!” Indeed.

Counterpoint: He does not look all that happy about it.

Legend of Zelda, previously, here:

Marine Video Game Controller

2008-09-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

Pictured below is a combed jellyfish that is among the treasure trove of previously unknown marine species that scientists researching Australian coral reefs reported as having observed last week. I am fascinated.

New York Daily News has a cool, if not wholly comprehensive, photo gallery.

Ruth the Robot (a.k.a. Sexy O'Sullivan)

2008-09-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

Search results that have resulted in disappointment (for them), amusement (for me), and unexpected visitors (for Back of the Cereal Box).

Number one hit!
Number one hit!
I heard it's actually "Melinda."
... and dead.
Two better questions: Why should you not you have a pet anteater? And when am I getting mine?
I no longer know, but I'm certain it's not the same as "Yebo gogo."
Those would be the Yip-Yips.
Were sibling-cousins, tragically.

Fond Aunt

2008-09-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

Included on California School Nutrition Associations list of foods of minimal nutritional value (or “FMNVs,” as they like to call them) is fondant. Not knowing what fondant was, I looked it up. Turns out its sugar cooked into a creamy state. It’s also the filling inside Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. Therefore, its inclusion on the list is a bit of a “duh,” especially alongside marshmallows and spun candies.

So remember, during next Easter or your next trip to England, when you bite into that Creme Egg, you’re not eating amniotic marshmallows. You’re eating fondant.

Eleven Was a Racehorse

2008-09-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

Notables and worth-your-times from my Google Reader shared clips.

The long-lost teaser for Buffy: The Animated Series. (Animation Magazine, via Topless Robot)
Americans people and British people call vegetables different things, and I am fascinated. (Separated by a Common Language)
Irrigation porn (deputydog)
A look at IMDb's two great Dark Knight debates: Is the Joker Sexy? and Is Maggie Gyllenhaal ugly? (The Onion A.V. Club)
Amazing, functional Donkey Kong Lego set. (Infendo)
Where the pinkie finger got its name (The Oxford University Press blog)
How recently were Great Whites near your nearest ocean? Cool tracking site. (Tagging of Pacific Predators)
Japanese beaches invaded by tetrapods (Pink Tentacle)
Complete sets of Clue suspect cards over the years and in different countries (The Art of Murder)
Towson: The Haunted College (Photoshop Disasters)

And, finally, a horrifying clip from The Adventures of Mark Twain, a claymation adaptation of the author's stories. This particular clip is the adaptation of Twain's unfinished work, The Mysterious Stranger. One of the creepier things I've seen in a long time.

As always, you can see my Google Shared clips or even subscribe to the feed if you so desire.

Push Harder, Harry Potter!

2008-09-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

In the last installment of “Ha Ha — This Person’s Name,” I expressed my reservations about mocking the names of people from countries where English may not be the predominant language. After all, it’s not your fault if your name happens to mean something awful in someone else’s language. I’d bet that someone, somewhere thinks my name sounds like something profane or embarrassing.

Something I have fewer reservations about, however, is noting humor in the names of the recently dead. Case in point: Hyman Golden, co-founder of Snapple, who passed away on September 14 and whose name, if read in the manner in which it would appear in a phone book, sounds like part of a title to some porny Harry Potter fanfic.

Religious Wrong

2008-09-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

Sam Harris’s Newsweek essay on Sarah Palin is perhaps the most insightful — and most terrifying — one I’ve read so far.

Fluttering Fleas, But Not Flabby Flannel

2008-09-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve learned something new: There’s a name for something I have wondered about for a long time. Simply put, there’s a tendency for certain letter groups to appear in words that have similar meanings regardless of whether those words have a shared etymology.

The term is phonestheme.

The example first given in the Wikipedia page on the subject is the gl- phonestheme, which occurs in many English words referring to light and vision. (Glitter, glisten, glow, gleam, glare, etc.) An important aspect of these words is that neither the gl nor the letters that follow mean anything on their own. (No such word as itter or isten, for example.) They also don’t necessarily need to appear at the beginning of words. As Wikipedia puts it:

While phonesthemes have mostly been identified in the onsets of words and syllables, they can have other forms. There has been some argument that endings like -ash and -ack in English also serve as phonesthemes, due to their patterning in words that denote forceful, destructive contact (smash, crash, bash, etc.) and abrupt contact (smack, whack, crack, etc.), respectively.

Interesting, no? There’s a few aspects of this I haven’t wrapped my head around yet, so I feel like I should read more on the subject. (If anyone of you can point be toward good resources on the subject, I’d appreciate it.) For example, I don’t understand why this happens. I would also like to know what linguists make of outliers.

For example, I have the letters ack in my last name, but no one would lump that in with the -ack group. Is it because my ack occurs in the middle of the my last name? And what to make of back and rack and Zack? Why wouldn’t they fit the pattern?

As I said before, I had some idea that phonesthemes existed before I learned what to call them. A while back, the very cool and always informative word blog Bradshaw of the Future put up a post on the etymologies of various words that begin with the letters cl and that also refer to noise. Clack, clip, clap, cluck, and several others. I have always wondered about the fl words, which so often refer to various either quick motion or motion in the air, and I said so in a comment on the cl post.

I've always wondered but have never looked into the English words beginning with fl, which often describe some sort of quick movement, often through the air. Flick, float, flutter, flight, flap, fleet, flee, flit, flash, flea, fling, fly, flip, flurry, flag, flail, flare, flake, flay... There are even more than this. Not all share the association, of course. Flan, flabby, flannel, etc. All generally fun words to say, I've found. Have you any idea what the deal with these is?

Goofy, the Bradshaw blogger, responded last week with a post just on fl words, noting their various etymologies. Very helpful, particularly because it provided my first encounter with phonesthemes. Now I’m firing in a hundred different directions.
Some other phonesthemes for your face:

sn-, referring to mouth and nose goings-on: snarl, snout, snicker, snack, etc.
sl-, referring to frictionless movement: slide, sled, slick, etc.
-tter, referring to rapid, uneven motion: mutter, stutter, flutter, patter, titter, glitter, jitter, chatter, twitter
squ-, referring to eruptive sounds: squeal, squeak, squash, squirt, squawk, squabble, squall

As you may have noted, a lot of these words seem like they could be onomatopoetic. The -ack words, for example, could have arisen through imitation of noise created when the actions associated with them happen. This, however, doesn’t work for all phonesthemes, as the gl- words like glisten and glimmer don’t make noise. So where then must this mental association come from?

Are English phonesthemes shared by other languages?

If not, why shouldn’t they, if we’re apparently so hardwired to make these associations?

What is it about English, then, that prompts us to make such connections?

Could it be that people recognize the pattern on a few related words and then subconsciously only accept into their language new words that fit that pattern?

Do people even process language in this manner?

What would the advantage be of doing so?

I’m clearly full of questions, but that’s probably because this is the most interesting thing I’ve learned in a long time. I’m not clear on the linguistic definition of icon, which the Wikipedia page on phonesthemes uses in a section under the subject line “Important considerations.”

If the words aggregated in these groups… were nothing more than arbitrary symbols, rather than being icons, their totally arbitrary nature would preclude any such systematic connections with meaning.
Although groups of phonesthemes can be identified, this type of iconic sign, in any language, is rather rare.
Despite [the above rule], there may well be far many more iconic words in, say, the English language, than we are aware of.
It is also important that not each identified phoneme operates as a phonestheme every time it is used. (e.g., words square and squadron have no connection with discordant eruptive sounds common to the -squ group of squeal, squeak… squall).
Despite [the above rule], it is very clear that, in many cases, some level of iconic communication certainly does take place in a number of words within any language.
Although people do seem to spend inordinate amounts of time creating a new word (such as deciding upon a “good name” for a new business), no one has ever been able to produce any evidence that speakers are consciously aware of such (iconic) signaling processes when they create new words.

Something about that sentence “There may well be far many more iconic words in, say, the English language, than we are aware of” strikes me as vaguely haunting.