When the Party tells you to dress like Elvis…
I’m working on a Saturday, and still behind in life and work. However, this is continuing to bring a smile to my face.
And to everyone who is going to ask (as I’ve already had a few ask me): No, these aren’t the real lyrics. They’re bs lyrics added to the actual official song of the games for lulz and social commentariez.
Hipster government
Probably not the most fiscally conservative government ever.
My favorite detail? Watch what he’s sworn in on.
Security Concerns
Quickly, because I’m at work (where I’ll soon be working on securing the application I am currently working on), but Wired has an interesting op-ed piece on what the next president should do to help security. I’m interested to hear what a certain someone has to say on it.
Post-weekend linkfest
Noah and the Whale
Nathaniel has a great post up detailing the work of this fine band. Make sure to grab their single “5 Years Time” from him, which is a perfect twee pop song for the morning. Even I feel chipper after listening. And, if you liked that, check out their myspace page this Thursday at 9 am EST to hear them play a streaming show (which is one of those little tidbits you get to learn when you speak another language).
Wood punk?
From Wired comes a neat photo gallery of wooden sculptures, many of which have a sci-fi bent to them.
Conspiracy theories are my guilty pleasure
Which is why reading Glen Greenwald’s Slate column is so fun. Over the weekend he’s posted three long articles regarding the ongoing anthrax investigation. He’s right about one thing: whatever the role of the government in the scare (and I still have a hard time believing any stories about the US attacking its own; yes, I’ll probably be one of the first to drink the Kool-aid), the media played a pretty despicable one.
Fin
And finally, I had a good weekend with this guy et al., discussing all sorts of politics and culture. So now I must get to my real job, but I’m looking forward to this week, where I plan to post a bit more on music and have a longer article in the works. Also, in the distant future will be coming a bigger project with a better-known blogger, so I’m really excited about that. I’ll let y’all know as it happens.
Cool, baby.
Via Kottke.
“Fist Jab”
When the word “jab” first came into politics, it was used so innocently. The second syllable of a two-syllable nonsense phrase, naming the website where funny videos were (and are) shown. Now, though, our language is being corrupted by these whipper-snappers who would have you think that “jab”‘s only place in political discourse is at the end of a very nocent phrase:
(the video’s worthless after about 10 seconds)
More seriously, Arnold Zwicky has a post up at Language Log in which he decries the usage of the term “Terrorist Fist Jab“, regardless of context. The post is uncharacteristic of Zwicky and Language Log in general in that it comes off as a politically-correct piece of prescriptivism. The article is a history of recent usage, both in language and in visual media, of the fist jab since the Obamas’ infamous incident. Zwicky ends with an ominous warning against using the term “terrorist fist jab”, even in jest, lest “such uses of the expression [...] reproduce nasty (and false) claims about African-Americans.” Apparently, the linguist has never heard of irony.
When I first saw the Obama fist bump, I didn’t even realize what I was seeing. Not because I didn’t recognize the gesture, but because it was one that even my white ass uses so often myself that I didn’t realize it was out of the ordinary. The next day, a friend mentioned it to me, and when I expressed ignorance to what he was talking about, he sent me a link to a Baltimore Sun article about the gesture. The article was, as I put it to him, “one of the most naive, stupid, and uninformative articles ever.” It was so bad I almost don’t want to link to it, but here it is.
Little did I know that, at nearly the same time, a commentator on Fox News was describing the gesture as a “terrorist fist jab.” Now, no one has ever accused Fox News of being fair and balanced, but such obvious (to me) slander was a bit surprising even from that news outlet. Other outlets continued to make a big deal of the simple gesture, culminating in the New Yorker’s making fun of the whole fiasco in their satirical cover, posing the terrorist Obamas in mid-bump, which all the news outlets decided to make a big deal out of again. Le sigh.
So, this is where Zwicky comes into it. When I realized how big of a deal was being made about the simple and common gesture, I began using the phrase “terrorist fist jab” instead of “bump” when extending my fist towards someone in valediction, in irony. Why? Because it’s a tell. It’s a comment on the ridiculousness of the media, who show themselves to be so out of touch when they write exposés on the “primarily black” phenomenon and can’t make up their mind whether it’s unamerican or “racially hip” to fist bump. The whole thing is just so damn stupid, and those of us who use the phrase ironically (I don’t pretend to have pioneered that usage: it was pretty obvious) are showing that we’re in the know, that we’re hip, that we’ve been using the gesture for years, and that everyone else just doesn’t get it because they’re trying to read too much into something that really isn’t that interesting. In condemning the use of the term, even in irony, Zwicky is showing that he isn’t hip, either.
The Language Log linguist is correct to point out that in the interwebs no one can hear you be sarcastic, and one should thus be careful whilst typing rather than speaking, but he is overly worried that the usage will promote “nasty (and false) claims about African-Americans”. When 14-year-olds in 98% white towns in rural Alaska (that would be me, 8 years ago) learn the fist-bump as an alternative to a high-five, the fist bump is no longer an African-American thing. If it ever was, it hasn’t been for a long time, so anyone worried that the ironic usage obviously doesn’t get it. And really, when someone uses the term ironically, that’s the whole point.
