Oh, the Horrors of Etymology

In the same way that kicking over a rock allows you to see what squiggly, slimy things may be hiding beneath it, tracking down the etymology of words so often takes you into weird parts of history that you may never see otherwise. For example, today I looked up the etymology of the word barber. It goes back to the Latin barba, “beard,” it turns out, but the entry also offers this grim look into early healthcare: “Originally also regular practitioners of surgery, they were restricted to haircutting and dentistry under Henry VIII.”

isaac koedijck, “barber-surgeon tending a peasant’s foot,” via wikimedia

And I even knew that already, but seeing it laid out like that — plainly, matter-of-factly, as if it were no big deal that the same guy who cuts your hair should also cut your skin and dig teeth out of your gums — gave me a shiver. “Yeah, you’re your problem here is that you have too much blood. Here, sit down. This will take a while, because I will have to cut you open a lot.”

The Yogurt of Last Resort

My friend posted on Facebook a photo of an Activia flavor that I’d wager most people don’t know about: Activia Prune.

via twyla johnson

It’s such a loaded product — no pun intended — and I can’t decide what eating Activia Prune in public says about you as a person. Some options:

• “Why yes, in fact, I am staying in tonight and maybe the whole weekend.”
• “I done ate something bad, and I want it out of my body yesterday.”
• “I have damaged my digestive system irreparably, and I’m eating this in the breakroom where everyone can see me because I really want you to ask what I did. Go on. I dare you.”
• “The guy in the apartment next door knows a lot about my intimate life.”
• “I’m a busy person. I don’t fuck around.”
• “I live on the edge.”
• “I don’t understand how prunes work.”
• “I lack shame.”
• “Essentially I’m donating my body to science.”
• “Can’t talk not, because I need to go catch a cross-state bus, and also I like being the center of attention and also I create stories wherever I go.”
• “You know how some people can only take maximum strength-level painkillers? Well, I’m the that of this.”
• “Goodbye, internal organs!”

And it’s all especially curious when you consider that the colon-exploding ramifications of prune-flavored poop yogurt would be muted if they had just said it was plum-flavored. But perhaps the Activia marketing team just knows their audience.

The Portrait of Lorina Dunlop

(An imagined drama based on a painting found in a thrift shop basement.)

— She hates it.
— But I captured her perfectly.
— That’s the problem. You painted her the way she looks. And she looks like Agnes Moorehead with cramps. Her eyebrows look like a cursive letter “M.”
— Her eyebrows do look like cursive letter “M.”
— Believe me, I know. But she feels the expression you’ve captured makes her look angry and judgmental.
— I think she looks… thoughtful.
— She does look thoughtful, but she’s thinking about how much money we wasted on hiring you to do her portrait.
— Has it occurred to you that your wife simply complains a lot?
— Yes.
— And has it occurred to you that if I painted her with an unfurrowed brow, she wouldn’t look like your wife?
— It has. In fact, unfurrowed, she’d look like her younger sister, Gladys, who is radiant and beatific.
— Well, I’m sorry if you’re not happy.
— No, I said she hates it.
— I… don’t follow.
— Young man, you’re very talented, very perceptive. You spend a days with Lorina, and I do feel that in capturing her likeness in this painting, you captured the essence of who she is as a person. I’ve been married to Lorina Dunlop for thirty-seven years — thirty-seven inconsolable years spent under the scowl you’ve re-created in this painting. That’s thirty-seven years of wine-drunk cackling at my expense, the majority of that time with an increasing brood of children who share their mother’s disposition. So please don’t misunderstand my message when I tell you that my wife hates the painting.
— …
— I’d like your most elaborate frame — gold and shiny, if you can, something showy. I’m hanging in the living room, immediately opposite the front door.

Separated by History, United by Heaven

It’s a love story that America is afraid to tell.

via

And while this is notable in and of itself, it’s a preview of the weirdness I’m posting tomorrow morning. I couldn’t not share. Maybe you could not share, but I lack your willpower.

28 Awesomely Insulting Words for Describing the Body Shapes of People You Don’t Like

Recently, the OED tweeted out a word that may prove helpful in the book you’re writing about that person you hate: napiform, “having the form, shape or appearance of a turnip.” It reminded me of a similarly specific word that you could use to describe someone’s shape in an unflattering manner: fabiform, “bean-shaped.”

Surely, there must be multitudes of words you could use to insult people’s appearance without them realizing, right?

Yes. Oh yes.

• aciform, “needled-shaped” — I stepped back lest my torso suffer another attack by his accusing, aciform fingers.
• campaniform, “bell-shaped” — “Had I only been born in the antebellum South,” Lois cried out, “my campaniform torso could work to my advantage for once!”
• cancriform, “crab-shaped” — The more literate of the yoga instructors would mock her cancriform stance between classes.
• corniform, “horn-shaped” — What the children mocked as being corniform tufts of hair turned out to be actual horns growing from Martin’s skull… but they’d realize this far too late.
• cucumiform, “cucumber-shaped” — But you really had to search if you wanted to find the spot where Abigail was surprisingly, secretly cucumiform.
• cymbiform, “boat-shaped” — Again, she reminded her husband that she’d prefer he not reference her giant boat feet as such but instead to speak of them as being cymbiform, as it sounded more melodious.
• digitiform, “finger-shaped” — “But wait!” he protested, “Not only is it digitiform, but I can also grip a pencil with it, and that’s worth something!”
• doliform, “barrel-shaped” — Ironically, his doliform body proved unable to float.
• ensiform, “sword-shaped” — Plump, candy-stuck fingers but a surprisingly ensiform tongue.
• galliform, “chicken-shaped” — One hoped that her feathered hat marked her decision to embrace her galliform features.
• flabelliform, “fan-shaped” — He had no hands, merely pink flabelliform growths with which he pawed at world as it passed by.
• gelatiniform, “gelatin-shaped” — Not only was she secretly gelatiniform inside her girdle, she was also full of orange slices and marshmallows.
• ginglyform, “hinge-shaped” — Nothing about him could be said to be round or smooth; in fact, his every joint seemed to be as awkwardly ginglyform as his elbows.
• hamiform, “hook-shaped” — One day, Edward was certain he’d meet a woman malformed enough to accept his hamiform gift.
• hippocrepiform, “horseshoe-shaped” — As the salesclerk arrived with yet another set of pumps, he began to wonder if a hippcrepiform pairing might better suit her foot shape.
• juliform, “millipede-shaped” — With hair winding around her neck in shining but sinisterly juliform curls
• lachrymiform, “tear-shaped” — Melinda’s teardrop pendant only underscored her overall lachrymiform body.
• medusiform, “jellyfish-shaped” — Vibrant, flowing fabric stretched over her undeniably wide frame, ultimately giving her a medusaform appearance when a floriform one was intended.
• mummiform, “mummy-shaped” — Yet another pair of TOMS Shoes gave some unwitting do-gooder tragically mummiform feet.
• oviform, “egg-shaped” — As a result of his oviform curse, my younger brother was unable to stop himself from rolling down the hill and into traffic.
• scrotiform, “scrotum-shaped” — As the professor continued his lecture, I was hypnotized by the by the pendulous, scrotiform growth on his chin.
• semipenniform, “halfway feather-shaped” — Despite her best efforts, the would-be Farrah could style her hair to look only semipenniform.
• serpentiform, “snake-shaped” — He was, tragically, serpentiform in all the wrong places but unpleasingly squat in the one area that mattered.
• squamiform, “scale-shaped” — Beneath his collar, we could spy squamiform dry patches that nicely matched his generally iguana-like appearance.
• unguiform, “claw-shaped” — Nadine’s repeated trips to nail salon resulted in increasingly unguiform constructions that she secretly enjoyed.
• ursiform, “bear-shaped” — The ursiform stripper had to work the hardest of all yet had little to show for her efforts.
• vermiform, “worm-shaped” — A hawk-like woman and her conspicuously vermiform husband
• vulviform, “vulva-shaped” — To the delight of all sitting behind her, the result of her painstakingly pinned, tucked and rolled hairdo was an obscenely vulviform structure.

And now that you’ve reached the end of the list, let me just say that I pity your enemies. Good luck on those memoirs!

“Sorry, Sarah — I Can Control Time Now”

That’s an actual line spoken in a movie that I now regret watching.

What’s the movie, you ask? Oh, it’s The Black Cat, also known as De Profundis, also known as Il gatto nero, also known as Demons 6, also known as Dead Eyes, also known as Edgar Allen Poe’s The Black Cat, even though it couldn’t have less to do with the actual Poe short story. If you, upon learning that this film has so many different titles, suspect that it might suck mightily, you’d be right: It’s not a good film. I’ve watched it anyway. And while I have a bit to say about it — among other things, “Holy shit, what the fuck was that?” — I’m going to do a favor for everyone and just show you the best the movie has to offer in stills. Occasionally, this film stumbles into a pleasing composition, and that’s all mostly a result of ripping off Dario Argento, so at the very least you can’t say it’s not colorful to look at.

Trust me, it’s a lot better than actually watching the movie, even passively, and you’ll follow the plot about as closely as I did.

Continued awesomeness after the jump.

Wow, you really scrolled through all of those? You may share my perverse interest in terrible things!

The weird thing is that I can’t now even remember how I heard about this movie now. But somehow, I ended up reading about the actress Caroline Munro, the brunette actress who looks and dresses like Kristen Wiig doing an impression of Lisa Vanderpump and whose every scene in this movie looks not only out of place but actually spliced in from a Skinemax softcore. And I only expressed even a passing interest in this movie because I’d read that it functioned as some kind of unofficial sequel to Dario Argento’s Suspiria, one of my favorite movies. Netflix had it streaming, and I said “What the hell? I don’t feel like hearing myself think tonight.”

It’s not an unofficial sequel to Suspiria. It actually mentions Suspiria by name and features chunks of its soundtrack. Instead, De Profundis or whatever you want to call it centers around the production a film that would theoretically complete the trilogy that Argento began with Suspiria, continued with Inferno and then left idle until 2007. This movie hit theaters back in 1989, believe it or not. Would you have guessed this by the overall look of it? No, of course you wouldn’t have. I guess this proves that Italy didn’t yet have the late ‘80s in 1989 and so it instead rocked that fuzzy, late 70s-early 80s vibe. The especially strange part about De Profundis is that it doesn’t even complete the trilogy. In the source material that inspired Argento to make the trilogy in the first place, Thomas de Quincey wrote about the Three Mothers — Mater Suspiriorum, the “mother of sighs” who serves as the big bad in Suspiria; Mater Tenebrarum, the “mother of darkness” and the big bad in Inferno; and Mater Lachrymarum, the “mother of tears” and the big bad in long-delayed final part, The Third Mother. This movie, however, concerned a different entity that de Quincey mentioned in the same essay. But whatever. That hardly seems like a flaw in a movie that so bravely struggles against coherence.

So what was this movie actually about? I don’t know. A witch or something? Who was Sarah supposed to be, again?

Revenge of the Ass-Licking

Remember when I wrote about that fifteenth-century cyborg, who inspired that Mozart composition that demanded the audience to lick his asshole? (Because that happened.) Well, today a new footnote to that story: Jack White, of all people, has masterminded an Insane Clown Posse riff on that very Mozart composition. Now if anyone asks you if such a thing has ever happened, you'll be lying if you say no.

Also worth noting: A Wikipedia page exists solely on the subject of Mozart and his shit obsession.

Is this how I shall close out August 2011 on Back of the Cereal Box?

Yes.

A Dishes-Based Video Game, for Sad Girls Without Aspirations

Hey there, Susie. Are you tired of feeling left out of big brother’s video games? Well, now there’s a game made especially for you.

You know, in which you get punished for failing basic household chores.

Actually, Dishaster isn’t about washing dishes so much as it is about spinning them on poles. (And sure, that could be a metaphor for the life of a homemaker, but I feel that probably gives the game creators too much credit.) Seeing the actual gameplay in motion makes me wish it was actually about chores, because my god this looks tedious and horrible. Do you suppose the object was to trick girls, to make a life with actual dishes and related drudgery seem less awful by comparison?

As Lame as Tiny Tim

This is the worst pro-literacy service announcement I have ever seen.

A poster, urging people to "Explore New Worlds / Read a book" but featuring the art from the terrible 2009 CGI movie adaptation of A Christmas Carol, witnessed by me in July and almost two years after the film's cinematic release and almost two years and one week after anyone stopped caring about it. I can't decide if the Ad Council simply forgot about this poster (and it somehow evaded graffiti and bum vomit) or if someone actually printed one of these fresh and said, "Yeah, the people of Los Angeles would be motivated to read after they see this."

I'll say this much: This PSA did, in fact, make me walk straight home and pop open my director's cut of A Christmas Carol.

The Slasher Movies of Greek Mythology

Another story from the Getty Villa: A wall dedicated to the labors of Theseus reminded me that this particular Greek hero on two different occasions got a little Jamie Lee Curtis and bumped off twisted serial killers to make safer the highways and back alleys of the ancient world. Both stories match silly and macabre in just the right proportion that either one could have been adapted into a bad ‘80s slasher film and I don’t think anyone would have bat an eye.

The first, Skiron, gets point for combining foot fetishism with murder. Apparently quite the ladies’ man, men’s man and equal-opportunity perv, Skiron would approach people on the path between Attica and Megaris and convince them to wash his feet. While performing this task — and keep in mind that wearing sandals on an ancient Greek highway would not make for pleasant feet — he’d kick them off a cliff, at which point a tortoise would eat them. I think the Getty Villa’s visual aid illustrates this process nicely.

And then, of course, Theseus killed him.

The second, Prokrustes, would trick travelers into staying in his Guest Bed of Body Dysmorphic Horrors. If the guests were too tall, he’d lop off their appendages until their fit snugly in the bed. If they were too short, he’d stretch them. And in case you think that Prokrustes might spare the rare travel who fit the bed perfectly, he wouldn’t. There were two beds.

Again, the Getty Villa supplies a visual aid.

And then, of course, Theseus killed him.

Despite the apparent demise of both killers, fans asked for years that the two should meet in a crossover myth. And then Skiron vs. Prokrustes hit the amphitheaters and everyone was like, “Damn, that sucked.”

Whatever the Opposite of the Luck of the Irish Is

Someone — and trust me when I tell you that the circumstances notwithstanding, he’s a well-wisher — recently sent me the text to a famous Irish curse. And if any nationality has the inherent way with words and the experience with staggering tragedy to hurl a good hex, it’s the Irish. See for your self:

May the grass grow at your door and the fox build his nest on your hearthstone.

May the light fade from your eyes, so you never see what you love.

May your own blood rise against you, and the sweetest drink you take be the bitterest cup of sorrow.

May you die without benefit of clergy.

May there be none to shed a tear at your grave, and may the hearthstone of hell be your best bed forever.

See? Pretty brutal, at least once you get past the quaint, rustic appeal of grass growing at the doorstep and the initial cuteness of a fox living in your fireplace. (You wouldn’t be able to light a fire because it would probably bite at you. You’d be so cold! Your potatoes would be eaten raw!) It seems especially cruel to request the addressee to die without getting the proper send off from the proper holy man, especially considering the presumably Irish target audience for such a curse.

But I’ve since been brainstorming other curses — less altogether damning but nonetheless unpleasant. Please, if you have the time, try on these curses and tell me how they fit:

May your every business email become, between you and the recipient, riddled with inappropriate emoticons.

May your birthmarks begin to form obscene pictures.

May your acid reflux always make you throw up, just a little bit.

May your stupid baby never grow into her nose.

May a clerical error in the doctor’s office result in your family being erroneously told that, in the moments before your death, you were mad with syphilis.

May your children remember you in embellished, unflattering tell-alls published so soon after your death that everyone presumes that they’d begun working on them before your death.

May your dog find a home with a new family, and may it be remarked by your neighbors that the dog looks much happier now. Thinner, too.

May you, while on your deathbed, learn that there’s a certain word that you’ve been pronouncing wrong for most of you life. And it’s a word you used a lot. And you feel really stupid.

May you, in your final moments, have really bad sick people farts.

And, to reiterate, the clergy is not there.

Well, if there is a clergyman there, he’s from a faith that you find pretty offensive. And even the clergyman is like, “Yeah, this is super awkward.”

May your will be confusing and cause much squabbling among your survivors, at least until they realize all your stuff is garbage and they just forget about the whole damn thing.

And, in closing, may your tomb eventually be developed upon, and may the family occupying the house you end up haunting find your presence to be “fun,” despite your best efforts.

Awful things:

• The Brazen Bull — a more awful way to die than of anything you have already thought of
• I refuse to believe that this is chocolate
• Marne
• Naked Broomrape

Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing (Shakespearean Sense)

Let’s suppose this morning's post about the runcible spoon wasn't my first interaction with Edward Lear. And let’s suppose that the spoon dug out a nearly forgotten memory of childhood mortification resulting from a certain owl's whimsical adventure with a certain pussycat in a certain pea-green boat.

Okay, you've got an elementary school. Two things to know about it: First, it holds an annual poetry recitation contest. Second, one class in particular has a scapegoat. If you don’t know what I mean, then you may well have been this kid — the one who took the blame for everything and who was denied any social mercy by his classmates, mostly on grounds that allying themselves with him would put them in the running to become the new scapegoat. For the sake of this story, let’s call this kid Aldo. Now, I’m not condoning how the class in question treated Aldo; being a grown-up, I realize see how pointlessly cruel it seems. On the other hand, I can remember the of-that-age fear of stepping away from the crowd and then having them suddenly see you as the new other. It was a legitimate concern. I mean, look what happened to Aldo.

Excuse the tangent. I meant to be discussing the recitation contest. Students, let’s say, were allotted a certain amount of time during which they could select their poems. If a kid failed to pick something — or if he insisted on “Always Sprinkle Pepper” in a classroom ruled by a woman who had heard too much Shel Silverstein — the poem would be selected for him. And this is what happened to Aldo, who had failed to turn in anything presentable and, likely, truth be known, didn’t turn in anything at all. Perhaps as punishment, the teach assigned him “The Owl and the Pussycat,” forcing him to recite it before the class several times a week leading up to the day on which he and everyone else would be graded on their projection, poise, memorization and overall grasp of the text.

If you’ve never read the poem, you won’t understand how awful it would be to recite anywhere, anytime, much less to a group of peers who already decided that they had it out for you.

The first verse:

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!”

Yep. Aldo wasn’t catching any breaks on this one. In the case of classmates who didn’t already know what pussy can mean, the ones who had learned early explained, with as much depth as kids this age are capable of, why it was funny that Aldo had to stand at the front of the room and announce his love for a beautiful pussy. When Aldo stumbled, he had to start over, thus necessitating the pussy pledge again, Aldo’s classmates laughed more. Outside of class, the kids recited it to Aldo. (It was, for everyone else, a fairly easy poem to learn.) It never stopped being funny because the class decided it shouldn’t stop being funny. God, fourth-graders can be cruel, but Edward Lear certainly didn’t help.

And this is the terrible little story I have about “The Owl and the Pussycat.”

Well, I guess there’s an epilogue. Let’s say these kids continued growing up, and let’s say that Aldo left the school a year or two after the teacher made him repeatedly tell everyone how much he loved beautiful pussy. Much later, at a bar, at a time when he could legally be at a bar, Aldo walked up to place an order and realized that he was standing exactly beside one of his former classmates. They clearly recognized each other. And while the classmate, more than a little drunk, struggled to think of something to say and the words of the Edward Lear poem prepared to spring out of his mouth like some party favor that had been kept under a lid, under pressure for, oh, let’s say fourteen years, Aldo rolled his eyes and walked back into the crowd — over it, annoyed, better than all of that.

Considering the circumstances, I like this ending better than an interspecies couple-that-should-not-be dancing by the light of the moon.

What Now Remains for the Unhappy Signora Psyche Zenobia?

“A Predicament” is the only Edgar Allen Poe story to feature a female narrator. Keeping that in mind, please enjoy this Wikipedia summary of it and draw your own conclusions.

The bizarre story follows Signora Psyche Zenobia. While walking through the city with her five-inch-tall poodle Diana and three-foot-tall servant Pompey, she is drawn to a large Gothic cathedral. As she makes her way into the steeple, she ponders life and the metaphor of surmounting stairs: “One step remained. One step! One little, little step! Upon one such little step in the great staircase of human life how vast a sum of human happiness or misery depends! I thought of myself, then of Pompey, and then of the mysterious and inexplicable destiny which surrounded us... I thought of my many false steps which have been taken and may be taken again.”

At the steeple, Zenobia sees a small opening that she wishes to look through. Standing on Pompey's shoulders, she pushes her head through the opening and realizes she is in the face of a giant clock. As she gazes out at the city beyond, she soon finds that the sharp minute hand has begun to dig into her neck. Slowly, the minute hand decapitates her, which it will do for the remainder of the story. At one point, pressure against her neck causes her eye to fall and roll down into the gutter and then into the streets below. She is annoyed not so much that she has lost her eye but at “the insolent air of independence and contempt” it had while looking back at her. Her other eye follows soon thereafter.

“At twenty-five minutes past five in the afternoon, precisely,” the clock has fully severed her head from her body. She does not express despair and is, in fact, glad to be rid of the “head which had occasioned... so much embarrassment.” For a moment, Zenobia wonders which is the real Zenobia: her headless body or her severed head. Comically, the head then gives a heroic speech (unwritten in the story), which Zenobia’s body cannot hear because it has no ears. Her narration continues, however, without her head, as she is now able to step down from her predicament.

Pompey, in fear, runs off, and Zenobia sees that her poodle has been eaten by a rat. “What now remains for the unhappy Signora Psyche Zenobia?” she asks in the last lines. “Alas — nothing! I have done.”

They Care a Lot

Justin Bieber has his Beliebers. Lady Gaga has her Monsters. But what can your lesser popsters hope for in the way of fanatical followers? The answer lies in the word of the week.

stan (STAN) — noun: an overzealous fan of a celebrity.

A week ago, the only word I would have used to describe the people who obsessively follow shallow, seemingly unworthy celebrities would have been losers. However, as a result of an error that ran on the website that I work for, I learned the term stan can refer to people who psychotically root for pop culture’s dullest. You see, an article erroneously mentioned Christina Aguilera as having picked up a Razzie nomination for Burlesque. As it turns out, only Cher was publicly censured for her role in Burlesque, like some kind of sacrificial mutton — stringy, tough, aged mutton. Almost immediately, the website’s Twitter feed was flooded with messages from rabid Aguilera fans who pointed out the error, assumed it resulted from a deliberate effort to bring Aguilera down and, most notably, referred to the website’s staffers as bobbleheads. (Weird, right? Since when did crazy people use polite insults?) Attempting to sort through the barrage of retweets to locate the original call to arms, I eventually stumbled onto a message board that made repeated references to stans and even featured this graphic:

Confused, I did some Googling and ended up at Urban Dictionary — you know, Wikipedia for fourteen-year-old racists — and found the definition I posted above. And while the site conjectures that the term comes from a combination of stalker and fan, it looks like the term comes from a suitably pop-cultural source:

Yup, the 2000 hit “Stan.” (Hey, remember Dido?) It’s that Stan that the stans emulate when they use the term — the fictional character from the Eminem song who writes the rapper obsessive letters and, when he doesn’t get a response, murder-suicides his pregnant girlfriend and himself by driving off a bridge. Isn’t that awesome? I mean, talk about finding the rainbow at the end of the storm! These balls-out fans so love their popbots that they’ve modeled themselves after a mentally ill man who imagines a personal relationship with a celebrity with whom none exists! And that’s to say nothing of how the have overlooked the point of the song, which is Eminem’s surprisingly levelheaded warning against that sort of behavior.

Please note: It’s not just Christina Aguilera for whom one can be a stan. If your life is that lacking in meaning, you could be a Beyonce stan, a Katy Perry stan or (I suppose) a Tracy Chapman stan. Each defends their chosen idol without fail, without logic and without any consideration of whether the star’s merit support. Must be nice to care that much and yet care so little.

Previous strange and wonderful words:

• acné excoriée des jeunes filles, adulterine, ageusia, ambeer, anosmia
• barrack, bissextile, bloofer, breastsummer
• catholicon, cecaelia, cherpumple, couvade, cranberry morpheme, crwth, culaccino, cummingtonite
• deasil, decussate, deuteragonist, dingbat, dingle
• eidolon, epeolatry, epopt, espalier, etui, exoterica
• fabiform, Feghoot, fissilingual, Föhnkrankheit, folderol, froward
• gallinipper, grandgore, grue, guilloche, gyaru
• hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, hogo, honorificabilitudinitatibus
• ignivomous, iracund, isabelline, itaiitai
• jabroni, jamais vu, jehu, jumentous
• kaffir, kakopygian, kayfabe, knipperdollin
• leman, lemniscate, limnovore, linsey-woolsey, longicorn
• malacia, malison, milt, mongo, morepork
• narrenfreiheit, nef, nihilartikel, nobiliary particle, nosism
• ochanee, ogonek, ombré, ooglification, orchidectomy, ordured, orf
• pace, pareidolia, pavonated, perendiate, petrichor, pismire, pogonip, pong, pruniferous, puggle, pulveratricious, purse
• quacksalver, quagga, qualtagh, quidnunc
• ronion, roynish, rubirosa, rumpsprung
• salmagundi, scrutator, seneschal, shebang, sinople, stevedore, suovetaurilia
• tappen, teratogenesis, tergiversate, tetromino, thagomizer, thon, tiffin, tittery-whoppet, tmesis, toby, tutoyer, tyro
• ucalegon, ultramontane, umquhile
• veneficial, verdigris, vespertilionine, vinegeroon
• weeaboo, williwaw, witzelsucht, wooper looper
• xenodocheionology, xyster
• yazoo, ypsiliform, yoink
• zanjero, zenzizenzizenzic, zinnober, zugzwang

Word nerd? Subscribe to Back of the Cereal Box’s word-related posts by clicking here.

It’s Breaking Up a Happy Home

Yesterday, I posted on this blog Nancy Nova’s “Made in Japan” as an example of a bad pop song that more than borders on offensive but in fact dances over that line with costume bucked teeth in place, exclaiming “So solly! So solly!” I’m still not sure what that video was, exactly, but it happened, and we can’t go back in time and prevent it from happening, unfortunately.

Now, however, I’m wondering whether it is actually worse — in terms of quality, in terms of political correctness — than my old standby for fascinatingly bad, offensive 80s pop songs: Aneka’s “Japanese Boy.” The song, which many people seem to recognize today from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, strikes the ears like a flurry of shurikens. But it is also incredibly catchy in a way that often leaves its victims humming it days afterwards, even when they have acknowledged how bad the song is. Even worse: It, like “Made in Japan” is sung by a Caucasian woman — in this case, Scottish mezzo soprano Mary Sandeman. It represents a strange trend in 80s pop music that had singers donning Asian clothes and acting in a manner that Westerners might consider traditionally Asian. Totally offensive, right? Like, on the same level as blackface, and I’d call this trend yellowface if that too didn’t sound totally racist to me. (Geishaface? Does that work?)

Anyway, I’m curious to know if people find “Made in Japan” or “Japanese Boy” more offensive, by whatever standard you chose to gauge offensiveness. Here is the video for “Japanese Boy,” featuring backup dancers that lord almighty I hope are actually Japanese and Sandeman herself, looking sort of like a hard luck Jane Leeves forced on stage because she lost a bet.

So? Which makes you feel worse about things white people have done? Which one makes you most regret having ears? Which one seems catchier, despite everything bad about it?

Mr. Brain

The original posting of this simply read “There’s a whole lot of wrong going on here.” I can add nothing more.

Via Meiko.

Well, Doctor, It Kind of Looked Like Chocolate

I have no control what kind of food comes into my office. That much must be said. Also, I don’t eat most of it, because any relief from hunger would be offset by the sensation of garbage food liquefying in my stomach, then solidifying, then causing digestive distress for days.

Ahem.

However, I have to admit that I have a sick fascination with these horrible food things that I haven’t been around since my freshman year. Some are even new to me. And they regularly fascinate me in their awfulness. Here’s the current champion:

Yes, Special K’s Chocolatey Drizzle. Chocolatey Drizzle. Not Chocolate Drizzle, which would make sense, but instead a spattering of chocolate-like or perhaps chocolate-looking goo. Personally, I don’t think a food-like product should share a name with a polite descriptor for a symptom of food poisoning. But even more than that, I’m bothered by the use of chocolatey over chocolate because I wonder if it’s not chocolate at all. Instead, it’s a chocolate-like substance that Kellog’s can’t legally market as chocolate but can as being chocolatey. You know, in the way that a purple SweeTart is grapey or a Slim Jim is meaty. Finally, I want to express concern that people should not be eating anything that they could conceivably expel from their body in more or less the same form. (Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and chocolatey drizzle to chocolatey drizzle.)

Look for it on the shitty food aisle!

Each Shirt Comes With Unique Pattern of Stripper Blood!

I don’t know what I did to make this Google ad show up, but I’m honestly sorry.

It’s even more distressing imagining what kind of people would want to be more Charlie Sheen-like.

Peter Brady on the Go

First, we were in too much of a hurry for yogurt. Now it has come to this:

Not going to knock the packaging: It made the product as appealing as anyone could have hoped for. However, even mod-retro graphics won’t stop me from running out the door, frantic for a quick energy boos and oh-so-thankful for my GoGo Squeez AppleApple, and then consequently, accidentally splurging a load of applesauce into my eye because I was in that much of a hurry.