A Picture of Me Imitating a Walrus

I could have gotten lip splinters.

The Punctuation Round-Up, Part Three

In retrospect, this little series should probably be called “The Punctuation Etymology Round-Up,” but there’s something to be said for tradition.

[ Ask a Simple Question ]

I’m completely boggled by the idea of writing in English without the punctuation marks that we’re accustomed to using. The question mark, for example, is one of those squiggles that makes written language understandable. It’s funny how we don’t think twice how a little loopy fragment has come to be so widely understood as the written form of a raise in intonation at the end of a sentence, but the question mark is one of the few bits of punctuation that can convey meaning independently of words. Think about it: A cartoon character who has a question mark suddenly appear over his head is immediately understood to be confused, or at least inquisitive.

A little research shows that it’s not such a foreign concept. By far, the most commonly believed origin for the question mark is the Latin word quaesto, meaning “question.” Various sources cite that the word — sometimes abbreviated “Qo,” sometimes with the “Q” being placed above the “o” — was used as a suffix after interrogative questions. The Q-o stack was eventually stylized — or slurred, if you will — into what we call the question mark.

If you compare the two images, you can kind of see it, especially if you picture the tail of the “Q” being bent down into the bottom leg of the question mark’s top half. Well, that plus the bottom-left quarter of the “Q” vanishing. I like this theory of the question mark simply meaning “question,” since it would seem to make sense, providing the assertion is true. But thought most people think this is probably how this particular punctuation came about, a lot of people also say that no one knows for sure. This is especially odd, since the question mark is fairly new, as far as punctuation marks go.

Various other theories include that the question mark arose from a tilted, tilde-like squiggle coming out from a dot that Eats, Shoots & Leaves author Lynne Truss credits to Alcuin of York. Another recent book, Why Cats Paint, alleges that the mark was originated by Egyptians, who modeled it after a sitting cat, viewed from the back. In this theory, the dot is the cat’s anus. I have to assume that this theory is bunkum since Why Cats Paint is essentially a humor book, but the Wikipedia article on the question marks notes it nonetheless. (I’d guess that this inclusion speaks less to the cat’s anus theory and more to the fact that the Wikipedia is often written by idiots.)

[ An Excited, Erect Point ]

The theories about where the question mark came from may abound, but people seem far more certain about the exclamation point. The only theory I could find online about where we got the stick-with-the-ball-underneath or “yelling mark” posits that it came from the Latin io, meaning “joy.” I’m not sure if it was tacked onto the end of sentences the same way quaesto was, though frankly the idea of people shouting “joy” for no reason after sentences is pretty funny. (“Marcus, there’s an angry gladiator behind you. Joy.”) A slightly different explanation for the symbol has it coming from the “I” in io being placed above a full stop, though I’m not sure the Romans even used full stops.

All I really found of interest about the exclamation mark aside from its origin is the sheer number of alternate names for the symbol, depending on whether it’s being used grammatically, mathematically, in typesetting jargon or in some form of computer science. Wikipedia lists “screamer,” “bang,” “gasper,” “startler” and “dog’s cock,” the last being a fitting, if improbable, complement to the “cat’s anus” explanation for the question mark.

[ The Chandler Mark ]

The exclamation mark has a slight edge over the question mark in terms of versatility. The Wikipedia article notes that British writing sometimes employs an exclamation point inside parentheses to imply sarcasm. I’d represent this with an example enclosed in parentheses here, but it’s next to impossible to properly do that, since it would make it look like I was showing an exclamation point inside two pair of parentheses. I suppose I could set it off by itself, though.

Like that. There, I think that worked.

During a previous Etymology Round-Up, Bri pointed out that the French sometimes use the similar irony mark, or point d’ironie.

It’s just what it sounds like, and as a result I can see why it’s never caught on. Irony, when written well, doesn’t need to be specified as irony. The example the Wikipedia gives is “If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?” (Just mentally flip the end punctuation in that quote around for the full effect.)

While this punctuation bit has never been formally adopted by typesetters, it looks exactly like a backwards question mark used in Arabic. The blog Ultrasparky notes that it might be really bad form, however, to employ Arabic punctuation to signify the occasion in which someone is expressing the opposite of what they mean, though he admits that such a punctuation could help those on message boards and chat rooms understand when people are speaking facetiously.

[ Short and Simple ]

The proper name for the paragraph mark — that backwards "P" or weird-shaped pi sign, depending on how you look at it — is the pilcrow.

That's all I can give on the subject today. For those that made it this far, feel free to look at the original Etymology Round-Up — in which I talk about the long-lost letter thorn, the ampersand and the interrobang — or the second one — in which I talk at great length about the weird history of the dollar sign.

What’s Wrong With Muriel Puce?

Good friend and sometime Cereal Box reader Lauren did me a total solid last week and asked for use of two of my photos in Get:Art, a fundraiser for Project Angel Food, a Los Angeles nonprofit that delivers meals to people with terminal illnesses. I like Lauren and am all for helping those with horrible diseases, so I was happy to donate the follow images for her to frame, place on a wall and sell as a means of raising money.

They’re apparently priced at $100 or so each, which I’m kind of astounded by. It’s the highest monetary value anybody’s ever put on my artistic efforts. It’s also the first time anything I’ve ever done has been exhibited in any kind of art-ish forum, so hurray for that. I might just have to head down south — if not just for this, then for Hilly’s submission, which I’m told implements some image of me into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Do the Whirlwind

Fucking amazing.

[ source: Paul Robertson's Journal, via Kotaku ]

Here's to You, Helen Lovejoy

A nice touch in “Little Big Girl,” tonight’s otherwise so-so episode of The Simpsons: Helen Lovejoy’s old hair. In the episode, Bart gets a driver’s license and, shortly thereafter, stars in a partial reenactment of the show’s opening credits. Instead of following the chalkboard gag with his escape from Springfield Elementary on a skateboard, he does so in a car. This little meta-parody also includes the scene form the beginning in which Bart normally zips up the street, past such Springfield personalities as Moe, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Helen Lovejoy. For the recreation in this episode, the animators gave Helen Lovejoy the red hair that she sported early in the series but now no longer does — except of course in this one part of the opening sequence. I wonder if Helen’s hair eventually became darker in an effort to make her more easily distinguishable from Maude Flanders, whom she was often paired with before Maude’s untimely demise.

Who's Laughing Now, Alex Kidd?

I recently stumbled upon a note that early versions of the Sega Master System title Alex Kidd in Shinobi World featured a first-level boss named Mari-Oh. Intended to be a parody of Nintendo's Mario, much as Shinobi World is a parody of the popular Sega series Shinoboi, this boss was renamed "Kabuto" for the final release. However, the character retained some of Mario's qualities, namely fighting with fireballs and shrinking after taking damage.

Here are the only images of Mari-Oh I could find.





More than a passing resemblance, I think — especially to Mario's sprite in Super Mario Bros. 3.

La Terza Madre

During idle internet time I’ve been following the production of an Italian film called “The Third Mother.” It’s a horror movie that rounds out a trilogy begun in 1977 with “Suspiria” and continued in 1980 with “Inferno,” only to remain incomplete until later this year. Aside from the fact that I enjoyed the previous two films, however, I’m not sure why I’ve been so fixed on this third movie.

In “Suspiria,” an American ballerina attends a dance school in Germany that turns out to be a front for witches. We watched it in my Italian film class during my last few months in college, and I liked it for being both a gorgeously gory, color-bleeding slasher film but also a kind of modern fairy tale, what with the maiden running from the evil old women and all.

The movie is probably the most famous film by giallo king Dario Argento. Its biggest pop culture impact — for the audience reading this blog, at least — would probably be its opening murder sequence, in which one coed can't decide whether or not there's a man hiding outside her bedroom window. (Spoiler: There is.) The scene is profoundly violent and includes such directorial flourishes as close-ups of a knife entering a beating heart. Still, for the ballsy, it's worth a look, as the end of the opening murder is the primary visual influence on the Drew Barrymore jiffy pop scene at the beginning of "Scream." Thus, I'm being sensible and including a link to the YouTube video if not the clip itself.

The sequel, "Inferno," contains none of the characters from the first and instead details a man search for his sister, who vanished while living in a New York apartment building that, of course, is inhabited by a witch. Whereas “Suspiria” featured a lot of psychedelic imagery, the plot in “Inferno” is downright surreal to the point that if you asked me to explain the ending, I doubt I could.

While reading about “The Third Mother,” I found that the trilogy has a basis in Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater, which I had to read for an English class the same quarter I took the Italian film class. In the text, de Quincey — clearly not letting his profound intoxication deter him from writing — conjectures that in the manner the three Graces governed the different facets of human loveliness, the three Sorrows are feminine representations of the worst of what people must endure. He names the Sorrows Mater Suspiriorum (Mother of Sighs), Mater Tenebrarum (Mother of Darkness) and Mater Lachrymarum (Mother of Tears).

Correspondingly, Argento designed the “Three Mothers” trilogy to confront these evil women, one-by-one. In the final scenes of “Suspiria,” the heroine kills the heretofore unseen headmistress of the dance school, a wizened corpse of a woman named Helena Markos. She, Argento posits, represents Mater Suspiriorum. And in the end of “Inferno,” an otherwise unsuspected character reveals herself to be Mater Tenebrarum. (Confusingly, a different Argento horror film — one of many — is titled “Tenebrae,” which concerns an axe murderer and no witches whatsoever.) Wikipedia states that “Inferno” also features an appearance by the third Sorrow, in a strange scene in which the main character makes eye contact with another student during a lecture in a crowded auditorium. That scene — which I didn’t understand until now — was to be Mater Lachrymarum’s only appearance until Argento finally got around to making “The Third Mother,” which will bring the story back to his native Italy.

I’m not sure what about this I find quite so interesting. The notion that a work could exist in an incomplete state for so long, I suppose, is worth noting, especially since Argento wasn’t in a coma at any point since 1980 and has found time to make dozens of other horror films. Still, the fact that I learned about these films and the literature that inspired them during the same period of study — and in such disparate classes, no less — makes me think this fascination is more about me than the director.

Hmm.

This is one of those exercises in which I aim to figure out how I feel about something by writing the situation out, yet now I haven’t got anything else to say on the matter and don’t feel I’ve reached a point.

This usually works.

Damn.