Back of the Cereal Box

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Wet Leaves and the Dirty Ground

Given that my weekend in the desert caused my word of the week to go up on a Tuesday, this word seemed especially appropriate, even if the Coachella Valley shouldn’t expect to use it anytime soon.

petrichor (PET-rih-kor) — noun: 1. the smell of rain on dry earth. 2. The pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.

A word whose beautiful sound nicely matches its meaning. (Take that, green cellar door.) I first found this one as a word-of-the-week on Fritinancy back in October and became instantly enchanted with the notion of anyone coining a term for such an ephemeral thing. It first appearing in a 1964 article in Nature by Australian geologists I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas, though it hasn’t become popular enough to merit inclusion in most dictionaries. (Both the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster omit it, the elitists.) And, like may previous Back of the Cereal Box words-of-the-week, it occurs most often in articles noting how rare it is. Petrichor apparently succeeded the less mellifluous previous name for this particular thing, argillaceous odor — a misnomer in that argillaceous comes from the Latin argilla, “clay,” even though this scent isn’t associated specifically with clay materials.

Escaping the strictly verbal realm for a moment, I’ll note that the science behind petrichor is more complex than just wet dust. In fact, it results from a blend of fifty different compouds, “rather like a perfume,” as World Wide Words’s Michael Quinion puts it. On a simple level, however the mechanics seem to be this: Rocks and soil absorb plant oils during dry periods and then release it during rain.

Fritinancy and World Wide Words explain that the term was consciously created through the combination of two Greek words: petros, “stone,” and ichor, a word for the fluid that flowed through the veins of the gods. (Though it has an antiquated use as a word for watery, bad-smelling discharge from wounds and ulcers, the word ichor apparently survives in English in fantasy literature. Wikipedia cites its modern uses as being a word for vampire’s blood for example. Also: “The term ichor is often misused in fantasy contexts by authors trying to find a different word for blood or ooze, to the point that it has become cliché. Author Ursula LeGuin, in From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, calls the term “the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate.”) Reading petros and ichor together, according to World Wide Words’s Michael Quinion, suggests the literal meaning “essence of rock,” which itself is pretty poetic — and also prettily poetic.

In conclusion, I’ll note a certain wistfulness sensation I felt as I posted this entry less than twenty-four hours after the hottest day Santa Barbara has seen so far in 2009. Late October, I have my eye on you.

And by eye, I mean nose.

But not literally.

Previous words of the week:

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

I Really Want to Know

Though I doubt it will pick up the steam that the Twenty-Five Things craze did, the latest Facebook trend seems to be those “What X Are You?” quizzes, with “X” being a city, article of clothing, cocktail, breed of cat, sandwich spread, 80s-era X-Man, or brand of toothpaste that someone, somewhere has deemed to be representative of basic personality types. I want to program these quizzes. And I want them to punish, specifically through assigning every quiz-taker the worst possible evaluation, regardless of their answers.

Example: The “What State Would You Be?” would assign out Delaware with the only explanation being simply “Bland. Forgettable.”

Others:

Q: What Sea Animal Are You?
A: Longshoreman.

Q: What Color Are You?
A: Clear.

Q: What Body Part Are You?
A: Nail polish painted on nail-less pinky toe to make it look like it has a nail.

Q: What Language Are You?
A: Midwestern-accented English, slurred loudly.

Q: What Vegetable Are You?
A: An ornamental gourd — pimply, lacquered, inedible.

Q: What Kind of Lunchmeat Are You?
A: Lunchables slice. Discarded.

Q: What Beverage Are You?
A: Brackish water in a Dixie cup.

Q: What Famous Cartoon Character Are You?
A: You would be an unfamous cartoon character.

Q: What 70s Movie Are You?
A: Series of educational films. Released December 1979.

Q: What New York Restaurant Are You?
A: A soup kitchen in New York.

Q: What Book Are You?
A: Title unimportant. Is dropped in a puddle. No one cares.

Q: Which Ninja Turtles character Are You?
A: Irma Langinstein, homely co-worker to April O’Neil.

Q: What Spice Are You?
A: You are not a spice. You are flour.

Q: What Accessory Are You?
A: Polio brace.

Q: What TV Network Are You?
A: The DuMont Network.

Q: What Renaissance Painting Are You?
A: You are a postcard of the Louvre, purchased at Charles de Gaulle.

Q: What Musical Instrument Are You?
A: A garbage can, which technically was used as an instrument in Stomp.

Q: What SNL Cast Member Are You?
A: Laurie Metcalf.

Q: What Kind of Tree Are You?
A: Model tree on train set in sex offender’s basement.

Q: What Kind of House Are You?
A: Whore shanty.

Q: What Looney Tunes Character Are You?
A: You are the human who couldn’t get the frog to sing and dance when he wanted to.

Q: What Mode of Transportation Are You?
A: A two-by-four with rollerskates taped to the bottom by children who lack adult supervision and sufficient funds to purchase an actual skateboard.

Also, all the better if I can design the quiz to interrupt the taker halfway through with the message that it does not matter what he or she picks for the remaining questions because it’s already tabulated the answer.

I will not take on your Top Fives tonight.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Boogie Woogie Feng Shui

Two more curiosities for my own online wunderkammer, the first coming via Spencer from the Wikipedia page on hermits.

Obviously, it depicts the Russian mystic St. Seraphim of Sarov, sharing his meal with a bear. (Bonus hermit info: Under the subsection “In philosophy and fiction,” the same Wikipedia page notes that “Herman’s Hermits were not hermits at all, but instead a creatively named popular music band.”)

The second comes via Sanam from the blog Shorpy. Sanam sent it over in response to my “dogz ‘n’ ladeez” post.

Obviously, it’s Miss Nancy Weeks with Mr. Rowe. It may initially seem obvious who is who, but think about it for a moment and you too will wonder if your first guess was correct.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Speaking of the Unspeakable

As a follow-up to my ball-chopper of a word-of-the-week, I can offer this: Wikipedia’s list of proper terminology for neutered animals, which, of course, is more extensive than I would have guessed.

wether — a castrated sheep or goat. (Not from the phrase “I don’t know whether it’s a ram or a ewe now,” fun though that would be, but instead from a similar old English word for “ram” that also gives us the term bellwether.)
ox, steer and bullock — all terms for castrated bulls. (With ox being a barely changed evolution of the Proto Indo-European root uks-en-, which itself translates to “bull” but which literally translates as “besprinkler,” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, anyway. Steer goes back to the Old English steor, which may descend from the same Proto Indo-European root as the word taurus. And bullock comes from the Old English bulluc, “a young bull.” Didn’t know about this last one until today. Makes me think of the impotent, sputtering Batman character differently. Weirdly, there doesn’t seem to be a direct relationship between bullock and bollocks, as in “Never Mind the Bollocks.” This British word for those special types of Easter eggs seems to be associated more with the verb bollix, “to botch” or “to bungle,” than with the actual bull himself. It’s worth noting, I guess, that both bull and ball supposedly come from the same Proto Indo-European root bhel-, meaning “to inflate” or “to swell.”)
capon — a castrated cock, though in the larger sense. (From a similar Old English word referring to a castrated clucker, just as its contemporary counterpart does. Makes me think of the string-clamping guitar tool, the capo. Apologies for that, Mr. Guitar, though I loved how it made you sing in a higher pitch.)
gelding — a castrated horse. (From the verb to geld, “to castrate,” though why we call these poor creatures geldings and not geldeds is beyond me.)
gib — a castrated cat or ferret. (Another new one. American Heritage Dictionary and Merrian-Webster both claim it comes from a nickname for Gilbert without offering any reason why such a nickname would become associated with nicked cats and ferrets. Poor Gilbert, I guess.)
havier — a castrated deer. (Although I should note that none of the dictionaries I use offer this word. Perhaps Wikipedia is wrong. Or perhaps someone named Javier does, in fact, shares a certain shame with Gilbert.)
barrow — a castrated boar. (I would assume that this one would be connected to the other barrow — something that carries a load, in the sense of a wheelbarrow — since castrated male animals tend to grow large, strong and steady. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. AHD is unusually quite on this word’s origins, citing only the Old English bearg as an ancestor. The more common barrow goes back differently, though I suppose they could converge at some point.)
lapin — a castrated rabbit. (Without giving any clue as to where this word might come from, Merriam-Webster claims it can refer to either what Wikipedia posits or a certain kind of processed rabbit fur. AHD offers only the second definition.)
stag — a castrated bull or sheep. (Probably the strangest of the lot, given the proliferation of the term stag party and the fact that stag parties would be best enjoyed by non-castrated males. With deer, it refers to non-castrated males, but the stags of other species are not so lucky. The Online Etymology Dictionary places its origins likely with the Old English stagga, meaning the same. It also notes, amazingly, that the Old Norse equivalent “was used for male foxes, tomcats and dragons.” I’m sure the need to differentiate between male and female dragons was important at some point, to someone.)

Not that the majority of my readership has much reason to use these in the near future, but good to know they exist. Also awful to know they exist, but whatever.

The lesson:

Don’t ask “Why is that cat sad?” Instead say “I know exactly why that gib is sad. Leave him alone.”

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Tony Has to Hide His Love Away

I had a thought that virtually no one who reads this blog will understand or care about one way or the other. The thought involves Earthbound. Bored yet? Confused? Yes, well, I encourage you to ignore this one, regular readers; this post, I am certain, is for the Googlers — the people who don’t know me but are somehow fascinated with the same pop culture minutiae that I am.

I’ve mentioned it several times previously on this blog: Earthbound is one of my favorite video games ever, not only because it’s fun to play but because it layers the allusions and references on thick in a way that keeps my English major brain happy. One of the major themes is the music of The Beatles. Most appear through subtle musical cues — songs that sound somewhat like Beatles songs and others that appear to take actual samples form them. (There’s a fairly extensive list of these here.) Other references are more obvious. For example, at one point, the heroes stumble upon an actual yellow submarine.

image source: flyingomelette.com

There’s another big one that was deleted from the American version, possibly in an effort to make the Beatles references less obvious, possibly for legal reasons. In either version, when starting a new game, the player has the option to rename the four heroes, the main character’s dog, a favorite food and a favorite “thing.” The player can enter whatever he or she wants but can also cycle through several sets of predetermined options. In the Japanese version, one is distinctly Beatles-themed. Protagonist Ness can be “John,” love interested Paula can be “Yoko,” sidekick Jeff can be “Paul,” too-cool karate kid Poo can be “George,” the dog can be “Ringo,” the food can be “honey pie,” and the thing can be “Love” — as in “All You Need Is Love.” Clearly, it’s not reaching to assume that the Beatles were on the minds of Earthbound‘s creators.

I suspect that another Beatles reference may lie in an extremely minor character, Tony. He’s a strange one in a cast of oddballs. (Really, it’s too bad that the boring silent protagonist Ness is the character most people are familiar with, as a result of his appearances in the Smash Bros. games.) Tony appears briefly in the story as the unusually affectionate schoolmate and roommate of Jeff Andonuts, the science whiz kid who eventually joins the main characters in their quest to save the world. Tony’s devotion to Jeff is such that he helps Jeff break out of Snow Wood Boarding House, even crawling onto all fours to allow Jeff to use him as a stepping stool to scale the school’s main gate.

After this point, the two separate, and Tony isn’t seen again until the game’s ending sequence. He’s heard at one point, so to speak. In one of the game’s many breaking-the-fourth-wall moments, Tony calls the heroes later in the game and asks for the player’s name. I mean, the person holding the controller can enter Gaylord Q. Tinkledink, for what it’s worth, but Tony specifically states that he’d like to get the player’s real name. The reason this happens is to allow the game’s final credits to thank the player by name, but Tony offers the reason that he needs it for a school project.

As I said earlier, Tony doesn’t behave like most video game characters do. Despite that Tony is young, his attachment to Jeff is portrayed in a way that very much so seems to suggest his feelings are more than platonic. For example, the pair are first introduced when Jeff wakes up Tony one night in their dorm room. Tony’s response is this: “Ah, Jeff, I just dreamt that you and I were taking a walk. ...What’s wrong?” Not typical schoolmate small talk.

And in the game’s ending, Jeff receives a letter from Tony that reads as follows:

Dear Jeff,

Everything’s really going great here. I wish I could have gone with you on your adventure, even just part of the way, but instead I’m sitting here, waiting for you in Winters. I want to see you again as soon as possible. I can’t wait to see your cheerful face. I bet your glasses are dirty... If you come back, I’ll clean them for you! Like I said, I’m waiting for you.

Yours truly,
Tony

P.S. Don’t show this letter to anyone!

As if to beat legions of slash fiction-writing Earthbound devotees to the punch, the game’s creator and writer, Shigesato Itoi, has stated that such a reading of Tony’s character is correct: He intended Tony to be gay.

In a strange way, Tony stood out even before I learned that he was supposed to be gay. (Though, in being so, he’s even more remarkable, as video games feature very few explicitly gay characters, much less any video games that came out in the U.S. back in 1994.) First, it always seemed glaringly normal that his name was Tony. The rest of the game’s characters sport far stranger names, such as Mister Carpainter, No Name Mouse, Gerardo Montague, Brick Road, The Apple Kid, and Lardna Minch. By contrast, Tony’s name seems very un-Earthbound-like. In light of all the Beatles references — and the game’s alternate name set, which transposes the identities of The Beatles and Yoko Ono onto the main characters — I wonder if Tony might take his name from one of the two Tonys known for their work with the Fab Four. There’s Tony Sheridan — an early collaborator of The Beatles who dropped out when the band went onto bigger and better things, much in the way Earthbound‘s Tony technically joins the party briefly but then lets the main foursome pass on without him. And then there’s Tony Barrow — a press officer who also worked with The Beatles early in their career, though later than Tony Sheridan did. Barrow seems like a less likely candidate, even if Earthbound Tony’s call to get information about the heroes’ progress has the vaguest of similarities to what a press agent would do.

Real-life Tonys aside, I feel like Earthbound’s Tony also merits a comparison to Brian Epstein — the Beatles’ manager and the best possible candidate for the position of “fifth Beatle,” according Paul McCartney. Though not publicly, Epstein was gay, and the stress of leading separate public and private lives inspired the band to write the song “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” or so said John Lennon. And Earthbound Tony’s letter to Jeff certainly seems to be doing just that, especially with that postscript line “Don’t show this letter to anyone!”

Of course, I’m overthinking all this. Still, Earthbound is a game that seems to invite analysis, as a lot of what went into it doesn’t seem to be arbitrarily thrown in. I guess posts like this are the most I could ever hope to do in tribute to Itoi’s work: offering even his most minor creations a chance at being placed in popular culture at large.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Never Kick a Man in His Orchid

I’m posting this from the land of slow internet and clogged-up computers, so I’ll cut to the chase: the word of the week.

orchidectomy (OR-kid-EK-te-mee) — noun: removal of the testicles.

Yes, as if this horrific procedure needed another euphemistic name beyond gelding, neutering or fixing, we have orchidectomy, as in, “My name is Donald and I was the victim of an orchidectomy.” Even knowing what the word means, I’d hope against hope that Donald’s worst draw of luck would be the theft of his flowers and not his “man flower.”

keep your eyes on your own orchids, wild thing

The word seems to be a less common and less fun variant of orchiectomy, which also names the unkindest cut of all. Don’t know if the “D” dropped in order to facilitate pronunciation or to make the term more similar to orchid, which also has its roots in all things testicular. If it happens to be the former, then I’m miffed in the same way I get when people say cremains. This word refers to an awful enough thing that we shouldn’t make it easier to say, if we must say it at all.

Regardless of what I think, Toothpaste for Dinner’s take on term uses the more popular spelling:

As I said, both orchid and orchidectomy both descend, so to speak, from the testicles — specifically the Greek orkhis, which means “testicle.” In case your wondering what the connection between orchids and male sex organs is, the American Heritage Dictionary states that the orchid got its name from the fact that its tubers resemble testicles. Strange, isn’t it, that the sex-organ looking things that grow on the roots would get to name the plant when the colorful, sex organ-looking flowers that grow on the visible part of the plant would get skipped over. I’ll refer back to my post on the obscene sexiness of orchids and how my orchid snapshot ended up as the lead image on an column about vaginoplasty.

All this makes me even more suspicious of the old ladies who fanatically collect and grow orchids. Apologies to your grandmother.

Previous words of the week:

Friday, April 10, 2009

Girls Bury Diana Friday Afternoon

Back in my piano lesson days, I was told to remember the order of notes on the treble staff with the mnemonic device “Every Good Boy Does Fine.”The sentence’s initial letters correspond to the notes that appear on the lines: E-G-B-D-F. Clearly, this device worked. It’s been a good twelve years since I studied piano and I can still bat it off as if it were my name and birthday.

While I’m pretty sure everyone learned this, the devices used to remember the bass clef notes — that is, the bottom staff, beginning below Middle C and moving down — seem to be less famous. In spite of the fact that it’s a sucky derivative of “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” the most widespread appears to be “Good Boys Do Fine Always.” I can’t imagine why both would be taught side-by-side, since a kid learning something as abstract as written music could easily confuse these two sound-alikes. Granted, you’re working with a limited range of options in that the scale has only seven notes named for seven letters, but “Good Boys Do Fine Always” nonetheless smacks of a lack of creativity.

Not that the one taught to me was much better. Mine, “Girls Buy Dolls From America,” might even out the gender ratio by giving boys and girls each a mnemonic device, but it’s also pretty sexist: Boys get the implication of being and doing good, while girls get stuck buying dolls. In any case, it doesn’t seem to be one with which too many people are familiar, at least according to Google.

Lame mnemonic devices seem to abound in music however. In Googling all this, I came across another one for remembering the order of sharps: “Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle.” (If a key only has one sharp, then that will be F-sharp. If it has two, it will be F- and C-sharp, etc.) The one offered for flats? “Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles’s Father.” Boo.

Music previously pondered:

Pages