Three Assumptions I’m Making About the Ancient World

One: Greco-Persian peoples had an unusual sense of jewelry aesthetics.

Two: In a similar way, Minoans had an odd sense of humor.

And three: The Etruscans didn’t really understand the animal kingdom.

The Surprising Sex Explosion That Killed Some Famous People

Last month was a big one for me. Not only did I turn twenty-nine and creep ever closer to wrinkly decrepitude, but I also passed my driver’s test. This may not sound like an accomplishment, seeing as how I’ve been driving legally for thirteen years and only rarely use the “pinballing from one parked car to another” strategy to travel, but for reasons I don’t understand I was required to re-take the written DMV test in order to renew my license. This caused a burst of stress second only is severity to going through puberty again, not because I feel I don’t know the laws of the road but instead because the prospect of taking the test — and being allowed to miss even fewer questions this time — dredged up a potent mix of adolescent anxieties I had repressed long ago.

Though I probably didn’t need to, I crammed, college-style, and read the entire California DMV handbook the night before. I got a perfect score, and my driver’s test is currently on display on my refrigerator. (Seriously.) But in reading the handbook, I came across a word I’d never heard before. It’s my word of the week.

sharrow (SHAIR-oh) — noun: the markings painted on road surfaces to indicating that both motor vehicles and bicycles use the indicated lane.

Observe:

But is it weird to anyone else that I’d never heard this term before? I don’t recall it appearing in the DMV handbook when I first took the test back in 1998 — you know, back in the age when some drivers actually resented the presence of cyclists on city streets, if you can imagine that — but I’m totally familiar with the concept. I just had no idea that this portmanteau of share and arrow was used to refer to them. I don’t know why we need a specific term for them, but I guess sharrow is handier than “bike symbol thing,” which is what I would have called them had I ever felt the need to refer to them before, which I didn’t.

But if I can quibble for a second, is it not strange to create a symbol for a shared road that only represents one of the two entities that it's encouraging to be all buddy-buddy? Maybe? A little bit? I can think of several designs that might be more all-encompassing, and those are these:

• some sort of half-car, half-bike contraption not unlike the centaurs of Greek mythology
• a car and a bike kissing
• a car and a bike getting married
• a car and a bike cradling a baby that's a half-car, half-bike contraption not unlike the centaurs of Greek mythology
• a photorealistic lobster (to get people's attention!)

So remember, the next time your piloting your motor carriage down the street, it’s a sharrow that you’re ignorantly driving over as you cut off an irate cyclist.

In closing, I should tell you that the “pinballing from one parked car to another” travel strategy is not an efficient one, but it is one that can get you noticed by other motorists. Also sharing arrows is also the polite thing to do if you ever travel back in time to Robin Hood days, so keep that in mind. Finally, I titled this post as I did because sharrows are one of the most boring topics ever and I wanted to trick you into reading it. I'm really sorry and yet am also not.

(The previous word of the week? Quiff. That and all the rest after the jump.)

• acné excoriée des jeunes filles, adulterine, ageusia, ambeer, anosmia
• barrack, bissextile, bloofer, breastsummer
• catholicon, cecaelia, cherpumple, chilver, cockernonnie, coprolalia, 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, mooncalf, morepork, muzjiks
• narrenfreiheit, nef, nihilartikel, nobiliary particle, nosism
• ochanee, ogonek, ombré, ooglification, orchidectomy, ordured, orf
• pace, pareidolia, pavonated, perendiate, perigee, petrichor, pettifogger, pettitoes, phlegmagogue, pismire, pogonip, pong, pruniferous, puggle, pulveratricious, purse
• quacksalver, quagga, qualtagh, quidnunc, quiff
• ronion, roynish, rubirosa, rumpsprung, runcible
• salmagundi, scrutator, seneschal, shebang, sinople, stan, stevedore, suovetaurilia
• tappen, teratogenesis, tergiversate, tetromino, thagomizer, thon, tiffin, tittery-whoppet, tmesis, toby, tutoyer, tyro
• ucalegon, ultramontane, umiaq, umquhile
• veneficial, verdigris, vespertilionine, vinegeroon
• weeaboo, widdiful, williwaw, witzelsucht, wooper looper
• xenodocheionology, xyster
• yazoo, ypsiliform, yoink
• zanjero, zenzizenzizenzic, zinnober, zugzwang

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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 Return of Mrs. Applewhite

I can think of at least two things wrong with the below image-and-caption, which I screengrabbed from one of the photo services I use for work.

I should also probably mention that I stumbled onto it while searching for pictures of Misty Mae Treanor, so seeing this was even more confusing.

His Derivative Way

Since learning that Sintra’s standard “My Way” shares its melody with the earlier Claude Francois song “Comme d’habitude,” I’ve bouncing between two conclusion. The first is that it’s ironic a song about living your life the way you chose would be derivative of someone else’s song. The second, on the other hand, is that it’s actually fitting that Sinatra’s song took someone else’s musical blueprints and built it up into someone else that became more famous than the original and ultimately more closely identified with him than it was with Francois.

Either way, it sounds wrong to hear someone else singing the song in the “wrong” language and with the “wrong” lyrics.

Also, Paul Anka wrote the English lyrics, so if anything it’s Paul’s way. I’d like to believe that Frank Sinatra was never told that his song wasn’t the original — and if he found out today, he’d be punching dames in heaven.

That New Street Drug, Antioxidants

So this is the scene: me, walking through an upper-class neighborhood with a Venti Starbucks iced green tea in hand. If the L.A.-ishness of the preceding sentence seems a bit much, don’t worry. It’s not that kind of story.

So I’m moseying along the sidewalk, exuding good citizenship in my every action, when I notice I cop walking cresting the hill and walking toward me. I get anxious. Even though there’s literally no way I’ve broken any law today, cops make me nervous in the same way I get when I notice a bee in the car. Eventually, we’re within reaching distance of each other. “Excuse me, sir,” says the cop on the easiest beat in the world. “What’s in the cup?”

I stop, and for a second I’m sure the cop cannot be speaking to me. I even point at myself, although no one else is using the sidewalk and he literally couldn’t be speaking to anyone but me. “This is… green tea?” I answer. It is green tea. I know this. But I respond in with an interrogative because I’m utterly baffled by why a police officer would care. His reply: “Excuse me?” I replay the exchange so far in my head. Could I have possibly answered “meth juice” and forgotten? Wait — am I too methed out to know? “It’s green tea. From Starbucks,” I answer. I can see myself in his sunglasses in a very film school sort of shot. He’s not particularly expressive.

“What’s in it?” he asks. Again, I’m at a loss. I mean, it’s green fucking tea — tea that is green. What the hell else is in it? And then I give what most cops would probably consider a smart-mouthed punk response: “Antioxidants.” I don’t know why I say this, but it’s true — aside from the ice cubes, I do know this Venti green tea has antioxidants in it. His reply, again: “Excuse me?” I’m not sure if he actually wants me to answer this, but I can’t because I don’t have a layman-friendly synonym for antioxidants. In fact, I don’t know what antioxidants are, aside from allegedly health-promoting, cancer-attacking particles. I wish now that I had looked into this before now — and, you know, before I began consuming them like crazy in a possibly misguided attempt to evade death. What if we find out in a year that antioxidants are actually poison?

It’s at this point — my antioxidant identity crisis — that I look down at my beverage. See, when you order iced green tea at Starbucks, the barista pours the already-brewed mix over ice and then shakes it. This action has given the tea a foamy head not unlike a beer that some crazy person might pour into a Starbucks cup and tote along on his walk. And the purportedly green tea, as viewed through my see-through plastic cup, actually looks yellow — light beer yellow, in fact. I get it now. “It’s just tea. Iced. And shaken. So the foam. Because it’s shaken. It’s not beer. You can have a look.” I offer it, and he regards it like it’s a urine sample, which foamy green tea also kind of looks like, I realize.

Did I mention he’s not especially expressive? After an inspection of my beverage — or, for all I know, a power nap, since I can’t see his eyes — he begins walking again. “You recycle that when you’re done,” he tell me. And then he walked past me, got into his parked car and drove away.

And you know what? I did recycle it.

But not because he told me to.

Preserve Your Loved Ones in Marble!

Quickly now, two people I met at the Getty Villa:

First, Dick Casablancas from Veronica Mars was there. I can only assume it’s a testament to the greatness of this show that even the Greeks were going on about it back in the day. (Carving busts out of marble is the ancient Greek equivalent of blogging, don’t you know.)

And yes, if Dick himself had been there, he would have made a “bust of a youth” joke.

And then this little bitch. It may sound harsh for me to call the child being represented here a bitch, but that’s actually how the Getty Villa labeled it in the brochure: “Little Bitch, Rome, A.D. 180-200 / The Early Bitchface Age.”

I can only guess that artisans of the day chose to re-create this awful little girl’s likeness in marble simply so their descendants could know what a little bitch she was.