"Buy your V.I.P. pass" - an obvious misnomer

If you have to buy it, you're probably not 'I.' , and almost certainly not 'V.I.'.

Phrases that should be expunged from the English language

Like parasites on the healthy discourse of the Queen's English, these awful expressions seem to be spreading amongst unoriginal office types eager to find the latest management-speak meme. Do you find yourself using either of these horrible expressions? You should consider stopping immediately.

"I'm just touching base with you to..."  

This probably was at least novel the first time it was used, but as a metaphor it's just a glib and clunky way of saying 'I wanted to talk to you'. Just drop it! If you called, it's obvious that you wanted to talk to the person, unless you're a creeper who was planning on just breathing down the phone line. Just say what you want, or if you need to amble why not 'I just wanted to say hi, and')

"I wanted to reach out to you, and..." 

We're so close! Touch my hand, it's some kind of magic!

No, it's a phone call. You probably don't even know the person. Adding a false, force intimacy doesn't endear me to you. I once had a cold call from some corporate person that used this about 6 times in a minute - it was clearly the crutch she kept clinging to as why she was calling.

Not Really Trying

If you call your store 'Forever 21', it's a fair bet that your men's section is likely to be mainly a joke, an also-ran remainder bin for bored boyfriends to browse through while their girlfriends buy stuff.

This is in fact true, but you probably didn't need to go in the store to figure that out - being 'forever 21' is an idea that mainly appeals to women. I imagine there's a lot of guys out there (myself included) who were cooler and had more game at 26 than they did at 21. You don't sell clothes to men by selling them the idea of being forever 21.

The "not really trying" could refer to either Forever 21, or this blog post.

In unrelated news, I liked this picture a lot.

Sting - Unoriginal Talentless Lyrics Thief (a.ka. Questions Google doesn't know the answer to)

Let's face it, there aren't many of these questions. But this is one.

Sting has a hit song, 'Englishman in New York'.

Wikipedia notes that the song was apparently written about Quentin Crisp. The song itself is okay, but it's the lyrics that are interesting. You can find a copy of them here.

So what's the problem?

The problem is that I'm quite certain that most of the lines (and in fact all the interesting lines) are taken from a poem of the same name, "An Englishman in New York". It's not credited anywhere, and I can't find it anywhere online. I can't even find any acknowledgement that it exists online. I don't remember who wrote it.

I remember seeing a poster of the original poem in the library in high school and thinking it was great. The poster was on a black background, and had a big green apple with a bite out of it behind the text, and a white silhouette of a man. I found the Sting song afterwards, recognised it as a blatant rip-off, and went searching for the original poem.

Except that now I can't find it. Most of the lyrics overlap, so the phrases tend to have a lot in common. The only phrase I know that's not directly in the song is

"If manners maketh man then I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien, an Englishman in New York".

Sting broke this up into two parts, thereby ruining the flow of the line. The best bit, and he couldn't get it right.

Seach ' "Englishman in New York" poem ' and you get the Sting stuff.

Search ' "Englishman in New York" poem -Sting ' and you get a bunch of stuff about Quentin Crisp instead. 

Search ' "Englishman in New York" poem -Sting -Crisp' and you get random peoples thoughts on stuff (lots of posts from people who like the idea of themselves being an Englishman in New York) with much higher pageranks than this poem, which apparently doesn't exist.

Search the precise phrase ' "If manners maketh man then I'm an alien" ' and you get nothing.

Search '"englishman in new york" sting lyrics rip-off stolen poem ' and you get stuff about lines he's ripped from William Blake, but nothing on this one.

So how do you know I'm not crazy, or making this up? How do you know the poster I remember wasn't just a transcription of the song?

I can offer only two bits of evidence. One, the aforementioned phrase that's not actually in the song, and I'm certain I didn't imagine - I would be very unusual to just put together two random lines in the song in my memory, given they're not even near each other in the song (and make much more sense together than apart).

Secondly, Sting himself offers a very sly allusion. The line in his song is:

"If manners maketh man as someone said"

He's acknowledging that at least part of this song isn't his own. Which isn't surprising. Do you think the guy who penned such inspiring lyrics as 'Every step you take, I'll be watching you'. 'Oh can't you see, you belong to me, how my poor heart aches, with every breath you take'? Puke. He wouldn't even know what a legal alien is if he hadn't ripped off the lyrics from someone else. He has to admit that 'maketh' isn't his own, because NOBODY would believe he came up with that.

Yes "someone said" it, you asshole! Someone you stole the lyrics from and who's now getting no credit!! Someone who doesn't exist even on the internet! How low do you have to get to not exist on the internet? I'm nobody, and I've got my own blog that's read by at least my Dad! This guy wrote an ass-kicking poem that got turned into a famous song, and he's a non-person, while that no-talent loser claims credit as a poetic genius.

You may have got away with this fraud so far Sting, but the internet never forgets.

I've never bothered editing Wikipedia yet, but if I find out what the original poem is, I'm going to make an account to call you a thief and a fraud.

Phrases that crack me up

"Bachelorette Party".

The phrase 'bachelorette' is, as far as I can tell, the penis envy of the linguistic world. Bachelor parties reflect a truth that feminists find uncomfortable, namely that an unmarried man is just as likely viewed as a someone with options rather than someone that's been passed over by the dating market. That's why bachelor parties exist - men are spontaneously mourning the loss of a certain freedom of action.

Moreover, the world was not lacking in a term to describe unmarried women. The term is 'spinster', and unlike 'bachelorette', it doesn't come up as a spelling error when I type it in blogger.

So why don't we have 'spinster parties'? Simple. The connotations of the phrase 'spinster' reflect another truth that feminists find uncomfortable, namely that unmarried women past a certain age are generally not viewed as having lots of options, but as people that have been passed over. Don't shoot the messenger, but that's just how it is.

Bachelor parties are usually quixotic, last-hurrah type affairs, where the groom-to-be is sadly bidding farewell to certain things he enjoyed, while his bachelor friends revel in the fact that they still get to do them. "Bachelorette" parties (or 'spinster parties', as I like to call them), on the other hand, have the opposite dynamic - the bride is triumphal, having finally gotten him to 'put a ring on it', while the other spinsters are trying to be happy for the bride's success. Whether this latter part always happens or not I do not know (having never been), but I would be surprised if there weren't a reasonable number of attendees who were merely putting on a brave face.

And that's where "bachelorette parties" come in. It's not only a linguistic sleight-of-hand, but a serious attempt to ape the demeanour of the bachelor party - friends celebrating their freedom to drink and flirt and sleep with random guys, a precious freedom that the bride is about to lose. Nobody is fooled by this charade of course. And in the scheme of life, the bride is least fooled of all. She's got the man she wanted.

Fact is, no guests want to turn up to a 'spinster party' - who wants to be reminded that they're on the path to living alone, while their friends experience relationship success? Bachelorette parties are an attempt to paper over the truth of the dating market. And while I can support that, the phrase is so comically ridiculous I can't help but laugh. It's a dark kind of comedy though, with the tragedy side barely concealed.


Bachelor Party

Guests --><--Host

"Bachelorette" Party

Host --><--Guests

"Black People = Slaves"

An excellent and very even-handed discussion by Orin Hargraves of the censorship of the word 'nigger' in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. 

The bit I find so funny about this is that for some reason, it's always the books that are the most sympathetic to the plight of minorities and the underprivileged that attract this kind of censorship. Write 'Heart of Darkness' and scores of post-colonial pinheads line up to call you a racist for describing the hair of Africans as 'woolly' and not giving them enough dialogue. But nobody bothers to censor Mein Kampf, for instance - what would be the point? If however you tell a story that is an immensely powerful critique of the institutions and attitudes towards slavery, people can't wait to bring out the big red pen. There's little sense that these kind of actions make it less likely that people will actually read the book (and thereby receive its anti-slavery message), but when was that important compared with posturing and feeling self-righteous?

Orin also quotes this hilarious justification by the censor-in-chief:

In this edition I have translated each usage of the n-word to read "slave" instead, since the term "slave" is closest in meaning and implication. Although the text loses some of the caustic sting that the n-word carries, that price seems small compared to the revolting effect that the more offensive word has on contemporary readers.

I thought the best response to this was from D.L Hughley:

"They took 'nigger' out of Mark Twain and replaced it with slave. ... that's not an upgrade. ... I'd rather be a nigger than a slave. If you call me 'nigger' I can go home; if you call me 'slave' I've got to go with you."

Just so. Slavery is deeply, enduringly offensive at the core of its very idea. 'Nigger' is just a word. Moreover, in this case it's a word being employed by Twain in the assault on the far more serious evil.

On the other hand, I'm deeply excited by the prospect of the Alan Gribben revised version of many other popular works of contemporary scholarship. Take, for instance, "Shoot 'Em Up" by Nas, as interpreted by Alan Gribben:

"One 44, Two 45s
Three loaded clips
Four free slaves roll
One free slave drives"

Or the Alan Gribben version of Chris Rock's comedy sketch 'Black People vs. Niggers'

"There's some shit going on with black people right now
It's like a civil war going on with black people
There's two sides, there's black people and there's slaves
and slaves have got to go."

Some people may describe Alan Gribben as a humourless, pompous, preening buffoon. I would not be inclined to disagree with those people.

The best name for an alcohol brand

I submit the following:

'Barty'.
'Zarty'
'Zub'
'Trub'.

What am I getting at?

Musicians are lazy. They don't tend to come up with many original rhyming words. And there's certain themes that they want to sing about a lot, namely being out at nightclubs and parties.

Currently, the Bacardi Rum company has a monopoly on being the only alcohol company whose name rhymes with the word 'party'. As a result, they get millions of dollars of free advertising from lazy musicians who write down something about a party, can't figure out what comes next, and think of Bacardi. For example, here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or... well, you get the idea.

There's no good reason for this. For example, 50 Cent's "In Da Club':

Go, go, go shawty
It's your birthday
We gon' party like it's yo birthday
We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday

There's plenty of other good substitute lines you could put in there:

We gon' party like it's yo birthday

Some guy was farty, ruining your birthday
Lots of castrati here for your birthday
Magna Carti gives rights on your birthday

Okay, so maybe we're seeing why most of the other words that rhyme with 'party' don't work (the second best is 'hardy', which sounds kind of weak and awkward).

Bottom line? It makes total sense for some other alcohol company to start competing on the 'alcohols rhyming with party' line.

50 cent also illustrates why 'Trub' and 'Zub' might be good names - there aren't many alcohols that rhyme with 'club'. Look at the lame extent he's forced to go to in the song:

You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub

'Bub'? Really? That's lame as hell. It's bad enough that it's short for bubbly, which is a chick name for a chick drink, or something that happens at classy celebrations. You really think 50 cent would be drinking champagne if the conventions of song-writing didn't apply? I think not.

But he would gladly be drinking Shylock Holmes excellent new mix drink 'Zub'.

When someone makes millions of dollars this way, I will of course file suit.

The worst metaphor in the history of song-writing

From the otherwise enjoyable Van Halen's song "Why can't this be love":

"Only time can tell if we'll stand the test of time."

Awful, awful stuff. Honestly, how can you write that and not cringe? How can you sing it year after year and not be embarrassed that you didn't spend an extra 5 minutes and come up with something less laughable?

Still, they made a lot of money off that song. I'm sure there's a lesson in that, and while I'm not sure exactly what it is, I'm sure it's depressing.

Great Website Titles

Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, two esteemed MIT economists, have a new website examining their work on poverty. The website is called 'Poor Economics':

http://pooreconomics.com/

I think this is a wonderful title. Many people would say that MIT has been doing poor economics for quite some time now.

Oh, burn!!!

Actually, that's not true, but I couldn't resist the gag.

Metaphor of the Day

From the excellent new song 'Bloodbuzz Ohio', by The National.

To describe the process of compounding interest leading to a spiraling debt:

'I still owe money, to the money, to the money I owe.'

I imagine that very few finance types would think to characterise it in this way, but it's far more evocative than, say, 'my interest expense keeps compounding higher and higher'. It often takes someone from outside the field to express an idea in language that resonates with the common man.

As I said a while back now, I think that the best description of opportunity cost is by Bob Dylan.

Child Abductions vs. "Child Abductions"

When I drive on the freeway, there are electronic signs up that give information, usually about traffic times. But every now and again, you get something like the following:

"Child Abduction Alert!
1999 Grey Chevy Tahoe
Lic ABC-1234"

Now, the natural response of most people is 'Child Abduction? How terrifying! Imagine if my kid got abducted by some stranger when we were at the park'.

Perhaps I'm a cynic, but my natural response is a little different. The first question that springs to my mind is this - if your kid were at the park and got abducted by some stranger pedophile, what are the chances that you'd actually know the number plate of the car that took them?

The answer, at least in my mind, is 'the chances are vanishingly small'. I'd expect abductions to happen precisely when the parents weren't around to see the number plate of the car. And if that's the case, wouldn't the immediate report be 'missing child', not 'child abduction'? How do you know they were actually abducted?

Given all this, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the parents in question must have known who it was that abducted their child. That's how they can give a name to the cops, and look up the person's car details with the DMV.

So who are the parents whose kids are being abducted by people they know? To ask this question is to know the answer. Dollars to donuts, the kids were abducted from their mother's custody by their father, who's now refusing to give them back, and whose whereabouts are now unknown.

Now for sure, this is something the law should get involved in. There's a chance that the dad has gone troppo, and the kids are at risk of some kind of murder suicide. But it's also possible (and to my uneducated guess, much more likely) that the dad is not planning to harm the kids, but is just not planning on giving them back to the mum. And give the way that divorce courts tend to screw over fathers, it is perhaps not surprising that some desperate fathers resort to these kinds of measures. That doesn't make it right, but it does make their motivations here a little more understandable.

Now think back to the red alert sign on the freeway. If it read 'Mother's sole custody of children violated! Family court decision over allocation of visitation rights under threat!' you might feel a little differently.

More infrequently, you get child abduction alerts that don't feature a number plate, just a vague description of the car. That's when I cross my fingers and hope for the safety of the child, because they really have been abducted.

Adieu, or The Difficulty of Final Farewells

One of the things I've noticed when watching people say goodbyes is that they become very awkward when it's likely they will never see the person again. Often they're incredibly reluctant to acknowledge that this will probably be the last time they will talk to the person.

Instead, it's common to cling to the feeblest pretenses that this won't in fact be the last meeting. The modern age has made this easier, particularly things like email and facebook. We'll stay in touch! I'll come and visit you when I'm passing through Japan. Never mind that you don't have any plans to visit Japan, and that once you do, it will probably be in 8 years time. At which point, of course, it would probably feel awkward and forced to call up that person and stay at their house. What would you even say to each other?

The reality is, the world is a huge place, and this is almost certainly the last time you will actually see each other. But nobody wants to admit that.

Part of the problem, I think, is that in English we don't have common expressions for this situation, so people don't know what to say. In their mind they're thinking 'Well, I hope your travels go well, and...'. But how do you finish that sentence? 'Have a nice life' sounds far too flippant. 'Goodbye' and 'It was nice to meet you' aren't definite enough, and lack the gravitas. 'It was nice to have known you' is better, but still not great. So they fill in the gap with 'what's your email address?', even though that's not really what they want to say.

I always liked the French 'adieu'. The literal translation of it is 'Until God' - meaning, I shall see you again in heaven. This is perhaps the nicest spin you can put on a final meeting. It offers the right measure of serious contemplation of the inevitableness of sad departures, but with the bittersweet possibility of that glorious day in the afterlife when we will all be together once more.

The problem with 'adieu', however, is that precisely because of its gravitas, it gets used very sparingly. Part of this is also that it would be awkward and anticlimactic to say goodbye forever and then see the person again. Interestingly enough, the Spanish 'adios' (which has the same meaning) is used much more liberally, which makes it accessible, but undermines the seriousness.

When I spent some time travelling on my own and meeting people, I decided that I didn't want to run with the 'let's chat on facebook!' goodbye, and tried to come up with a more satisfactory farewell.The formulation I settled on is the following:

"Well, I don't know when or if I shall see you again, but it was a true pleasure nonetheless."

which is the best I've been able to come up with.

In Imperial China, it was much harder to pretend that you actually were going to bump into each other in a few months, and so serious men had to give the matter much more thought. So rather than closing with my relatively poor words, I instead leave you the much wiser and better thoughts of the Tang dynasty poet, Du Fu.

To Wei Ba, who has Lived Away from the Court

Like stars that rise when the other has set,

For years we two friends have not met.

How rare it is then that tonight

We once more share the same lamplight.

Our youth has quickly slipped away

And both of us are turning grey.

Old friends have died, and with a start

We hear the sad news, sick at heart.

How could I, twenty years before,

Know that I'd be here at your door?

When last I left, so long ago,

You were unmarried. In a row

Suddenly now your children stand,

Welcome their father's friend, demand

To know his home, his town, his kin -

Till they're chased out to fetch wine in.

Spring chives are cut in the night rain

And steamed rice mixed with yellow grain.

To mark the occasion, we should drink

Ten cups of wine straight off, you think -

But even ten can't make me high,

So moved by your old love am I.

The mountains will divide our lives,

Each to his world, when day arrives.

How to Diss an Ex-Lover as a Rock Star

The current corner solution in my listening playlist is the song 'Gives You Hell' by the All American Rejects:

It's a classic of the 'You know how you didn't want to date me in high school? Well I'm a rock star now, bitch!' genre.

It's apparently quite a popular theme, with the other notable example being Cee-Lo Green's song 'Fuck You' . This reinforces my conclusion that a lot of famous rock stars were actually losers in high school. Not all of them, of course, but certainly the ones singing about all the girls that barred them. You know who doesn't have a song like that? Jon Bon Jovi. You know why? Because he was probably knee-deep in pussy, both in high school and ever since, and has barely given the question a moment's thought.

Cee Lo Green - Exhibit A

Tyson Ritter - Exhibit B

Jon Bon Jovi - One of these things is not like the other.

But as Roissy pointed out, it's very difficult to make this kind of point as a rock star without looking kind of pathetic. To wit, you're implicitly saying two things:

1. I was lame back in high school and girls didn't like me, and

2. I'm still so hung up on this fact that I need to compensate by flaunting my rock star status and talking up how much better I am than that guy who she was being boned by at the time.

Which brings me back to the All-American Rejects. The chorus is catchy

When you see my face,

hope it gives you hell,

hope it gives you hell.

When you walk my way,

hope it gives you hell,

hope it gives you hell.

But it's the bridge that's really well done. They make a very good attempt to deal with point 2.

Truth be told, I miss you.

And truth be told, I'm lying.

Very nice. They implicitly acknowledge the possibility that writing this song means he's still obsessing about the girl in question. Trying to deny this outright would not look credible, and would seem too desperate to appear over her. So he opens with what seems like an admission of this fact. Psychologically, it's him baiting the girl. He knows that if she is regretting her decision to ignore the guy, she will likely cling to the fact that she's still desirable in his eyes.

But knowing this is what she wants to think, he follows his admission with a clever quip (and some very nice word play) that implies the previous line was a joke. He might find her still attractive in some way. But he's not really bothered by the whole thing. In other words, the song is his idle and humourous reflection on high school, not a burning grudge he has to get off his chest. And that is the only way you can successfully deliver this kind of song.

Nice work, All American Rejects.

Lady Gaga and the Evolution of English

The English language is extraordinarily flexible in terms of how it adapts over time. Pick up a copy of some Chaucer if you don't believe me. Not only do spellings change, but the words used to describe the same underlying concept change over time too.

Lady Gaga, a women not obviously conservative in most respects, is nonetheless fighting a culturally conservative battle in one arena - resisting the increasing disappearance of the word 'telephone', and its replacement with the abbreviated 'phone'.

'Telephone' had two main forms - as a noun, to describe the device itself, and as a verb, to describe the process of using the device to contact someone. The noun form is probably in 'endangered' territory. The verb form ('I telephoned John this morning') is almost 'extinct in the wild', having been thoroughly supplanted by its evolutionary successors, 'phoned' and 'called'. These have the obvious reproductive advantage of requiring only one syllable, rather than the clunky three, and in present tense form requiring 5 and 4 letters respectively, rather than 9. Thus does survival of the fittest operate in the language world.

Lady Gaga uses both forms in her song 'Telephone':

Call all you want but there's no one home

And you're not going to reach my telephone. 

...

Stop telephoning me...

Truth be told, it was probably a year since I'd heard the noun form in the wild, and perhaps a decade since I'd heard the verb form. And they sound odd and slightly jarring, in a way that you can't quite pin down. In fact, it was the Lady Gaga song itself that made me realise how long it had been since I'd heard the word used.

If you look at Google search results, 'phone' returns about 1.1 billion results. 'Telephone' returns about 211 million results. The top news result for telephone is from Pakistan:

 'Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Chief Altaf Hussain had a telephonic conversation with the Chief of Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam (JUI-F) Maulana Fazalur-Rehman on Tuesday.' 

The subcontinent sticks to old-world English long after the originators have given it up. I remember my uncle talking about reading a plaque in India saying that a particular king had 'no male issue' (i.e. had no sons). When did you last hear that from a native speaker?

I suspect that even the Lady Gaga rearguard action won't be enough to save 'telephone'. Most of the steps in the evolution of language happen too slowly for most people to notice. But this is one you can witness yourself. If you wondered how Chaucer became modern English, this is the answer.

You're Not Persian, You're Iranian

Okay, so if you're either, you're probably both, but they're answers to quite different questions. 

Why do people from Iran always want to refer to themselves as 'Persian', rather than 'Iranian'? I am certainly no expert in this area, but my rough understanding is that 'Persian' is an ethnicity (and distinct from, say, 'Arab'), whereas 'Iranian' is a nationality (and distinct from, say 'Iraqi'). But when someone asks 'where are you from?' or 'where does your family come from?', they're asking about nationality.  You'd certainly find it odd if someone from England responded that 'I am Anglo-Saxon' when asked where he was from.

It's as if some PR flack from Madison Avenue decided that 'Iranian' had far too much negative baggage associated with terrorism, but 'Persian' sounded old-worldly and vaguely mystical. So no matter which question was asked, just answer 'Persian'. Pretend that you've just walked out of 500BC when 'Persia' actually described a specific empire! You'll have no trouble getting work as an extra for the movie 300 or as a model for "a stowaway on a merchant ship, known by no one, scorned by all!" (a la Prince of Persia).

Still, the Madison Avenue guys would have a point. Don't believe me? Here are some random images that came up on the first page of the Google image search for 'Persian'.

Persian

Persian

Persian

Now, let's compare this with some random image selections from the first page of the search for 'Iranian'

Iranian

Iranian

Iranian

Hmm, come to think of it, maybe it's not so strange after all.

The Rudest Word in America

When people think about rude words, they usually focus on their raw power to cause offense. This tends to prioritise the usual suspects like n***er and  c**t. (Although in the case of n***er, Americans don't get offended by the word in general, just when a white person says it - nobody blinks at its use in gangster rap)

But let me suggest an alternative measure of how rude a word is. It's based on squeamishness of people in using it. So in this view, the real test is the extent to which ordinary people will avoid using the word when it's actually appropriate, and reach for a synonym (especially a euphemistic synonym) instead.

So based on this metric, let me suggest the following word:

Toilet.

It's amazing the lengths people here go to in order to avoid using the word. In Australia, it's common for people to ask 'Where are the toilets?.' Not here. They go to the 'bathroom'. This is used regardless of whether the room is a combined bathroom/toilet (such as in a house) or whether it's obvious that there's only a toilet (e.g. in a restaurant).  This sometimes gets modified to the 'washroom', as if to emphasise even further that it's the bodily cleaning aspects of the 'bathroom' that they're after, rather than the toilet. They use the 'restroom', as if they're going for a relaxing sit down and chill out. Occasionally, it's referred to as the 'little boys/girls room', whatever that means.As for the purpose of their visit, it's to 'use the facilities'. Or 'wash their hands'. Or 'powder their nose'.

The only time that people use the word at all is when they're unavoidably  forced to refer to the mechanics of the device ('The toilet is broken/clogged'). And even then, oblique references to the 'bathroom being out of order' are common.

And yet I bet everybody would claim that they're perfectly fine using it. They just, you know... don't really want to.

Exactly.

Expressions I'm Trying to Popularise

"Irish Breakfast - it's the whiskey of teas."

The Power of Marketing

The Last Psychiatrist has an interesting post about the images that marketers use to subtley convey cool:

It's easy to think that the ads are designed to draw in the demo shown in the ads, but that's not the way advertising works, and consequently that's not how America works. If you're watching it, it's for you. These ads play heavy during late and late late night talk shows: the target is boring middle aged white people. Blackberry isn't targeting gays and limber blondes, it's pretending they are already on board so you don't feel like a dork without a touch screen.... They know you better than you know yourself. Strike that: they know the lies you tell yourself better than you.

It reminded me of a conversation with AL years ago during our undergrad days. The question he posed, not dissimilar from Enrico Fermi's 'Where Are They', was this:

If marketers are so brilliant, why are all the people studying marketing at uni complete dumb@$$es?

Which brings me to the question of how much marketers know me better than I know myself. To help answer the question, let me quote from some marketing material that Château Holmes recently received from United Airlines. It was in a separate fold-out book attached to some letter:

"The day miles got set free"

One sunny morning, a man woke up to find his miles anxiously tugging at his toes. "Let's go out and play", they seemed to say. Unable to resist, the man decided to see where his miles could take him. Turns out, they could take him almost anywhere.

This was as far as I got before throwing it across the room in rage.

Who exactly is this drivel appealing to? 5 year olds with a frequent flyer account? Senile old people with too many miles on their hands? I honestly have no idea. But someone signed off on spending thousands of dollars, printing up this junk and sending it across the country. In entirely unrelated news, United Airlines posted a Net Loss of  $651m in 2009, and a Net Loss of $5.348b in 2008.

Some marketers have deep understandings of human nature, and manage to cleverly work this in to the messages they convey. On the other hand, most of the clowns you knew in uni doing marketing? Yeah, they're still clowns.

He's Strong, Yet Vulnerable!

I think I've figured out part of the secret of Robbie William's success.

It's his carefully crafted persona that broadcasts "I'm an alpha male bad boy" but lyrics that frequently suggest "But I'm somewhat vulnerable and introspective too".

Chicks love it, because bad boys are always appealing, and the sensitive part builds rapport. Average schlub guys like it, because they think 'Hey, I'm somewhat vulnerable and introspective too! Maybe women will like me now!' (They won't).

Add in some catchy pop/rock instrumentation, and it's a winning formula. Clearly Robbie Williams understands vulnerability game. Which sounds about right, given he seems to have pretty good game in general.

Take the song 'Feel'. The chorus is standard wuss rock:

'I just wanna feel real love,

Feel the home that I live in.

'Cause I got too much life,

Running through my veins, going to waste'

But look how he contrasts this in the next verse with his implied status of a) having lots of women and b) treating them as he pleases :

'I don't wanna die,

But I ain't keen on living either.

Before I fall in love,

I'm preparing to leave her.'

Demonstration of High Value, with a hint of Romantic Vulnerability.

'Come Undone' features another motif of his - I'm alpha enough to engage in reckless behaviour, but this recklessness leaves me exposed emotionally to you:

'I'm contemplating thinking about thinking

It's overrated Just get another drink and

watch me come undone...

If I ever hurt you your revenge will be so sweet

Because I'm scum, and I'm your son,

I come undone.'

Perhaps the epitome of this is in 'Strong'.

Here he threads the needle entirely - his sensitivity and introspection is about his own bad boy lifestyle! The Mobius links back on itself!:

'Early morning when I wake up

I look like Kiss but without the make-up

And that's a good line to take me to the bridge.'

Yes,that is a great line actually - easily the best in the song.

The chorus is inane, but hammers home the same tried and true formula to a catchy tune:

'You think that I'm strong.

You're wrong. You're wrong.

I'll sing my song.

My song. My song'

etc. It's all the same shtick. Whoever he's paying to write this stuff has got it figured out.

Ah, Robbie Williams! He's so cool and tough, and yet sensitive too! How dreamy...

Untranslatable Words

Everybody tells me that I should learn a language. It's the trendy thing to do. Wouldn't it be amazing to go to some remote village in Bolivia and speak to the locals, and find out about their lives?

Well no, frankly. At the moment, if you put me in a truck stop in the middle of Nevada, I am completely capable of speaking to the locals and finding out about their lives, which are surely quite different from mine.

And yet I don't want to. I feel like a slightly lesser person for not wanting this, but that alone doesn't get me over the hill. And somehow, I can't imagine this feeling changing when the locals are in some godforsaken part of a foreign country.

Still, there is one legitimately cool thing about learning foreign languages - finding out about awesome words that English doesn't have an equivalent for.

But thanks to Jonah Goldberg's G-File, I don't actually have to go to the hassle of learning to get this cool! Here's a fascinating list of 20 'untranslatable' words, which they really mean 'words which require a whole sentence to describe, as the single word version of the concept doesn't exist'. A really untranslatable word would be, well, untranslatable.

My favourite:

Toska (Russian) – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

Huh. That does warrant a separate word.For all its faults, Russia sure has some interesting cultural ideas.