Whenever we watch a movie or TV show that features the military, we hear soldiers asking each other "What's your 20?" Through the application of context clues, we have ascertained that this is simply a way of saying "Where are you?" But we've never understood why "20" means location--we even asked a veteran, and he was unable to shine any light. We considered passing the question along to the Research Department, but she's off gallivanting somewhere in the American Southwest. So, we had to do the job ourselves.
After an exhaustive and, frankly, impressive feat of investigation--consisting of a Google search of "What's your 20?" followed by a click to urbandictionary.com--we found out the origin of the phrase is CB-slang. CB-slang features a number of "10-codes"--shorthand for common expressions. The most familiar is probably "10-4": OK. "10-20" is shorthand for, "What's your location," which has subsequently been adopted as "What's your 20?"
Of course, why people--particularly soldiers who may be in the heat of battle and thus presumably desirous of maximum speed--prefer "What's your 20?" to the syllable-saving "Where are you?" remains a mystery.
By the way, if you've never checked out Urban Dictionary, it's quite a hoot. It's like Wikipedia for slang. People contribute their own slang terms and/or slang definitions of everyday words and names. Thus, according to Urban Dictionary, the definitions assigned to the name of the primary author of "The Solipsist" include, "A very VERY sexy person" and "Something you would/should name your penis." Sounds about right. What really convinced us of Urban Dictionary's value, though, was the definition of "solipsist":
"(noun)-a person who believes he/she is the center of the universe.
"See also: cockbunny"
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Brought to You by Outback
Well, OK we're not brought to you by Outback. Not yet, anyway. We'd like to be brought to you by Outback. And since our sponsorship deal with PETA fell through, we figure there's no conflict of interest.
Call it a guilty pleasure, but we love Outback. Sure, it's not Le Cordon Bleu or Wendy's, but there's just something truly satisfying about mass-market steak seasoned with just the right excess of salt. They do a decent baked potato, too.
Today, while waiting for our food, we overheard a man place a seemingly strange order: two house salads with vinaigrette dressing. That's it. Now, Outback is known for many things, but a noteworthy house salad is not among them. Who goes to a steakhouse for salad? But then it became clear. "Oh," the customer cleared his throat and asked in the most non-chalant tone imaginable, "and could you give me three breads?"
There it is! The thing that sets Outback apart from all other fast food emporia, casual dining eateries, out-of-the-way boites, and three-star restaurants: the bread!
Bread, you ask? Yes, bread! Basic, wheaty black bread. Except there's nothing "basic" about it. Warm and moist and chewy and semi-sweet--it's addictive. We suspect it's laced with heroin. And notwithstanding the considerable pleasure to be found in the rest of the meal, it's the bread that keeps us coming back, the bread we could eat for three meals a day, the bread we would happily sell our own mother's kidneys for--
Perhaps we've said too much.
So, in closing, Outback: Go for the bread. Stay for the steak. Tomorrow, we will be discussing the parsley at Applebee's.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Things That Make You Go "Huh?" (A Brief Post)
As part of a promotion of some kind, WOS received two free magazine subscriptions. She was presented with a list of magazines and told to choose two; if for any reason one of the titles she chose was unavailable, another title would be substituted by the company making this offer. WOS chose National Geographic and something else, Long-Suffering Wife Illustrated, perhaps. Whatever it was, though, it was unavailable. So the company decided instead to send her a subscription to, of all things, Money magazine.
Suffice to say, WOS is not the Money magazine type. Indeed, giving her a subscription to Money is roughly akin to giving the Solipsist a subscription to Ovaries.
We're keeping our fingers crossed that Money will start featuring pictures of cats.
Suffice to say, WOS is not the Money magazine type. Indeed, giving her a subscription to Money is roughly akin to giving the Solipsist a subscription to Ovaries.
We're keeping our fingers crossed that Money will start featuring pictures of cats.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Well Begun Comes Undone
"In the essay by the authors John Smith and Michael Jones is saying that men who have conversations with other men for joking and camaraderie but women conversate when they talk about relationships and emotions topics men can't discuss so they just offer advice."
The above is not an actual quote from a student essay, but we assure the Nation that it is a faithful attempt at verisimilitude, a taste of the kind of sentence that plunges us into an abyss of befuddlement.
The technical problem here is incoherence. Now, most people take offense if you tell them their writing is incoherent, but it's not an insult--it's a literal diagnosis: It means the piece of writing, either on the level of the sentence, the paragraph, or the entire piece, does not flow smoothly and/or logically from beginning to end.
In this case, the student is trying to say something like, "In the essay, John Smith and Michael Jones say men talk to other men because they enjoy the joking and camaraderie. Women talk to other women about relationships and emotional topics. Men often have trouble discussing emotions, so they may just offer women advice." Perfect? No. But at least a reader can follow these sentences from beginning to end.
What causes incoherence? We suspect some students simply lose track of what they are trying to say. Often, while agonizing over what to write, they stop midway through a thought to look for the "right" word. Not finding it, they simply pick up the sentence where they left off--perhaps forgetting that this was NOT the beginning of the sentence. It's tempting to blame our multi-tasking, shuffle-play, soundbite culture for this attention deficit disorder, but we know incoherence has been around longer than the internet.
What gets us is not so much the fact of incoherence, but its persistence. We understand why a student might write an incoherent sentence--we've been known to ramble off down a syntactical sidepath ourselves, leaving sentences behind us in a knotty mass of tangled words (and mixed metaphors). But we never let those sentences live to see confused eyes staring down at them. We read our sentences and recognize that what we have written is not, y'know, English. We don't understand why students seem unable to do the same thing.
Of course, some cynics will say that students don't bother to reread what they've written. In many cases, the cynics are right. But not in all cases. Sometimes, we point out a particularly egregious example of non-communicative prose, and students simply look at us, wondering what it is we want them to do. We say, "Look, what you've written here is 'A.' It's not clear what you mean. Can you tell me what you were trying to say?"
"Yeah, I was just trying to say 'B.'" More often than not, 'B' will be a straightforward statement using simple words.
"So, why didn't you just write 'B'?"
"Well, because that's how I talk."
Aha! Look, we know many writing teachers frown on "conversational" prose; they want students to master the polished phrasing of the academic world. But trust us, the more complicated the thought, the more necessary the need for simple words and straightforward sentences. As Kurt Vonnegut once pointed out, one of the most profound quotations in all of English literature--a sentence that encapsulates a fundamental dilemma of human free will--uses vocabulary familiar to a three year old: "To be or not to be, that is the question." No problem with coherence there.
As one who is constantly reminded of his own over-inflated vocabulary, the Solipsist would like to state emphatically that it is not the length of the words that matter, but the depth of the thought. Short, coherent sentences that build up an idea are always preferable to rambling monstrosities that aim to impress but serve only to bemuse.
The above is not an actual quote from a student essay, but we assure the Nation that it is a faithful attempt at verisimilitude, a taste of the kind of sentence that plunges us into an abyss of befuddlement.
The technical problem here is incoherence. Now, most people take offense if you tell them their writing is incoherent, but it's not an insult--it's a literal diagnosis: It means the piece of writing, either on the level of the sentence, the paragraph, or the entire piece, does not flow smoothly and/or logically from beginning to end.
In this case, the student is trying to say something like, "In the essay, John Smith and Michael Jones say men talk to other men because they enjoy the joking and camaraderie. Women talk to other women about relationships and emotional topics. Men often have trouble discussing emotions, so they may just offer women advice." Perfect? No. But at least a reader can follow these sentences from beginning to end.
What causes incoherence? We suspect some students simply lose track of what they are trying to say. Often, while agonizing over what to write, they stop midway through a thought to look for the "right" word. Not finding it, they simply pick up the sentence where they left off--perhaps forgetting that this was NOT the beginning of the sentence. It's tempting to blame our multi-tasking, shuffle-play, soundbite culture for this attention deficit disorder, but we know incoherence has been around longer than the internet.
What gets us is not so much the fact of incoherence, but its persistence. We understand why a student might write an incoherent sentence--we've been known to ramble off down a syntactical sidepath ourselves, leaving sentences behind us in a knotty mass of tangled words (and mixed metaphors). But we never let those sentences live to see confused eyes staring down at them. We read our sentences and recognize that what we have written is not, y'know, English. We don't understand why students seem unable to do the same thing.
Of course, some cynics will say that students don't bother to reread what they've written. In many cases, the cynics are right. But not in all cases. Sometimes, we point out a particularly egregious example of non-communicative prose, and students simply look at us, wondering what it is we want them to do. We say, "Look, what you've written here is 'A.' It's not clear what you mean. Can you tell me what you were trying to say?"
"Yeah, I was just trying to say 'B.'" More often than not, 'B' will be a straightforward statement using simple words.
"So, why didn't you just write 'B'?"
"Well, because that's how I talk."
Aha! Look, we know many writing teachers frown on "conversational" prose; they want students to master the polished phrasing of the academic world. But trust us, the more complicated the thought, the more necessary the need for simple words and straightforward sentences. As Kurt Vonnegut once pointed out, one of the most profound quotations in all of English literature--a sentence that encapsulates a fundamental dilemma of human free will--uses vocabulary familiar to a three year old: "To be or not to be, that is the question." No problem with coherence there.
As one who is constantly reminded of his own over-inflated vocabulary, the Solipsist would like to state emphatically that it is not the length of the words that matter, but the depth of the thought. Short, coherent sentences that build up an idea are always preferable to rambling monstrosities that aim to impress but serve only to bemuse.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The Best That You Can Do
Every semester, we tell our writing classes a story. The story was first told to us by a writing professor some twenty years ago. It's probably apocryphal, but we like to believe it's true. At any rate, it illustrates something that all writing students need to understand.
Once upon a time, on a sunny Monday morning, the president of an advertising agency called his staff into a meeting. "I've got good news, everyone. We just landed the account for Shiny Toothpaste." (Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.) The president continued, "Now, this is a multi-million dollar account, so I need your best work. I want you all to go back to your offices and get started. I want your ideas on my desk by 5:00 this afternoon."
So all the account executives and artists, copywriters and assistants, streamed energetically out of the conference room and back to their offices. They spent the rest of the day brainstorming and drafting, tossing ideas back and forth, and by the end of the day they had quite a lot to drop off The president thanked them and told them to meet in the conference room the next morning at nine o'clock sharp to discuss the proposals.
The group gathered in the conference room at nine o'clock. They waited. 9:05. 9:10. 9:15. At 9:20, the president entered the conference room. He carried all of the proposals in a large stack.
THUH-WACK!!!!
He slammed the papers down on the conference table. He glared at his staff.
"Is this the best that you can do?"
The assembled copywriters and artists and project managers looked at the table, at the floor, at each other--anywhere but at their boss.
"Now look," he said, "I said I need your best work on this. Get this stuff out of here, go back to your offices, and get me something good by 5:00 today!" He marched out of the conference room.
Five o'clock. The proposals were dropped off. Another meeting was called for nine o'clock the following morning. The morning came. The participants waited. And waited. And waited. At 9:30, the president swept in and--THUH-WACK!!!--"Is THIS the BEST that you can DO?!?"
Again, the audience looked anywhere but at the president. For a full minute, there was silence.
"Now, look, I don't think you understand the importance of this account. This is a major opportunity for this firm, and if we don't produce quality work, our reputation will be garbage! Now, I want you all to go back to your offices. I want you to work on these today. I want you to work on them tomorrow. I want you to leave them with me by 5:00 Thursday evening. We will meet on Friday morning at nine to discuss them. And if the work doesn't show some massive improvement, some of you will no longer be working here by Friday afternoon."
The next two days passed by in a blur for the members of this advertising agency. Lunches were skipped, phones went unanswered. People stayed late on Wednesday night, they came in early on Thursday morning. At five o'clock, they slipped their proposals into the president's mailbox and went home, dreading the next morning's meeting.
Friday. Nine o'clock. Door opens. President walks in. THUH-WACK!!!! "IS THIS THE BEST THAT YOU CAN DO?!?!"
Everyone looked down at their feet, at the table, at each other. Everybody but one young lady. She stood up, looked at her boss, grabbed a folder from the top of the pile, and shook it in the president's face. "You know what," she said, "Yes. This is the BEST that we can do!"
The president looked at her, took the folder from her, and sat down. "All right," he said, "In that case, I'll read them."
SO
Whenever you are called upon to produce a piece of work, before you hand it in, put yourself in the position of those advertising executives. If your reader were to ask if this is the best that you can do, would you proudly say "Yes," or would you be one of those people sheepishly reaching for the paper, hoping to receive another chance?
Once upon a time, on a sunny Monday morning, the president of an advertising agency called his staff into a meeting. "I've got good news, everyone. We just landed the account for Shiny Toothpaste." (Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.) The president continued, "Now, this is a multi-million dollar account, so I need your best work. I want you all to go back to your offices and get started. I want your ideas on my desk by 5:00 this afternoon."
So all the account executives and artists, copywriters and assistants, streamed energetically out of the conference room and back to their offices. They spent the rest of the day brainstorming and drafting, tossing ideas back and forth, and by the end of the day they had quite a lot to drop off The president thanked them and told them to meet in the conference room the next morning at nine o'clock sharp to discuss the proposals.
The group gathered in the conference room at nine o'clock. They waited. 9:05. 9:10. 9:15. At 9:20, the president entered the conference room. He carried all of the proposals in a large stack.
THUH-WACK!!!!
He slammed the papers down on the conference table. He glared at his staff.
"Is this the best that you can do?"
The assembled copywriters and artists and project managers looked at the table, at the floor, at each other--anywhere but at their boss.
"Now look," he said, "I said I need your best work on this. Get this stuff out of here, go back to your offices, and get me something good by 5:00 today!" He marched out of the conference room.
Five o'clock. The proposals were dropped off. Another meeting was called for nine o'clock the following morning. The morning came. The participants waited. And waited. And waited. At 9:30, the president swept in and--THUH-WACK!!!--"Is THIS the BEST that you can DO?!?"
Again, the audience looked anywhere but at the president. For a full minute, there was silence.
"Now, look, I don't think you understand the importance of this account. This is a major opportunity for this firm, and if we don't produce quality work, our reputation will be garbage! Now, I want you all to go back to your offices. I want you to work on these today. I want you to work on them tomorrow. I want you to leave them with me by 5:00 Thursday evening. We will meet on Friday morning at nine to discuss them. And if the work doesn't show some massive improvement, some of you will no longer be working here by Friday afternoon."
The next two days passed by in a blur for the members of this advertising agency. Lunches were skipped, phones went unanswered. People stayed late on Wednesday night, they came in early on Thursday morning. At five o'clock, they slipped their proposals into the president's mailbox and went home, dreading the next morning's meeting.
Friday. Nine o'clock. Door opens. President walks in. THUH-WACK!!!! "IS THIS THE BEST THAT YOU CAN DO?!?!"
Everyone looked down at their feet, at the table, at each other. Everybody but one young lady. She stood up, looked at her boss, grabbed a folder from the top of the pile, and shook it in the president's face. "You know what," she said, "Yes. This is the BEST that we can do!"
The president looked at her, took the folder from her, and sat down. "All right," he said, "In that case, I'll read them."
SO
Whenever you are called upon to produce a piece of work, before you hand it in, put yourself in the position of those advertising executives. If your reader were to ask if this is the best that you can do, would you proudly say "Yes," or would you be one of those people sheepishly reaching for the paper, hoping to receive another chance?
Monday, February 22, 2010
Well Begun and All Done
Years ago, one of our literature professors speculated that one could gain insight into a novel or short story simply by examining the opening and closing lines. He proposed--or perhaps threatened--to write a monograph on the subject. So far as we know, he never followed through on this threat. Considering that we took his class over 20 years ago and the man was in his 70s then, we suspect he never will.
In honor of this professor, then--and not at all because we're stuck for ideas--we take up his idle speculation and present the first installment of "Well Begun and All Done." In this space, we will present the opening and closing lines of whatever book we happen to be reading and see what conclusions, if any, we can draw. We may even find some perfect sentences to boot.
Opening Line
"Rausch," said the voice in Hollis Henry's cell.
Closing Line:
She put the helmet on, turned it on, and looked up, to where Alberto's giant cartoon rendition of the Mongolian Death Worm, its tail wound through the various windows of Bigend's pyramidal aerie like an eel through the skull of a cow, waved imperially, tall and scarlet, in the night.
--From Spook Country by Wiliam Gibson
William Gibson, author of such works as Neuromancer, is popularly known as the father of "Cyberpunk"--a science-fiction sub-genre featuring dark visions of a computer-dominated future (for the uninitiated, think "The Matrix"). This novel, a bit of a departure, is set in the present-day and, while it does feature technology, is less science-fiction than sociopolitical thriller.
The opening line is nicely disorienting. What does "Rausch" mean, and why is someone saying it in Hollis Henry's cell? Who is Hollis Henry and why is he or she in jail? Or is Hollis in jail? Are we hearing a voice in a cell phone? Is this some commentary on the different meanings of the word? Is the author suggesting that Hollis is a prisoner of technology? Are we all such prisoners?
As for the last line, who is "she"? Hollis again? We obviously are getting references to other characters in the novel. We're struck by the difference in the feel of the two sentences. The first short and telegraphic, the last more expansive and descriptive. But what's with the "eel through the skull of a cow"? Shouldn't that be "snake"? An intentional "mistake"? It can't be an accident. An eel moving through a cow's skull would look much like a snake, except it would, of course, be "wrong"--unless we're dealing with an underwater cowskull or an air-breathing eel. As with the opening line, then, there is a disorienting quality to the final sentence. Maybe Gibson is establishing the uneasy, uncomfortable, or simply off-putting qualities of life in "Spook Country."
WOS says we should ask the Nation to leave their own thoughts about the first and last lines, and/or suggest other books' lines to discuss. WOS says this. We ourselves couldn't care less.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Deep Philosophical Question (A Brief Post)
Is it unbelievably pretentious to correct someone who refers to "Baba O'Reilly" as "Teenage Wasteland"?
Discuss.
Discuss.
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