The very confused voice of God

Sorry, I don't speak the language

Thanks to Language Log, it didn't take me long to dig out several examples of an old (possibly apocryphal, but definitely old) story:

   Prof. Adolphe Cohn of Columbia University recently, in discussing the teaching of French and German in public schools, said that the attitude of a good many people on that subject was explained to him very aptly by a remark he had once overheard in a street car. Two elderly Irish women were talking about their children, when one remarked: “I won't let my child be taught Frinch.”
   “Why not?” inquired the other.
   “Sure,” replied the first, “if English was good enough for St. Paul to write the Bible in it's good enough for me.”

—New York Time, January 15, 1905 (Sunday Magazine), p. 8

Makes sense. I mean, it's not as if we're better than St. Paul, now are we? As we know, St. Paul is a great figure in Christian history, the bachelor saint who gave tons of marital advice to those who chose to marry rather than burn. He's the saint that denounced the Judaizers for their continuing espousal of the practice of circumcision—not required for followers of Christ, he insisted—and then promptly turned around and sliced off Timothy's foreskin. No doubt Timothy's guard was down.

But Paul is not really the subject of this post. Ray is. I mean Ray Guarendi, a clinical psychologist who is a fixture on Catholic Radio and is usually called “Dr. Ray.” I recently heard him featured as a guest on Marcus Grodi's “Deep in Scripture” program. Grodi and guest were trying to parse St. Paul's teachings on love, as embodied in the apostle's first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:4-7). Guarendi was stressing the difficulty of Paul's statements with some mocking banter: “Love is patient? Where? Love is kind? When?”

That, however, is not what caught my attention. I startled chuckling at a statement in Guarendi's amazing preamble, which immediately reminded me of the old “good enough for St. Paul” story. Check it out for yourself. At 6:45 in the video below, Guarendi offers this startling pronouncement: “You're familiar, Marcus, with the inadequacy of language to express truth. We have these infinite truths that God wants to give us, and he binds himself to the English language.”

The English language? Ha!

Tossing a word salad

Dressing on the side

During a recent jaunt to San Francisco, I popped into the Books Inc. branch in Opera Plaza on Van Ness. While browsing the shelves, I encountered a curious book aimed at young readers. The slender volume was A Little Book of Language by David Crystal. The book flap identified the author as “one of the world's pre-eminent language specialists.” Never heard of him, I thought.

I read further. Crystal is the author of The Stories of English. Now that rang a bell. When I got home, I checked my library. Oops! The book in my collection was actually The Story of English (by McCrum, Cran, and MacNeil). It seemed likely that the title of Crystal's later book was a wry play on the title of its predecessor. I liked him already.

I purchased A Little Book of Language with the notion of giving it to a precocious nephew, but he's going to have to wait till I acquire a second copy. Crystal's book is staying in my collection. While written specifically for a young audience, A Little Book of Language is a gentle and conversational introduction to notions of language and linguistics. Within the compass of a slender volume, Crystal ranges widely from baby talk to tech talk, touching on texting, signing, slang, and speech versus writing. He pitches his discussions at an elementary level without condescension. There's the occasional wink as he presents some of the amusing idiosyncrasies of language and deflates a few pompous over-generalizations.

To add to the fun, Crystal is a British writer and the differences between American and British usage crop up in ways that he doesn't always identify—although he does point out several instances. One amusing American-British dissonance occurs in the chapter on “Developing a style,” in which Crystal discusses one's choice of wardrobe as a metaphor for selecting a a prose style. This paragraph give a nice sample of his conversational manner as well as an unconsciously(?) wry twist at the end:

If we look inside our wardrobe, what do we see? Most of us have managed to collect quite a range of different kinds of clothes. We have posh clothes for special occasions, casual clothes for everyday, clothes to wear if it's hot, clothes to wear if it's cold, clothes for messing around in, swimming costumes, and lots more. We don't mix them up. We'd be daft if we went out in the snow wearing shorts, or went to the beach on a boiling hot day in a mac. And if we've been invited to a swish party, we dress up for it.

A “swish” party? I'm sure I don't have a thing to wear!

Lettered ladies

Always the gentleman

The other day I found myself in the unaccustomed position of defending Sarah Palin. It was, I admit, a very mild defense, but a defense nonetheless. A member of the Friday lunch bunch was castigating the former half-term governor of Alaska for having attended five colleges (University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hawaii Pacific University, North Idaho College, University of Idaho, and Matanuska-Susitna College) on her way to a bachelor's degree in communications. Having attended and earned units at five different colleges myself, I did not consider persistence at a single institution to be a virtue in and of itself. (I did, however, complete degree requirements at four of them.)

The habitués of the Friday lunch bunch are mostly former journalists these days, the ink-stained wretches having supplanted the coterie of old legislative hands that used to frequent the TGIF observances. And “ink” is the right word, too. All of them served in the trenches when hot lead and metal plates and barrels of black goo were standard tools of the newspaper business. I don't go back quite that far, but I am accepted into this journalistic fraternity because I, too, have worked for a major metropolitan newspaper (but not for very long). Besides, I have seniority in the lunch bunch, being one of the last survivors of the original gang with state capitol experience.

We are a largely left-of-center group, naturally concerned that the president is not even close to being the extreme liberal of right-wing accusations, and cheerfully derogatory in our references to the various nut-case conservative cabals running Republican legislative caucuses throughout the nation and in entirely too many governors' mansions. Palin gets extra contempt from the Friday gang because of her journalistic pretensions and her slender résumé as a reporter (but not as slim as mine). It doesn't help her cause, of course, that even her prepared remarks come out as tossed word salads of right-wing talking points: blah, blah, blah ... American greatness ... blah, blah, blah ... Reagan ... blah, blah, blah ... God bless America ... blah, blah, blah ... war on terror ... blah, blah, blah. Jealousy is probably involved a little. Imagine pocketing $50,000 a pop for that kind of disjointed drivel, as Palin did at Stanislaus State University.

Despite her degree in communications (with an emphasis in journalism), Palin opted to hire a ghostwriter for her autobiography. She's apparently been too busy doing other things.

Like serving as a role model.

California has spawned a Palin camp follower who boasts that she is a “blogger extraordinaire” (that may be premature) with a master's degree in English on top of a bachelor's degree that included journalism coursework. This phenomenon was brought to my attention by a regular visitor to my blog (hi, Kathie!). She was puzzled by the prospect of an English major with a graduate degree who spews out this kind of breathless prose (spacing, spelling, and punctuation preserved from the original):

I'm a San Diego girl& patriotic American at heart!I graduated from San Diego State University in 2005 where I studied English & Journalism.I also have a Masters' Degree in English.I never thought I'd be setting up a blog,but feel I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to share with readers topics that are important to me & I hope to you as well.I will use this blog as a platform of sorts to promote not only conservative values,but strong,conservative female candidates.Sarah Palin is the epitome of this female.Strong,sincere,classy,intelligent & graceful.I have heard individuals describe her as a modern-day Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan.It is she who has inspired me to get involved politically.The mere mention of her name sends the main-stream media into a tizzy.It is also my hope this blog will become a platform for conservative females everywhere.(God knows we could use more representing us).And yes,I also hope to prove that,contrary to popular opinion,it CAN be cool to be a young conservative.You can also catch me from time to time as a guest on #1 AK Talk Radio Host Eddie Burke's show where I discuss Sarah and national issues.

Odd stuff. While the political sentiments are obviously contrary to mine, I am struck by what an admitted English major does to the language. That can't help but catch my attention, if only for the moment. Does San Diego State University offer a master's degree in English as a third language? Was writing part of the curriculum? Optional, perhaps?

At least we can rest assured that she does not suffer from a narcissistic obsession with her own prose.

Of two minds

Reflexive code-switching

Quentin Crisp once gave some encouraging advice about maintaining one's residence: “There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.”

I have occupied my current domicile for more than a quarter-century, so I'm well past that initial quadrennium. Unfortunately, I do not have Crisp's strength of character. Once or twice a year I feel compelled to do—or at least try to do—some serious cleaning. The big problem, of course, is the clutter created by my ever-growing collection of books and papers.

At the conclusion of every semester, I feel the pressure of the responsibility to tidy up after myself. Stacks of books need to be picked up from tables and chairs and floors (and any other surface that is at least approximately flat) and shelved (occasionally with some attempt at an organizational rationale). Stacks of papers need to be picked up from those same locales and sorted into the filing cabinets or recycling bins.

The room I call my library is usually an especially grueling undertaking. It has long served as my home's emergency reservoir, its pressure-release valve, a place where random items get shoved out of the way. The shelves of the library's bookcases are packed to overflowing—those shelves that I can see, anyway. The lower ones are obscured by stacks of miscellany. I recently made an effort to cleanse the Augean library.

A funny thing about housework: I sometimes find myself channeling my paternal grandmother, who was always tidy as a pin (whatever that means). Hands on my hips, I'll gaze into the turmoil of the library and say, “Credo! Tal lástima!” Loosely translated, it means, “Can you believe it? What a disaster!” Another good word is porcaria, which means filth and evidently owes something to pigs (porcos).

In this frame of mind, it's easier to get down to work, occasionally muttering Avó’s favorite imprecations to myself under my breath. It's just a little weird, but it's okay. Whatever works. But I noticed something the other day that gave me pause.

I dug my fingers under a stack of old school papers and tugged at it, preparatory to lifting it up and moving it to a desk for sorting. My right hand slipped and I received a sudden and sharp paper cut on my index finger. I cried out involuntarily, but I did not shriek “Ow!” or “Ouch!” What I said—rather loudly—was “Ai!”

I was in Portuguese mode and I used a Portuguese cry of distress. As I sucked on my finger, distressed but bemused, I pondered this curious occurrence. Cries of pain, you know, are reflexive. You don't think about them. You just say them. (Thus a painful mishap could give away an undercover operative in a foreign land.) I tried to remember if this had happened before, but I could not recall for certain. I imagine it was standard operating procedure when I was little and Portuguese was my principal language, but my childhood memories are not that detailed.

In graduate school a few years ago, I learned for the first time about code-switching, the blurring of the boundary lines between languages in the speech of multilingual people. For me, it was just a new name for a phenomenon I had long been familiar with. Sometimes we grind the gears in our language transmission box as we shift among the languages we know. Since English has long been my dominant tongue, I don't experience this as often as I did in my youth, but apparently it's still there. Or, at least, my first language remains so embedded in my nervous system that I can still use some elements of it reflexively. I just need to be in the right mode.

Grandma would be so proud. (But not about the state of my library.)

Words versus numbers

My students tell me my job

“You can't do that!”

My student's emotions were an admixture of horror and disbelief.

“No, really! You can't do that! This is a math class!”

Oh, really? I guess I had lost track of that. I inquired as to the basis for the student's convictions.

“Why do you think I can't give you an essay question to answer?“

The student goggled in disbelief at my question.

“Because that's what we do in English class, not in math!”

Another student chimed in.

“Yeah. Math is about numbers and calculations—not about words!”

I've had this conversation a few times now, mostly in intermediate algebra and precalculus. It tends to occur when I hand out a quiz or exam with the following kind of problem:

Rewrite the equation x² + y² + 4x − 6y + 9 = 0 in standard form and graph your results. Describe your graph in words.

It's a perfectly ordinary problem that occurs after the students have learned about the basic conic sections and the technique of completing the square. Upon rewriting the equation as

(x + 2)² + (y − 3)² = 4,

most of my students (if they've gotten this far) easily recognize that they have the equation of a circle with center (−2, 3) and radius 2. They quickly sketch the circle and then stare in hopeless confusion at the prompt, “Describe your graph in words.”

I've tried amplifying the prompt in an attempt to make it less intimidating:

“Think about how you would describe your graph over your phone to a friend so that your friend could graph it without having seen it.”

(These days I have to add the warning that it's no fair to just send the friend a quickly snapped image of the graph.)

Lots of students leave that part of the problem blank and move on. Others tentatively write “circle” (miffed that I didn't just ask for the name of the conic section and anxious that I used the plural “words”) and nervously move on.

And then there's the handful of students who write dissertations like this:

Subtract the 9 from both sides to isolate the variables. Look at the coefficient of the x term, which is 4, take half of it and square it. Add that to both sides. Change x² + 4x + 4 into (x + 2)². Now look at the y term...

Wow. A complete procedural guide to deriving the answer (though seldom as coherent as the mocked-up example above). Where did I ever ask for that? (I'm sure they get a prickly feeling that something must be wrong when they overflow the tiny space I allowed for their answer and they continue their discourse on the back of the page.)

Why do so few of them offer the brief and straightforward response that “The graph is a circle of radius 2 with its center at (−2, 3)”? Wouldn't that suffice to fully inform their imaginary friend at the other end of the phone conversation?

Hardly anyone is pleased when I unveil the answer. The typical reaction is exasperation:

“Is that all you wanted? Why didn't you say so?”

I thought I did.

“You're just confusing us. This isn't English comp!”

My students are like fussy eaters who get upset if their corn touches their mashed potatoes. Food should reside in carefully demarcated regions and college curriculum should reside in strictly disjoint sets. (They're not like my kid brother, who regarded his dinner plate as an artist regards the palette whereon he mixes his colors.)

Eventually, however, I break down my students' reservations and most of them start scooping up the relatively easy points I assign for complete one-sentence answers to simple prompts. By the end of the semester they are rather less startled by questions that require a written response. They still don't, for the most part, like them, but they can do them.

Then the school term ends and I have to start all over again with a new batch. And I know what words will be coming out of their mouths.

Based on a true story

A befuddled eyewitness account

Weird things happen sometimes. A year ago at this time I was immersed in a weird thing myself. You'd think I would have a clue why it occurred, but you'd be wrong. Perhaps it was like the pressure building up inside a containment vessel until at some point the vessel ruptures and the contents spew out in a sudden, uncontrolled pulse. Maybe it was like that.

Whatever the explanation, the result was that I spewed out 110,000 words of text in 20 days.

It was pretty awesome.

I have witnesses, too. They watched in bemusement as the pages poured out of my computer. One of my victims was my friend GW:

You've got a lot of nerve, Zeno, sending me pages from your upcoming novel, thereby totally knocking out a good half-hour of my day. How dare you!

I can see the family flames beginning to ignite.

Yeah, GW was instantly aware that I was writing a roman à clef based on my family's history. He started the guessing game. Was this particular character based on my grandfather or my uncle? Is this person based on your dad?

It was immediately obvious that the boy desperate to run away to college was me.

It seems like the character Paul might be playing your role in the story, being a puzzle and a weird mix of genes, and liking Wagner and books. Yeah, in a story about dairymen in Tulare county, that starts to sound like you.

Busted.

So tell me, did the real trial over your grandmother's will involve a handwriting “expert” and, if so, did you simply pull the dialog from the court transcript? I know, that would be cheating and unnecessary for Zeno, but it's so crisp and logical that it made me think, well, that you copied out of the transcript!

No transcript. It was all cobbled up from memory and make-believe, although it might have been nice to have a transcript for reference purposes.

You see, my family really did rend itself into warring camps when my grandmother died and deprived us of the great peace-making matriarch whose disapproving glance could turn the blood in our veins into ice water. We flew to flinders in the absence of the binding force of that formidable center.

That great cataclysm occurred nearly thirty years ago. Some family relationships were gradually repaired. Others never recovered. (My godfather and I never spoke another word to each other.)

Most of my family has yet to see the manuscript. I quietly shared it with my sister. She called me up to say she had had difficulty putting it down. “It brought back a lot of memories,” she said. Even though I wrote it as fiction, the outline of the story is faithful to our family disaster. My sister was also very concerned that I was going to stir up old resentments and spark recriminations. Her son perused the manuscript, but was less concerned:

“The good thing for you is that the characters who would be most insulted by an accurate depiction of what they really are like are dead, incompetent, or almost illiterate,” he said.

I can't imagine where my nephew got his sharp tongue. Such a rascal.

He's heard several of the family stories before. The weird and tragicomic anecdotes are staples at family gatherings. (Some of them have trickled onto this blog.) My sister would often comment after the nth retelling of a family fable, “Someone should really write these down, but it would have to be as fiction. No one could believe they actually happened in real life.”

Every time I heard her say that, I would think, I could do that. But I never did. At least, not until last year. That's when the stories that had been percolating through my brain for decades burst loose and spilled onto the pages of a book-length manuscript. In a way, I had been rehearsing the saga for all those years, so perhaps it's not so surprising how the episodes poured out at a rate of 5500 words per day.

I was rather stunned when it all came together like that, with the fictional mortar binding together the real-life incidents. Thanks to the comments of GW and a few other readers, I revised and expanded the manuscript in a more leisurely fashion over the subsequent months, reaching a “final” product last spring. It tilts the scale at nearly 125,000 words now and that's what is in the hands of a publisher's team of reviewers.

GW was pensive at the end of last August's exercise in prolixity:

Phew, so we're done? I actually read a whole book in a bit less than three weeks, must be some sort of record. I'm really glad I got to participate in this bit of madness. I enjoyed it for the reading, but also to see you crank this stuff out, day after day. I'd say Where does it come from, but we mere mortals don't really want to know.

I shared the manuscript with my college president, under the heading of “What I did during my summer vacation.” He was dutifully amused (one must give moral support to one's faculty members), but then—who saw that coming?—he read the whole damned thing. He sent me a message:

“I got goosebumps, a tug in my heart, and chuckled out loud with the close of your book.”

Damn. That's going in the cover blurb.

How you say—?

Tongued pickles

I heard one of my colleagues tell a student during office hours that he was “spot on.” It made my antennas quiver. Later I caught him using the word “rubbish.” My suspicions grew. Then he mentioned his brother. That tore it.

According to my colleague, his brother was named “Harry,” but when he said it, it did not sound like “hairy.” No, when he said it, it came out this way: /ˈhær.i/

But true-blue Americans say it this way: /ˈher.i/

See the difference? (I guess I really mean “hear.”) You can listen to the corresponding sound clips at the on-line edition of the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

I braced my colleague in the faculty room and demanded to know which of his parents was the British one. He confessed. His father was a son of Albion and the source of the Britishisms that had crept into his American son's manner of speaking. I knew it! (It was either that, or my colleague was excessively fond of PBS rebroadcasts of British comedies.)

I was reminded of such peculiarities of spoken language when reading the comics page this morning. The Frank and Ernest strip gives us an example of three homonyms—or does it?

How say you? Does “Dalai Lama” come out as “Dolly Lama” when you say it? How about Salvador Dali's name? I think I say all of them differently.

But I'm kind of weird when it comes to language. As is that colleague of mine.

That @#!%ing stupid censorship

Let's keep it clean out there

The San Francisco Chronicle gave a little boost to freedom of speech this morning by publishing an opinion piece by Nick Danforth. The writer took note of Turkey's two-year ban on YouTube. It's a relatively unsuccessful ban, made all the more pathetic by the way Turks have taken to mocking it. Danforth points out that the notice “Access to this site has been blocked by order of the court” is no longer limited to popping up on the screens of Turks trying to access forbidden Internet sites. It has now been printed out on banners that protesters use to decorate urinals, escalators, and anything else that an enterprising free speech advocate might see fit to substitute for the word “site” in the original notice.

The Chronicle is to be praised for bringing this situation to the attention of its readers. I nodded my head in silent approbation when I read Danforth's article over breakfast.

Then I switched my attention to the Chronicle's Datebook section. Mick LaSalle's review of Judd Apatow's Funny People was on its front page. I like reading LaSalle's reviews and plunged right in. He was saying nice things about an Adam Sandler movie, which challenged my credulity just a little. (A good Sandler movie?) Then I got to the end of the review and spewed Cheerios as I read the notice (in bold!):

Advisory: This film contains sexual situations, strong language and multiple jokes about the male member.

Excuse me? “The male member”? Can't we just say the movie contains several penis jokes? Or doesn't the Chronicle allow the word “penis” in its entertainment section?

Access to this penis has been blocked by order of the court!

Bandying words by the bay

Says You in San Francisco

Arnie Reisman was concerned. He called out to the moderator.

“Richard, we may have a problem with this word!”

Richard Sher strode over from the podium and huddled with Arnie and his two teammates.

“Two of us already know the word,” continued Reisman. ”If someone on the other team already knows it, that rather defeats the purpose.”

Sher turned to the other team. “Do any of you already know the word?”

The rejoinder was quick: “If we did, why would we tell you?”

Good question. Sher grinned and let the game continue. It if turned out to be a bust, the round could always end up on the cutting-room floor during editing.

The word was “strigil” and it was displayed in large letters in front of Benjamin Sher's scorekeeping station. The audience murmured while an octet on stage provided a musical interlude. In hushed voices audience members conferred over the word's possible meaning. My seatmate turned toward me and raised his eyebrows. I grinned back at him and nodded my head. Yes, I knew the word.

“Damon” and I were attending a San Francisco taping of Says You, the word game that is broadcast weekly on several National Public Radio stations. When I can, I routinely tune in to KQED on Sundays at 4:00 to get my fill of “words and whimsy.” Although based in Boston, Says You likes to travel about the country and record its shows in different venues. When I heard that taping sessions had been scheduled for San Francisco, I quickly snatched up a pair of tickets.

One of my math department colleagues is also a big Says You fan. We were both looking forward to the event when family obligations forced him to bow out. I was stuck with two tickets, but I was only one person. After a moment's thought, I took a shot in the dark and pinged an old college buddy. I hadn't seen him in ages.

To my surprise, Damon replied quickly to my e-mail with a phone call. No, he wasn't familiar with Says You, but he was curious. He quizzed me about the quiz program and decided it was worth the venture. He needed to be in San Francisco that weekend anyway to pick up his wife at the airport. My invitation had been serendipity. We arranged to rendezvous at the Little Star Pizza parlor in San Francisco and then attend the Says You taping at Presentation Theater on the University of San Francisco campus.

Back when we were graduate students, Damon and I used to see each other on a daily basis and hang out together. That, however, hasn't been true in more than thirty years. We've stayed in touch intermittently, but we live at least a hundred miles apart and we've been working at different schools for over twenty years. I tried to remember when I had last seen him in person, but I wasn't certain. Once again, though, we would break pizza together and bandy words.

Some friendships are resilient in the face of interruptions, while others simply fade away and are forgotten. As we noshed and chatted, it was clear that Damon and I had one of the resilient kind. How pleasant. We took turns bragging or complaining about our activities at our colleges, swapped family news, and generally did the kind of catching up that good friends do when they're on the same wavelength, as we indeed were.

Later, when Says You was under way and Arnie Reisman's team crafted bogus definitions of “strigil” with which to fool the other team, I scribbled in the notebook I had brought with me and showed Damon what I had written: “sweat scraper.” He frowned at me a bit skeptically, but kept his own counsel. Up on stage, Carolyn Faye Fox, Arnie Reisman, and Paula Lyons took turns explaining the meaning of strigil. (Lyons described it as a tool to “remove excess sweat from an athlete,” whereupon I grinned triumphantly at Damon. I had to be right!) The rival team tried to decide which of the proffered definitions was the true one, finding that they did not believe the one involving perspiration (“Excess sweat? What is excess sweat?), so they picked the wrong one. Sher polled the audience for its preference, and we noisily cheered for the sweat tool. Lyons then revealed that she had had the correct definition. (Arnie had bluffed by saying a strigil was used to separate nut meat from its enveloping shell. I forget what Carolyn Faye Fox chose for her bluff.)

In the pause between rounds, Damon asked me how I had known such an obscure word. I think he was humoring me, since he probably could tell I was bursting to explain anyway.

“Remember the movie Spartacus?” I asked. “In the Roman baths they used strigils to scrap off the sweat after soaking in the hot water.”

Damon gave me a slow smile, then said, ”Well, I guess I'm not as big a fan of gladiator movies as you are.”

I wrinkled my nose back at him.

My friends. They can be such bitches.

As I was saying

(Just between you and me)

In January 2007, I poked some fun at erstwhile radio banshee Melanie Morgan for her abuse of parentheses. She was trying to stack the deck for a call-in program that was likely to determine her fate as a talk-show host at KSFO. (That particular storm eventually died down, but in 2008 she was finally dismissed—but not missed.) In her 2007 call to arms, Morgan included the following paragraph, which I embellished with a couple of snide corrections:

Now liberal bloggers are calling for our firing. They are also pushing for implication [sic: she means “implementation”] of the Fairness Doctrine to force liberal radio programming down the public’s throat. (They tried to compete in the free market with “Air America” and that failed miserably, so now they are using these tactics to silence conservative radio voices). [sic: the period belongs inside the parentheses]

---

I know it's slightly unsportsmanlike conduct to pick at small usage flaws in an e-mail bulletin, but I found it difficult to be charitable toward an eliminationist extremist like Morgan, who cackled cheerfully about abusing people she didn't like. So, as befits a mean, nasty, godless liberal, I couldn't resist taking a couple of cheap shots.

A more gentlemanly individual sprang to her (partial) defense:

Anonymous: The period doesn't necessarily belong inside the parenthesis. That's a stylistic choice—different style guides offer contradictory rules.

---

Although my unnamed commenter didn't offer an example of a style guide that disagrees with my parenthetical preference, I've seen enough bad guides to believe that one (at least) exists. Yet I remain unmoved.

Logic, of course, is an unreliable guide to usage in as human an endeavor as written language, but it is nevertheless the slender reed on which I rely in this instance. A parenthetical remark is an aside. One should be able to delete the remark without doing violence to the main thought. In Morgan's example, deleting the parentheses and the material they contain would leave an orphaned period. It should have been enclosed in the parentheses, where it would live or die with the rest of the parenthetical remark. (And that's the truth.)

Proofread!

Win some, lose some

“It really puzzled me at first, but then I figured out it was a proofreading error.”

“You're kidding! Is this like the infamous ‘butterfly ballot’ in Florida in 2000?”

“Oh, it's much, much worse. The candidate in question vanished! And so did his election hopes.”

I thought “Steve” had reported to me all there was to say about the student council election at American River College in Sacramento. My friend (and former student) had served as a poll worker during last week's balloting and thus enjoyed a front-row seat during the battle between the right-wing Christian incumbents and the “Change” coalition that challenged them.

The Change slate won a sweeping victory, taking six out of seven positions for student association officers and eight out of ten positions for at-large representatives. On Friday, when Steve sent me the link to ARC Students for Change, I noticed that Change candidate Cody Lathe was the only candidate for a leadership office who lost his race to the right-wing candidate (the so-called “ARC Students 4 Liberty”). Poor sucker. All his friends win, but he's left out in the cold. How did he lose when he was part of a very successful slate?

There's the rub! Are you really part of a slate if you're missing from the slate card? Steve gave me a scan of a flier that was widely distributed on campus last week. It's the Slate change card. Check it out:


Yep. Cody is missing. Someone forgot to list the Change candidate for director of public relations. That opened the door for the victory of Slavik Gurmeza, the extremely lonely sole member of the “Liberty” gang now represented among the officers of the ARC student association.

Now I'm just guessing here, but I expect that the other student association officers will give a very close reading to any press releases that Slavik prepares on behalf of the ARC student government.

Proofreading. It's a good thing.

My latest euphemism

A gift horse in my mouth

The orthodontist peered into my mouth and poked at my retainer.

“Hmm,” he said. “This could use a bit of activation.”

Activation?

“What's ‘activation,’ Doc?” I asked. “Some kind of term of art that orthodontists use?”

The orthodontist grinned at me (he had nice teeth). He plucked the retainer from my mouth and picked up a pair of stainless-steel needle-nosed pliers.

“It means your retainer can use some tightening.”

He tweaked the retainer's wire with his pliers and fit it back in my mouth.

“Feel okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

I was breaking in a new retainer. My old one no longer fit because I had neglected to wear it after a couple of crowns installed by my dentist made it difficult to wear. The new retainer was supposed to coax my teeth back into better alignment, too, since they had drifted a bit during the retainerless years. Hence the periodic tightening. I mean, activation.

My colleagues at school were delighted with my newly discovered euphemism. Even the humor-impaired felt inspired to try their best:

“I like to get activated on Friday night.”

“I'm staying on my diet until my belt needs activation.”

“My students think I'm an activated grader.”

“I like babes in activated jeans.”

“Hey, if you're inhibited, will people say you have an activated ass?”

Hey yourself, guy. That last one didn't work at all. If you're not an orthodontist, beware of trying to use their lingo.

A short lesson in semiotics

Please check it out

I had never heard of semiotics until about twenty-five years ago, when I read Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Eco, it seemed, was a semiotician. The biographical sketch of the author explained that semiotics was the study of signs, symbols, and significance. The Name of the Rose was fraught with symbology, including an elaborate red herring involving an apparent recapitulation of the signs of the apocalypse. I filed semiotics away as an interesting word and thought little more of it.

Our recent ill-fated fight against Proposition 8 in California (which in the longer run may yet bear interesting fruit) reminded me of the importance of symbols and the meanings people ascribe to them. The first campaign posters against Prop 8 included a green check mark in the “O” of “NO.” I remember in grade school that a check mark used to indicate that my teacher had found a mistake in my work. By the time I was in college, however, the check mark had morphed into a symbol of approbation and it was supplanted by the “X” symbol as a signifier of error. Therefore the first anti-8 signs might have been subtly misleading, suggesting that 8 was okay. See? It has a check mark! (A green one, no less.)


As the campaign heated up, new leadership took over the opposition campaign. The new campaign advisors immediately amended the signs, replacing the green check mark with a bright red X. They sharpened the words, too. Now it was clear. Proposition 8 was wrong. It was in error. The new signs blossomed everywhere, although the old version was still evident at campaign rallies (and on my bumper).


It was, unfortunately, too little, too late. Would the red X have saved us if we had seized upon it sooner? Perhaps. I think, rather, it was our overconfidence and late start that cost us dearly. If we had made better use of the opposition of Sen. Obama (more than a million Obama voters must also have voted for Prop 8) and Gov. Schwarzenegger, the election might have turned out better, but that's hindsight speaking. Instead, we are left with a small lesson in semiotics and an unfulfilled agenda for the future.

Prissy Percy protests politely

Don't go there!

It was an informal after-hours gathering at a colleague's house. We lapsed into talking shop, cheerfully describing the foibles of absent colleagues and the sins of wayward students. I began to recount the tale of a peevish student who got upset near the end of the semester that I would not guarantee his A in the class.

He was one of those extremely bright and extremely lazy students who had never had to break into a sweat in any of his previous classes, so he was offended that matters were proving to be just a little more difficult in calculus. He also liked to arrive late or skip class, so it was extremely unfair of me to average in zeros for all the assignments and quizzes he had missed. He was at risk of getting a B if he did not blow the doors off the final exam. It made him very unhappy.

Could I guarantee his A? No. Could he withdraw from the class? No; too late. He did not come back to class after our discussion and I noticed that he had magically vanished from my class roster. Somehow he had finagled special permission to wipe the slate clean despite having missed the drop deadline. I was deeply dismayed that someone had been willing to pull strings on the little prima donna's behalf, ensuring further postponement of a lesson in responsibility that he seriously needed to learn. In fact, I was more than dismayed. I was angered by his success at gaming the system. I told my colleagues:

“That little shit worked some angle and managed to talk a lamebrain flunky in administrative services into preserving his delicate little butt from the risk of getting a demerit on his transcript.”

My complaint was greeted with knowing chuckles. My colleagues had all met such students. One of my listeners, however, had a bemused smile on his face for a different reason.

“Hey, didn't anyone notice? Zee said ‘shit.’ Jesus Christ, Zeno, how much did that little fucker piss you off if you're starting to swear now?”

Busted! My exceedingly observant colleague was correct. I probably have the cleanest mouth in the math department. Perhaps the entire school. Hell, in all of North America, with the possible exception of a few convents. It rather sets me apart from my fellow math professors. It sure as hell sets me apart from my students. (Notice how I use “hell” for emphatic stress as if it still retains some currency as a profanity? Heck, how sad is that?)

My students, both male and female, litter their language with the f-word and don't even bat an eye. They stroll by with their cell phones stuck in their ears and the profanity flows freely and casually. Fascinating. That's how denatured profanity has become. F-bombs used to create shock waves in my youth. Today there's barely a tremor.

I never use the f-word myself (see how demurely I use the euphemism?), with minor exceptions for when I'm quoting others (see above, for example, or Dick Cheney). And the time when a young friend died as we sat vigil in the intensive care unit. On that occasion I combined it with some suitable blasphemy, which might have offended God if only he had remembered to exist.

It's perhaps even worse that I am a liberal blogger. I don't fit in. My leftish peers are decidedly more pungent in their prose than than those who describe themselves as wingnuts—I mean, conservatives. (Sorry.) The right-wing blogs even take quite a bit of pride in how clean their language is. Frankly, I think they should pay more attention to what they say than how they say it, but that appears not to concern them. (I guess it's okay to support torture if you say it nicely.)

My Listerined language is yet another item on the tally sheet that suggests I could be a repressed right-winger. I don't drink. I don't use drugs (except for those which are duly prescribed by a physician). I don't sport any tattoos or piercings. My hair is short. I often wear ties. I am thoroughly white-bread retro-conventional. I could infiltrate a Republican gathering without anyone being the wiser. (Of course, I'd have to bone up on my profanity if I were slipping into a meeting of McCain's campaign leadership.)

I was even mistaken for a Mormon once.

Even so, I have no big plans to change. I'm perfectly happy with my clean-mouthed lifestyle, supplemented as it is by a simply enormous vocabulary. There may even be advantages. For example, an epithet like “shithead” would just roll off my kid brother's back, but “microcephalic imbecile” always seemed to offend him quite satisfactorily.

My avoidance of Carlin's notorious seven dirty words may be a slight handicap, and will surely prevent my becoming a celebrated rap artist, but I'll manage somehow. And frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Pseudo-Freudian Republicans

True believers of the moment

Despite the crying need that so many of them have for strenuous psychological counseling, most Republicans claim to belong to the school of rugged individualism and mock the theories and therapies of Freud and his successors. Nevertheless, as devout members of the Church of Opportunism, they'll embrace the concept of Freudian slip with ardent fervor if it suits their purpose. That's why they're all over a 13-second sound bite from This Week with George Stephanopoulos in which Sen. Obama supposedly admits to his Muslim faith. It's a misrepresentation, of course, but when did that ever stop them?



The problem is simple: We just don't have enough punctuation in spoken English. And Barack Obama is too dignified to do “air quotes” even when he really should. (No one wants to be mistaken for Dr. Evil.) But as Victor Borge taught us long ago, rabbit ears can be our friend.

Here's a faithful transcript (including the candidate's peroration, truncated in the video) of the exchange between Obama and Stephanopoulos, as the latter insisted that McCain himself was not spreading smears against the Democratic standard bearer:

Obama: You're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my "Muslim faith" and you're absolutely right that that is not coming—

Stephanopoulos: Christian faith.

Obama: My Christian faith. Well, what I'm saying he hasn't suggested that I'm a Muslim.

[Stephanopoulos: (overtalking) He's suggested connections, right.]

Obama: And I think that his campaign's upper echelons have not either. What I think is fair to say is that, coming out of the Republican camp, there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith, something which I find deeply offensive.

---

But Sen. Obama did not hook his fingers in the air to underscore the sense in which he was citing “my Muslim faith”—a specious claim by GOP operatives and other members of the loony right—and thus we have a video clip certain to warm the bigoted cockles of many a shallow Christian.

Keep this in mind: Most of the Republicans who will cite the short version of the “Muslim faith” clip will know full well what Sen. Obama intended and what his statement meant. Therefore we should not hesitate to bestow upon them the title they so richly deserve: liars.

Notice I didn't put quotes around that.

Ass for sale

Get your frango while it's hot!

A fellow writer of sophisticated tastes and refined sensibilities sought my assistance recently with a vocabulary problem. His curiosity had been piqued and he knew I was just the person to alleviate his confusion:

Zeno, could you use your knowledge of the Portuguese tongue to explain this here pitcher? My mind reels with possibilities.

Is it true that flesh from the ass of the Brazilian frango tastes just like chicken?

Or could it be that “frango” is the first-person singular form of the verb “franger,” which translates roughly as “to frandge”?

---

It's a surprisingly good guess by my erudite friend, but—alas!—not quite on the mark. I hastened to set him right:

Well, we're on dangerous territory here! Literally speaking, frango is chicken. It's likely that ass in this context is an abbreviation for assado, which means roasted or baked. In other words (namely, English words), the vendor is advertising roasted chicken.

Then, of course, there are the slang possibilities. First of all (and most tamely), frango means a mistake, blunder, or cock-up. (I include the last one advisedly because frango is often translated as cockerel, an iconic symbol of Portuguese legend. The more common term, however, is galo, meaning rooster.)

More scandalous, however, is the usage of frango assado to indicate the position of the passive partner in the act of anal sex, which usage comes to us with the assurance of The Alternative Portuguese Dictionary. I'll have to take their word for it, since I've never heard the phrase used in that sense in my family circle. (Or if I did, I had no idea that that's what anyone was talking about.) This suggests the possibility that the vendor in the photo was not selling chicken ass, but this is a good place at which to end this discourse. Especially since you now know more than you could ever have wanted to know about frango assado.

—Z

---

My correspondent had sent his inquiry with copies to several other friends and acquaintances in the hopes of ensuring an enlightening answer. I, however, discreetly sent my reply only to him. When the other e-mail recipients began to pepper him with responses of varying degrees of seriousness, he decided to forward my response to everyone.

I didn't notice that Senhor Zeno replied without cc'ing everyone else.

Here 'tis.

This is NOT required reading, and while it is certainly informative and answers the original question, it may come under the heading of too much information—or as they say in England, “Too many data.”

---

Or, as they say in Portuguese:

“Bastante!”

Gods and know-nothings

Clueless at KSFO

The departure of Melanie Morgan from the KSFO commute-time talk show may have reduced the variety of right-wing vitriol, but the Bay Area radio station remains a reliable source of nonsense and idiocy. Sometimes word maven Richard Lederer calls in to promote one of his books or bandy words about, but Lederer represents the apogee of intellectualism when it comes to KSFO. Too bad he wasn't on hand this morning when Brian Sussman and Officer Vic (Tom Benner) were highlighting Barack Obama's supposed lies about his plan to withdraw troops from Iraq. That's probably because Lee Rodgers was off today and prefers to reserve Lederer's visits to his own segments. Thus the B team was in place in his stead.

Or maybe it was the C team. Sussman and Benner don't know the difference between “precipitous” and “immediately.” They mocked Sen. Obama for denying that he had called for a “precipitous” withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Their evidence was a statement on Obama's website that he would begin withdrawals “immediately” upon becoming president:

Sussman: As of Friday, this was still on his website: “Barack Obama's plan. Judgment you can trust.” In September 2007, he laid out a detailed plan for how he will end the war as president. You ready for the plan?

Benner: Yeah, Brian.

Sussman: It's on his website. “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq.” Now does that sound like precipitous withdrawal to you?

---

Excuse me, guys, but “precipitous” means “hasty” or “rapid”; it carries connotations of recklessness, which I'm sure is what you were after. By contrast, “immediately” means “without delay” or “right away.” You can begin something immediately (rather than delaying it) and there is no implication that the process you began is either rapid or slow. Tim Conway could immediately start shuffling across the room like the world's oldest man. His progress would be slow.

We must, however, entertain the possibility that Sussman and Benner know full well the distinction between “precipitous” and “immediately.” I think they don't, but it's possible. They are propagandists for a right-wing radio station, so anything that advances their agenda is permissible. Besides, they can count on many of their listeners to fall for whatever they say. Love and war. And politics. It's all fair!

I admit, though, that I think it's more likely that Sussman and Benner are as clueless as they come across during their broadcast. The key bit of evidence came hard on the heels of their colloquy on Obama's alleged contradictions. Sussman segued from his quotation of a statement from Obama's campaign site that contained the word “immediately” to a discussion of supposedly seditious elements that had been dropped from the website:

Sussman: You can't find this link any longer. It's been off for months now. But I still have the copy, when you could link from his website to their website and from their website to his website. This was Muslims for Obama.

Benner: Yes.

Sussman: Their tag-line was “Donate one dollar for one nation under God.” Now I got news for you. I don't think the God they were talking about is the God of Christianity and Judaism and let's include Hinduism and Buddhism and all the other isms. I think it has something to do with—

Benner: The one that says “submit.” [Laughter] Isn't there one? It seems to me. Let me go up to the catalog, Bob. Let's see, there's one here that says “submit or die”! Yeah, that's the one.

Sussman: In a word, yes. Submit.

---

Since Sussman and Benner haven't been paying attention, let's clue them in. The world's three major monotheistic religions are closely related. Just as Christians fancy themselves the successors of Judaism, the religion whose adherents supposedly didn't recognize the coming of their messiah, so do Muslims see themselves as successors to Christianity, the religion whose adherents didn't recognize the coming of the new prophet Muhammad.

In brief, Yaweh = God = Allah. You can have fun quibbling about differences in emphasis (whether the Jews may have also recognized lesser gods, why the Christians adopted a trifurcated concept of deity, and if Muslims regard Allah as the perfected version of predecessor notions of godhood), the fundamental notion for all three religions is that there is one supreme god. Arabs who are Christians use the name “Allah” when referring to God and do not imply by that usage that they are adherents of Islam.

But I trust you noticed the more egregious error in Sussman's ignorant rant. He included Hinduism and Buddhism under the Judeo-Christian “one God” umbrella, where they certainly do not belong, while excluding Islam, which certainly does belong in the line of descent of Old Testament monotheism. Hinduism espouses many gods while Buddhism is content to acknowledge none. English vocabulary words aren't the only things the KSFO talkers don't understand.

That's not the point, though, is it? The agenda at KSFO is not fact-based. The intent is to drive a wedge between the United States and Islamic culture. We need bad guys to ensure more electoral victories for the GOP. We're the good guys. Muslims are the bad guys (along with Democrats, liberals, gays, lesbians, atheists, and evolutionists). They're not like us. Oh, and Obama isn't like us either. Vote Republican.

Thank you, no. Republicans and their shills embrace a crabbed and cramped cultural view of us-and-them that reduces everything and everyone to caricatures. Let us laugh them to scorn. Cheekily borrowing some words from Psalm 2:4, I say that we shall have them in derision. They are so easily refuted. But will that be enough? My one concern about these idiots of the airwaves is reflected in the cautionary words of Adlai Stevenson, who was reportedly told by a supporter that he was sure to get the vote of every thinking American. “Thank you,” replied Stevenson, “but I need a majority to win.”

If you're a thinking person, get out there and make a majority. Otherwise the know-nothings win. And we lose.

A nit at the opera

My way or the wrong way!

You can't beat the American Record Guide when it comes to insightful reviews of classical recordings and videos, as well as informative reports on live performances around the world. Every issue is a feast of nearly 300 pages. One might think that this generous offering should be enough to sate any music aficionado, but resident curmudgeon and editor David Vroon cannot resist the opportunity to serve up lagniappes on proper behavior.

Vroon routinely decries the state of society (we're in the hands of barbarians) and music appreciation (we have tin ears and popular music is perverse). I'm sympathetic—to a degree—and it's difficult not to admire someone who knows everything about everything and is willing to share the bounty of his omniscience. An unsigned squib appears as a filler on p. 232 of the March/April 2008 issue. Although it's unattributed, I think I recognize the lion by his paw:

Word Police: Brava and Bravi

There is an English interjection: Bravo!

It has no feminine or plural form; interjections do not get declined. When you hear “Brava!” or “Bravi!” you are listening to a pompous ass—or you are in Italy.

By the same token, a great female player is a virtuoso, same as a man. And it's piano concertos, not concerti.

Why do these people pretend to be Italians? What is wrong with English?

---

The writer knows what is proper and would appreciate it if we were to emulate his impeccable example. Let us pass gently over the opportunity to make sport of a sententious finger-wagger calling someone a pompous ass. Let me instead perform a dutiful examination of conscience. I do believe that I have sinned.

There were three occasions when I was privileged to see and hear the phenomenal Birgit Nilsson at the San Francisco Opera. She sang Isolde in Tristan und Isolde, the Dyer's Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten, and Brünnhilde in Die Walküre. From piano to forte—or should I say “from soft to loud,” Mr. Vroon?—the diva's voice left us vibrating in sympathetic delight. When she took her curtain calls, I'm quite certain that I yelled “Brava!” quite vigorously, as did several other people in the audience.

Those other people were pompous asses, of course. I, on the other hand, always cheer in Italian at the end of a German opera. Tanto meglio!

A turn of the phrase

Twisted

Issues of great pith and moment were in play. It was a meeting of the faculty senate and my colleagues were discussing the process by which hiring priorities were set by the college. Some professors were piqued that a few senators didn't bother showing up for senate meetings except when their own departments were trying to get authorization to hire new or replacement faculty. They're scarce when less glamorous issues are on the agenda and there's work to be done. One senator attempted to summarize the general sense of the assembly:

“It's a craw in our side!”

My ears pricked up and I twisted in my seat to see the speaker. Oh, good. It wasn't an English professor. But at least now I had something with which to entertain myself while my fellow educators droned on.

What had my colleague intended? I believe he had inadvertently crafted a chimerical amalgam of St. Paul's “thorn in the flesh” (so frequently rendered as a “thorn in one's side”) and the phrase “sticks in one's craw.” It's perfect: We don't know the nature of Paul's thorn and no one in these urbanized days knows what a craw is. The two pieces fit together by virtue of both being obscure, their fuzzy edges allowing my colleague to unconsciously merge them.

Then someone suggested we look at the by-laws to see what we could do about absentee senators and the moment was over.

The name game

Titled lords and ladies

I cringe whenever it happens—which is at most education seminars or campus forums. Someone will step up to the microphone and address the audience with an introductory statement:

“Hello. My name is Doctor Jane Doe.”

“Good morning. My name is Professor John Smith.”

Betcha it's not! Unless your parents were even wackier than you.

“What shall we name the baby, dear?”

“Oh, I'm really fond of professional titles. How about ‘Senator Robert Roe’?”

“That's a great idea!”

Sad to say, I knew Senator Robert Roe. No, that was not his real name and his parents did not actually name him that way, but I did know a state senator in Sacramento during my time on the legislative staff who got hung up on his title. He had his driver's license changed so that it included “Senator” in front of his name. He became an object of ridicule later when he petitioned the court to make “Senator” officially part of his name. His lame excuse was that he had signed legal documents that way during his tenure in office, and he was concerned that those documents would no longer be valid if he reverted to his pre-elective name. We rolled our eyes and shook our heads—if we were nice. Others pointed and guffawed. Senator Richard Roe had not been a bad legislator, but he stumbled badly on his way to becoming a senior statesman, ending up as a laughingstock instead.

Look, people. Your title is not part of your name. It is a prefix to your name. If you must use it, this is how you do it:

“Hello. I am Doctor Jane Doe.”

“Good morning. I am Professor John Smith.”

Now I'm mollified.

By the way, you can spare us the titles outside an academic context. If you introduce yourself as Doctor Doe at a social gathering, someone is going to tell you where it hurts. If you make a point of your professorship in casual company, folks may well be put off. Feel free to dredge it up if they ask you what you do. Then it's cool.

And that's the prescription from Doctor Zeno (not a real doctor).