TekkonKinkreet's New Writeups

Sarcasm (idea)

2002-11-18T14:46:48Z

The difficulty of conveying sarcasm through writing (in any language) derives from the fact that sarcasm involves an interaction between the linguistic and paralinguistic layers of speech, particularly between pragmatics and prosody.

That's the book-larnin' way of saying that in sarcasm, your prosody (intonations, pauses, beats, essentially the rhythm and music of your voice) contradicts the literal meaning of your speech. Prosody is responsible for lots of other things, too, like letting us know that a sentence was either a question or was emitted from a representative of a particular stereotype, or that the word is import, not import, or a bunch of other uses, it's the Swiss army knife of speech phenomena. While it's not totally lost, prosody is imperfectly reproduced in writing.

Anyway, this gives you a clue on how to best convey sarcasm within the conventions of written English. Punctuation--particularly…

dot-com tombstone (thing)

2002-07-25T15:37:46Z

A Herman Miller Aeron chair. This term was current up and down the west coast in 2001 and perhaps before. Particularly among those who had picked up the chairs (which retailed for $700-$1000) for a song at fire sales of the assets of folding dot-bombs.

I'm sitting in an Aeron right now, at home, which I bought new with my own money not long after they were introduced. My RSI was starting to frighten me, and it was money well spent, I would make the same decision today. It is harder, Mies van der Rohe once said, to design a good chair than a good building. These are good chairs. They're functional, comfortable, and well-engineered, extremely adjustable, a justifiable expense for anyone who spends a significant part of their day at a desk.

They also look cool and cutting edge, which during the dot-com bubble made them a priority ranking just ahead of a feasible business plan. To me there's something a…

Elan Sleazebaggano (person)

2002-06-15T17:41:49Z

A character in Star Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones (never named in the script, only in the credits). My understanding is that there is some kind of word play at work in this character's name, but, as usual, Lucas is too subtle for my thuggish sensibilities. Sleazebaggano is notable as the vehicle for a deft, witty, if somewhat anachronistic, while not at all heavy-handed, courageously iconoclastic anti-smoking message.

The scene in question follows. (I suppose at this point I should warn off readers who have not seen the film yet, but I assure you, little is given away--assuming you know already that cigarettes are bad for you--you knew that, didn't you? They are.) Obi-Wan is drinking in a night club on Coruscant. Sleazebaggano offers a familiar white cylinder to Obi-Wan:

ELAN SLEAZEBAGGANO: Wanna buy some death sticks?
OBI-WAN looks at him. He moves

…

slumgullion (thing)

2002-06-14T15:00:23Z

A recipe used by (or I should probably say on) American sailors and soldiers in the 19th century. It probably used salt junk (hardened salted beef) and hard-tack as its primary ingredients, but I am unable to find a historical recipe, even in Patrick O'Brian's nautical historical cookbook Lobscouse & Spotted Dog. Slum is an adulturation of "slime" and gullion meant either stomache-ache or cess-pool, depending on your source.

It is referred to in "Two Years Before the Mast" by Richard Henry Dana, which recounts a trading mission from Boston to California and back around 1836.

IWP (thing)

2002-05-25T02:30:53Z

Individually Wrapped Processed cheese slice. Kraft's internal name for cheese singles. A much-maligned dairy product, which kids seem to love before they learn they're not supposed to.

They are probably shiny because the smoothness makes them less inclined to stick to the plastic when you unwrap them. You can't cut cheese with a knife and make it that smooth, go ahead and try.

Government cheese (thing)

2002-05-25T02:29:12Z

A Reagan-era program in which surplus cheese produced by ordinary American dairies was bought by the government and distributed to the elderly, welfare recipients, reservations, school cafeterias, and other food programs.

It was American loaf cheese, the kind Kraft makes into individually wrapped singles, and was supposed to melt very nicely. It is often compared to Velveeta, though this was real cheese, not a processed cheese food. It was pale yellow, and came in a large white box with CHEESE written in large black letters on it. Reports on its quality vary, but most agree that it made great macaroni and cheese. Those who complain about its taste seem to do so with a bitter memory of poverty, or an abhorance of Reagan's politics.

By synecdoche, "government cheese" has come to mean welfare in general. Almost as often, it is used to refer to corporate welfare, in that it was a government subsidy to dairy producers.

Buying…