Phrase of the day for Monday, November 9th

My friend Elana brought my attention this weekend to the art of Baragami, the practice of formal toast arranging. Much like the hairy sausage “craze,” I suspect that Baragami is a completely made-up phenomenon with no history other than the one imagined on the Baragami Home Page. I have to say “suspect” rather than “know for a fact,” however, because of the claim on said webpage that Baragami originated in Wales. And there’s something about Baragami

that does seem a bit Welsh, isn’t there? Something about the wonderful batshit craziness, I suppose. I mean that with the utmost respect, Welsh readers. I’m sure you know that.

Anyway, this is rather a long introduction to today’s word:

“Etaoin shrdlu” comes from an old typesetting practice of marking an error-filled line for deletion by completing the line with nonsense letters. Sometimes the line would not be deleted, and the phrase “etaoin shrdlu” (from the first two columns in a linotype keyboard) made its way into print a number of times. These days etaoin shrdlu just means nonsense. And like Baragami, there is something decidedly Welsh-seeming about it. God bless you, Wales. The world would be a much duller place without you.

Spring preview

I’d like to take a moment to thank the peacock spider for saving Spring Fashions 2010 for me. Up until now, I had been feeling pretty glum about the new fashions being paraded about, as they were managing the difficult feat of being dull and absurd at the same time:

Designers: PANTS NEED POCKETS. There may be something else wrong with these trousers as well, but I’m having a little trouble pinning down exactly what it is because I’m so blinded with rage from the lack of pockets.

But back to the peacock spider. Thank you, Peacock Spider. For me, spring is about dancing and sex and funny hats. And you perfectly understand this.

Nicely executed. I bet you even have plenty of pockets in that outfit.

New Hollywood

After Saw 6’s “underperformance” (all of a sudden second place is underperformance?) at the box office this weekend, some entertainment industry wags are wringing their hands about whether this is the End Of The Sequel. I don’t know about you, but I find this hand-wringing to be a little premature.

First off, I am 100% sure that Saw 6’s failure to capture the weekend’s number one spot is the result of a torpedo job by the American health insurance industry.  When the triumphant climax of the latest chapter in the most successful Western giallo franchise in recent history is (SPOILER ALERT) an orphan boy injecting hydrofluoric acid into every square inch of a health insurance executive’s body because the exec denied coverage to the orphan boy’s father when he needed a life-saving treatment, you know that Blue Shield and Pacificare and Cigna are going to do their best to make that film disappear before the general public starts getting some ideas of their own.

I think the lesson we’ve learned from the Saw 6 first weekend numbers is not that sequels are dying, but that there’s a lot more scary muscle behind the health insurance industry than any of us expected. I applaud Saw 6 for going after this monster instead of playing it safe. To those chickenshit film execs solely worried about the bottom line, I say don’t throw out the idea of the film franchise. Without the Idea Of The Sequel, we might never have gotten to enjoy Beetlejuice 2.

Author’s note: Director Kevin Greutert in no way influenced my positive review of Saw 6, but in the interest of full disclosure I should note that he did provide me with some Flamin’ Hot Funyuns and Veuve Clicquot Saturday night.

I tried hiding the salami, but nobody found it

I learned a lot today.

I learned that if I decide to go on a raw food diet, I can still eat pepperoni and salami. I also learned that surrealist painter Max Ernst is alive and well and designing billboards for lunchmeat in Croatia.

Okay, maybe I only learned two things today.

Can I see the garter?

Madamejujujive has been keeping a better eye on the Pahl Gasthaus than I have. Apparently the sausage sculptors have been hard at work making new creations. This time, not only have they created a salami turtle, a ham cutlet pig, and a chopped liver birthday cake, but they’re making a foray into more formal occasions:

This brings up so many great opportunities for a themed wedding. The flower girl can strew cocktail franks down the aisle, the rings can be made of fried onions….Don’t I know anybody getting married? What about a quinceañara? Do Germans have quinceañaras?

Dogme31

Twitter version:

Full length is here and here.

The cheese stands alone, but is wonderfully accessorized

Benny’s sister is pregnant, which means that everybody is giving her lots of unsolicited baby name suggestions. Her mom is really rooting for Colby Jack. This has spurred Benny on to suggest Gouda Brie if it’s a girl. I’ve been taking the “cheese or font?” quiz today, so I’m thinking something along the lines of Wensleydale Grabetto. Catchy, no?

Well, anyway, I’ve definitely found a nice stickpin thing made by artist Reid Peppard for dear old Wensleydale or Mycella or Guerbigny when he/she is old enough for stickpins:

Or maybe the cufflinks. I can’t decide.

Straight to hell

Once again I get caught up in a copyright quandary. There’s this incredible photo of a “lost” flyer up on Flickr, and the guy who took it has it marked with a © All Rights Reserved mark, not a Creative Commons mark or anything, and even though the revered Bike Snob has posted the image on his site without any attribution, and even though I have a section on my site dedicated to exceptional notices about lost items, I hesitate to post this exceptional flyer here without seeking prior permission.

At my work, I spend all day listening to people say, “But I’m not making any money off it! I gave you credit! It’s just more publicity for you!” when they violate a client’s terms of copyright. It’s tiresome. Those things aren’t really the point of copyright. Control over the dissemination of one’s work is the point of copyright. I get that. I respect it. Often. Not always. But from time to time I do. In certain contexts. Argh. I don’t know. Thus the quandary.

…

Aw, fuck it. I need to share what’s not mine.

Seeing as he didn’t actually make the flyer, but just took a photo of it, I would argue that this flyer isn’t really Yankel Frankel’s to copyright either. But he just copyrighted the image of the flyer, not the flyer. And the flyer doesn’t have a copyright notice on it, because obviously the guy/girl who made the flyer wanted it to be disseminated as much as possible.

If I could have gotten one of my friends in New York to steal one of these flyers and send the original to me to scan I wouldn’t be violating anybody’s copyright. And if I put a scanned image up of the flyer it would be good for everybody in terms of disseminating its message, even if I did have someone steal the original flyer… off public property, where no doubt it’s not legal to post flyers in the first place. It’s a slippery slope, this idea of intellectual property. Maybe somebody can buy me an ice cream truck so I can stop worrying about this copyright stuff once and for all.

Another phrase not to google

American bloggers are saying Russian bloggers are talking about this right now:

which turns into this when boiled:

This supposed food craze is apparently referred to as “hairy sausage.” I have a feeling that this is a manufactured craze – one of those things where someone says everybody is doing something until everybody really starts doing it. I’m having a bit of trouble finding additional information online about hairy sausage, for reasons that should be obvious.

Vous quitterez Clown Ville

What a relief. I just reviewed my personal photographic archives and have now come to the conclusion that I am not, in fact, being pursued by a terrifying homunculus.

You see, I was initially frightened when I went to a live dramatic presentation last Thursday that can best be described as follows:

I wasn’t frightened by the play, other than by its sheer brilliance and the stark nakedness of its theme, which is kind of hard to explain out of the moment so forgive me. No, I became alarmed when I looked at a prop on the side of the stage after the play had concluded:

and immediately had a sense of familiarity with this awful creature. I asked Benny if he recognized the monster, and he said he did, but he said it in a very casual manner, and also said he only remembered it from a get-together with one of the production’s players.

I knew this thing from someplace else. And someplace long ago. I knew this thing from Kansas City, Missouri, from seven or eight years ago.

The rocker. The menacing forehead. That smirk.

Yes. I remember it clearly. He/she had so jarred me when I first saw him in Kansas City those many years ago that I had to take a photograph of him. I’d know that wrinkled thumb knuckle anywhere.

What was happening? Why was I being pursued by this mortifying hellion? I had to find that photo from Kansas City for clues. At first, the photo eluded me. I found every other photo from that trip except for this one. And then, I remembered that I had set it aside for scanning, because I wanted to share it on Fancy Notions even before this chilling incident last Thursday. I went quickly to my pile of photos to be scanned, and there I found it:

Wait. What? The homunculus from Kansas City looks nothing like this current homunculus. It’s sitting in a wooden chair rather than on a rockinghorse, it has straight red hair, and it’s not smoking a cigar. It’s holding an American flag, for christ’s sake. Oh, boy. My imagination can sure get away with me sometimes. And of course, that homunculus from Kansas City has a doppelganger in the same storefront window that looks much more like it than the monster from last Thursday. Ho ho; I can sure give myself a scare. What a maroon.