Literature
Meme is mem, not me-me nor meem
Apr07
I was driven to write this article of dubious merit by a simple question from Say no to Crack humor blogger extraordinaire, Anita. Why do they call it meme anyway? or something like that (Emails are confidential right!)
As a Pisstaker with 2 years of French, I would hazard a guess that the blogging term Meme originates from the French word même. In certain circumstances, même, as in moi-méme, can mean "myself". This makes perfect sense, as memes are an excuse for people to blog about themselves in some contrived list-oriented way.
However, history is a strange story teller and all is not as straight forward as it seems in the world of words.
Rumor has it, you see, that in France, même (pronounced mem) was originally Moi Moi, but noone inside or outside of France could pronounce it without sounding stupid, so même it was for centuries. In fact, it was like that until quite recently. (ie before le blogging took off in la France!)
Suddenly out of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, the whole Wawa phenomenon blew the "stupid mnemonics with too many vowels" theory out the window. Millions of Americans happily sounded off like reverberating guitars at least twice a day. Wawa, Wawa cawfee, wawa wait in line... Repetitive word sounds were becoming socially acceptable in the North East's convenience mini mart coffee store of choice.
Rapidly, linguistically challenged techs, living off of Wawa coffee and banana nut muffins started to experiment with names for their web 2.0 software applications. Instead of celebrating the vowel, they hit on the idea of dropping the "e" as far as was humanly possible. So Flicker was born without an e, revver without an e, beggr, fuckr, suckr, and so it went on, all e-lessly acceptable.
At that point, even new verbs got invented ie you could google. So logically, if you could Google, you could do anything to the Nglish language. It seemed as if every word was under potential attack, even même.
Luckily there are always checks and balances in language. Be thankful that the Web 2.0 deal is still young and only marginally influential. If not, this whole article would be unreadable and we would now be seeing a blogospheric explosion of "e"-less memes, MM's as it were. And we would have to learn a new form of Nglish.
"Come join in at MM Monday. Xprimnt with other bloggrs writing maninglss drivl about 5 things thy hat about thmslvs, or 5 bloggrs who irritat thm."
For students of language, like moi-même, that would have been catastrophic too, as we would be struggling to even guess where many terms came from. But, now, language has come full circle, e's are back and we are back to même without the hat, aka Meme.
May I take this opportunity to state that Pisstakers blog fans should join me in launching the next revolution of linguistic nonsense based on French haute couture. Henceforth "we" refer to these silly Meme's as mems. Mercy. And here is my 5 obsession meme.
The root of all meme's
As a Pisstaker with 2 years of French, I would hazard a guess that the blogging term Meme originates from the French word même. In certain circumstances, même, as in moi-méme, can mean "myself". This makes perfect sense, as memes are an excuse for people to blog about themselves in some contrived list-oriented way.
However, history is a strange story teller and all is not as straight forward as it seems in the world of words.
Meme même moi-moi
Rumor has it, you see, that in France, même (pronounced mem) was originally Moi Moi, but noone inside or outside of France could pronounce it without sounding stupid, so même it was for centuries. In fact, it was like that until quite recently. (ie before le blogging took off in la France!)
Suddenly out of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, the whole Wawa phenomenon blew the "stupid mnemonics with too many vowels" theory out the window. Millions of Americans happily sounded off like reverberating guitars at least twice a day. Wawa, Wawa cawfee, wawa wait in line... Repetitive word sounds were becoming socially acceptable in the North East's convenience mini mart coffee store of choice.
Lose the "e" losr
Rapidly, linguistically challenged techs, living off of Wawa coffee and banana nut muffins started to experiment with names for their web 2.0 software applications. Instead of celebrating the vowel, they hit on the idea of dropping the "e" as far as was humanly possible. So Flicker was born without an e, revver without an e, beggr, fuckr, suckr, and so it went on, all e-lessly acceptable.
At that point, even new verbs got invented ie you could google. So logically, if you could Google, you could do anything to the Nglish language. It seemed as if every word was under potential attack, even même.
Meme survives web 2.0 holocaust
Luckily there are always checks and balances in language. Be thankful that the Web 2.0 deal is still young and only marginally influential. If not, this whole article would be unreadable and we would now be seeing a blogospheric explosion of "e"-less memes, MM's as it were. And we would have to learn a new form of Nglish.
"Come join in at MM Monday. Xprimnt with other bloggrs writing maninglss drivl about 5 things thy hat about thmslvs, or 5 bloggrs who irritat thm."
For students of language, like moi-même, that would have been catastrophic too, as we would be struggling to even guess where many terms came from. But, now, language has come full circle, e's are back and we are back to même without the hat, aka Meme.
Post Script
May I take this opportunity to state that Pisstakers blog fans should join me in launching the next revolution of linguistic nonsense based on French haute couture. Henceforth "we" refer to these silly Meme's as mems. Mercy. And here is my 5 obsession meme.
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. Swearing in English and Spanish - the semantics!
Mar07
De-semanticise coño
In real English, de-semanticised means that words that were once profane, have become shadows of their former insulting selves.
If you ask an 18 to 80 year old male what coño means literally, they will probably smile and say the c word. 18 to 80 women will either blush and tell you not to be so rude, or point to a patch down south. A grandma will slap your face!
In Spain you will hear everyone, from toreador to toddler utter the word coño, a sort of cross between exasperation and bloody hell. It is amazing how those 4 letters were a complete taboo for hundreds of years, but have been incorporated into the everyday language of innocence today.
Semanticised - hostia and bollocks
On the opposite side of the profanity coin, simple, innocent words can be made vulgar!
Hostia which, in Spanish, is literally the wafer at a communion, is nowadays incorporated into every working man's conversation on every building site and in every bar in Spain. It is hard to translate its meaning exactly, because the tone and emphasis of a word makes a big difference in meaning in conversation. Let's just say the biscuit has given way to the bastard.
On a similar vein, in the 70's, The Sex Pistols released an album, Never Mind the Bollocks. Their record company probably did their homework better than the civil liberties people who tried to get the title banned for being offensive. According to the judge, the Anglo Saxon b word is per se, not rude at all, it is good old English. It is only well spoken poorly educated civil liberties folks in the 20th century who saw it that way. ie the "good guys" semanticised the innocent word into an oath.
Invented swear words - cacking
Last on this linguistic list, in a category, (or is it a world), all of their own, we find made-up swear words. Cacking is a weird English word, because popular mythology says it was an expletive invented for TV - cacking crap TV at that!
There is an horrendous soap opera set in Liverpool, called Brookside. It was baaaaad. In order to convey the Liverpudlian propensity to swear, without getting the program banned, the writers came up with a supposed substitute for fucking. So, Cacking hell, mate, wa sa abou' ? spoken with venom, was rude and threatening on TV but not in real life.
The program's catch phrase should have been, Brookside is fucking crap, and it should have been taken off the air in a blink, but instead, they insisted on cacking well pimping the culture of a dockland city with about as much class as a cacking turnip.
How to swear politely
When you next decide to insult someone bigger than you, try a new approach. You cacking gollicker will not get you punched in the mouth, but it will make you feel good when venting your spleen. Win-win, coño!
If you have any thoughts on such a rudely educational post, please fire away with comments and posts.
The Zombie meltdown effect at B&N
Nov06
Barnes and Noble have some neat stores and millions of books. Wandering around the Philly store I was freaked out though. Everywhere I looked, my eyes seemed to focus on books about zombies and death.
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