Philoillogica

Practical Federalism

Sarah: "Can I drive my car with a temporary Ontario plate in New Brunswick?"

Random member of New Brunswick public service: "I don't know. What does Quebec say?"

I'm back, and it's all about MEME

I found this over at Pandagon.  Essentially one goes over to Music Outfitters, types in the year of  graduation from high school, and cuts and pastes it into a blog.  Songs you like(d) get bolded; those you don't get stricken thru.  If you don't know it or didn't care, leave it alone.  I've included my comments where applicable. 

I graduated in 1997, so...that gives us:

1. Candle In The Wind 1997, Elton John
I was working in a florist's shop when I heard the news that Princess Diana died.  My first thought was "Jesus, this is gonna be a circus."
2. Foolish Games / You Were Meant For Me, Jewel
I used to warble this on my drive to school in a dreadful falsetto.  It's amazing the windshield never broke.
3. I'll Be Missing You, Puff Daddy and Faith Evans
4. Un-Break My Heart, Toni Braxton
5. Can't Nobody Hold Me Down, Puff Daddy
6. I Believe I Can Fly, R. Kelly
7. Don't Let Go (Love), En Vogue
8. Return Of The Mack, Mark Morrison
9. How Do I Live, LeAnn Rimes
10. Wannabe, Spice Girls
Loved it.  Shhhhh.  Don't tell anyone.
11. Quit Playing Games (With My Heart), Backstreet Boys
12. MMMBop, Hanson
13. For You I Will, Monica
14. You Make Me Wanna..., Usher
15. Bitch, Meredith Brooks
It's super lame and poppy, but show me another song on this list that admits that women are *gasp* complicated.  Sorry, Sheryl, "Every day is a winding road" doesn't count as aphoristic.
16. Nobody Keith Sweat
17. Semi-Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind
18. Barely Breathing, Duncan Sheik
19. Hard To Say I'm Sorry, Az Yet Featuring Peter Cetera
20. Mo Money Mo Problems, Notorious B.I.G.
21. The Freshmen, Verve Pipe
I never figured out more than half the words to this song.  All mumbling.  But it seemed mopey and deep, so I liked it.
22. I Want You, Savage Garden
23. No Diggity, BLACKstreet Featuring Dr. Dre
Mmmm-hmmmmmm.
24. I Belong To You (Every Time I See Your Face), Rome
25. Hypnotize, Notorious B.I.G.
26. Every Time I Close My Eyes, Babyface
27. In My Bed, Dru Hill
28. Say You'll Be There, Spice Girls
29. Do You Know (What It Takes), Robyn
30. 4 Seasons Of Loneliness, Boyz II Men
31. G.H.E.T.T.O.U.T., Changing Faces
32. Honey, Mariah Carey
33. I Believe In You And Me, Whitney Houston
34. Da' Dip, Freaknasty
35. 2 Become 1, Spice Girls
36. All For You, Sister Hazel
37. Cupid, 112
38. Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?, Paula Cole
39. Sunny Came Home, Shawn Colvin
Two words, Sunny: Go back.
40. It's Your Love, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill
41. Ooh Aah... Just A Little Bit, Gina G
42. Mouth, Merril Bainbridge
43. All Cried Out, Allure Featuring 112
44. I'm Still In Love With You, New Edition
45. Invisible Man, 98 Degrees
46. Not Tonight, Lil' Kim
47. Look Into My Eyes, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
48. Get It Together, 702
49. All By Myself, Celine Dion
50. It's All Coming Back To Me Now, Celine Dion
51. My Love Is The Shhh!, Somethin' For The People
52. Where Do You Go, No Mercy
53. I Finally Found Someone, Barbra Streisand and Bryan Adams
54. I'll Be, Foxy Brown Featuring Jay-Z
55. If It Makes You Happy , Sheryl Crow
It doesn't. Shut up shut up shut up.
56. Never Make A Promise, Dru Hill
57. When You Love A Woman, Journey
58. Up Jumps Da Boogie, Magoo And Timbaland
59. I Don't Want To / I Love Me Some Him, Toni Braxton
60. Everyday Is A Winding Road, Sheryl Crow
Why won't you just shut up?
61. Cold Rock A Party, Mc Lyte
62. Pony, Ginuwine
63. Building A Mystery, Sarah McLachlan
64. I Love You Always Forever, Donna Lewis
65. Your Woman, White Town
66. C U When U Get There, Coolio
67. Change The World, Eric Clapton
68. My Baby Daddy, B-Rock and The Bizz
69. Tubthumping, Chumbawamba
Can I just say how awesome this song was to start college to?
70. Gotham City, R. Kelly
71. Last Night, Az Yet
72. ESPN Presents The Jock Jam, Various Artists
73. Big Daddy, Heavy D
74. What About Us, Total
75. Smile, Scarface
76. What's On Tonight, Montell Jordan
77. Secret Garden, Bruce Springsteen
Co-opted by Jerry Maguire, but still good for all that.
78. The One I Gave My Heart, Aaliyah
79. Fly Like An Eagle, Seal
80. No Time, Lil' Kim
81. Naked Eye, Luscious Jackson
82. Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix), Los Del Rio
83. On and On, Erykah Badu
84. Don't Wanna Be A Player, Joe
85. I Shot The Sheriff, Warren G
86. You Should Be Mine (Don't Waste Your Time), Brian McKnight Featuring Mase
87. Don't Cry For Me Argentina, Madonna
This is when I started to doubt that Madonna was the coolest person ever.  She went from Sex to Evita?
88. Someone, SWV
89. Go The Distance, Michael Bolton
90. One More Time, Real McCoy
91. Butta Love, Next
92. Coco Jamboo, Mr. President
93. Twisted, Keith Sweat
94. Barbie Girl, Aqua
95. When You're Gone / Free To Decide, Cranberries
96. Let Me Clear My Throat, DJ Kool
97. I Like It, Blackout Allstars
98. You're Makin' Me High / Let It Flow, Toni Braxton
99. You Must Love Me, Madonna
100. Let It Go, Ray J

Ugh.  How depressing.  That's what was on the radio in my formative years? No wonder I started drinking young.

Blog round up: better than that stuff that kills weeds

So instead of working, I'm...

...sobbing over Getupgrrl's birth story for Gefilte...

...endorsing this kickass poster over at feministing...

...peeing myself over Dooce's telephone conversations with her sister...

...counterbalancing Getupgrrl's heartwarming account with a much less sentimental version of the birth process from TwistyFaster...

...hoping that Skot's harrassment seminar taught him a few more propositional phrases as good as "I wanna bang you like a screen door"...

...crying, again, thanks to Fussy...

Jesus, that was intense.  Now I'm going back to work.

"You may know kung fu...but you're still a fairy."

BEIJING, Aug. 18 -- THE filming of the sequel to the martial arts blockbuster “Kung Fu Hustle,” directed by Hong Kong's “King of Comedy” Stephen Chow, will begin in Shanghai this September or October and will be completed by the year end.

The sequel reportedly recruits almost all the faces appearing in “Kung Fu Hustle,” including Chow, Lam Tse-chung (Chow's sidekick), Yuen Qiu (the landlady) and Yuen Wah (the landlord).

Even Chan Kwok-kwan, whose character died in the first film, will return with a new character in the sequel.

The only one missing is the female lead Huang Shengyi, who is currently having a contract dispute with Chow's agency company. Chow is now looking for a new face to take the place of Huang.

The sequel will inherit the hilarious elements of its predecessor but feature more action sequences that will still be handled by Yuen Wo-ping.

The budget is about US$15 million and part of it comes from Sony Pictures.

Sweet.

*
(Still working.  HONEST.)

Like I said, I'm WORKING

You're Catch-22!
by Joseph Heller
Incredibly witty and funny, you have a taste for irony in all that you see. It seems that life has put you in perpetually untenable situations, and your sense of humor is all that gets you through them. These experiences have also made you an ardent pacifist, though you present your message with tongue sewn into cheek. You could coin a phrase that replaces the word "paradox" for millions of people.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

An entry in which we learn that the Canadian vocabulary is going to H-E-double hockey sticks in a hand basket, and I don't give a fuck

The following entry is periodically interrupted to answer questions from American readers.

The CBC reports today that for the first time ever, the Canadian Press Caps and Spelling guide has seen fit to determine how Canadians are allowed to see the word "fuck" in print. 

(Yes, just now.  2005, why?  What do you mean what year is this?  Hell-lo, Canadian.  We don't allow caffeine in our Mountain Dew, remember?  No Sunday shopping in Halifax? Right. Canada.)

It seems that until today, the editors of Press Caps have seen fit to ignore this obscenity, preferring instead to supply the media with detailed instructions on how to spell "Fudgsicle" (with a capital 'F') and the abbreviation for "son of a bitch" (lower case, with periods, don't count the 'a'). 

According to the editors, "fuck," that glorious catch-all shockword used equally frequently as a noun ("I don't give a fuck"), verb ("We fucked it up"), modifying adjective ("fucking awesome"), intensifier ("what the fuck did you do that for?"), and even as a punctuation mark ("Fuck this fucking fucker, I'm going to fuck him up") has received so little of their attention because up until recently it was hardly used.

(Yes, apparently Canadians use the word "Fudgsicle" more than we use the word "fuck".  I don't know.  Maybe the Prairies.)

Anyway, "fuck" has found its way into the press guide because the term in its various incarnations has found its way into the popular vernacular:

"We found the word was creeping into our news stories on a fairly regular basis, probably because people are saying it more and more in public, and various media pick it up on their microphones and recorders," said Patti Tasko, editor of Caps and Spelling.

And if people say it, the media's supposed to report it.  No editorializing, no censorship. No "effin' " this, or "f*&$" that.  No, no.  Not for Canadians any more - we now we get to see "fucking" in black and white with no metaphors whatsoever.

(Yes, seriously. What do your media do?  Really? And yet you still watch CNN?  FoxNews? Whoa. You people must have really great media literacy programmes that let you filter all that spin out, huh?  What?  Oh, like the WMD stuff.  No they didn't.  They didn't. No. That was made up.  Rove. ROVE. Oh, forget it.)

And of course, it wouldn't be a real article about modern language usage unless it had a tragic "we're fucking up our Anglo heritage!" element attached to it, pace Mrs. Reverend Lovejoy ("would somebody please think of the children!"):

"It's much more socially acceptable than it used to be," says Katherine Barber, the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. "I hear children using it a lot. I hear them walking down the street saying it, and I mean young children who are only nine or 10 years old. Maybe children that age have always been running around yelling it, but I don't think so."

Thank you Ms. Barber. 

Anyway, check out the coyness of the CBC article, which manages to write a whole 300 words on the word "fuck" without actually printing it, choosing instead such trite euphemisms as "the word that rhymes with 'duck' "and "the most infamous four-letter word."

*
Postings will be light this week, as Philoillogica attempts to write a long-overdue paper on the care and feeding of editorial apparatus in the case of radiating texts of indeterminate authorship.  I don't know what any of those words mean, but they sound pretty good, and I have to string about 4,000 or so more together and couple them all with wit and charm that give the impression that I am, in Clayton J Delery's terms: "a subject presumed to know". 

Only $16,000 (U.S.) to feel like a natural woman

Well, Edward Greenspon has outdone himself yet again.  Doubtlessly inspired by the ample news coverage of an LA strip club advertising "Vaginas 'R Us", the Editor-in-Chief of the Glib and Male has decided to expend precious front-page inches keeping us informed on the ins and outs of Los Angeles cunts.  There's nothing like starting your weekend with a cup of coffee and an article that tells you step-by-step how to feel flabby and raggedy in your girly bits:

Women from around the world flock to David Matlock's marble waiting room carrying purses stuffed with porn. The magazines are revealed only in the privacy of his office, where doctor and patient debate the finer points of each glossy photo.

The enterprising gynecologist sees countless images of naked women, but none are more popular than Playboy's fresh-faced playmates. They represent, he says with a knowing smile, the perceived ideal.

“Some women will say, ‘Hey, you take this picture and hang it up in the operating room and refer back to it when you're sculpturing me,'” he said in an interview in his clinic overlooking hazy Los Angeles. “I say, ‘Okay, all right, fine.'”

Dr. Matlock is a colourful pioneer in a controversial — and growing — frontier of plastic surgery: nipping and tucking vaginas. Patients from the United States and more than 30 other countries pay thousands of dollars for his “designer vagina,” a purely esthetic procedure that includes shortening or plumping up the labia, or vaginal lips. He attracts even more women for an operation he claims improves sex by tightening, or “rejuvenating,” the vagina.

See, I when I use the word "rejuvenating," I think of splashing cold water on something.  Dr Matlock obviously uses "rejuvenating" in OED sense 2b: "to take advantage of the lesser gender's insecurity and disadvantage, by carving into the flesh of its primary sex characteristics for fun and profit."

But I shouldn't be so harsh.  Dr. Matlock and his ilk are philanthropists, after all, doing what they do for the good of women everywhere:

“There's a need for this,” he said. “Women are driving this. I didn't create this market, the market was there.”

While doctors have long known how to enhance women's genitals, demand for vaginal surgery has mushroomed in recent years because physicians — led by Dr. Matlock — market it as enhancing sexual satisfaction.

In other words: If you build it, they will come.

Matlock defends his creepy and advantageous vocation by claiming that he's only trying to make women's famously inept naughty bits more useful - not for MEN, you see, but for WOMEN.  And plus, they're asking for it:

“They say, ‘Look, I want to enjoy this. I want to have the best sexual experience possible. It's for me.' That's what they're doing. If a man was pushing a woman to come in, I'm not going to do it.”

See? He's a pretty ethical guy.  If some dude "pushes" his woman through the door bound and gagged, he's not gonna cut her open for the sake of making her cootch all symmetrical.  He'll only do the surgery if the guy's more subtle than that.

Still, a husband of a woman with stress incontinence in the mid-1990s played a large role in Dr. Matlock's inadvertent realization of the demand for vaginal reconstruction, which builds on decades-old surgical techniques. Some physicians have long quietly added an extra stitch “for the husband” while repairing new mothers' episiotomies.

After he treated her, the woman reported that her sex life had dramatically improved. Then her husband telephoned to thank Dr. Matlock profusely, and the couple sent flowers.

See? Send flowers.  Vagina carvers love flowers.

Pardon the pun, but his whole thing gives me the willies. 

Jabba doesn’t have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.

Feeling magnanimous, I direct you to:

Lines from “Star Wars” That Can Be Improved by Substituting “Pants” for Key Words

Hat tip: Shakespeare's Sister.

Hair hath no fury like a woman shorn

Being one of the curly-haired flock, I have never been a big fan of haircuts.  My apprehension with the whole hair-styling enterprise is directly proportional to the enthusiasm of the person with the scissors, because 26 years of experience has demonstrated that the more excited a stylist is about chopping up my halo, the less likely they are to do it well.

What will likely end up happening is that, after being pinned in an elevated chair under a plastic sheet grimacing much like a corpse in a body bag, I will experience any or all of the following:

• LAYERS.
• The stylist saying "Hmmmmmmm....", which means she cut off waaaay too much somewhere, forgetting that it will rebound the second she lets go.
• MORE LAYERS.
• "Oh, this is gonna look like the best perm ever!"
• "You really frizz up, huh?"
• "I'm just gonna layer it in the back."
• "So, you'll need this product, and this product, and this product, and this product..."
• "You always blow it dry straight, right?"
• "Where do you part your hair?"
• "Huh.  Look at that.  It'll grow out."
• "Straight hair doesn't do THAT."

And then I pay my money and go home and cry.  I avoid looking in the mirror for the next six months as I try to figure out what possessed that reasonable-looking stylist with the impressive pedigree to give me a she-mullet.  I stare enviously at my friends who can change hairstyles without having to plan two summers ahead, and who don't gain six inches of height when it rains.  They own things like brushes and combs and actually use them, smelling like finesse and aplomb and all sorts of other showy isms as I glower in a corner dwarfed by my fuzzy nimbus.

"Too bad about your hair", they say, flicking a streaming mane of chestnut silk over a shoulder.  "You should try my guy - he's fabulous."

And then it just starts all over again.

It's been this way ever since I was a kid, when I demanded that my mother take me to Simpsons for a pixie cut in the vain hope that stripping myself of my ringlets would end the ubiquitous comparisons to Shirley Temple and the incessant parade of vague parental acquaintances lining up to pinch my cheek.   It didn' t  work - I was still pinched regularly by odd people as if grabbing the tender flesh of a child's face is an appropriate way to express fondness.  But I digress.  The whole point was THAT was when I started cutting my hair regularly in the first place, beginning the chain of hell that ended with my copying of the haircut that almost ended Keri Russell's career:

It was SHORT.  And it was WRONG. 

And it's been growing out ever since.  The nightmares stopped in late 2003, but the damage caused by that ill-advised hair choice lasted lasted almost two years, until this week I finally squirrelled up enough courage to go and have a much-needed cut.

But instead of going to some psychopathic scissor-wielding curl butcher, I went here.  And lo, it was beautiful.  THEY CUT MY HAIR CURL BY CURL, and gave me the BEST PRODUCT EVER TO CONTROL FRIZZ.   There was no "ooops".  There were no layers.  Shirley Temple was nowhere to be found.

This time I cried tears of joy.  The best part was, there's a twenty percent discount if you come during a weekday and pay cash.

Hell, after a lifetime of mullets, poodle cuts and sheared lamb 'dos, I'd pay them in blood if they asked. 

Still waiting for the Americans to make their o-face

Early pullout unlikely in Iraq