Category: Thoughts

Dropping the N-Bomb

The trouble with automatic translations is that sometimes you end up with the wrong word. Oops! An honest mistake, and easy enough to fix. It’s not like it was deliberate.

I remember clearly when I learned the n-word. I was a precocious reader and I’d grabbed Huckleberry Finn way before I was old enough to understand it. I must have been about eleven or twelve. I didn’t know what it meant, and I didn’t know it was a bad word. I told my mom about the plot and the characters, and described them as they’d been described in the book. She set me straight pretty quick. I also learned the word “derogatory” that day.

This is similar to the story of how I learned to pronounce the word “genre” — I’d only ever seen it written down, so I just guessed at how to say it. I would have been in junior high, I guess… right in the middle of my science-fiction obsession. I think I pronounced it jenn-air, like the appliances. In front of my parents and a dinner party of their friends. Everyone laughed. I still feel a twinge of sympathy when people mispronounce that word, although it doesn’t stop me from laughing at them.

Unenviable Jobs

On rainy Mondays, people are tempted to resent having to go to work. Especially when it’s a rainy holiday Monday, and you have to work anyway. If you’re one of those people, consider this fact: your job could be to retrieve semen from an elephant. Now, doesn’t that cozy desk seem a lot more inviting? Here’s the video, which I think is a BBC special on zoo veterinarians.

I AM THE KING OF IRONIC MUSTACHES

John Fleck pointed out that I shouldn’t argue when people use the word “ironic” to mean “sarcastic or campy,” since language changes over time, and the word is evolving to mean what people use it to mean.

That’s probably true. I understand that Daniel Webster’s wife once caught him screwing the maid, and said she was surprised at his behavior. His response was, pedantically, “No: I am surprised, you are merely astonished.” Nowadays, astonished and surprised mean the same thing, but at the time, surprise was strictly about catching someone unawares, whereas astonishment indicated … anyway.

The point is, this website is now the #1 result for Google searches for “Ironic Mustache.”

Notes on the Ironic Mustache

Gethen pointed me to a little throwaway line in Go Fug Yourself, making fun of young men with “ironic” facial hair, and it occurred to me that, since I’ve finally gotten rid of the ‘stache I had for nearly two years, I am in the position to explain the appeal of that mustache, and the reasons that people might get rid of them.

I grew that mustache because it was easier than shaving, because it was softer than stubble, because it was fun to pet, because in very cold weather it was capable of supporting amusing icicles, because it created vertical lines that made my face look longer and thinner, because it made me look tough and dashing, and to a certain extent because it was silly.

But I did not grow it for irony. In fact, there is no such thing as an ironic mustache. Perhaps when people say “ironic mustache” they mean “kitschy” or “campy” mustache; Wikipedia points out that “‘irony’ as popularly used during the 1990s referred to an aesthetic equated with a fondness for kitsch.” But that’s a misuse of the term “irony.” It might be a sarcastic or camp mustache, grown to mock all mustaches and people who wear them, but it’s not ironic.

I did not shave that mustache off because it was ironic. I shaved it off because I grew tired of trimming it, and because I look younger, if rounder-faced, without it. I was also concerned that people would remember the mustache rather than anything else about me. I don’t want to meet people and be remembered as “the guy with the mustache.” I want them to overlook my appearance and focus on my inner qualities, or better still, think that my clean-shaven, youthful face implies that I am honest and trustworthy. Ideally, I want to look as much as possible like the people I am trying to impress, so that they will think I am as wonderful as they think themselves to be. Then, when they’re not looking, I’ll be able to steal their identities and wallets. It would be the perfect unironic crime.