Monthly Archives: June 2008

Holy incoherence, Batman

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Remember Crispin Glover, who played George McFly in 1985’s Back to the Future ?

Well, Crispin is now a writer and director. Oh, and a wackjob. Don’t forget wackjob. I triple-dog dare you to sit through this interview without wanting to gouge out your eyes with a melon baller.

Especially freakish (and equally as disjointed) is his answer to the fan question, “Why did you cast actors with Down Syndrome in a movie that isn’t about Down Syndrome?”

In case you don’t want to endure the actual video, imagine yourself in a situation which, unfortunately, many of us find all too familiar: You ask a person a simple question, and fifteen minutes later….

Gives new meaning to the phrase, That’s twenty minutes out of my life I’ll never get back.

Fink (running) out (into the street, screaming).

Are you hyper?

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Hyperventilation, hypersensitivity, hyperactivity, hypertension…everybody’s hyper these days. But there’s one “hyper” that is particularly dangerous in Finkville.

Today’s hyper: hypercorrection. It happens when a person, in an effort to say something correctly, overcompensates and ends up adding more to the word or phrase than what should be there.

While there are several ways to linguistically hypercorrect, today we shall focus on Americans using non-English words. Ready?

  1. It’s smor-gas-bord. Smor. Kind of like the graham cracker and marshmallow and Hershey bar thing you used to make over the camp fire. Smor – gas – bord. Not shmorgasbord. Comes from the Swedish smörgås (sandwich) and bord (table). [In Swedish, it is the combination rs that is pronounced ‘sh.’]
  2. Taj Mahal. How did you just say it in your mind as you read it? Probably the way 99.9% of all Americans pronounce it: like the name Zsa Zsa Gabor. (Remember her, fellow Old Ones?) Actually, native Hindi speakers (so I was told by one — a college student back in the early 80s) say it like so: Tahdj. Rhymes with Dodge.
  3. Same deal with the Chinese city of Beijing. In Mandarin, it’s pronounced Bay-Jing, as in “Jingle.” Here is the audio proof. And while we’re on the subject…
  4. Parmesan. Ok, this one’s tricky. “Parmesan” (pronounced just like it’s written — sounds like Amazon) is an Americanized version of the original name for an Italian cheese, made in the Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna and Mantua provinces, called Parmigiano. Now don’t go Frenchifyin’ it — it’s pronounced par-mi-JAH-no. Choose one or the other, but please don’t zhu-zhu them together and say, with a French flair, parmezhan. I keel you.
  5. How about Xavier? There’s a university in Ohio by that name, so I hear it a lot. (Uh, notice “a lot” is TWO words…) It’s pronounced Zay-vier. Like xylophone and Xerox. Or you could say eks-ylophone and Eks-erox, if you wanted to. But then I would hit you.

But seriously, folks. I really do share the Schmenglish posts to remind my own bad self to be careful as much as anyone else. Heck, I struggle with a word or two, now and then. My worst (and repeated) offense: imaginative. It’s never looked right to me. I have been caught out by the spell checker several times after writing a paper in which I absentmindedly used imaginitive. It’s a dumb error, too. Just think “imagination” and change the last 2 letters. But noooOoO. So, see? I am not a perfect “everyday” speller. Almost…but not.

I just believe that how we write and speak as a nation says a whole lot about how we think and what we hold dear. A country’s language is a huge part of its legacy; ya just don’t mess with that.

Fink out (of words for today)

Hollyweird

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Remember the *original* Superman? George Reeves was his name (pictured at left). I only watched reruns as a kid, because he died before I was born (ok, 2 months before I was born, but still…).

Strange death, too. Some say he was murdered; others say it was suicide. Booze was definitely involved. His blood alcohol level at the time of his shooting death was a staggering .27% (Yeeowza…legal limit is .08%).

Here is a picture of him after he died (courtesy findadeath.com). Although it’s not super-grotesque, don’t click on it if you get all ooky looking at cadavers.

So what really happened to the Man of Steel? Turns out he was rather unhappy at being typecast after Superman was pulled from the air in 1958, but no one around him could believe he would commit suicide because of it. He died three days before a wedding he was very much looking forward to.

The night of the murder/suicide/whatever, he and his fiancee were partying and got a little inebriated. Ok, a lot inebriated (see paragraph 2). George went upstairs to his bedroom, and a shot was heard. When he was discovered on the bed, he’d been shot in the left side of his forehead. Trajectory analysis done much later indicates that it would have been difficult to kill oneself at the angle at which the Luger killed George. Other inconsistencies also existed.

He left no suicide note; he was not despondent or even depressed, according to police reports filed by friends and business acquaintances. He apparently had no reason to off himself. Bizarre. And the world will never know, thanks to the drunken recollections of the party guests (and the fact that most of them, if not all of them, are dead now anyway), and botched evidence at the crime scene.

Ben Affleck actually shone (for once) in his role as Reeves in the 2006 movie about the incident, Hollywoodland.

It’s sad, truly. Guy should have lived a long life and enjoyed a comeback in the 70s or something.

On a brighter note: last Sunday, Amy Winehouse fired her hairdresser. Yikes. Tribble on a ‘roid rage. That’s some scary stuff.

Fink out.


Hey, look what we made.

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*yawn*

Man, I overslept today. I hate that.

This will be a bit of a diversion from the usual Finkness. Today I am going to give a lesson to those interested. Ok, I’m also doing it because I’ve never done anything remotely artistic (visually) in my life, so this was a milestone for me.

While some may think this lesson is geared to women, I will say that any man (if he is smart) could do it as well. As long as a woman supervises.

The photos below were all taken at my house. My daughters, Sarah and Jessie, and sister Mavis joined me in the project. It was fun, and you should try it if you have a baby shower to attend. So, without further ado:

How to Make a Diaper Cake

(click on the photos for larger views)

Roll up infant disposable diapers (amount may vary, but I think we used 2 of those big Luvs packages) starting at the bottom fold, and seal them with rubber bands. Build the bottom tier by stacking diapers around a baby bottle, about 4 deep. Tie together with yarn. Later, you'll wrap a folded receiving blanket around it to make it look nice.

Fold a receiving blanket so it can fit around the top of the protruding baby bottle. We used clear packing tape to secure it around the bottle.

Stack the diapers in the same fashion around this second tier, tie with yarn, and wrap with another receiving blanket. We stacked a couple more blankets on top of the baby bottle to create a flat top.

At this point, get ready to insert rattles, bathtub toys, teething rings, bootie socks, little bottles of lotion and shampoo, gift cards, bibs, whatever, into the little open spaces as surprises that the parents will find as they use the diapers and the cake is dismantled. Wrap up the 2nd tier with a blanket and some ribbon, as shown above. Now, for the final tier:

Build your top tier in the same fashion, hiding a toy in the middle around which to stack the diapers. We folded baby washcloths into little rosettes, and decorated the base tier with them. We also secured a bib to cascade down the front. You can use your own creativity to do whatever you want.

Et voila! We had enough diapers and gift items leftover to make a companion cake. Of course, we knew it was a boy; hence, the car and car keys. We stuck on more goodies, and it ended up being a great conversation piece at the shower.

Ok, now it’s your turn. Mark, get set, go.

Yikes, it’s 9 a.m. and I’ve nothing done (except this lovely picture lesson, which I enjoyed doing). Have a super Tuesday.

FO

RNF IV

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Random Neuron Firings

Well, well, well. It’s Monday, and look who’s in trouble. A pro athlete. Oh, and another pro athlete.

What’s a man to do with his free time, after all? You know…the NFL prides itself on making sure that these guys get plenty of off-season training; not only at the gym, but in the classroom. I read somewhere on ESPN’s site that young players and new recruits have to attend sessions on dealing with the pressures of being in the NFL — sudden fame, mostly, and the instant shower of cash that comes with it.

Apparently, at least in some cases, you can take the boy out of the ghetto, but…yeah.

Anheuser-Busch may be sold to a Belgian company? What the???

Seems like every major bastion of the American corporate infrastructure has knuckled under to foreign ownership on some level. GM, Pepsi, Ford…they all have huge ties to overseas funding.  And now Bud? What’ll the rednecks drink?

And speaking of positively weird: did you know that foreign countries are buying up more than just American retail companies? Check this out, from a USA Today article:

On a single day in June [2006], an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years.

Foreign countries are now buying the very surfaces on which we drive the conveyances they sold to us. What’s next?

The world’s goin’ to the devil, I tell ya. You mark me.

I’m off to school, but I thought I’d leave you with a cute sign-off. Jake is my joy…

Grammie Fink out.