Category Archives: Human Behavior

Chaucer’s Salons

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From a long-time favorite novel, Steven Minkin’s A No Doubt Mad Idea:

“On to the library. And all through his time at the card catalog, combing the shelves, filling out the request cards, he danced a silent, flirtatious minuet of the eyes with a rosy-cheeked redhead in the biology section, pages of notes spread before her. All his life, he had had a yen for women in libraries. In a cerebral setting, the physical becomes irresistible. Also, he figured he was really more likely to meet a better or at least more compatible woman in a library than in a saloon. Ought to have singles libraries, with soups and salads, Bach and Mozart, Montaignes bound in morocco; place to sip, smoke, and seduce in a classical setting, noon to midnight. Chaucer’s Salons, call them, franchise chain.”

The Needle Strikes

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So.

So I haven’t really been talking much about my health, as this site has mainly been an escape for me. But I want to write this down (and probably different health issues, in future posts), because I have a new image, one I think can convey how certain things feel to me.

I have multiple sclerosis, or MS. It’s a shibboleth of the tribe that everyone’s course of MS is different. The main way MS presents in me has the unwieldy name of trigeminal neuralgia (TN). I call it my “MS pain” to folks I don’t want to put off with medical Latin. It’s a very sharp pain in my lower right jaw. I’ve likened it to two electrical wires, sparking. Or a metal pick, stabbing me.

When it’s affecting me, I tend to go “Ow!” a lot, and I seem to twitch. The medical aides and nurses, seeing this for the first time, get very concerned and scared. It’s tough for me to tell them what’s going on, because I hurt, and speech has been known to be a trigger. As has swallowing. Or chewing. Or licking my lips. Or touching my skin in that area. Or drinking. Not all at the same time — every time is different.

I’ve had people ask if the body movements are spasms, or seizures. Today I realized I had a better image: I’m flinching, or wincing. I’m trying to get away from an intermittent pain source. But, being in the nerve, I can’t. Doesn’t stop me from trying, though. But I offer as a hypothetical — if I was repeatedly sticking a needle into your jaw, would you move?

This is why when the pain lasts a bit longer, I won’t move as much. I get used to the pain as a constant (though I still cry out from it — as both Ulrika and our dog Kaylee can attest, from an incident a few years ago). But when it really is off and on — bzzt! bzzt! bzzt! — I flinch each time. Which is probably why it looks so strange. I’m wincing from something no one can see. (Note: in an earlier era, it might have been off to Bedlam for me. It’s interesting to speculate how many inmates were experiencing something we’d diagnose differently today.)

Anyway… I thought it better described how I feel, and was worth documenting.

“The New Cruelty”

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Lexicon. Derived from this bit in Steve Martin’s 1991 movie, L.A. Story:

L’Idiot is the hot restaurant of the moment, and pronounced as if French (as one might expect from the apostrophe). The phrase is generally used when someone is being a dick.

“I see Congress has cut Medicaid spending.”
“Part of the New Cruelty?”

Interestingly, the New Cruelty also shows up with lightning speed in this deleted scene that featured John Lithgow:

Publishing

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“And that’s what’s wrong with publishing today.”

Lexicon. Mild reworking of a bit William Goldman has in his foreword to Morgenstern’s The Princess Bride:

WHEN I WAS twenty-six, my first novel, The Temple of Gold, was published by Alfred A. Knopf. (Which is now part of Random House which is now part of R.C.A. which is just part of what’s wrong with publishing in America today which is not part of this story.)

Usually used to illustrate something being overly intricate:

”That restaurant is run by Fussmucker, but it’s owned by Muckenfuss, which is really a part of Gilded Octopus, LLC.”
”And that’s what’s wrong with publishing today.”

Your rudder is too small

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Lexicon. From the movie Titanic:

“(Captain Smith) figures anything big enough to sink the ship they’re going to see in time to turn. But the ship’s too big, with too small a rudder… it can’t corner worth shit. Everything he knows is wrong.”

Not so much a misquote, as a paraphrase. “Your rudder is too small,” means you don’t have enough resources for the task at hand. Thus:

“I really think I can learn general relativity from this Mandarin textbook in six weeks.”
”Your rudder is too small.”

The Best Homer Simpson Quote

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“Marge, if you’re going to get mad every time I do something stupid, then I guess I just have to stop doing stupid things!” (S04E09, “Mr. Plow”)

This also works from our perspective as well, to wit:

“If you’re going to get upset every time we call something you did stupid, then I guess you’ll just have to stop doing stupid things!”

YAMAD

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Oh, boy, is this Lexicon.

Yet Another Movie About Dorks. The principle lurking behind YAMAD is, no matter how stupid, or clutzy, or socially inept you may feel, here’s a movie (or TV series, these days) about people stupider, less graceful, etc., so a broad audience can look down on them.

Origin: There we were, dear reader, at one of our weekly movies (we cut the cord before a whole lot of people) in 1998. We were being subjected to a trailer for A Night at the Roxbury for the 35th time. It was obvious this thing was incredibly stupid. It was obvious it was going to flop. But still, some studio exec had greenlit spending $17M of budget to make and market this steaming turd.

Why? Who did they expect to show up?

Possibly fans of Will Farrell, the Godfather of YAMAD. Chris Kattan, the co-star, never really showed up too much after this. (I mean, Sharknado 5?)

No, this is a movie of consolation. No matter how bad your life is, here are some clowns who are even worse. Dumb and Dumber is YAMAD. Wayne’s World. Anchorman. Kevin Smith is the Orson Welles of YAMAD — his characters are dumb on the surface, but there’s more there than you think.

Kardashians is YAMAD plus money. Most descendants of Candid Camera (think Ridiculousness on MTV; or nearly all of MTV, these days) are YAMAD plus voyeurism.

No big summation. “I alone escaped to tell thee.”

Sing a song

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There’s this text printers use when they want a graphic mock-up of a page, but don’t want to be distracted by the meaning of the words. It’s called Lorem ipsum. It’s a long stretch of Latin, which very few people understand anymore.

I realized tonight an appeal when listening to songs in a language you don’t understand — “world music” — is much the same. The song itself can wash over you. The melody, the qualities of the instruments and human voices. You don’t know what the song’s about, but that’s the point. You’re there to appreciate the song, with the chrome of meaning stripped off.