Category Archives: Lexicon

“I’m glad…”

Posted on by
Reply

Bernard: I believe you know each other.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, we did cross swords when the Minister gave me a grilling over the estimates in the Public Accounts Committee.
Hacker: I wouldn’t say that.
Sir Humphrey: You came up with all the questions I hoped nobody would ask.
Hacker: Well, Opposition’s about coming up with awkward questions.
Sir Humphrey: And Government is about not answering them.
Hacker: Well, you answered all mine anyway.
Sir Humphrey: I’m glad you thought so, Minister.

— Yes, Minister, S1E1, “Open Government,” written by Antony Jay & Jonathan Lynn

Lexicon for the final line, which those who know me have oft suffered from. Here’s the bit as performed:

Full retard

Posted on by
Reply

Kirk Lazarus: Everybody knows you never go full retard.
Tugg Speedman: What do you mean?
Kirk Lazarus: Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man. Look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Counted toothpicks, cheated cards. Autistic, sho’. Not retarded. You know Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump. Slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and he won a ping-pong competition. That ain’t retarded. He was a goddamn war hero. You know any retarded war heroes? You went full retard, man. Never go full retard.

You don’t buy that? Ask Sean Penn. 2001, I Am Sam. Remember? Went full retard, went home empty-handed.

— Tropic Thunder, screenplay by Etan Cohen, Ben Stiller, and Justin Theroux

Not the most sensitive of lines, no. Still, funny for the sense of the machinations actors calculate when it comes to determining which of their roles might get them awards (should they be interested in such things).

Also, lexicon, for the formulation, “Full {x}.” Usage: For the past year and a half I’ve gone almost full Mormon — no alcohol or caffeine. The exceptions are few enough to be easily counted; one beer, two cups of coffee.

YAMAD

Posted on by
Reply

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.”

Facebook = “You Must Die”

Posted on by
Reply

Lexicon. This comes from a phonetic rendering of the word “Facebook” into Mandarin, and then translating the characters back into English.

非死不可 

Fēi sǐ bù kě

This is reminiscent of what Paul Linebarger (who also wrote science fiction as Cordwainer Smith) did during the Korean War:

While in Korea, Linebarger masterminded the surrender of thousands of Chinese troops who considered it shameful to give up their arms. He drafted leaflets explaining how the soldiers could surrender by shouting the Chinese words for ‘love,’ ‘duty,’ ‘humanity,’ and ‘virtue’–words that happened, when pronounced in that order, to sound like ‘I surrender’ in English. He considered this act to be the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his life.

Linebarger here is Paul Linebarger, the real name of Cordwainer Smith. The Chinese words mentioned are probably 爱责仁德, pronounced “ài zé rén dé,” a fair approximation of the English.

(Rooting around about him, I see Project Gutenberg has five works by Linebarger, one of which is a novella written under his Cordwainer Smith pseudonym, three of which are works about China, and the fifth is Psychological Warfare, the book that established the field.)

”The Hot Dog Is Enlightened “

Posted on by
Reply

Lexicon for Ulrika and myself. This originally comes from the FAQ for the Usenet newsgroup alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, which has a number of amusing bits. This is by far the one we quote, though. Here’s the whole section:

3-4. 

Hey, I heard a great Buddhist joke…

Yeah, we know. Let us tell it to you instead:

A zen student walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, “Make me one with everything.”

But we have a better ending:

The vendor then proceeds to throw the student to the ground and shove a Hebrew National, all-beef, kosher hot dog with Bob’s Own Zesty Vegetarian Chili into the student’s left nostril while screaming, “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that one?!?!”

The hot dog is enlightened.

“It was all perfectly fine…”

Posted on by
Reply

“It was all perfectly fine until you came along!”

As usual, a mild misquote on my part.

This comes from an episode of the Goon Show, “The Histories of Pliny the Elder”. Specifically, a slow-building gag about rowing as slaves on board a Roman galley:

*^*^*

Orchestra, Grams: Seagoing music; boat-bound voices in background; ship sounds
Greenslade: And so, some months later, a Roman slave galley drew nigh to Ostia.
Slave Driver: In, out… in, out…
Eccles: Make up your mind…
Bluebottle: Have you ever rowed a gallery before, Ecclus?
Eccles: Is that what we’re doing?
Bluebottle: Yes.
Eccles: No, I’ve never done this before.
Slave Driver: Faster, you dogs!
Bluebottle: He wants us dogs to go faster.
Slave Driver: Silence, you scum!
Eccles: He wants us scum to go silent…
Slave Driver: Or do you want a kiss of the lash?
Bluebottle: No, thanks, I just had some cocoa.
Eccles: Oh, look, they’re bringing a new slave from the reserve.
Bluebottle: Goody!
Seagoon: Let me go, you devil, how dare you? Take your hands off me! Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. How dare you chain me to this oar? I shall write to the Times about this! In print!
Flowerdew: Shut up, you! It was perfectly quiet until you came along! You’re not the only man chained to the oars, you know…

— “The Histories of Pliny the Elder,” The Goon Show, Spike Milligan and Larry Stephens

*^*^*

“I shall write to the Times about this!” also tends to be used as lexicon from this source.

Beige Volvos

Posted on by
Reply

Early in our relationship — so, late 1980s or so — we were driving around, and Ulrika mentioned beige Volvos. And I said, “Beige Volvos? Do they even make those?”

Whereupon we saw about five beige Volvos in the next fifteen miles. (This was on an LA freeway. That’s a short distance.)

“Beige Volvos” has become our shorthand for something that is ubiquitous, but invisible, until your attention is called to it. (I think there’s a different term for it, but this is ours.)