Monthly Archives: July 2010

July 19, 2010 · 7:52 am

Two-fer

Once again, where have I been? 

Over the weekend I was so tickled to learn a new language term, only to find out everyone is already talking about it.

The portmanteau.  It’s been around for years, or at least as long as smog.

There are hundreds of portmanteaus (portmanteaux?) in circulation today, and the booming trend of blending two words into one continues to spread.  I just didn’t know there was a name for it until a friend sent me a Groupon (that’s another one) that used the term in a marketing promotion.

A celebrity couple can’t be mentioned as separate individuals any more, but rather, by their portmanteaus—Brangelina, Tomkat, Bennifer.  Does the First Couple go by Barelle or Michak?

A large share of the high tech vernacular is composed of portmanteaus.  WiFi, for example, as well as modem and even Internet.  Almost anything with “aholic” added on the end is a portmanteau:  chocoholic, workaholic, shopaholic.  And who can forget the Manssiere?

Can you come up with an original portmanteau or two?  Or maybe tell a story?

Billy had a dreambition of becoming a televangelist.  After school, he would go into the cafegymitorium and practice giving a sermily.

One day, in walked Isabella, looking fantabulous in her jeggings.  Billy loved how she ate Gogurt with a spork.

They began talking on their iPhones, with their conversations full of insinuendo.  They became frienefits and starting sexting in Spanglish.

When their parents found out, Billy and Isabella were forbidden to see each other.  But one day, as they were chillaxing in front of the cineplex, a photographer with the local ragazine exposed their relationship.  Billabella was busted.

Horrific, I know.  Try it?

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July 17, 2010 · 8:52 am

Never on Sunday

What’s your favorite fast food restaurant?  Okay, okay, if you had no other option but to eat on the run, what would be your choice? 

Mine is Chick fil-A.  I’ve totally bought into their Save the Cow campaign, EAT MOR CHIKIN (I won’t fault a cow for poor spelling).  But also, even though I’ve got no beef with beef, those nasty fast food burgers can pretty hard to choke down.

My husband’s a McDonald’s man, so when we’re on the road, that’s where we go.  All hail the Dollar Menu.

But when it’s my choice alone, I choose the Chick.

For better or worse, Chick-fil-A is different from the other chains in three ways that I can discern.  One, the place offers no hamburgers.  I am sure their chicken sandwiches are loaded with fat and calories and all kinds of nasty stuff, but they taste pretty good on their buttered buns after a long stretch in the car.  Two, their employees bend over backwards to be nice and helpful.  Three, they are not open, and apparently never will be, on Sundays.

They take a lot of heat for it too.  From mall owners and customers for obvious reasons, but also from a few employees and observers who criticize the staunch position held by company founder S. Truett Cathy, a devout Christian who remains firm in his position to put family and worship ahead of business.  Over the years, the company has gotten in some legal and PR hot water for some of its policies.  I just hope the company is taking these seriously and treating people fairly.

That aside, though, it is hard to fault a business owner for closing down one day a week, for whatever reason.

In a recent interview for Advertising Age magazine, Chick-fil-A’s vice president of marketing David Salyers was asked what he thought would  you think would happen first, a hamburger on the menu, or a Chick-fil-A opening on a Sunday? Salyers answered, “Definitely a hamburger on the menu.  Not even close.”

I too take Sundays off, in part as my own Sabbath observation and in part to rest, renew and be better at what I do.  I just hope my CHIKIN cravings pop up on the other six days.

See you Monday.

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July 16, 2010 · 7:52 am

Real life

Greetings from Lake Chautauqua, where I’ve been with about 25 family and friends for a mid-week reunion.  Aunts, uncles, a niece, four nephews and another 25 or so second cousins, cousins removed several times and family friends who’ve been in my life since day one were all here in western New York for the gathering.

It’s fun hearing everyone’s news and even more fun re-hearing the old stories.  Yes, it is true that I was “baptized” with gin by a drunken lobbyist while in my baby carrier atop a night club piano.

If you saw the movie Dan in Real Life, you have a picture of what it is like here—right down to the used book store in the center of town.  Dozens of relatives, complete with their successes and worries and baggage and history, under a roof a wee bit too small for the crowd, loudly living the joys and bumps of real life.  

The fact that I write a blog has come up periodically, and people have asked if I’d be writing any stories from the week.  I simply said, only if they are blogworthy.  That was all it took for one aunt who set out actively to achieve blogworthiness.

Wednesday alone, we fished off the dock for hours, undertook a hopelessly disastrous group craft project, which I orchestrated after temporarily forgetting my deficit in this area.  We divided into teams for a putt-putt tournament, swam, ran, played basketball, attended my father’s brilliant performance before an audience of 5,000 at the Chautauqua Institution’s amphitheater and had a loud dinner with 50 spirited guests. 

Was it blogworthy?  You decide.  I must report though that my 76-year-old aunt succeeded in achieving blogworthiness in her own right, on the mini golf course.  On the 12th hole, she stepped back from a rolling ball, into a row of raised bricks, and fell backwards, landing simultaneously on her tail bone and her head.  She got up and finished the remaining six holes. 

It takes a lot to stand out in this crowd, but everyone tries.

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July 15, 2010 · 8:39 am

Buzz off

You never can tell with bees.

We all remember Winnie the Pooh, a bear of very little brain, trying to outsmart bees in a half-baked quest to steal their honey by floating up to a tree branch with a balloon.

“Wouldn’t they notice you underneath the balloon?” Christopher Robin asked. “They might or they might not,” Pooh answered.  “You never can tell with bees.”

Oh, they will.  Those mean, nasty, hurtful little demons.  You bet they’ll notice you and come after you with every trace of their vengeful wickedness.

If you can’t tell, I hate bees.

Last summer we called in a bee man after neighbors complained that there were yellow jackets coming from our yard.  The bee man came and, of course, there was nothing flying around.  He asked me to describe them—do they look like yellow jackets, hornets, wasps, bumble bees, what?  What do I know, they look like bees!  I don’t know one from another, I just hate ’em.  They sting.  The sting hurts, even kills.  I can’t enjoy time on our back deck because it’s them or me, and they won’t leave. 

Anyway, one or two flew by and I pointed them out to the bee man, who said, “Those are honey bees, I can’t kill honey bees.”  Then the neighbor walked over.  I reported, it’s honey bees.  She said, “Oh, well, you can’t kill honey bees!”

Well why in the world not?  Yeah, yeah, balance of nature, blah, blah.  Stupid nature. 

I can probably live without honey.  I can live without flowers if it means I can complete a crossword puzzle on a summer afternoon without being harassed by evil apiarian attackers.  And that infuriating buzz.  Heck, as much as I love Jerry Seinfeld, I didn’t even see Bee Movie. 

Sorry to drone on so, but get this.  I’ve just discovered that a colony of pollinating pests has built a hive in the rocker on our front porch.  And they were none too happy when I went out to sweep and unknowingly moved their cushy condo.

Well, I plan to cut them off at their little bees’ knees if it’s the last thing I do. 

Anyone have a hazmat suit?

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July 14, 2010 · 8:19 am

Toy with me

Last weekend my husband and I, sans child, went to see Toy Story 3.

Somehow I managed to miss 1 and 2, even though our son was six when the first one came out; perhaps these were part of a guys’ night out.

Friends and family members who remember what an awful time I had when our son left for college in 2006 made sure I saw Toy Story 3 and that I brought along plenty of Kleenex.  Used every last one.

We weren’t the only childless adults in the theater, which is a testament to this particular series of Pixar animated films and, I dare say, to the therapeutic effect of being surrounded by toys for two hours.

Until we got to the heartbreaking part where Boy leaves Mom, I enjoyed re-living my own childhood through the animated toys. 

I had practically every one of those classic toys.  Those I did not, my brothers or cousins or friends did.  Someone in our family, perhaps grandparents, had the old cymbal-slapping monkey.  My brothers had the See ‘n Say The Farmer Says, as did our son.  I like to think of that one as onomatopoeia machine.  I loved the telephone on wheels that googled its eyes when you pulled it along on its string.  I also had a doll in about as good of shape as Big Baby, abused by love.  I had a few Barbies, but not Metrosexual Ken.  Oh, and who can forget Slinky Dog?

After seeing the movie, I went up to our attic, where a few of our son’s old toys have retired, and to the basement, where the old books and games are, to apologize for sending them there.  I pulled some fire engines off the shelf and rolled them to a make believe emergency–big pileup of Matchbox cars–and paid overdue homage to some other old friends.

One fellow who was never banished to Floors 3 or B was Pippo, a sock monkey named for the series of Helen Oxenbury books we enjoyed so much.  He still lies on our son’s bed, mainly to keep alive the childhood spirit of the room in the absence of our boy, now grown and living out of state.  I suppose Pippo is our Woody.

I think I’ll see if my husband wants to play Candyland tonight.  We can call it a playdate with destiny.

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July 13, 2010 · 7:33 am

Spywear

Here in the nation’s capital, just as it seems things can’t get any weirder than our weather dominating headlines, we’ve busted open a ring of Russian spies and, over the weekend, began trading Russia theirs for a couple of our own.

As this was happening, I had the same gut reaction I had last summer when our government was battling Somali pirates.  Pirates?  Really? 

Russian Spies?  The Cold War ended 20 years ago, so I confess, I haven’t given spies much thought since.  Except, of course, during the arrest of Robert Hanssen, who sold U.S. secrets to the Russians for diamonds and cash.  That was fun.

Before that, though, I had not given Russian spies any thought since, oh, the last time I watched Bullwinkle.  Or Get Smart.  I was a child of the 1960s but never experienced firsthand an air raid drill.  In essence, I never felt the threat of potential communist attack personally.

At a young age, my frame of reference came from bumbling television spies.  Agents 86 and 99 were the good guys, fighting the fictitious enemy, KAOS, an international organization of evil.  And the real reason I rooted for the good guys was that, at age of seven, I wanted to be Barbara Feldon.

Back then, the enemy could be pretty sexy as well.  Take Natasha Fatale, for example.  Natasha’s character on the Bullwinkle cartoon was svelte and always wore a clingy cartoon cocktail dress.  She and Boris were wily spies from the fictitious nation of Pottsylvania, trying to outsmart a stupid moose.  We didn’t know where Pottsylvania was but its spies spoke with Eastern European accents.  

This summer, as the recent spy-busting events unfolded, national attention zoomed in on one particular accused Russian spy, 28-year-old Anna Chapman, nickname, Lady in Red.  Va-va-va-voom!  When she wasn’t collecting secrets she was posing for suggestive photographs (the most famous of which looks like she’s wearing Natasha’s cocktail dress), working as a real estate agent in New York City and living a seemingly normal life on Facebook.

Apparently, she let her guard down one time too many and, before she knew it, her cover was blown, along with the covers of her compatriots.  Whoops. 

Obviously, I am not the first to make the Anna-Natasha connection.  You can’t ignore the parallels.

But I am betting Natasha never came out of that red cartoon cocktail dress.  It was the 1960s after all, people had their modesty.  Plus, Facebook hadn’t been invented yet.

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July 12, 2010 · 7:40 am

Less is more

You probably have gathered that I enjoy digging into grammar and usage issues that are either arcane or funny.

I really could not care less about the mundane ones, and my readers have shown that they prefer the complex over the mundane–such as “I could care less.”  We’ve all known since the third grade that this is incorrect, if the intent is that one doesn’t care at all.  

I doubt anyone reading this blog wants or needs a lesson in “I couldn’t care less.”  But perhaps you know someone who does.

Let’s hope those who are rearing children are passing the lesson on to them, so the misuse of such a descriptive comment as “I couldn’t care less” isn’t perpetuated.  After all, once these children become teenagers, they will likely express the sentiment quite often, so let’s be sure they at least express it correctly.

A fellow wordie made me aware of this pre-packaged primer on the subject.  You might want to watch it with your child or view it as an amusing refresher. 

You might find yourself caring more about caring less.

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July 10, 2010 · 8:57 am

Another land

It’s Saturday.  Time to take a rest from the heady grammar issues and get a little shallow.  And I can be quite shallow.

The truth is, I love TV sitcoms. 

My favorite are the old sitcoms of the 1960s and 70s.  I now confess to being a closet viewer of the TV Land network.  I got hooked early on.  TV Land started off playing the classic comedies I grew up with.  Actually, my parents placed fairly strict limits on our TV viewing, so I usually had to sneak off to a neighbor’s for I Love Lucy or Dick Van Dyke.

My husband jokes that, if there were a channel that aired all Everybody Loves Raymond all the time, I’d watch no other.  He’s right.  And now, on TV Land, for two hours every weeknight—Raymond.

Until recently, TV Land has been a place to which losers slink off to forget their problems and the fact that they are losers.  My time spent in TV Land is clouded by tremendous guilt.  I go when no one is home and always remember to change the channel to CNN before turning off the TV, so the next person doesn’t know where I’ve been.  A shameful addict always covers her tracks.

But things have changed.

TV Land has become home to some intelligent—or at least socially accepted—programming , namely, Hot in Cleveland.  By now, it’s almost cliché to rave about Hot.  It’s really a modern-day Golden Girls, another classic (Psst, Hallmark channel).  Let’s hope its popularity gives rise to more clever new shows in the fall.  

Personally, I think what makes the show successful is timing.  Timing in featuring a hot cast, led by Betty White and Valerie Bertinelli, both at the height of their hotness.  The other two co-stars, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick, no slouches themselves, fill in nicely, though I’m disappointed they have Malick playing the same character she played on Just Shoot Me.

And what a brilliant move to have Carl Reiner, one of television’s most acclaimed comedic geniuses, on the show.

The writing is also based on timing–timing of the jokes, one right after the other with barely a chance for the viewer to catch her breath (my husband has come in to ask me if I’m OK) and the agile timing of the sight gags. 

Timing is also a big part of the acting.  The lines are delivered with a soft build and a one-two punch, while the actresses’ facial expressions, some extremely subtle, add beautiful texture to the humor.

OK, so maybe I am shallow.  But I am certain of two things.  One, that laughter is good for me and I know where to go to get it, and two, that there are smart people in TV Land who know their target demographic and are going to do very well capitalizing on it.

Now if you’ll allow me to skulk out of here, I’ll try and have something smart to write about next week.

Please remember, Word Nymph doesn’t post on Sundays.  They’ve got to be airing some kind of marathon.

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July 9, 2010 · 7:55 am

In a perfectly tense mood

While we are on a grammar roll, here’s another one. 

My interest comes about, as it often does, as a result of an aural assault by a well-meaning speaker.  Typically, once the bristle passes, I look up the pertinent rule to be sure I understand it.

This one has to do with a mishmash of subjunctive mood and conditional perfect and past perfect tenses and the errors people are prone to making with regard to these verb uses.

For whatever reason, I never fully appreciated things like mood versus tense  until I studied foreign languages.  And still, I know them more intuitively than by the rules themselves.

If the following phrases make you bristle, then you don’t need the review.  If they sound perfectly fine, read on.

  1. “I wish I would have kept the appointment.”
  2. “If I would have known you were going, I’d have offered you a ride.”
  3. “If I was in your shoes, I’d be worried.”
  4. “If I would have went to the party, I would have had a good time.” 

You could drive yourself crazy reading all the rules.  But feel free.  They are long and involved and I’d probably miss some nuance in explaining it anyway.  I’ve included the relevant Wikipedia links above because they are the simplest and most accessible online sources for this purpose, in my opinion.

Or, you could simply train your ear to pick up on the errors and correct them before you speak.  Often, it simply means taking out “would” or changing “was” to “were,” but not always.  Here are some tricks you might use to keep it straight.  Maybe you have some of your own.

If you are tempted to say “I wish I would have . . .,” think about The Rolling Stones’ “I Wish I’d Never Met You” and remember to say, “I wish I had . . .”   No would.

If you are tempted to say “If I would have known . . .,” think of the 1950 song, “If I Knew You Were Comin’, I’d’ve Baked a Cake,” then say, “If I knew” or “If I had known…”   For you younger readers, the song was also sung on Sesame Street, so you’ve probably heard it.  Just try to get past the double contraction.

If you are tempted to say “If I was,” think of Fiddler on the Roof and the song, “If I Were a Rich Man.”  It’s were, not was.  Subjunctive mood, conditional perfect tense.  Or some might call it imperfect past subjunctive.

Finally, if you are tempted to utter the double whammy, “If I would have went,” then you are probably not reading this blog anyway.

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July 8, 2010 · 7:54 am

Collective consciousness

Does anyone else lie awake at night fretting over collective nouns?

At my current stage of life, I often find myself wide awake in the wee hours, teeth clenched, eyes wide open, brain ticking away like an electricity meter on overload.  It’s 3:00 a.m. when little things become big things.

Last night it was collective nouns and why, even though they are singular, they often precede plural verbs.   You too, eh?

Example:  The couple were on their honeymoon.  Couple, singular; were, plural.  Even as I type this, my computer’s grammar checker flags it as an error.

A collective noun, also called a mass noun or non-count noun, is a noun that represents more than one thing:  couple, team, group, herd and countless more.

The most recent 3:00 a.m. over-analysis was precipitated by a lead sentence I read yesterday in The Washington Post:  “A handful of federal lawmakers are seeking to vastly expand the number of long-distance flights at Reagan National Airport . . .”   If “handful” is the subject, then why isn’t the verb “is?”  “Of lawmakers” shouldn’t matter; it’s just a prepositional phrase of sorts.

Bleary-eyed, I stumbled into my office and consulted two trusted sources.

The Associated Press Stylebook says that “nouns that denote a unit take singular verbs and pronouns.”  For example, “The committee is meeting.”

The Chicago Manual of Style says that a collective noun “takes a plural verb when it refers to the members of the group considered as individuals.”

Are they both correct?

I then scanned about a dozen word blogs for some practical interpretation.

The consensus among observers appears to be that collective nouns are singular and call for a singular verb, except when the members of a group are acting as individuals, in which case the collective noun is plural and requires plural verbs and pronouns.  So, yes, AP and Chicago are both correct.

Which brings me back to the couple on its/their honeymoon.  Are they acting as individuals and if so, is the honeymoon then over?

Tonight I’ll try counting the imaginary flock of sheep that are jumping over a fence.  It is “are,” right?   Oh, never mind.

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