As I wrote last year (2007 (First) NZ Sign Language Week), New Zealand has given official status to New Zealand Sign Language, the natural language of New Zealand’s Deaf community.
New Zealand Sign Language Week is this week (May 5-11, 2008). That link has information, video signing samples, and downloadable PDF cards of the two-handed manual alphabet used for fingerspelling names and sometimes English words within the related British Sign Language (BSL), Australian Sign Language (Auslan), and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). (The unrelated American Sign Language [ASL] uses a one-handed manual alphabet adapted from French Sign Language’s.)
Straight Goods[EDIT (6/7/10): archive access requires free subscription] has a “definition list for new mothers,” with new meanings for familiar words. My favorites are:
Family planning: The art of spacing your children the proper distance apart to keep you on the edge of financial disaster[.]
Feedback: The inevitable result when the baby doesn’t appreciate the strained carrots.
Puddle: A small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing dry shoes into it.
Show off: A child who is more talented than yours.
Sterilize: What you do to your first baby’s pacifier by boiling it and to your last baby’s pacifier by blowing on it.
Storeroom: The distance required between the supermarket aisles so that children in shopping carts can’t quite reach anything.
Happy Mother’s Day to all who perform that vital role.
In the movie Drillbit Taylor, some high school boys are looking for a bodyguard to protect them from a bully. They settle on Owen Wilson after interviewing others like Adam Baldwin, who tells them hiring a bodyguard is a stupid idea.
Baldwin (unrelated to Alec and family) played the high-school bodyguard in My Bodyguard (1980) and wore the same kind of white T-shirt plus army-surplus jacket as in this movie.
On episode 13.1 (2008) of the Globe Trekker TV series (also known as Pilot Guides and formerly known as Lonely Planet), they traveled to Los Angeles and Hollywood and took in the L.A. County Coroner’s Office gift shop.
Along with products like dead-body-outline beach towels and toe-tag key chains was their own sign:
If you’ve been here to Language and Humor Blog before, you may have noticed a certain lack of roadway license. Er, street cred. That’s all about to change with this post about The Extensive Hip Hop Rhyming Dictionary (On-line Records, US$8.95) (on-linerecords.com/). [EDIT (6/7/10): dead link]
I’m not a fan of rap music or hip hop, but I find the phrasal rhymes very interesting. The book could be of use not only to rappers but also to song parodists (including science-fiction filkers), whose alternate lyrics often rhyme with those of the original song.
I notice that some of the examples in the book aren’t rhymes proper (same vowel sound and same final-consonant sound) but assonance (same vowel sound). For example, the phrase asthma attack rhymed with blast from the past has the “az-” of asthma and “(bl)ast” of blast. That’s assonance, but the consonant sounds are so close that it’s also an approximate rhyme. However, the “-(t)ak” of attack with the “(p)ast” of past is just assonance. With the unstressed schwa vowels, there’s also rhyme (“uh” of attack with “uh” of the), which keeps the rhythm/beat to STRESSED-unstressed-unstressed-STRESSED. The last set has the same schwa assonance as well as consonance (same consonant sound) of the initial “m” in asthma, “-muh,” and the final “m” in the word from, “(fr)um.” [EDIT (6/7/10): This paragraph edited for clarity.]
You might want this book if your level of “free flow” now is at “zero.”
It’s that time of year again. It’s time for Youtube’s sketch comedy contest: Sketchies II. Actually, “that time of year” is three months earlier this year (must be the leap year thing), as last year’s contest started in May (Summer 2007 Youtube sketch comedy contest).
You could win $25,000 (in money) and $15,000 in film-making equipment.
This time the contest is more structured. The first video, three minutes maximum, has to be about a road trip and has to incorporate a traditional musical instrument. The second video, if you’re a finalist, is to be announced.
To enter, you also have to be an adult and live in the United States.
Open Call: Submit first video February 18 to March 3, 2008 (11:59:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time).
Round 1: If you’re one of ten finalists chosen by March 19th, submit second video by April 6th.
Round 2: The winner will be announced on April 18, 2008.
The latter was more creative but took too long to get to the point for the Web-surfing culture. However, I realized I can have it both ways. Like Classic Coke, though, the old one is slightly different from the original. I’m a perennial editor.
EDIT (2/12/08): I’ve just made a few small changes to this post.
Do you like The Office (US), especially Steve Carell’s Michael Scott character? Do you dislike The Office? Did The Office use to steal your lunch money?
Then you should like andsarah channel‘s And Sarah videos on Youtube.
Writer-actor Sarah Dooley and director-cinematographer-editor Rachel Mersky (kokiriforest channel) are making mock documentary videos of a deliciously annoying character’s college life.
The fictional Sarah, like The Office‘s Michael Scott, is arrogantly clueless. But she’s master of her own reality. She wells over with so much denial that low-lying islands are at risk of submersion.
I won’t spoil the best stuff, but watch in Episode 1 (“Sarah introduces her college life. Awkwardness ensues.”, embedded below) as Sarah waves and calls out to Allison, gets snubbed, and rationalizes that Allison must have thought she was waving to someone else—”also named Allison.”
Then in Episode 2 (“Sarah auditions for the Vagina Monologues!”), see Sarah get called on her lies by her beleaguered roommate, only to do an English-muffin reality reset.
So far there are only the two installments, but Episode 2 is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on Youtube.
Episode 2 is funnier than the winner or any of the other nine finalists for the 2006 Youtube Video Awards: Best Comedy compare for yourself (youtube.com/ytawards?name=ytcomedy). [EDIT (6/7/10): link content gone] Enjoyable as many of those videos are, I got only one laugh out of the winning video, Smosh Short 2: “Stranded” (below), and zero laughs out of the others.
I got two huge laughs out of And Sarah Episode 2 from the deft writing, acting, and editing. That’s, sadly, quite rare from what I’ve seen on Youtube over the last year. Watch it a second time just for the enjoyable characterization from facial expressions and body language.
Episode 1 is also very well done. I got smiles not laughs, but I loved the writing and acting (and the mockumentary style). You just want to shake the character Sarah and shout “What is WRONG with you?!” Yet somehow she’s endearing.
I confess I have a personal interest in this. The real Sarah is a busy university student. But if many people subscribe and many more watch, she’ll feel pressured to keep making videos for me and others to enjoy—instead of wasting her time learning, uh, learny stuff in schooliversity and junk.
The And Sarah show is worth checking out. Travel over to Youtube and subscribe to/bookmark andsarah channel, and bring friends along for the trip to mirth. Sarah will entertain you. But she can’t help you get back your lunch money. That’s a journey you must take alone.
Perfect storm (a synergy of bad luck/bad decisions): I like it, but it has been overused.
Webinar (World Wide Web seminar): It’s inelegant. The only motivation for the blend is the same vowel sound in web and seminar. Can’t we just call it a seminar?
Organic: Over the last couple years, I’ve noticed that seemingly all actors now describe their movies as “evolving organically.” How is this different from “evolving naturally”?
Wordsmith and to Author: I like them, and they’ve been around since 1873 and 1596 (click on “2, transitive verb”), respectively. Write is better than author, but the latter gives you some variety.
Random (as in “that’s so random”): This has been vogue slang among teens for a few years at least. It seems to just mean “that’s so odd” or “that’s out of left field” or “Where did THAT come from?!” We’ll see if it sticks around.
Webster’s New World Dictionary named grass station and
the American Dialect Society voted subprime as words of the year.
Grass station (a gas/petrol station for ethanol, perhaps made from switch grass) is clever, but I doubt it would ever be a serious word.
Subprime (as in “subprime mortgage”) has certainly been in the news a lot in the United States. I suppose it will be around a long time unless the laws change; has anyone had a need to say “junk bond” since the late 1980s?
Meanwhile, until January 31, 2008, you can vote for Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary2007 word of the year.
I’d like to point out a couple of omissions in the Macquarie Dictionary entries.
Helengrad
nounNZ Colloquial (humorous) Wellington, seen as controlled by the government of Prime Minister Helen Clark. [Helen Clark + -grad common Russian ending meaning `town']
Helengrad isn’t just Helen + -grad; it’s clearly a blend of Helen and [Sta]lingrad and perhaps to a lesser extent of [Len]ingrad.
data smog
noun electronic information as by emails, internet searches, etc., which, by its volume, impairs performance and increases stress.
Data smog is most likely based on the accessible data cloud (popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4205068.html?page=2) [EDIT (6/7/10): revised content on linked page] of all your digital stuff (a different meaning at Wikipedia, a way of visually displaying data).
