False needs in the mailbox

“False needs” is our household’s name for the catalogues that come to our mailbox, day after week after month after year:

“Did we get anything?“

”A water bill, a New Yorker, false needs.”

The term comes from Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964):

We may distinguish both true and false needs. “False” are those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice. . . . Most of the prevailing needs to relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love and hate what others love and hate, belong to this category of false needs.

The term “false needs” is related of course to the Marxist idea of false consciousness.

[Your needs may vary. This post makes no claim as to the truth or falsity of anything beyond the contents of my mailbox.]

On Louis Armstrong’s birthday

“Musician Louis Armstrong waving to the audience seated at back of the stage.” Photograph by John Loengard. Manchester, United Kingdom, 1965. From the Life Photo Archive.

Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901.

WKCR-FM is playing Armstrong all day.

Related reading
All Louis Armstrong posts (Pinboard)

Telephone exchange names on screen: GRamercy

[From the Naked City episode “Color Schemes Like Never Before,” May 1, 1963.]

The Naked City also contains at least one pay telephone in the GRamercy exchange. This desk phone is a model 500.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire

Metaphors for writing

Walter Benjamin:

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

One-Way Street, in “One-Way Street” and Other Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London: NLB, 1979).

This three-part model reminds me of Betty S. Flowers’s four-part model for the work of the writer: madman, architect, carpenter, judge. Flowers’s madman and architect are more or less Benjamin’s composer; her carpenter is his builder. Flowers’s carpenter and judge share the work of Benjamin’s weaver. I think.

What all good writers know is that the work of writing is many kinds of work, not to be attempted all at once.

A related post
Granularity

Domestic comedy

[Watching Food Network not long ago.]

“It’s Perth Amboy!”

“Do you know him?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[The Food Network sounds better, but it’s Food Network. Go figure. Perth Amboy is a place, not a person. Go figure.]

Polident, different to and than

[“Different to.” “Different to.”]

For some time now, spokesdentists in Polident television commercials have been telling us that dentures “are very different to real teeth.” The spokesdentists above are doing just that.

Is that a problem? No and yes.

Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern American Usage (2009) describes different to as “common and unobjectionable BrE [British English].” But there appear to have been many objections to different to in BrE. In Modern English Usage (1926), H. W. Fowler defends different to while conceding that different from is, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, “now usual” — but only because of what Fowler calls “the dead set made against d. to by mistaken critics.” “That d. can only be followed by from and not by to is a superstition,” says F. We might say that for F., d. to was beleaguered and unobjectionable. MEU as revised by Sir Ernest Gowers (1965) holds to the Fowler position. MEU as revised by R. W. Burchfield (1998) says that objections to different to are “not supportable in the face of past and present evidence or of logic.” But Burchfield acknowledges that twentieth-century BrE shows “a marked preference for different from.” Is different to part of BrE? Yes. But it doesn’t appear to be the norm.

The real question is not whether different to is right or wrong: it’s why Polident’s American dentists speak BrE. But change is in the air: last night I heard a Polident dentist warn that dentures “are very different than real teeth.” Different than : that’s a problem.

GMAU ‘s excellent discussion of different acknowledges a variety of circumstances in which different than is “sometimes idiomatic, and even useful.” But Garner adds, “When from nicely fills the slot of than, however, that is the idiom to be preferred.” Dentures are different from real teeth. My guess is that Polident finally had it with people wondering about different to and switched to the ubiquitous, inelegant than. Different than, Burchfield’s MEU says, “does not form part of the regular language in Britain” but “is widespread in AmE.”

You can find the two spokesdentists above at Polident’s website, still speaking BrE.

[A Google check: “different to,” 7.03 million hits; “different than,” 15.4 million; “different from,” 47.6 million.]

Orange bookmark art

I don’t think the paint manufacturers of our nation will mind that much if a dedicated reader here and there decides to use a paint sample as a bookmark. So durable. And such a selection.

The sample to the left is pretty much not actual size.

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange car art : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange flag art : Orange manual art : Orange mug art : Orange newspaper art : Orange notebook art : Orange notecard art : Orange peel art : Orange pencil art : Orange soda art : Orange soda-label art : Orange stem art : Orange telephone art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange Tweed art

Eraser cap, eraser cap, eraser cap, eraser cap

When it comes to DIY Warholism, eraser caps aren’t as rewarding as the faces of Mrs. and Mr. Mark Trail. But there was only one way to be certain about that.

Pretty much actual size, neater too

[Eraser cap. Pretty much actual size if you’re reading on a mobile device, maybe.]

Now there’s a much cleaner line.

Pretty much actual size

[Eraser cap. Pretty much actual size.]

In response to popular demand (a request from Fresca), here is a recreation of the missing-eraser-cap picture. I drew this one in ink, not pencil, to make a better scan. I’ve omitted the details that accompanied the original (an impassioned plea for the cap’s return, and my street address in Anytown, USA).

If anyone’s wondering what this post is all about, this post explains.