Topical humor from The New Yorker

Zack Bornstein, “First Obama Came for My Guns.” Clever, funny, and short.

Bill Flanagan, “Li’l Donald.” Clever, funny, and a little longer.

Plainfield T.

An imaginary football team (its colors: mauve and puce), an imaginary star (Johnny Chung, the Celestial Comet), an imaginary school (Plainfield Teachers College): “The Greatest Hoax in Sports Agate History” (The New York Times ).

I think this story beats that of I, Libertine .

[Agate: “condensed information (as advertisements or box scores) set especially in agate type.” Agate type: “a size of type approximately 5½ point” (Definitions from Merriam-Webster.]

Everyday carries

Pez, candy cigarettes, pocket flashlight, pocket magnifying glass, pocket microscope, “ID wallet,” ChapStick, Coin Caddy, bike-lock key, wallet, house key, license, car key, college ID, pen, cigarettes, lighter, grad-school ID, tobacco, rolling papers, Kryptonite-lock key, faculty ID, office keys, Wrigley’s Extra, El Pico key ring, Burt’s Bees Lip Balm, discount cards, keychain flashlight, miniature California license plate, multi-tool, iPod, iPhone, emeritus ID, Jack Black Lip Balm.

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El Pico key ring : No smoking

[“ID wallet”: made of black plastic, with plastic windows to hold a maximum of two cards. Used by grade-school secret agents to carry, uh, ID. Sequence often approximate. Thank you, Rachel, for the Jack Black. No connection to the actor. I went back and added a pen: what was I thinking?]

Gevalia coffee, unbalanced?

We bought the wrong Gevalia coffee, Traditional Roast, not House Blend. As with toothpaste, there are just too many varieties. It is easy to err. Traditional Roast, as it turns out, tastes just fine. However:

Gevalia describes its Traditional Roast as “medium-bodied, smooth, and perfectly balanced.”

And House Blend, as “medium-bodied, smooth.”

Does Gevalia believe its House Blend to be less than perfectly balanced? Slightly askew? Off its foundation?

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[Image found here and altered.]

Scam diction

We received our first “Internal Revenue Service” phone call this morning. Is that because we’re reading The Pale King ?

I listened to the recording a bit before hanging up:

“The reason of this call is to inform you that IRS is bringing a lawsuit against you,” &c.

The IRS doesn’t make such calls. But if you didn’t already know that, would you catch the details that mark this call as phony?

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Ballad of the spam mail : Fake speeding ticket : Phishing : Tech scamming

The Pale King : note-taking

Chris Fogle, a self-described “wastoid,” has walked into the wrong classroom and found himself in Advanced Tax, surrounded by note-takers:


David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (Boston: Little, Brown, 2011).

This post is meant to divert Manfred, who writes about note-taking practices at Taking Note Now.

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[T&A: Training and Assessment. Fogle joins the IRS.]

Domestic comedy

[While starting up the iPad.]

“Let me ask Picture Picture.”

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[For anyone who’s puzzled.]

The life of Vivian Maier

In The New York Times , new details from the life of the photographer Vivian Maier: “Digging Deeper Into
Vivian Maier’s Past,” “A Peek Into Vivian Maier’s Family Album.”

The source for these articles: Vivian Maier Developed, an investigation by Ann Marks (“a retired business executive”) and Francoise Perron (“a retired judge from Maier’s French hometown”).

A related post
Henry Darger and Vivian Maier

[For clarity: Maier’s mother Marie Jaussaud was born in St. Julien, France. Maier was born in New York City. Mother and daughter lived in France for some of Maier’s childhood.]

Word of the day: banausic

It appears in David Foster Wallace’s The Pale KIng (2011), in the extraordinary last-class hortation spoken by a Jesuit substitute instructor of accountancy. He is speaking of the work of the accountant, which he describes as an surprising form of heroism:

‘Exacting? Prosaic? Banausic to the point of drudgery? Sometimes. Often tedious? Perhaps.’

The American Heritage Dictionary (Wallace’s dictionary, in a way, as he was a member of its Usage Panel, from 1999 to his death) defines banausic thusly:

1. Merely mechanical; routine: “a sensitive, self-conscious creature . . . in sad revolt against uncongenially banausic employment” (London Magazine) .
2. Of or relating to a mechanic.

Webster’s Third gives a greater array of meanings:

1a. governed by or suggestive of utilitarian purposes : practical
b. common in taste, thought, or intention : dull and menial
2. moneymaking, breadwinning : vocational : commercially minded : materialistic.

The Oxford English Dictionary is terse: “merely mechanical, proper to a mechanic.” Webster’s Second is terser still and tart: “smacking of the workshop.” Sounds a bit like the Dowager Countess of Grantham.

Whence banausic ? The AHD is helpful:

Greek banausikos, of or for craftsmen, from banausos, craftsman who works with fire, smith, potter, probably dissimilated from earlier *baunausos : baunos, furnace, forge (probably of pre-Greek substrate origin) + auein, to light a fire, get a light from; akin to Latin haurīre, to draw water.

Learning about banausic made me wonder: could banal be related? No, it had a different beginning. From the AHD:

Drearily commonplace and often predictable; trite: “Blunt language cannot hide a banal conception” (James Wolcott).

French, from Old French, shared by tenants in a feudal jurisdiction, from ban, summons to military service, of Germanic origin.

So whatever is common to all (or, at least, to all tenants) is banal. Webster’s Second has a definition which heightens the element of contempt in the word: “showing no individual taste.” The Dowager Countess strikes again!

It is reassuring to those of us who can never decide how to pronounce banal that at least some members of the AHD Usage Panel share the problem: “A number of Panelists admitted to being so vexed by the word that they tended to avoid it in conversation.” Thank goodness this post is written, not spoken.

Did Wallace discover banausic by way of this William Safire column? I wonder.

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Overheard

[Flipping channels.]

“As first impressions are the most important asset, that’s where we’re going to start first.”

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