 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2009, MARCH |
||
|
|
|
March 27 So we’ve had oxymorons, phrases that contradict themselves; and contranyms, words with two contrary meanings. I promised a little more on antonymic homophones, also known as homophonic antonyms. “Razed” and “raised” are the only pure H.A. pair I know, in that they are pronounced exactly the same and applied to the same object-a building—to mean exactly the opposite of each other. There are “wont” and “won’t,” which have problems of their own as I noted in January. How about “accept,” to take in and “except,” to exclude? Not truly homophonic, but close. Or “sucker,” to take advantage of, and “succor,” to comfort. Not truly antonymic, but close. It’s a stretch, and admittedly you can’t do both to the same object, but if you bale cotton you pack it together, while if you bail water, you empty it out. Hey, these are hard; you have to cut me some slack. Those are all I can think of. Any help out there? Now let us consider a whole new class of words, nameless as yet: words that mean only the opposite of what they purport to mean. I’d call them autoantonyms, but some people use that as a synonym for contranym. A synonym for contranym? Don’t worry, I’m not going there. I got interested in this sort of thing, so I did some research. “Research,” of course does not mean to search again, but to search the first time. Unless you couldn’t find your keys the first time you searched the house, so you researched. Which would make this a contranym (see January 24), but no dictionary I checked listed that definition, so I’m keeping it here. Do you weed your garden? I deweed mine. And “peel” actually means to unpeel. Do you buy boned chicken? I don’t—I think they have enough bones already. If you’ve ever brought your own wine to a restaurant, you will be familiar with “corkage” fees, which is a charge for uncorkage. There is at least one other word that is somehow linked to those in the back of my mind, but the front of my mind refuses to bring it out and look at it. In America, “table” means to take something off the table (i.e. remove it from consideration). In England, though, “table” means to put it up for discussion, so it matters where you are. Why do movie trailers always precede the movie? And another temporal incongruity of sorts: “preorder,” which means to order. The fact that it isn’t in stock doesn’t mean that you haven’t actually ordered it—just ask Amazon.com. A relatively new addition to the world of autoantonyms is much in the news recently, a word coined by the world of finance: “securitization.” I could go on, but I have to go to the vet. I have an appointment to get my dog fixed.
March 23: I was recently taken aback when I heard my favorite DJ refer to Tchaikovsky’s March Slave as a potboiler, since I was accustomed to thinking of potboilers as literary works. What exactly is a “potboiler”? And why? It’s one of those words we live with, recognize, and understand until someone asks for a definition. It seems any composition--of words, music, or whatever—which is dashed off to pay the bills, or boil the pot, may be termed a potboiler. It doesn’t even have to be of inferior quality, though that’s generally the case. Picasso was famous for creating potboilers, even if I’ve never heard the term used in that context. Aback, or surprise, if you were wondering, is literally “at or on the back” from an unexpected change in the wind that flattens the sails back against the masts. So you are taken aback when the wind is coming from the front. As a public service, I have undertaken to clarify a few of these strange words we (OK, I) use all the time without quite understanding them. There is a ground swell of support for this sort of endeavor, which we all know means a rapid change of public opinion that just sort of happens, without leadership or direction. Oddly, it always seems to be in support of something, even if the thing itself is negative, like a ground swell of anti-war sentiment. I have no idea why it’s called this. You can also have a ground swell at sea, where there is no ground. It’s a broad, deep undulation of the water, often the aftermath of a distant storm or earthquake. Everybody knows that an aftermath is what happens after a particular, usually catastrophic, event. But what’s math got to do with it? Nothing. In the 16th century, an aftermath was a second crop of grass grown after the first had been harvested, and “math” is from the Old English for “mowing.” Not at all disastrous. Now aren’t you glad you tuned in today? So do you need math to be a polymath? Again, no. Polymath (one who knows a lot about a lot of things) is from the Greek words for a lot and learning, while math (the kind with numbers) comes from the Latin (by way of Greek) for, well, math. I guess if you know tensor calculus, you would be a polymath but you’d have to call it something else. Maybe mathmath, from learning and mathematics. If you are a whiz at tensor calculus but useless in any other field of knowledge, would you be a monomath? That’s one I just invented to replace the socially objectionable idiot savant, or really smart stupid person. I had a math professor once who was like that: really smart, but his wife had to drive him to campus. There should be a term for that, the opposite of an idiot savant. How about genius noncompetant? “Pettifogger” is a great word, even if it’s not the sort of thing you say every day. I know it’s not complimentary, and it has to do with lawyers, but I’ve never been completely clear as to what it means. But it sounds so cool, who cares? Well, it’s so easy to look these things up now, I have no excuse. So here it is. A pettifogger is an unscrupulous or unethical person, usually a lawyer or politician. It’s also a nitpicker, someone who raises minor annoying objections (or, I suppose, petty fogs). Now that’s a useful word, more than I even thought. OED differs slightly on the definition, saying its “an inferior [as opposed to unscrupulous] legal practitioner,” but I think that’s just pettifoggery. That's enough for today, but if I come across some more, I'll save them for you...
March 19: Retention Boguses I don’t want to be the only one in the country who is not grousing about The Bonuses, so here’s my two cents’ worth. Several dictionaries define “bonus” as something given or paid over and above what is due. In business, it’s something extra you get (if the boss feels like it) for doing a good job. A performance-based bonus is one whose size is based on your productivity. AIG isn’t using those, or the employees would owe the company. AIG is calling their grants “retention bonuses,” money intended to entice their key people to stay on the job. I always thought that was what a salary was for, but what do I know? Anyway, it’s not working all that well. Of the 73 people in AIG’s Financial Products division given bonuses in excess of $1,000,000, 11 are no longer with the company. That’s an attrition rate, for those of you without your calculators, of fifteen percent. Seems to me if fifteen percent of your employees take the money and run, you need to call the retention bonus something else. And since AIG has said they are dissolving the Financial Products division, you have to suspect that retention isn’t really what they have in mind. Nor is “bonus” what they have in mind, since it is apparently written into the employment contracts. I don’t know what you call it, but it ain’t a bonus: “something extra or additional given freely.” I propose a different name, the one at the top of the page. AIG chairman Liddy says he can’t rescind the boguses or his employees will sue. And evidently Secretary Geithner agrees, so he has demanded that the company pay it out of operating funds. Like that will make it better. And he says the next $30 billion of the bailout will be reduced by $165 million, the amount in question. What is this supposed to do? AIG will just come back next month and say “Gee, we seem to be $165 million deeper in the hole than we thought—we need another cash infusion or we might just go under.” And, still being too big to fail, they will get it. I’ve said before that failure should not be an option for companies TBTF, it should be mandatory. Let’s agree to bail out AIG as part of its bankruptcy and reorganization. All contracts—and all bonuses—would be abrogated. It would cause a panic among the banks that AIG insures, but hey, we’re bailing them out too. And paying for their executives’ massive bonuses…. Congress is now looking into legislation that will impose an excise tax of 90 or 100% on corporate bonuses. There may be some serious legal problems with that idea, but some legal scholars think it could be written to survive a Constitutional challenge. I’m all for it in this instance—could we include some jail time?—but it’s a scary precedent.
March 16: Philosophies on First Meditation The average Zen master, if you asked him what was the goal of meditation, would probably clap you on the ear with one hand, leaving you wondering what that sound was. The goal is to have no goal. Well, maybe eventually, but somehow you have to get there. The immediate goal is to focus the mind by emptying it of all extraneous thought—which is to say all thought. You begin by concentrating on a single, simple thing, be it an imaginary triangle, your breathing, or the rhythm of your pulse, until you are able to concentrate to the exclusion of everything else. The ultimate goal, and it must be a goal or no one would ever embark on the journey in an attempt to achieve it, is to dissociate yourself from your physical environment and become one with the universe, whatever that means. The reason people work at this is to come to a state of complete peace, the definition of which seems to be all negatives: absence of goals, of striving, of desire. I’m not at all sure this is a state compatible with being human. We all want something. The Dalai Lama wears glasses, after all. Even Mother Teresa, who was famously selfless even if she wasn’t a Buddhist, wouldn’t have gotten out of bed if she hadn’t wanted to improve the lot of Calcutta’s poor. At least meditation doesn’t have to take up much of your time. The old Zen masters used to spend a lifetime on it, but nowadays you can try ten-minute Zen, from the book of the same name by Sell and Roberts. I tried meditation years ago. I never had any formal instruction, but the basic principles seemed pretty straightforward. I had what I suppose would be called a degree of success: I reached the point where I could remain apart from my surroundings, aware of what was happening but unaffected by and not interacting with it. I might know my nose itched, but I felt no need to move to scratch it. It wasn’t nirvana, but it was very relaxing. I have the impression that it has at least as much to do with the body as the mind. Try this non-meditation experiment: sit still. That’s all, just sit still. Let your mind do whatever it wants, but don’t move a muscle (N.B.: it’s ok to let your chest move in and out). After a few minutes you will find your body awareness changing. You will ask yourself why you decided to leave your neck twisted like that, or how anyone could ever sit comfortably on a wallet. Then you realize you can’t actually feel your hand resting on your thigh, and you begin to wonder what it would take to move your arm. And when you decide you don’t really care, your mind will go off on its own, leaving (well, not really leaving, but ignoring) your body. I’m not sure why I gave up meditating. It wasn’t a conscious decision; I just stopped doing it. I don’t have much interest in trying it again, though. What if I got really good at it and achieved the ultimate goal? I can’t imagine anything more boring. I want things. My entire waking life is spent wanting things. I don’t mean a new camera, although that might be nice. But maybe today I want to help an old lady across the street, or have an old lady help me across the street. I want to go across the street. I want to scratch my nose. I want lunch. If I never wanted lunch, I would go to heaven, or nirvana, or somewhere out of this life in fairly short order. I can’t imagine not wanting anything—I think it would be like being dead. Maybe it would be being dead. In any case, I’m not in any hurry.
March 12 OK, I know you're tired of waiting for something to happen here; me too. Tomorrow I am going to investigate either a new computer or a way to retrieve my data from the old one. Or both. Meanwhile, chew on this: L.A. restaurants are to food as L.A. fashion is to clothing. I like food. I can’t imagine living without it. And I enjoy going out to a restaurant. But in a lot of places in L.A. you can’t have it both ways. The hottest new restaurant in town is called XIV because the chef has had 13 restaurants before this--apparently nobody will have him for long. They serve…something. I’m not sure what to call it, but certainly not food: “A white chocolate cube dessert hides layers of fruit, cream, and beets.” BEETS??? I don’t think so. I don’t care how wonderful the restaurant is supposed to be, or how expensive, if it puts beets in my chocolate, I’m not coming. The concept at XIV (restaurants in L.A. can’t just have food, they need to have a “concept”) is simple: you can order whatever you want, but everybody at the table gets the same thing. This is done so the waiter doesn’t have to remember who gets the caviar parfait, though it seems to me if he expects a 20% tip, he ought to be able to handle that. I thought the point of menus was so you didn’t have to eat what everybody else had, but what do I know? Most of the dishes at XIV are $8 per person (good stuff slightly more) so each item on your plate adds $32 to the bill if you’re dining with friends. Or you can go for the volume discount and order everything on the menu, all 35 items, for $250 per person. I don’t recommend it, though: you’ll probably lose your appetite somewhere between the Thai coconut soup with garnet yam and the crispy pork belly with pea leaves and cashews. Pardon me: I’m getting a cramp in my pinky.
March 7 The computer has finally quit, but the good news is that Apple says they can fix it--for a few dollars less than the cost of a new one. Unfortunately, it was sick for a long time before it died, so my automatic backup was backing up all of the folders on my desktop--and none of their contents. My external hard drive has 10 copies of a bunch of empty folders. So I’m writing this on my Little Mac, but the version of the Curmudgeon file on my laptop wasn’t quite up to date, which is why February, in case you were looking for it, ends on the seventh. Until my stimulus check arrives, I am not spending upwards of $1000 to fix Big Mac. I would hate to deprive you while I’m waiting for a bag of money to fall out of the sky, so I will put up something by way of temporizing. Now let’s see, what haven’t I said yet… News is that congress has decided to delay the final conversion to digital TV another four months. Seems two years notice was not enough, and there is a fear that some people might be cut off. Besides, the coupon program providing rebates for the converter boxes has run out of money, so the laggards might not get reimbursed. Like nobody thought of that before. Like the program will suddenly get an influx of money from some part of the government stimulus/bailout package in the next few months. The same afternoon, later news says the congress voted down the delay…. No worries: they changed their minds again and voted the delay back up. We now have until June 12. Anyway, I got the new digital TV attached to my old rabbit ears, and the picture looked good except when the signal disappeared altogether, which was often enough to make me want to throw large and heavy objects at the screen. My solution was to invest in a bigger rabbit. It worked pretty well. The new antenna, which looks disturbingly like the starship Enterprise, has its own remote, and you can set it to rotate to the optimum position for each channel. Without even getting off the bed. We get a lot more channels now, which got me to thinking. How many different signals are floating out there waiting for me to tune them in? And every one on a different carrier wave. There are hundreds of them, just for TV. (Hey! They’re waves! I just figured out why they call it “channel surfing”!) Then there’s satellite radio, which has another million separate broadcasts including, I’m told, one for classical music. And that’s not to mention the numberless different cell phone calls, wireless internet connections, who knows what all else. All buzzing invisibly around my head at once, all trying to (or trying not to) occupy the same space at the same time. I guess waves can do that, but I don’t see why they don’t interfere with each other. Talk about air pollution. The particulates in the air, the stuff you can see and smell, are the least of it. Mark my words, no good will come of this.
March 2 Well, I see we have dropped another $30 billion down the rathole that is AIG. The stock is quoted today at 42 cents, down 99% from last year. It seems like a terrific buy to me. If the government’s treatment means anything, it means that AIG stock can only go up. You and I and our representatives in Washington are clearly not going to allow this insurance behemoth to fail. I wondered several billion dollars ago why this should be. Apparently AIG is the company that insured all those credit default swaps that made bank CEOs obscenely rich and the rest of us obscenely gesturing. If AIG can’t pay off on the banks’ losses, the banks might go under. So tell me again why I have to bail out the banks too.
The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect--well, yes, come to think of it, I guess they do.
all materials on this site ©michael grossman. all rights reserved. |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|