McReality check

McDonald's Corporation is not happy with the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of the word "McJob," which the OED says is "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector." As a consequence, the company has decided to urge dictionaries in the UK to remove the definition, claiming that "McJob" means the exact opposite (i.e., a job that is stimulating and offers good chances of career enrichment and advancement).

By extension of the company's logic, Ann Coulter henceforth will be identified as a paragon of tolerance, intelligence, and wisdom.

The Hebrew Hammer fronts a band from Indianapolis

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming at He Writes About Words for this entry, which is cross-posted at extrawack!

This is Jim, your final extrawack! guest blogger. Before I get to the real substance of this post, I should say Erin Go Bragh. I hope you enjoy a nice cool (not cold) Guinness as you celebrate the snake beater holiday. Here in Indianapolis, we dye the Canal green, drink green beer, and have a parade with lots of guys in kilts playing bagpipes. So I suppose that we celebrate St. Patrick's Day like just about every other large city in the United States.

We also have an often overlooked music scene. It's certainly not Austin or Montreal. Hell, it's not even Omaha. But it is what it is. It is certainly trying to get noticed with events like the Midwest Music Summit, which gets bigger and better each year.

One of the Hoosier State's best musical assets is Secretly Canadian. After allowing the world to hear great artists like Jens Lekman, the Bloomington label continues its run of excellent musicians with David Vandervelde, who recently released his first full-length album, The Moonstation House Band. Vandervelde, who is from Chicago, has been dubbed a latter-day Marc Bolan by critics. I can certainly understand where they're coming from, as the new album's lush sounds evoke shades of T.Rex circa Electric Warrior. Secretly Canadian has kindly offered up the first two tracks on the album for public consumption:

"Nothin' No" mp3
"Jacket" mp3

Stream The Moonstation House Band at David's official website.
Buy the album from Secretly Canadian.

Vandervelde will appear at Luna Lounge on April 21 and at Pianos on April 22.

I really miss the Clash. I still haven't gotten over the fact that Joe Strummer is gone. As a result, I have a huge soft spot for bands that borrow heavily from the Only Band That Mattered. One band falling squarely into that category is Indianapolis' Those Young Lions. The band released a self-titled EP last year on local label Affirmation Records after the members joined forces upon splitting from other Indianapolis bands. Their shows are always packed with kids desperate for noisy, boozy rock after getting their fill of sensitive-guy indie pop. I will be seeing the Lions tonight at my favorite local club.

Sample the wares:

"Showdown" mp3
"Trainwreck Times" mp3

Buy the EP from CD Baby.
Watch the ultra-low-budget video for "Trainwreck Times" and see if you don't think that frontman Tony Beemer bears a strong resemblance to Adam Goldberg.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Musical Family Tree, which is a diamond mine of mp3's from Indiana bands. Recommended listening: Gentleman Caller.

Guest blogging at extrawack!

After a long hiatus from writing about the world of music--well, aside from writing about lyrics--I'll be putting on my hipster badge again this week in a guest blogger stint at the venerable and unquestionably cool music blog extrawack! My official guest blogger day isn't until March 17, but in the meantime, please stop by and check out extrawack!'s offerings.

Flipping the bird to the English teacher - Grammar Myths, Vol. 1

At some point in our childhood, most of us had a teacher that we didn't like. Some of even hated that particular teacher. I didn't have any issues with a teacher until the ninth grade, when I managed to get an English teacher I shall never forget. I'll call her Miss Smith.

For some reason, I could do nothing correctly in Miss Smith's eyes. This was very difficult for me because I had never had any problems with English. In fact, I did exceptionally well in every English class I had taken until Miss Smith's class. In that class, I received sub-par grades on just about every assignment. I truly believe that she disliked me. Why she did, I don't know. She even accused me of cheating on a quiz when I had not cheated.

I managed to somehow redeem myself with her on the last assignment in the course, which was a short story. I wrote a cheesy sword-and-sorcery tale that ripped off just about every fantasy story and action movie I could think of, including Raiders of the Lost Ark and Conan the Barbarian. In a weird about-face, Miss Smith gushed about my short story (which I believe was called "The Chalice"). She called it "compelling" and "masterful."

Unfortunately, on my other English assignments, the comments that I received from Miss Smith were much less complimentary. For instance, in one assignment, I had written a sentence that began with "and," followed by a sentence that began with "but." In huge red letters in the margin, Miss Smith wrote something like this: "It is NEVER permissible to begin a sentence with either one of these conjunctions. Whoever taught you that you could use them in such a way did you a grave disservice."

Ah, Miss Smith, how wrong you were. In fact, it appears that you did a grave disservice to me, an impressionable fourteen-year-old who anxiously clung to this grammar "rule" for several years before deciding that it was nonsense. You see, there is simply no grammar rule that prohibits a writer from using the conjunctions "and" or "but" to begin a sentence. Random House's Word of the Day mavens note that writers have used "and" and "but" to begin sentences for centuries:

Sentences beginning with "and" or "but" are found in English as early as the ninth century, in the Old English Chronicle, and such sentences can also be found in Shakespeare, the King James Bible, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Lord Macaulay, Charles Dickens, and others.

Patricia O'Conner, author of the fantastic grammar book Woe Is I, notes that writers should feel free to use "and" and "but" to begin sentences, but not to overdo it. Just like any other type of stylistic device in writing, overuse of a particular word or phrase can make writing dull.

And so, Miss Smith, wherever you are, I'd like to leave you with a quote from Charles Allen Lloyd, who taught English (among other subjects) for 30 years. This is what he said about Miss Smith's admonition in his book, We Who Speak English:

One cannot help wondering whether those who teach such a monstrous doctrine ever read any English themselves.

Clique speak

Slang is one of my favorite language topics. In my mind, slang is one of the keys to the vibrancy of the English language. It helps the language to grow and change. It also reflects contemporary culture and attitudes. In short, slang could reasonably be considered the lifeblood of any language.

So this article from the local alternative newsweekly got me thinking about the power that peer groups can have over the slang that one uses. In fact, the groups that I hung around with when I was in college virtually had a language of their own. Since these groups were comprised primarily of college guys, most of the group slang centered around sex, girls, drinking, and sports. While I can't claim that the slang we used was entirely original, it was certainly colorful, humorous, and sometimes (gasp) offensive.

Here's a sampling of the "clique speak" of my college peer groups. Be forewarned--if you're easily offended, particularly by remarks about women that could be considered disparaging, then you might not want to read any further. I contemplated censoring some of these entries, but I thought that I might as well be totally honest about the language that we used. I'm not proud of some of it, but I and my peers certainly weren't as mature or reflective at the time that we used it.

After reading these words, you might not be shocked to learn that I was in a fraternity in undergrad; many of these terms come from that experience.

burt (verb) - To vomit. "After Solly did that beer bong, he burted all over his shirt."
Craftsman (noun) - A jerk. Originated as an attempt at a more creative variant of the slang tool. "Steve - He's a total Craftsman."
fat house (noun) - Off-campus housing. Originated when several hefty fraternity brothers moved off campus. Came to be used as a blanket term for any house or apartment in which fraternity brothers or other friends were living off-campus. "Dude, let's head on over to Joe's fat house."
goat (noun) - An uncool person. "John's a goat because he listens to DeBarge."
hee-her (interjection) - Used in response to an act of stupidity. The rough equivalent of duh. Comes from an attempt to mimic the sound of the laughter of a fraternity brother who was not considered terribly bright. "Dropped your beer, dude? Hee-her!"
Santo (noun) - A sixteen-ounce can of Old Style Beer, so named because Chicago Cub Hall of Famer Ron Santo's picture was once featured on the back of the can. "Dude, toss me another Santo."
saving throw (noun) - When one escapes the clutches of a drunk, unattractive woman. From a term used in the fantasy role playing game Dungeons and Dragons that describes the dice roll a player makes to see if he can escape a dangerous situation. "That girl had Joe cornered, but he managed to make a saving throw."
skeetch (noun) - A physically unattractive girl. "Did you see the skeetch that Woody took back to his room?"
skeetch stud (noun) - A guy who has a reputation for chasing skeetches, particularly after he has consumed alcohol. "Woody is the king of skeetch studs."
Well, Gorby (interjection) - Used simply as a pause in speech when the speaker is thinking. Substitute for um, uh, and the like. Inspired by a comedy sketch depicting a conversation between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Came into use when one of my college friends began to repeatedly use the phrase at the beginning of each sentence. "Well, Gorby, I guess we can go get some beer now."
wet (adj.) - Uncool. "Those acid wash jeans are wet, man." Variant is the noun waterfall, used for someone who is extremely uncool. "He's such a waterfall because he wears acid wash every day, dude!"

Lyrics in Focus, Special Edition: "Push The Button" (2007)

When I began this blog, I envisioned Lyrics in Focus as a monthly feature. However, some songs are just too intriguing to pass up.

The Eurovision Song Contest is the pinnacle of musical cheese on the Continent. In short, the contest works like this--European nations enter a native musical act in the contest. Each act is selected by telephone voting in each country. After the contestants are chosen, the winner of the whole contest is again chosen by telephone vote.

The acts themselves are rarely musicians who would or should be taken seriously. Many are purveyors of syrupy techno-pop that is coupled with banal lyrics. Last year's winner, a Finnish band called Lordi, sort of broke the Eurovision mold because they're a hard rock band. However, they don't win any originality points because they're essentially a rip-off of GWAR (at least from a cosmetic standpoint).

For some reason, Israel gets to compete in the contest. The country has won three times. The last time Israel won was in 1998, when transsexual singer Dana International took the prize with her song "Diva," which typifies the type of music that rules in the contest.

For this year's contest, which will take place in May in Finland, Israelis overwhelmingly chose "Push The Button" by Teapacks as their country's entrant. In the song, the band careens through musical styles, beginning in an Israeli folk/Balkan gypsy style and then shifting to rock. The bridge of the song is done in a grimy techno-rap. The lead singer, Kobi Oz, shifts languages along with musical genres, singing and rhyming in English, French, and Hebrew.

Truth be told, I find the song to be catchy in a perpetual-mental-tape-loop way. The lyrics, however, are causing some controversy. Here's a snippet from the English portion of the song:

The world is full of terror
If someone makes an error
He’s gonna blow us up to biddy biddy kingdom come
There are some crazy rulers, they hide and try to fool us
With demonic, technologic willingness to harm

They’re gonna push the button
push the button push the bu push the bu push the button

Many are interpreting the lyrics as an inflammatory and not so veiled reference to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, like other leaders in the region since the State of Israel's establishment, has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. The contest coordinators have received complaints are are apparently going to discuss whether the song should remain eligible for the contest.

For those who want an excellent perspective on Eurovision, The Believer did a great piece on the contest this past summer.

More on the song from the New York Times.

Enjoy: