Walking Spanish [antelogism]
While gchatting with Shani, she casually used the phrase “walking spanish” that she picked up from a book we both have read (or are reading, in my case), and I wanted to toss it into the neologism pot. In researching it without my copy of the book (“Then We Came to the End,” by Joshua Ferris), I discovered that it’s no neologism after all.
The characters coin the phrase Walking Spanish to refer to the laid off workers, as in, “the folks at my firm are walking spanish.” Sadly, when Shani used the phrase, it was used casually because of the recession, and it actually applies. Damn life imitating art! The phrase, as acknowledged by the slightly clueless characters, comes from a Tom Waits song, which according to a New York Times review of the book, is “a phrase with origins in pirate days borrowed from a Tom Waits song about an execution.”
According to my extensive internet researches, the phrase didn’t originate with Waits’ definition.
Anyway, I recently discovered that “walking Spanish” means, literally, being forcibly carried from a place by one’s collar and belt, with one’s tiptoes scrabbling at the floor, so that the Spanish walker is being forced to go somewhere he doesn’t want to go. The expression derives from being made to walk the plank on a pirate ship, but a more modern example might be being thrown out of a bar.
So, while this isn’t a Shani-ism, I think phrases from books are fair game for the neologism feature.
Always Glutton for Family Punishment
This has gotten me in trouble in the recent past, and I mean no disrespect for posting on this, but I do think that I’m disturbed by my own depravity and moral outrage when it comes to Always Sunny in Philadelphia vs. my depravity and moral outrage watching Family Guy.
I watch both. I have laughed at both. The issue is… part of me protests at Family Guy, whereas the least tasteful aspects of Always Sunny are often the best.
I think this speaks to their format and the ways they address their audience. Family Guy goes for the gut laugh. When it makes jokes about, say, rape, it’s not situating that joke in anything other than the scatological. It’s more like.. what can we get away with, and it’s funny because it’s taboo. It’s funny because it twists a familiar formula (hell, it’s even called family guy, as in, “he’s just a regular bloke with a family, dealing with family stuff”) into something both somewhat familiar and somewhat taboo. In the process, it transforms the taboo into the familiar. I’m also sensitive to people using the word “rape” casually [thanks a bundle, Alexander Pope]. To me, this is part and parcel of the same slippage, and directed at the same audience.
Always Sunny, on the other hand, makes us part of this gang of depraved folk. They’re no good, and we know it. They start up sweat shops, they are racist and homophobic cannibals, yet somehow they’re way more cuddly than even the family dog on Family Guy. [Aside: I want a plush doll of Charlie!] In the course of the episode, without hardly meaning to, Always Sunny is commenting on these issues. They don’t familiarize things, instead they let us be complicit. I have to acknowledge my own depravity, instead of my normalcy, when I watch it.
So, yeah. Liminal spaces. Are they always good? Can you set limitations on your liminality? Am I a dork?
“Everything Else”
I like going onto ebay, and clicking on the “everything else” category. Couple of reasons why. First, I really like to sort the stuff by cost, most expensive to least expensive. Find some really interesting stuff that way. Can buy a “haunted ~rare~ Magickal unicorn crystal ball sphere” for only 4 grand. I’m astounded by the number of “haunted” things there are in this category. There’s also the “HAUNTED- THE RING OF UMBRA – THE SEAL OF THE SUMMONER” which sounds fascinating. Apparently it has “incredible magick and control over matter”….did I miss the boat on spelling magic day?
Anyway, the other reason I like looking at this section is for the subdivisions: “Funeral & Cemetery,” “Metaphysical,” “Test Auctions [don’t know what that means],” and, finally, “Weird Stuff.” Best stuff in there: The Tesla Shield (trademarked of course)…it’s a “personal energy enhancement device.” Oh, also in “weird stuff”…the “PREMIUM” leather sensory deprivation hood, affectionately called “Mr. Chastity.” Guaranteed that “GENUINE LEATHER = LIFETIME OF FUN.”
-Scrapply
The Shanty Kingdom 