Vakkotaur

It can be amusing at times when people mis-speak (hopefully it just mis-speaking) and you know what was intended to be said. I was told a story a few days ago about a young fellow who was concerned about a roommate doing things in their apartment. The details are not important, but the term "contraseptic" (as a noun) was used in the original telling without any sense of irony or in-joke.

I know what contraceptives are. And that they can be called prophylactics. And what contraception is. But I had not heard of a "contraseptic" before. Then, there likely a good many things I have not yet heard of. So I went to a search engine or two and looked around the web. Nope, no stunning revelation of something I've managed to miss for some time. Just a lot of advice to people using that word, which can all be summed up in two words: don't mate.

Ah, but 'contraseptic' does have that odd appeal of something that feels like it ought to be a word. But it lacks a proper definition. Perhaps you can add to the lexicon: How would you define "contraseptic"?

If you mix a Smithwick's Ale with a Corona, do you get a Typewriter?

( If you need an explanation of that... )

I while ago I saw mention of the response to a lengthy item of "tl;dr" which stands for "too long; didn't read." It's one thing if something is genuinely of excess length and skipped over - but why post any response about it?

A few minutes ago I saw a fairly short posting, all of 42 words (even with all the punctuation and spaces it's within the 140 character limit of Twitter), get the the "tl;dr" reply. Someone responded to that with I usually translate it as "ta;ri" - "too apathetic, remained ignorant". Yes, that fits.

Headline in the Star Tribune: Black & Decker recalls 9,000 thermal coffeemakers for potential burn risk.

Anyone have a non-thermal coffeemaker?

I was never into sports and that's putting much of it mildly. There were things that did interest me, such as radio. The book that I first learned much of electronics and radio from was originally written in the days of vacuum tubes. The later revision I read mentioned transistors but a mention was about it.

Thus I knew of electron current (just try to explain, sanely, how a vacuum tube works using "conventional current") and of the heater, cathode, grid, anode or plate, and such. This has an impact on how I hear or interpret at least one phrase.

While I know full well the intended baseball-derived meaning of "step up to the plate," whenever I hear that phrase I wonder why someone should closely approach the anode.

One of the supermarkets/grocery stores in town has or had a couple announcements that are unintentionally amusing. One suggests "Kitchen Chicken" for a family meal. Upon hearing that, I wonder what other rooms might have chicken. I'd certainly hope that the chicken would have been prepared in the kitchen. I sure don't want bathroom chicken.

The other announcement advises folks to look for the "NuVal nutritional label." The problem with the announcement is one of speed or lack of pause. I keep hearing it as "Look for the new malnutritional label."

Occasionally I see a journal post appended, and the addition starts with ETA. The first time it was quite jarring. I had only seen or heard ETA as or for "Estimated Time of Arrival" and this was new thing that I eventually discovered was meant as "Edited To Add." What, ADDENDUM is too big and fancy a word?

Animals such as dogs, cats, and horses, that look like the they're walking on their toes, because they are, are digitigrade and can be said to have digitigrade feet. Getting that look is sometimes desired when building a fursuit, and I don't have any real problem with that. There are at least a couple ways of getting the look.

What bugs me is all the folks who either ask for help and advice or show their versions in fursuit communities who don't manage to spell the word. Very often I see "digigrade" or even worse variations and it grates. At least some are likely just typos, but when the misspelling occurs repeatedly, I wonder if that person shouldn't do any work on the design until they can get the spelling right.

A locked post I read told a version of the "Aristocrats" joke. The only thing it did for me was explain the occasional posting of just "The Aristocrats!" in some thread or other. If you are not familiar, the alleged joke involves a talent agent, some act (generally a family) that is rude, lewd, and just plain appalling (scatological, incestuous, etc.) and at the end the rather shocked talent agent gets enough composure to ask the name of the act or, "What do you call yourselves?" only to be told, "The Aristocrats!" Alternate versions might have "The Sophisticates!" or similar names. The idea, it seems, is that the humor is in the incongruity of the name with the act. Supposedly this is also "the dirtiest joke ever told" and gets worse with each telling as people try to one-up each other on the vulgarity. Note that. The vulgarity increases. The humor, if any, does not. It's the same incongruity. The shock might increase, but after a while it hardly matters. More excrement or more incestuous acts doesn't do anything for the humor.

The person who posted this joke was a bit surprised by the negative reaction it got. It wasn't seen as funny, but just as crude. I suspect this falls into the "So crude it's funny" trap. There are funny jokes that happen to be crude. Much like there are funny jokes that happen to be stupid. The mistake is in thinking the the crudeness or the stupidity are what makes things funny. Those are just along for the ride.

I've often heard the line that something is "so stupid it's funny" and found the result was not funny, merely very stupid. Here I have a similar reaction. The idea might be "so crude it's funny" but all I get is that it's very crude. Many jokes depend on having some less than perfect aspect aspect to them. This is why self-deprecating humor works so well: you don't have to concern yourself about who is the butt of the joke. Rodney Dangerfield had this down. For that matter, so did Jack Benny though it might not have seemed obvious at the time.

While censorship is an ugly thing, some restraint can be a good thing. Some limits require a person to think about how to get a point across or do a joke without using cusswords and crudity as a comedic crutch. When my sister and I were much younger and living our folks, there was some show on the history of comedy. It had tantalizing clips of folks like Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Burns and Allen. And also, I expect, Rodney Dangerfield and up through the folks who were in or had just had been in Saturday Night Live. After the show, Pa remarked on something. My sister and I had been lying on the floor as we watched and he was also watching us. We laughed almost uncontrollable at the early comedians, and didn't laugh much if at all for the more recent ones. It's not that we didn't get the jokes. It was that the jokes just weren't very funny. They were, as I have dubbed such things, subjests. They live in the comedic state of Almost. And Almost Funny... isn't funny.

Yes, shock can work. But not if you're desensitized to it from nearly continual exposure. Shock only works when it actually is shocking. "Not worth a tinker's damn" comes to mind. It's nothing unusual for the tinker to cuss. He's always cussing anyway. No shock. But if something happens and someone not known for cussing, the Pope perhaps, cuts loose with an expletive...that's shock that would work - once. It works by the sheer rarity and unexpectedness of it. Repeating it lowers the value, and fast. And even then the shock, by itself, is not necessarily funny.

I just made (and quickly corrected) a typo that might be useful as a word. When someone attempts to make a joke and while it's not complete crud, it's still only semi-amusing and not really laugh-worthy and they might even feel a need to ask if you got it because you didn't react? That's a subjest.

"Didn't you catch that?"
"Yes, I did."
"And?"
"And it was only a subjest."