How is it that something reads “collegiate” when “collegial” is meant? I know how it happens. You think you heard it or saw it that way and eventually start using it with confidence. And next thing you know you’re throwing your misheard/misused word around all over town. But it’s wrong and could be fixed by just checking and confirming it in a dictionary first. Just to be sure, even if you are sure you’re sure.
I am almost always sure, but I like to double check. (Or, to jump in and use a phrase I hate – and discuss below – Don’t double down until you double check.)
I saw a job ad today that put itself out there as a high-end, exclusive luxury branding manager kind of role. But then in the bulleted highlights, it read: “collegiate environment”. I dunno about you, but if I were going to take on a luxury-goods senior brand management role, I don’t want to feel like I’m back in college – kegger anyone? Which is what “collegiate” means.
In a similar vein, my mom did some work for a writer who wrote the line, “She reached into her brazier” when he actually meant “brassiere”. He was offended when she corrected it. But, pardon the pun, would you rather look like a boob… or actually use the right word for what is essentially… a boob holder?
The Swedish J to Y
It isn’t that Swedes cannot say “J” as in “just” or “judge” or “jet lag”. In some constructions, depending on where the “j” comes in the word they want to say, they say the “dj” sound. In many others they pronounce it “y”. Many Swedes pronounce it “y” always. So it’s “yet lag”, “yust”, “yudge”, “yoy” or “enyoy yourself” – or, as I heard today, “yam” when “jam” was meant. There was some discussion that employed the word “jam” – and it was all I could do not to laugh when people quite earnestly said “yam”. Candied yams all around. I should be used to this now, and for the most part I am. I never so much as flinch when I hear the common words from the mouths of Swenglish speakers every day. But this may well have been the first time I heard “jam” as “yam”.
Doubling Down on Dumb – Vernacular Abuse
I was none too pleased quite some time ago when KFC launched a sandwich called the “Double Down” – it is basically two fried chicken patties in place of the bread that would normally house a sandwich. The media has enjoyed the launch and limited-time relaunch of this “sandwich”, with The New York Daily News going so far as to question what constitutes a sandwich, and The Guardian calling it “controversial”, almost as much as the eating, feasting public likes the (as described) “bunless, protein-rich, fat-filled” concoction.
Double Down on coronary artery disease
All that aside, and my point for even bringing it up, I am not at all a fan of the term “double down”. I noticed it creeping into everyday language a few years ago (and wrote about it) – especially from the babbling mouths of political pundits, usually criticizing other politicians who had a bad idea and then “doubled down” on the same bad idea. (“Double down” is a gambling term – doubling the bet on whatever one was wagering on.)
Now, this build up of “doubling down” has finally reached its peak (or given how poorly I think of it, its nadir). I sat in a corporate meeting today and TWO executives mentioned that we will “double down” on some part of the strategy. Can we get a collective Nancy “My life really began when I married my husband” Reagan (that is, “just say no”) here? Once its in the corporate jargon lexicon, it’s past annoying. It’s vomit-worthy.
My only up-close-and-personal experience with the very Swedish phenomenon of caviar in a tube was a week I spent in Stockholm with a French former dalliance. He loved this convenient “spray” of caviar and in fact stocked up on numerous tubes of it to take back to Paris with him.
I am pretty sure that Swedish “kaviar” – that is, some creamy pink goop that looks like pink toothpaste (yes, caviar squeezed from a tube) is a lot like Spam, poi, black licorice or mushrooms. Love/hate. No lukewarm, in-between reactions. In the case of tubed caviar, I can imagine that it would be most popular among Swedes, who seem fairly addicted to the stuff, while other groups and nationalities to whom it was offered would not enjoy it so much.
And this is precisely the theme around which a Kalles Kaviar ad campaign is built. I saw the first ad, in which a guy offers samples of Kalles caviar to bypassers in Tokyo. Their reactions are a mix of horror (as their taste buds get a hold of that special Swedish caviar-in-a-tube paste taste) and politeness (they are Japanese, after all, and cannot publicly register their distaste!).
The reactions in the next ad – set in the US – are markedly different. These people have no problem telling the guy that he basically has no right to call the samples he is serving “food” because they are so disgusting.
I have been giving this campaign considerable thought. Is this the best way to sell? Since these ads are targeted at Swedes, the audience is already … captive. Already people who like –or don’t like – squeeze-tube caviar. Is it then meant as a reminder that this brand exists – reinforcing the brand? Is it a mark of being “special” because Swedes really like something that no one else likes – engagement with the audience’s self-perception as “unique”? National pride at loving something that the rest of the world finds disgusting? A dig at the rest of the world for not having good enough taste/sense to like it? I suppose it could be interpreted in any or all of these ways.
Having written almost prolifically about postage and the controversies of postage stamp motifs, it occurs to me to write about the corollary of postage stamps – letters. We need letters to mail if we are going to get excited about postage stamps. Sure, a lot of people do not mail anything any more – and in fact, many young people apparently don’t even know how to mail things — but if you are going to “go postal” (in the literal sense, not in the violent figurative sense), you might as well do it in a visually appealing way, with fine, varied stamps (after all, someone has gone to the trouble of designing and producing them!). And while you’re at it, you can revive a nearly lost art – letter writing. Don’t use stamps to mail bills (yeah, yeah, I know most of us are paying bills the virtual way these days): fill mailboxes with lovely cards, postcards and handwritten letters. “The letter is dead; long live the letter.”
“…newly shaken with the power of so seemingly simple a thing as a letter — a medium that’s always held enormous allure for me, a humble page that blossoms into a grand stage onto which great romances are played out, great wisdom dispensed, and great genius manifested. But what exactly is it about a letter that reaches such depths, and what ineffable, immutable piece of humanity are we losing as the golden age of writing letters sets into the digital horizon?
That’s precisely what Simon Garfield, who has previously explored how our modern obsession with maps was born, seeks to illuminate in To the Letter: A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing — a quest to understand what we have lost by replacing letter-writing with email-typing and relinquishing “the post, the envelope, a pen, a slower cerebral whirring, the use of the whole of our hands and not just the tips of our fingers,” considering “the value we place on literacy, good thinking and thinking ahead.” (from “The letter is dead, long live the letter.“)
The beauty of the art of letter writing – the anticipation and the intimacy – is captured both in the article I cite and the book the article writes about. But it’s not something one really understands fully unless s/he has been immersed in this “otherworld” of letter writing. It’s still appealing in some way, but the magic it used to hold over me has faded. I don’t know whether this is because of the ease and immediacy of digital communication (against which I fought tooth and nail for such a long time, which one would never guess now) or because of age (that is, life and priorities shift to such a degree that sitting down to devote time to letter writing – which used to be a large chunk of many an artist or writer’s day – seems wasteful).
I don’t know if it is a byproduct of becoming more “worldly” myself – as letter writing was one of the major ways in which I felt I could reach out into a wider world and experience new languages, new cultures, new countries. I could get a glimpse of Communist-era Eastern European countries, just on the cusp of a democratic shift. I could admire the philatelic sensibilities of the French. I could note the similar curves and twists familiar to a country’s handwriting – as though everyone in that one country had been taught to write and form letters and numbers on a page in exactly the same way (a letter could arrive, and even without seeing the stamp, I could usually identify whether it came from Germany or Italy or Japan – how similar the graphology).
There is still something very intoxicating about the idea of having to really want to communicate with someone else so badly that you will make the effort of putting pen to paper and go through the motions of packaging and posting a letter to some other place in the world. It is not really a massive effort – but it is becoming a less and less likely occurrence all the time. When I mail my quarterly CD mixes and sometimes even handmade cards, many people (non-pen pal people) who make it onto the mailing list often express such shock that they received a real, genuine piece of mail. “I haven’t received a personal letter since the 1980s!” they exclaim.
And frankly, I don’t think most people have much experience receiving personal letters. Maybe people’s grandparents are still clinging to the postal service, along with outliers like myself. Everyone seems to enjoy receiving, but like a lot of things in life, people are too lazy or disinclined to reciprocate.
But there are those among us who keep this hobby – passion, even – alive. I can’t say I have been particularly good at it in recent years, having said goodbye to a number of my longtime pen pals because my global bounding and bouncing around has not been conducive to keeping regular contact. There are a few people I will never say goodbye to – and it is funny to imagine ever saying goodbye to anyone, given how protective and “into it” I was in the old days. In the heyday of my pen pal life, I had more penfriends than I could count, all over the world, and counted them among my best friends (despite a few horror stories – which is entirely another story). They were my window to the world, and the daily visit from the postman (whose name was “Maynard” haha) was a lifeline for me throughout my adolescent and teen years. It seems so strange to me that I was checking the mail every ten minutes back then, wondering why the mailman was late, whether my letters were lost, etc. – when now I could go days without checking. And to imagine that the biggest problem in my whole life back then was managing to get enough stamps. I never had enough stamps or money for stamps. And any stamps I was given were gone as soon as I had them in hand. Now I have piles of stamps (that I, perhaps ironically, order online and have shipped directly to me!).
There were “pen pal migrations” over the years. I found that when high school and/or college ended, a lot of pen pals disappeared because they “got on with their lives”, so to speak. Careers, marriage, children, just not being interested in writing or maybe just not wanting to write to me. Fine and dandy. And then there was a mass migration to online communication – many people, citing convenience and expense (envelopes and stamps, once again), shifted entirely to email, and for me, that pretty much ended a lot of friendships because there is nothing about instant email that rivals that sense of excitement one feels when receiving an envelope from somewhere across the world, savoring the reading of every word, setting aside some huge chunk of time to write back and sending off a response, not knowing when you’d get a reply.
It is, it’s worth saying, also intoxicating to think that you might have to wait to get an answer. You might ask a really burning question – and at best, you could expect an answer in two weeks. And at worst – well, who knows? Months? We’ve sort of lost the charm of anticipation – we expect to have everything immediately and instantly, and that instant gratification culture has perhaps spoiled us and made us far less patient, treating others as disposable and thinking of ourselves as much more entitled than we actually are. Letters manage somehow to humanize and slow things down.
The whole thing about letters and parcels – it is just a wholly different feeling, a wholly different world. I will never completely stop with my postal entanglements; it will just continue on this meandering, winding road.
Could you have imagined that postage stamps could summon controversy? Okay, maybe, Finland’s recent “unfurling” of homoerotic stamps featuring the artwork of Tom of Finland will not be everyone’s favorite (I love them!), but conventional philatelists are pretty up in arms about non-conventional stamp releases.
Unfurl it! Cannot help but think of classic Kids in the Hall skit “Danny Husk is Blade Rogers” – the whole clip is chuckle-worthy, but the final 30-40 seconds feature the clip I thought of. (Love Scott Thompson and Dave Foley!)
“Now that I own it, let’s say I see it. Unfurl it, boy. It’s not a flag, let it touch the ground.”
Not being a stamp collector – at all – but someone who likes to choose interesting postage stamps when I send out postal letters and my quarterly soundtrack CDs (yeah I am that old school – actual CDs in the actual postal mail), I sort of keep my eyes open for cool stamps.
“A U.S.P.S. rep told the Post that stamp subjects may change at any time. The Postal Service is looking to attract younger stamp collectors with some of these new additions; because some of these proposed stamps betray previous stamp guidelines (such as the subject being American, in the case of John Lennon), this new direction has become controversial among older philatelists.”
Who knew that stamps could cause controversy? While I can imagine that something like the Finnish stamps might stir up some grumbling among some people, the idea that a non-American appears on an American stamp seems like igniting a controversy where there isn’t (or shouldn’t be) one. Then again, there is something called the “Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee” – stamps really matter to someone.
Rise and shine – I am sure if one day I fulfill this destiny of becoming lord and mistress to a bunch of chickens, I may yet have a rooster crowing at some insane hour, telling me “rise and shine” even before it actually is time for that. My colleague, determined as she is to spread the gospel of chicken ownership, has talked up the different personalities of her chickens and, as if to assuage my fears about their noise potential, claimed that they are largely silent. She went on to attribute this to the breeds of chicken one gets – and opened the chicken bible I have already written so much about to show me pages and pages of glossy images of all the different breeds of chicken one can get. I really had no idea.
But then, who really does have any idea? People are fairly far removed from livestock, animals and food production. I recall having a field trip or two to a working farm but don’t remember anything useful (and I grew up in a place where most farms were flower-bulb farms anyway, so chicken breeds as a topic did not come up). All I can say is that as a consumer or as a baker or eater, I can see, taste, feel the difference in quality when comparing a real, whole, organic, fresh product and something from the store. I have never had a worse egg in my life than the ones that are sold in Sweden. I don’t even know how they can be called eggs. The yolks are slightly yellower than a pale vanilla custard, and the egg, when cooked, tastes like nothing. Very few things in Norway, in my humble opinion, are markedly better than something in Sweden. But eggs are high atop that short list.
These egg experiences do indeed make me question whether it is time to get back to nature and start doing something – some little thing – to at least get eggs that pass muster for me.
I would not be alone in this. I have read a number of articles lately citing the trend toward taking up farming… whether it is because people are inclined to “drop out and become farmers” (despite having no agricultural or rural experience that might lead them to think it was a wise choice), because people want to become more connected to the food they eat, slow down and do a small bit to fight against the overlord factory farm and get into “niche farming” – or just because people really have reached a saturation point (a combination of joblessness and dissatisfaction with the corporate world, whether or not they are actively part of it, and the real desire to escape the maze or jump off the hamster wheel that the world and life often feels like). Farming is difficult and hard work – but it’s undoubtedly rewarding work – very little can be as satisfying as enjoying the fruits of one’s labors. (No, I don’t intend to romanticize it, but sometimes doing something manual and inherently “good” – not at all ambiguous – sounds heavenly.)
And I do live in a place that at least allows for ideal chicken-raising capabilities and environment.
Some farming trends are about getting back to the earth, to something simpler, but even the enrollment in American high school club, Future Farmers of America (FFA), is on the rise. “No Plows, Cows, Sows: Not Your (Grand)Father’s Youth Farm Group” describes a club that is less about plows, cows and sows and more about food and agricultural science with a healthy dose of “law, public policy, entrepreneurship and bookkeeping”. The vast majority of those joining FFA are in urban areas and are not planning to go into large-scale production farming. But the movement reflects that people are growing more interested in learning about their food and where it comes from – at the very least (organic and “ethical” farming are also issues driving participation in FFA).
I will continue to contemplate my chicken situation – and read this book to find out how one cares for chickens. Then I will decide. Out here in the wilderness where I live, the chances of foxes getting into the henhouse are pretty good, and we actually love foxes so much, we might even be inclined not to stop them. That does not really bode well for future chicken residents.
I watch way too much Al Jazeera English. I suppose this is because I like a constant stream of news. How else would I know about the coming clown shortage?? I don’t have a TV and AJE streams live 24/7 online. I can just let all the day’s bad news filter directly into my brain to create hybrid reality-fiction nightmares and wonder when I wake up what really happened and what my brain concocted from what I half-heard.
I understand their point and how seriously they are taking the matter, but after a while, the wording sounds like such an urgent plea for something that just isn’t going to happen. Can you really “demand” something that you are “continuing” to ask for after… ten, forty… one hundred days? And adding in “immediate” on top of that… it threatens to sound almost comical even though there is nothing funny about it. But that is how I dissect language. After a while, these words designed and put together to create a more powerful meaning can be taken apart and reflected back on themselves to show how naked they are. It is not that the speaker does not mean them every half hour of the day for almost a one-third of a year. And it is not that the speaker should not be repeating something – we can’t be allowed to forget the fates of these journalists who were just doing their jobs.
At last everything comes down to “continuing”.
Everything is on a continuum, and you have to continue to change, grow and evolve to become and be more. I suppose this is why I so seldom rest, why I keep taking on more and different work, studies, projects – I want to keep evolving. I have given this a lot of thought lately, surrounded as I have been by creative artist types. Those who took a corporate job to get some corporate work in their portfolios and managed to limit that experience to two or so years are doing great – they moved on when they got what they needed and moved forward. They continued – and expanded. Those who have continued on, doing the same designs day-in, day-out, have stagnated. And the longer that sameness goes on, the less chance there is to evolve. It is perfectly possible, as illustrated in repeating the same words verbatim day after day, to continue to do the exact same thing. Continuing can embody either path.
But the portfolio – figurative or literal – that continues in the same way forever – it cannot be expanded on.
Now, sure, I write and talk about stamps a lot – but I am no philatelist. I have never collected or thought about the value of stamps (other than when the price goes up and my postal costs – as a lifelong pen pal type – go up). I have always sought to get the most interesting or visually stimulating stamps because I assume that is the kind of stamps my pen pals (and anyone receiving mail from me) would want to see. Not patriotic row on row of American flags! No. Give me the Johnny Cash or the March on Washington! Or Harvey Milk or… Jimi Hendrix! Give me the Imagine Peace Tower or Eyjafjallajökull! Give me the cutest depictions of animals ever on Swedish Christmas stamps – or even Swedish luminaries (albeit from totally opposite ends of the cultural spectrum – Nobel laureate TomasTranströmer and footballer ZlatanIbrahimovic!). Give me heart-shaped French designer Valentine stamps! Just not something boring. So the playful argument ended up with a UK resident telling me he was going to outstamp my stamp prowess (I argued that my Swedish wildlife Christmas motif was the best ever, hands down). He claimed he could outdo it.
I am, being a bit afraid of clowns, freaked out because there was just a serious news report on Al Jazeera about the coming “clown crisis” in the clown industry because their numbers are declining. They interviewed all these professional clowns who were blaming media and movies who make clowns look weird and “scary” when they are (according to their “unbiased” self-assessment – ha) “actually fun, full of laughter and kids love us”. The reporter showed some statistical charts to show the dip in the number of registered clowns. Who the hell knew clowns were registered?? I suppose it is much like any other profession – but still struck me as funny.
From one of the world’s dumbest (but therefore silliest) movies, Real Men. Check out the shirt on John Ritter (RIP) and Jim Belushi‘s mullet!
“It’s a clown attack! Agents who’ve gone bad!” “Bad clowns?!”
“Hens are not known for their kind eyes.” – Quote from a wise colleague.
Good to know: This is not a piece of corporate branding.
I have a new colleague who is definitely her own person – and fantastic. She tried to convince me recently that I need to start raising chickens at my house in the countryside in Värmland. I have the space for it, not quite the time, but that was not a good enough reason to say no, according to my colleague. She has chickens and said it is not difficult to care for them. She brought me what she refers to as her “chicken bible” (and it is pretty comprehensive), which tells one everything s/he needs to know about parenting chickens.
A menacing chicken face threatening to teach me about raising chickens
She followed up by telling me that her friend has a few chicks who will, in a few weeks, be ready to take home. Dear heavens – I think I am just not ready.
The Värmland region of Sweden is a place that seems to fill its residents with a considerable amount of regional pride. People who don’t live in or aren’t from Värmland often echo the feeling that Värmland is the most amazing place, that it would be “like a dream” to live there, and that it embodies what many consider to be “the real Sweden”. Sort of smack in the middle of everything, Värmland is mostly rural, its largest city – the virtually unheard-of (outside Sweden) Karlstad (except for IKEA furniture named after the city) is uniquely placed at a near-equidistance from the Nordic holy trinity of Stockholm, Oslo and Gothenburg. Värmland is not known for city life, of course. It’s the landsbygd – truly rural and in many ways untouched. For those who love nature, Värmland is it.
And it seems to me (in my very few years as a Värmlander myself) that Värmlanders (current and former) bond with each other – in a similar way to how people who come from a small town and meet somewhere else, far away, do. Even though Värmland is a big place and coming from the eastern edge is not totally the same as coming from the far west on the border with Norway (life there, which is where I call home, has been affected by an influx of both Norwegians and their massive border shopping centers) people connected to Värmland do seem to consider it home forever – long after they leave to put down permanent roots elsewhere. There is a sense of pride and identification with the place that people from Värmland adopt – and transplants, like me, fiercely take on. I feel protective and proud about Värmland for some really inexplicable reason. Maybe just because living here has given me the kind of inner peace that I did not really imagine ever having. I never felt at home anywhere, but Värmland is home. As exotic and wonderful as my “native stomping grounds” – Hawaii – is, Värmland is home. I spent most of my formative years in the lovely and diverse Seattle and surrounding environs. But Värmland is home. Yes, Sweden is home, but more than that, Värmland is home. When you meet Swedes, they may tell you they came from “some small town but now live in Stockholm” or will introduce themselves using the city they currently live in. But when you meet a Värmlander, it’s almost a guarantee that s/he will self-identify as a Värmlander (if their värmlandska language does not give them away! Even those who have long left Värmland still consider themselves proud Värmlanders – you can take the Värmlander out of Värmland but not Värmland from the Värmlander). The regional identity assumes almost equal importance to the national identity, and I have not noticed this anywhere in Sweden as I have among Värmlanders.
Heading into the long Easter weekend, I drove home and felt a growing sense of relief, contentment and pride once I crossed into Värmland. Happy.
