language

Urinal cakes: Flushing it out – “Nothing’s wasted if it’s human”

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I was recently told more than one story about someone who seems to have a sick and unnatural obsession with urinal cakes (that is, removing urinal cakes from urinals and throwing them around in a public place – like a bar). Yeah, no details, but my thinking was less about how disgusting and freaky this quirk of obsessively handling urinal cakes and more about how the word “urinal” is pronounced.

In American English, we say /ˈjʊr.ən.əl/and in UK English they say /jʊˈraɪ.nəl/. Have a listen. Hearing “urinal” the UK way in the course of hearing the aforementioned story, I almost spit my coffee out all over the place. I had heard it before but had somehow forgotten how it sounded – the stress being on a totally different syllable. Lots of words like that between the two Englishes.

Amidst all this urinal talk, I suddenly remembered the episode of Frasier in which Niles finally gets a satisfactory divorce deal. He had labored under the false belief that his wife’s family fortune came from the timber industry. His wily lawyer discovered that the family fortune really came from urinal cakes. Niles decided to phone Maris, the soon-to-be-ex-wife, who refused to come to the phone until Niles craftily and smugly stated, “I have flushed out the family secret.” Haha. Maris immediately came to the phone.

Frasier was such a fantastic show.

Urinal-cake talk makes the brief but vivid poem “Bladder Song” from Leonard Nathan spring to mind.

Bladder Song
On a piece of toilet paper
Afloat in the unflushed piss,
The fully printed lips of a woman.

Nathan, cheer up! The sewer
Sends you a big red kiss.
Ah, nothing’s wasted, if it’s human.

Technical difficulties and language questions

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Under the wire, I finished my school paper and since then, there has been a technological meltdown. Okay, I exaggerate. I just had a full day fighting against internet disconnectivity chez moi. That’s really one of the most frustrating “first-world” problems I can encounter.

In my academic readings, I found that the writers used the term “unpacking” too many times for my liking. Rarely have I seen so many texts referring specifically to “unpacking” the meaning of things. It annoyed me. Then, annoyed thoroughly, I used “unpacking” myself in my own hastily penned paper.

Today my mother said “we visited with her…”, and I realized that it is not very often that I hear the term “visit with” someone in the sense that means to “talk with”. “Visit” generally connotes that you have gone somewhere to see someone. But in this sense, “visit with” is basically just having a conversation with someone. I have been hearing my mother say this all my life, so it never struck me as odd, but when she said it today, it suddenly sounded strange. I don’t recall hearing very many other people use it this way.

I heard someone say “eighth” today, and it also annoyed me a bit just because the pronunciation can vary. I like “eighth” pronounced with a hard “T” (eighT-th) but many people pronounce it as “eigh-th”, and this always throws me. Neither way is wrong. I just do not like the latter pronunciation.

End of yet another rant.

Will I bake this week? I don’t think so.

Missing in French

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