Fungible Convictions

…”Why are we designed to find these colors beautiful?”

(No, not Gatsby.)

Sav-Mor Liquors, next to the Whole Foods on Rt. 16 in Medford. Sav-Mor’s signs are good for guffaws year ’round.

A quick note…

Tonight is the “Stand Up to Cancer” telethon, and though SU2C’s work is amazing, it highlights a paradox of cancer marketing.

Cancer marketing, to be effective at raising money, needs to frame the enemy as “cancer”.

Cancer research, however, has proven that “cancer” as a single disease doesn’t exist. While the word cancer may be useful as a catch-all term for diseases characterized by unregulated cell division, every kind of cancer—from acute lymphoblastic leukemia to Wilms tumor—has a particular cause, a particular reason for growing uncontrollably, and, one day, its own particular cure. You can’t “cure cancer” because cancer as a single disease doesn’t exist.

But “Wilms tumor” can’t get a nationwide telethon and raise $100 million in a single night.

The only way to solve the paradox—the apparent contradiction—is to perpetuate the misconception in order to get the money…and then, we hope, to be honest in that money’s disbursal. It does, nevertheless, come at the cost of misinforming the public.

Same shoulder bag, same watch, same hair (eventually). (The dog couldn’t be helped.)

Government’s role in the economy should be to allow creative accidents to happen and ensure destructive accidents don’t.

Right there in the middle, on the back of a packet of beef bullion:

"As a broth: For a satisfying hot beverage, dissolve contents in 1 cup (8 oz.) hot water."

I advocate throwing up in your mouth a little.

…yeah, that’s exactly what a new mother wants after twelve hours of labor, a kid with a drum.

That’s right up there with the Wise Man who broke the agreed-upon $5 limit and brought gold:

…would not result in the other reindeer loving him and shouting out with glee. On December 26th, they would have held a secret meeting, while Rudolph slept one off, to figure out whether to unionize themselves or to simply “get rid of” all these red-nosed reindeers that will soon put them out of work.

“Don’t think this is going to be the last foggy Christmas eve,” says Blitzen. “Santa might be a little slow on the uptake, but one day he’s going to realize our lack of rhinolucence is a liability. Something has to be done, and it has to be drastic.”

I was looking up a word–”divil”–from the Planxty song “As I Roved Out” (from “devil”, it’s a negation word, so that “divil a one could hear us” means “no one could hear us”), and Wikipedia redirected me to an entry on Hiberno-English with a lovely section on words for drinking too much:

There are many terms for having consumed a drop too much drink, many are used elsewhere, but the Irish tendency is to attempt to find the most descriptive adjective yet on each occasion. Some examples: “loaded”, “blocked”, “twisted”, “full” (common in Ulster), “as full as a Gypsy’s tit”, “spannered”, “Spangled”, “scuttered”, “menashed”, “stocious/stotious”, “bananas”, “baloobas” (common in Cavan), “locked”, “langered”, “mouldy” (pron. mowldy as in “fowl”; used in Galway esp.), “polluted”, “flootered”, “plastered”, “bolloxed”, “banjaxed”, “well out of it”, “wankered”, “fucked”, “fuckered”,”paraplegic” (common in Kilkenny), “ossified”, “binned”, “rat-arsed”, “gee-eyed”, “demented”, “flahed drunk”, “langers altogether”, “in shit drunk” (common in Cork), “buckled”, “steaming” (common in Donegal), “messy”, “rotten”, “out of me tree” (common in Limerick) “off me head altogether”, “off my face”, “sloppy”, “cabbaged”, “wasted”, “paralytic/palatic”, “full as a boot”, “full up”, “full as the bingo bus” (common in Louth), “legless”, “hammered”, “circling over Shannon”, “blootered”, “squooshed”, “banjoed”, “mullered”, “bingoed”, “mangled”, “ruined”, “landed”, “cant even see my hand in front of my face” “half-tore”,”lubed” (Common in Ballincollig), “oiled”, “jarred” (not too drunk, “I’m not drunk, I’m just a bit jarred!”), “scorched”, “in the horrors”, (common in Waterford), “in the rats”, “in the livin’ rats”, “in the livin’ fuckin’ rats” (common in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford), “stoned” (Louth/South Monaghan only), “I’m off my tits”, “binned”, “pissed”, “cut and half cut”, “flamin’” (common in Kerry), “sozzled”, “blottoed”, “trolleyed”, “sloshed”, “wrecked”, “rancid”, “goosed”, “off my game”, “off my trolley”, “gimped”, “destroyed”, “wrote”, “wrote off”, “guitaroed” ‘”I wasn’t banjoed I was guitaroed”‘, “steamed” (common in Mayo), “off my chops” (common in Clonakilty), “sauced” (Fermanagh) “transmoglified”, “I was off me shoe”/ “I fell off my shoe”, “smashed”, “so drunk he couldn’t spell his own face”. (Phrases in italics are more “colourful”)