july 3 in idea barrages

I often wonder why Americans call it “the eighth grade” Canadians call it “grade eight” and I guess Brits call it “eighth year”. They’re so close to each other, it’s all the same language more or less, I wonder what caused such a pronounced popular split of terms.

Maybe some people hate “pumpkin spice” for reasons of snobbery or the fear of being perceived as drinking a “girly” drink but, really, I’m just a little bothered by the name linguistically, as there’s no pumpkin in most of its iterations. I get it, they’re the spices that go INTO a pumpkin pie but… I dunno, I get bugged about Word Things.

When they got to the city pool, hoping to put on a flash mob performance of “Equus”, they were stymied by a yell from a lifeguard: “HEY! NO HORSE PLAY!”

If when Disney had that Twilight Zone elevator-drop ride, if they didn’t have a wine bar next door called “The Tower of Terroir”, that was just an unforced error on their part.

“WHO’S THAT RASHOMON?” the cartoon screams with one shadow covered in question marks and then gives you six pictures of creature that are all potentially valid possibilities, depending on your personal perspective.

One of the stupidest internet discourses, of course, is “famous person is merely incredibly conventionally attractive, not physically perfect, let us make fun of them for that”. I get that it’s people projecting their own feelings of inadequacies onto their pantheon of gods, that’s mean but understandable, it’s just… when people truly think they’re being SUPER CLEVER or ORIGINAL by doing it, man, it just makes me sad. That’s what they think humor is.

The state of journalism is so weird these days. Instead of reporting a proven truth, that he had nothing to do with his kid trying to make a few bucks off his name, it’s the polling on who believes a debunked conspiracy theory or not that’s reported. This is not the best future.

I just had a really good Spider-Man joke. It’s on the thwip of my tongue.