Grammar: On Direct Address

One of the great disadvantages of our progressive class structure is that we often find ourselves without a term by which we can politely address someone of different standing, age, and/or gender, of whose name or official designation we are ignorant. For instance, how does a young man properly get the attention of a young woman in a polite fashion, without insinuating that he seeks glory on the fields of sexual conquest? "Hey you" is certainly rude. "Assface" has recently fallen out of fashion. "My dear" is condescending and possibly creepy. "Buttertits" has met with only mixed success thus far. Other, more stratified, cultures do not suffer from this problem. There is nothing overtly sexual about a Texan addressing a young woman as "darlin'" - rather, that a Texan woman is a possible target for a man's crossbow shaft of virile potestas is taken for granted in their culture. Some more progressive women might take offence at the use of the term, but that offence, at least, is not presumed - it's something the addresser learns after the fact.

We certainly do have terms for men, though there are some difficulties. "Buddy" or "my friend" most definitely are acceptable forms of address for men of the same age and standing, though the latter term has a whiff of Birkenstock sandals about it. "Sir" can work for those considerably older than you, though some people do not like to be addressed as "sir," seeing it as too formal, or as a painful reminder of their Imperial Russian past; a delicate thing, then. What is to be done about this?

Toward a remedy, I propose a new set of totally arbitrary terms for direct address. They are to be understood to be polite but straightforward; they do not invite conversation, rather they merely grab the attention of the addressee for temporary purposes, in cases where the addresser is unaware of a better term by which they can initiate dialogue with the addressee, or in cases where it's unnecessary to know their name (as with a whorehouse client to the valet). What is needed is a universal grammar by which one can differentiate age, standing, and gender in an easy-to-understand way. As long as the addresser correctly identifies the nature of his or her addressee, there should be no difficulty in composing terms on the fly.

What would such a grammar look like? Any term employed would be relative; that is, for any given speaker, it can be assumed that they are talking to one of three people: someone of the same standing, someone of lower standing, or someone of higher standing. Then, the gender of the addressee would have to be taken into consideration. Further, the age would have to be differentiated. Components could be dropped if context makes the intended target clear enough. An addressing term, then, would ideally take the form

(gender)(standing)(age)

Gender terms*:

Male = andro(aner)-
Female = gyno(gyne)-

*The term in parentheses is used if the latter two components are omitted

Standing terms:

Higher-than-addresser= -ameino-
Equal-to-addresser = (no term is employed)
Lower-than-addresser = -cheiron-

Age terms:

Older-than-addresser= -geronta
Equal-to-addresser= (no term is employed)
Younger-than-addresser= -paida

So there you have it. Next time you need to shove past an old male member of Parliament on the bus, you just say (allowing for vowel elision), "Pardon me andrameinogeronta, but I need to get past. Well, fuck you too."

Considerations: On the Intentional in Literature and Life

I am always deeply impressed by intentional action. I rarely act with much deliberation, finding it somewhat gauche. This is not to say that I'm impulsive, or erratic, for I'm perfectly capable of satisfying my short-term needs with intentional action: when sleepy, I go to bed; when thirsty, I reach for some water; when hungry, I stare longingly at my unmarinated cats. What I mean is that I have no broader plan in life. One day melds into the next; time is an ever-receding ever-rushing ocean, and I the graceless feeding manatee, basking in the lukewarm shallows of unfulfilled ambition. I enroll in programs and go to places and do things that will give me credentials which no one will respect, but if you asked me why I preferred this course of action to any other then I would be as bereft of sensible answers as the average Jay Leno program is of humour. It would be more accurate to say, then, that in the grand scheme of things I rarely act with deliberation, which is why I find myself terribly awestruck when people are apparently so deliberative that they plan in advance what literarily significant gestures they are going to execute that day, such as are in accordance with them as a literary character.

To give you an idea of just what it is I'm talking about, read the following passage from the Feb. 2009 issue of Harper's:

"I heard the voices of predators again through the wind. And for loss, for vengeance, for sorrow, I fired the last three rounds that my father had left in my rifle into the dark of the field behind the barn. I was responsible for the bullets and knew, as I sent them, that they would have to fall somewhere."

Here, in the closing words of his tale about his love affair with that most American of objects, the rifled gun, Benjamin Busch acts very deliberately. With his father deceased and gone to that great shooting gallery in the sky, Mr. Busch, now a grown man (a Marine, no less), decides to spend a moment shooting into the darkness outside the family home with the .22 rifle they both cherished. I'm personally astonished by this. Do people really do things of this sort? Who is around to record the significance of this gesture? The wolves in the woods don't care. They don't talk, and their writing is incomprehensible, filled as it is with esoteric references to German philosophy and serving as it does as a mouthpiece for their nationalist rhetoric. For personal satisfaction? If it was personally satisfying then the author would keep it to themselves. The secret, I suspect, is that he was intending to write this article since infancy and has molded his life in such a way as to allow a nice arc of character development, one which ends with a man firing three bullets at nothing in particular and feeling darned good about it. Imagine the planning involved in such an endeavour! Imagine the foresight! Always the question must haunt him when considering whether to do this or that: "is it good for the story?" Even so quotidian a thing as stealing your neighbour's newspaper becomes fraught with worry when Harold Bloom might be opining on its consistency with you qua literary character. "Is this the Benjamin Busch we've come to know in the rest of the story?" Yet, for some reason, Benjamin Busch is full of confidence and energy and is able to achieve gainful employment while I'm left to suffer from catastrophic anxiety whenever I try to explain how to make macaroni and cheese to a six year old retarded girl. Benjamin Busch also plays Officer Anthony Colicchio on TV's The Wire, while I play a short-legged pedant who gets short of breath pronouncing "pronounce." So, in some ways, we're really quite alike.

Introduction: Friendly Handshake

Greetings. Welcome to a blog. "Blog" is a rather unfortunate word, but it's the one that's stuck. Short for "weblog," it came about one day when famed computer columnist and masturbation enthusiast Anand Lal Shimpi, attending on the basis of a misunderstanding an event for those who owned and enjoyed Hummers, attempted to pronounce the full word but, busy as he was scarfing down the C-grade salmon caviar and reprocessed toast points on offer, choked before he could complete the first syllable. Thus, confused and aroused onlookers merely heard "kblog," followed by a moist spray of toast point crumbs and salmon egg bits. While the habit of spitting food on interlocutors did not catch on, the neat syllabic truncation did, and a phenomenon was born (or "phenom," in keeping with the theme of this post).

For most of us, then, the word "blog" simply refers to the online journals that certain members of our community keep. They range from the very stupid to the very not-stupid. People in professions which require interacting with the public are virtually required to keep blogs, lest their fans miss their up-to-the-moment thoughts on Obama underwear sales and the American trade imbalance vis-a-vis Chinese lamp oil. For instance, Winnipeg Free Press reporter James Turner keeps a blog where, in the absence of fact checkers and those who know the English language,he informs us, without a hint of irony, that a prosecutor "literally blew through a number of key witnesses." Would that I lived in such a state of blessed innocence! Imagine typing that sentence fragment. Imagine thinking it's very good. You're satisfied. You've done a great job today. You've kept up to the minute, down to the wire, socks up, pants down. You've informed the public. Your career is going nowhere but up. You can smell the Pulitzer. You can almost taste the binding glue of that book you're about to write, the one about the no-nonsense crime beat reporter who "literally smokes a thousand cigarettes a day" and regularly defiles his blooming young secretary. Your vision blurs at the edges as you try to take in the seething crowds of adoring fans and well-wishers. We love you James Turner. Continue writing. Do not stop writing blog articles. But, soon enough, the dream dissolves and you're back in your cubicle at a low-tier local newspaper, where even the tubby, acne-bespeckled teenage interns spurn your clumsy advances. At least you have that blog, you think to yourself, munching on some minced pork.

This too is a blog. I've given it a Latin title. Because I am better than you, I can do this. While most of you have wasted your time "making money," "saving the world," and "buying clothes that fit," I have pursued an education suited for only the most refined aesthetes. With the melodious aid of illa lingua Latina, I can raise condescension to never before seen heights, unde James Turner appears little more than a mus.

Now I've run out of words. Goodbye, gentle reader. May the eyes of Greta Van Susteren follow you eerily wherever you go.