On A Time-Based Basis

Ever noticed how things are always 'on a daily basis', rather than daily, or every day? Or a weekly basis, or whatever it might be? 

But 'on a daily basis' has only itself replaced the previously universal '24/7' as an even more long-winded way of saying 'every day'. This is part of a growing tendency for catch-phrases and colloquialisms to be more of a mouthful than the word or phrase they replace (see: http://robocono.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-lexicon-of-transatlantic-prolixity.html), a reversal of what might be called the vernacular imperative through much of history.

It parallels the proliferation of products giving an illusion of choice which conceals an actual reduction of choice that is one of the hallmarks of late model capitalism, as for example with beer, as I've already pointed out: http://robocono.blogspot.com/2015/09/booze-ocide.html. 

Not only are more words used to say the same thing, but the use of certain words and forms of words seems to be seen more and more as essential. Nothing new about that of course, catch phrases and words that constantly come in and go out of fashion have always been a feature of the pronouncements of journalists and spokesmen, businessmen, or 'experts' from any walk of life. That happens as a kind of overspill from what is properly called jargon - the specialised vocabulary that people working in any particular field use to communicate about their particular field with each other.

No, the thing is that ordinary people now use deracinated jargon with each other, to talk about things in daily life. Jargon often uprooted from the world of 'spokesmen' (and women of course), and usually spun out of nothing by PR functionaries, the language of the press release and the company prospectus. 

Take 'problem', for instance. Someone in some PR company in the US in the 80s decided this word has negative connotations - which, of course, it does, by definition - so they co-opted the word 'issues', previously meaning: things which have come to be (as, originally, in the specific sense of 'progeny'), or developments which have appeared and need to be discussed, in the sense of 'I would take issue with you over that'. 

This substitution became common usage among the different professions, and then spread to the general population. So now we have two words used interchangeably; one with a very specific meaning, and one which now has two meanings, with the original meaning with all its subtlety being eclipsed. Same thing with 'just', which used to mean only just, or precisely, and now substitutes in every case for 'only': 'The murderer's victim was just 18.'

For other examples of those words whose boxes have to be ticked if any statement of any length is to attain credibility or be taken seriously, I give you:

 'passion', 'icon' (in all its forms, 'iconically iconic icon' sounding horribly inevitable), 'vibrant'/ 'vibrancy'. 

These words aren't longer, or have more syllables than words they replace, because they don't replace any other words. For instance, it didn't used to be thought necessary, for, say, a job applicant to spell out in their application the fact that they had some kind of leaning towards or interest in the subject or nature of the occupation. 

Next time you hear someone say the word 'inappropriate', pause to think if they actually mean anything other than 'bad'.

Invasion of the Traditional British Pint Snatchers

The latest on beer in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/11/brewsters-women-brewers-men-inside-micropub-world-dancing-man
All the new cliches (see http://robocono.blogspot.com/2015/06/shocking-news.html) are there: 1. Beards - 100% hit rate for all men interviewed (both of them), 2. Citrus, 3. Pale Ale: “...the beer itself... “citrusy pale ale”, 4. Passion: the head brewer “always had a passion for pubs” and 5. Fruit Beer: ...“beer that hinted at mango and papaya”.

But there is one shocking new revelation: the head microbrewer claims English hops are “dull and a bit boring”, and we are told authoritatively that “The best hops are from New Zealand, Australia and the US, with the UK catching up mainly with blends grown to mimic the more tropical foundations”.

Passing over the question of WTF the journalist imagines a “tropical foundation” might be, the implications of this confidently stated 'fact' are staggering: although we invented the Pale Ale which is the new default setting for beer, our native hops are now considered inferior and are being crossed with other strains to make them more like foreign ones (presuming that's what “blends grown to mimic” means).

So, not only are the forces of classic late model capitalism at work to stop you getting the pint you like - by which I mean the illusion of choice concealing the operation of oligarchy, in that more and more breweries are taken over by larger ones, and their beer replaced by that of the large one while still being marketed under the old name (Thwaites, Jennings and Tetley by Marston's, too many to list by Greene King) - and more foreign hops are being used here, but 
British hops are being genetically modified to produce beer that tastes like lemon juice or tropical fruit juice. 


No wonder traditional Bitter is getting harder to find and the sale of Mild is under threat, it  sounds like it will soon be impossible to brew traditional British beer any more.

(For those of you who were expecting more fashion victim revelations, normal service will resume shortly...)

Before

After

More Fashion Victims

Further to my observation about people wearing their hats over their ears, in http://robocono.blogspot.com/2014/06/mens-hats-in-tv-period-dramas.html: I noticed someone wearing their baseball hat over their ears the other day, and he happened to take it off while I was doing so.

His ears were deformed! Nipped in against the skull at the top and then flaring out until a normal attitude was achieved. Since then I've noticed a significant minority of young men with ears deformed in this way.

(Not the man I noticed, by the way)

I had previously speculated that perhaps this fashion was about more than ignorance or taking gang bangers as style icons (ignorance at one remove), and that it may have something to do with the wearer being concerned about having stickie-out ears, and attempting to nip a wingnut tendency in the bud, as it were. But if that is the case, the job only gets half done, leaving them with this absurd hybrid effect.

State sponsored kitsch offensive

Thanks to my friend https://www.facebook.com/richard.tellstrom, I now know the reason why the stage outfits of Swedish dansbands in the 1970s are streets ahead of the competition in Ireland and Norway when it comes to making us laugh today.

Expenses for stage outfits were tax-deductible, but only if the clothing claimed for was solely for professional use and of such an appearance that it precluded use as everyday wear.   

But it's more than just the clothes - what makes these pictures so horribly compelling is the combination of extremes, the visual oxymoron of absurdly flamboyant costumes being worn by people with yokel-like goofy faces from a village fete gurning competition.

And the names.

He's got the Schytts

By Popular Demand

Following the success of my earlier post: http://robocono.blogspot.com/2015/09/swedo-hibernian-paralells_1.html

Swedo-Hibernian Parallels

It's a little-known fact that Sweden and Ireland enjoyed (if that's the right word) until quite recently, remarkably similar versions of an aspect of popular culture seminally (and that probably is the right word) involved with rural courtship rituals and, ultimately, the diversification of the national gene pool in recent modern history.

Dansbands and Showbands. These parallel phenomenons both involved the travelling of large distances by rural populations, particularly young adults of romantic and/or sexual proclivity, to attend entertainments provided by groups of musical artistes inexplicably similar in styles of dress, combination of instruments and conventions of rhythm, tempo, characteristic genre and vocal rendition (the inspirations being 60s light entertainment dancebands and Country & Western).

The venue for these events was the church or village hall, or more typically in the remote areas where the ritual had most significance, a more rudimentary structure of unique application:

in Sweden the dansbana, an outdoor wooden dancefloor and stage with a shed-like bar and snack kiosk,

in Ireland the dance hall, an adapted barn or rudimentary and hastily-constructed breeze-block and board shed, or sometimes a marquee. 

The Swedish incarnation has the edge in the stage costume department, the Irish in closeness of vocal and musical authenticity to the American sources of origin.

Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Wexford and Limerick are, of course, Viking cities, but we don't see any mobile musical genre cum rural marriage bureau phenomenon of the type of the Dans- or Showband in the former territories of the Danelaw east of the river Lea in London. 

(But, while there is no indigenous culture of peripatetic transatlantic musical schlock  and awe, this might go some way to explaining the unusual enthusiasm for Line Dancing in Essex.