Enunciating my Thoughts About Annunciate

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Earlier this evening, I sent out some email that contained the following sentence, “Paul Krugman wrote a column that I think is really insightful and enunciates a lot of the frustration that I feel about the Obama administration.” But before I did, I spent a half-hour fretting over whether to use the word “annunciate” rather than “enunciate.” Other people spend their evenings watching TV or visiting with friends. These options are not available to me, having neither TV nor friends close by. So I get enunciate and annunciate.

Normally, such a question would be easy to settle. A hare has hair and not the other way around. But the definitions of “enunciate” and “annunciate” are frustratingly similar. What’s more, reference to Fowler and other usage guides were, in this case, useless—I dare say because “annunciate” is effectively obsolete and literally archaic.

I will get to the differences between these words, but I would like to point out that the Internet—as I find increasingly—provided at best flawed and at worst simply wrong information on the subject. One Step Forward provides a nice overview of the two words—including the etymology of the words, only half of which I could corroborate, but provides a highly misleading definition of “enunciate.” Much worse, Mighty Red Pen rightly blasts a Huffington Post column about Perez Hilton for using “annunciating” where “enunciating” is required, only to provide a ridiculously limiting definition of the latter.

Everyone seems to understand that “annunciate” means “announce.” Thus, it is wrong to say that Perez Hilton over-annunciates. (Although it might be all right to say that Thomas Paine over-annunciated Common Sense. Maybe.) The problem is “enunciate.” Again, everyone seems to understand it as an intransitive verb: to utter articulate sounds. We run into trouble when we deal with it as a transitive verb: to make a definite or systematic statement of. This definition is, in most cases, identical to “annunciate.”

In addition to these problems, the two words have pronunciation issues. “Annunciate” is pronounced with a soft-E, “enunciate” hard. In my experience, “enunciate” is pronounced with a soft-I. This places it right in between the sounds of these two easily confused words.

I think we should jettison “annunciate.” It has many problems:

  1. It is almost never used.
  2. It means exactly the same thing as “announce.”
  3. Its meaning is roughly the same as “enunciate” when used the same way.
  4. Enunciate and it are too easily mixed up in spoken English.

Regardless of what the rest of the foolish world does, I plan never to use “annunciate” again.

Photo Op

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My work within the yearbook industry has required a lot of photo-editing. I can’t tell you how many obscene gestures kids will try to sneak into class photos that then need to be “corrected” by adding or removing fingers and other appendages. Then there are those unfortunate shots that require the addition of modesty-preserving elements such as longer shorts, higher necklines, and occasionally even underwear. (Don’t ask.) My reason for explaining all this is to prove that I’m not a pervert, only perhaps a bit more likely to notice awkward bits in seemingly innocent photos.

For example, the movie poster for It’s Kind of a Funny Story.
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Notice anything a little odd? If not, here’s a larger version.
Screen Capture

I have been under the impression that Emma Roberts is a modest, self-respecting GIRL, so what is it exactly that is dangling from the front of her pants? I understand that on the full-size movie poster it’s probably quite clear that the object in question is ummm, well, something that isn’t a penis. But you would think that someone (other than myself) would have checked the photo for details that might not translate into the teeny world of JPGs. If I were Miss Roberts (or her mother) I think I’d be a bit piqued with the publicity firm responsible. Maybe there will be an opening for an eagle-eyed photo editing grunt like myself!

spare me your teen-aged angst

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My friend Andrea and I were discussing self-consciously intellectual writers and so naturally E. E. Cummings came up. We agreed that he mostly sucked, but she promised to send me two poems that she thought were okay.

As a kind of header, but perhaps more of a challenge, she wrote, “Life’s not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis.” That was curious, so I went and looked it up and found that it was from Cummings’ poem “since feeling is first”:

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

I like the word play and images in this poem. And unusually for Cummings, the rhythm is really interesting—more what we expect from the much more talented William Carlos Williams. That’s as far as it goes, however. The content of the poem is—as usual—really troubling.

It seems that Cummings never really made it out of adolescence. Here, although he does it with more style, he says nothing more than Joyce Kilmer did in his poem “Trees”:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

Or as Cummings might have written

when I see your eyelids flutter
i throw my pen down in the gutter.

It isn’t just that this poem indicates a romantic outlook that Jane Austen was parodying over a hundred years earlier in Sense and Sensibility; the poem is preachy. This is what most defines Cummings’ work. He is always telling us—as only a youth can—about the secret of the Good Life that only he possesses.

The two poems Andrea sent me are just like this. Here is the first:

why
do the fingers of the little
(once beautiful)
lady
(sitting sewing this fine morning)
fly
instead of dancing
(i wonder)
is she possibly a
ware that life
(who never grows old)
is always beau
tiful and that nobody beau
tiful
ever
hurries

It does have the compelling ending, “nobody beautiful ever hurries.” But as I think is clear in that line itself, he pushing a romantic notion of existence a lot harder than it can bear. It has other problems, but I doubt it is necessary to go into them.

The second poem is “maggie and milly and molly and may.” It deserves a full hearing:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

The rhythmic structure of this is maddening. It is kind of iambic pentameter, but frustratingly not. I really don’t know how to “read” it. This is not a criticism—at least not of Cummings. I don’t doubt that he is doing just what he intends. This is also true with the difficult assonantal scheme. Am I supposed to read “were” in the third stanza as “war”? I don’t suppose it matters.

What does matter is that Cummings is again here to delight us with another tired insight. This time: the world is what you make it. Wow! Where are the neo-fascist teenagers of today? No wonder our lives are so devoid of Truth and Beau

ty.

The Archie Leach

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Tonight I am making Oven-Roasted Chicken Thighs with Carrots and Yukon Gold Potatoes from the March 2009 issue of Bon Appetit magazine. Or something like it; my oven is not nearly big enough to deal with the six servings of this recipe. So I am kind of winging it the way I often do when I am into my third sidecar. I’ve been drinking a lot of sidecars these days, but they still seem to affect me the same. But tonight I think I have done something different with the sidecar.

According to Mr. Boston De Luxe Official Bartender’s Guide, a side car is made as follows:

Juice 1/4 Lemon
1/2 oz. Tripple Sec
1 oz. Brandy

Shake with ice and strain into cocktail glass.

I disagree. To begin with, the glass must be rimmed with sugar to make the drink taste right and most bartenders know this. Rimming a glass is not as easy as you think it might be. If you are like me, you have always rimmed a glass by placing sugar (or salt) on a plate and putting the top of the glass down on it. This has several problems. First, the sugar attaches to the outside and the inside of the glass (which you don’t want). Second, the sugar clumps up and he get lots of sugar some places and none others. About.com—which is rarely a good source of information—has an excellent, illustrated article on this subject that I highly recommend you read—especially if you make a lot of sidecars or margaritas.

Apart from learning how to rim a glass properly (it sounds absolutely pornographic, doesn’t it?), I believe I have developed the worlds best sidecar, which I am calling an Archie Leach (or “Cary Grant” if you must) because of his film I Was a Male War Bride. Here it is:

1/2 part lemon juice
1/2 part orange juice
1 part Tripple Sec
2 parts Congnac

Yes, you could just use brandy, but as Lance says in Pulp Fiction, “But when you shot it, you will know where that extra money went.” Congnac is worth the extra cost—always. Try this recipe; it is quite good.

Bang Bang’s Chicken

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Jill Dupleix presents a dish she calls Bang Bang Chicken—a name I like because of the character Bang Bang in film The Brothers Bloom. I made it for the second time last night, because William came over and when I was out at the grocery store, I couldn’t think of anything else to make; this is perhaps because the first time I made it, it was so good. You can find the full video recipe on Dupleix’s DVD Good Cooking: The New Basics. Here I will just give you mom’s take on the recipe.

There are two parts: the salad and the sauce. They are both really easy.

Salad

Poach a couple of chicken breasts with some ginger, salt, chopped green onions in enough water to cover the chicken. Be careful here; if you just cover the chick, the water will evaporate and the top of the chicken will not cook (which is okay, just don’t use it). How long? I don’t know; until the chicken looks cooked; don’t over-cook it (whatever the hell that means). Set them aside and let the chicken sit in the pan with everything else while you do the rest of the cooking.

Julienne cut an English Cucumber, carrot, and celery stock. Why an English Cucumber instead of a regular one? It has fewer seeds and so is less bitter. Put all these cut vegetables together. By the way, I did all my chopping with a Santoku knife I just bought—I haven’t had a chance to use it enough to talk about it intelligently. Add to these vegetables (well, cucumber is a fruit, right?) some copped green onions, and a little bit of toasted sesame oil (yum), rice wine vinegar, and some sesame seeds—roasted if you like. Finally, remove the chicken from the water; shred the chicken into this bowl and toss that baby.

Sauce

In a mixing bowl, put in generous amounts of toasted sesame oil (yum, again), sweet chili sauce, and rice wine vinegar. Add even more peanut butter, soy sauce, and sugar. Finally, add a diced hot pepper to your taste; I used about a half a Jalapeño—I don’t care for food that is too hot. If you can get a red pepper, it adds a nice bit of color.

Mix this (what I admit sounds like an odd assortment of ingredients) until it is pretty smooth. Then pour it onto the vegetables (and fruits) and toss well. This is delicious and makes two servings (although at 125 lbs. I can eat it all myself; It’s that good).

On How You Had To Be Really Cool To Not Be a Victorian Writer In 1937

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I am in the middle of reading E. T. Bell’s Men of Mathematics. It was written in 1937, but frankly, it could have been written in 1887. The thinking and style are so Victorian. I’m sure I will have more to say about Bell’s thinking at a later time—for now, take my word he has a simplistic, highly romantic view of people and history. (In its way, it is charming.) Today, I would like to talk just a little about the writing style.

Here is an example of Bell’s style taken almost at random:

In spite of his demonstrated genius the harassed boy was not even now left to himself at school. The authorities gave him no peace to harvest the rich field his discoveries, but pestered him to distraction with petty tasks and goaded him to open revolt by their everlasting preachings and punishments.

Yes, this in itself is not horrific, but I challenge you to put up with hundreds of pages of it. This is why I was pushed to check the book’s copyright. When I bought it, I thought it was recent—in the last few decades. After reading some of it, I started to get that P. A. Motteux feeling. But both thoughts were wrong; it was written well into the Modern period when so much great—and above all, crisp—writing had been done. Ten years before Bell wrote the above quotation, Gertrude Stein wrote this for Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts:

Pigeons on the grass alas.
Pigeons on the grass alas.
Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass. Pigeons large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the grass.
If they were not pigeons what were they.
If they were not pigeons on the grass alas what were they. He had heard of a third and he asked about it it was a magpie in the sky. If a magpie in the sky on the sky can not cry if the pigeon on the grass alas can alas and to pass the pigeon on the grass alas and the magpie in the sky on the sky and to try and to try alas on the grass alas the pigeon on the grass the pigeon on the grass and alas. They might be very well very well very well they might be they might be very well they might be very well very well they might be.
Let Lucy Lily Lily Lucy Lucy let Lucy Lucy Lily Lily Lily Lily Lily let Lily Lucy Lucy let Lily. Let Lucy Lily.

Or I could have quoted something from The Sun Also Rises—but that’s not nearly as fun.

The point of all this is that Bell was not a writer; he was a mathematician. Had he written fifty years later, Stein would doubtless have had an effect on him—even (or perhaps especially) if he had never read her. It takes such a long time for the cutting edge to become “less work around the house!” I know Bell understood that about math. I can’t say whether he understood that about writing. But it doesn’t matter; such knowledge would not have changed how he wrote.

Perfect Information

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A great deal of conservative economic theory depends upon the idea that people in an economy make decisions based upon “perfect information.” Along with this and the questionable assumption that all people are rational, economists on the right explain how the economy will be just fine if we simply let it be. This is obviously a big subject that is debated between people who are much smarter and well-educated than I am. But I do have serious doubts about this “perfect information” assumption.

Yesterday, I went to Amazon to see about getting Liars for Jesus by Chris Rodda. For now, I am not going to get it because I have spent a lot of money the last couple of days buying books for a play about Evariste Galois that I am working on. But I noticed an interesting thing (although I have seen similar things many times before): the cheapest used copy is $28.92, while a new copy is only $23.99. And the new copy qualifies for free shipping if you spend just $1.01 more! (The used copy will cost an extra $3.99 for shipping.)

Since the prices change over time (although it is two days now and it hasn’t), here is a screenshot to show you what I mean:

Liars for Jesus

I have long been suspect of this “perfect information” business, because I often find bargains simply because I will spend hours dismantling the shelves of book and electronics stores. But I’m a freak. Most people do not get the best price on an item, even when the best price is just next door. The situation is supposed to be much easier online. But if Amazon sellers don’t even know that their own items are over-priced compared to Amazon itself, how are consumers supposed to know who has the best price on the Internet generally, much less downtown or at the mall?

And Now a Few Words from a Dead Man

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I am too busy to write anything of much interest here, so I thought I would just provide a few quotes from the late, great John Maynard Keynes. My outside work took me to The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations (by Robert Andrews) to find for a quotation from Keynes. It was probably his most famous:

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

This is such a pithy antidote to the common economist’s bromide, “It will all work itself out in the long run.” One hears this sort of nonsense all the time and it is handy to know this quotation; one may respond sharply: “Is that right? Well, in the long run we are all dead, expletive!”

Many of Keynes quotations address the pretensions of economists and those who think them gods. I rather like the following, because it so nicely sums up many people I know—almost 75 years after Keynes wrote it:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

The emphasis is mine. It is hard to believe that Keynes was not writing this about the Chicago School of economic thought (e.g. Milton Friedman) and those very many politicians who follow it. Whenever I hear them speak about economics, I get the impression that they believe they have found The Truth. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence against their tenets, they are shocked: “But our models are perfect!”

And one more about roughly the same people:

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. I do not know which makes a man more conservative—to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

That’s all for now, folks. Next up will most likely be a discussion of Janis Bell’s fun and helpful, Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences. As good as it is, I have a few bones to pick.

The Prologue of Don Quixote

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It may come as a surprise to many that Ingmar Bergman’s almost three-hour-long Scenes from a Marriage was a heavily edited theatrical release of what was originally a six-part mini-series that is five hours long. Five hours! It may also surprise many that a pretentious twat like me has never seen it. So when I got my hands on the Criterion Collection release, I had to make a decision: do I watch the three-hour movie or the five-hour mini-series. Following Peter Cowie‘s advice, I decided to watch the series, “as it was meant to be watched”: one “scene” every night for six nights. But even after making this decision, I was wary: am I really going to get much from this film when I don’t speak Swedish, and thus am left to subtitles—even if they are, “New and improved”?

Then, earlier today I watched Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville. It is also from the Criterion Collection. It also promises new (although strangely no claim to being improved) subtitles. And again, I had the same concerns. Recently, it seems I fret a good deal too much about translations. But the problem is very real—especially for films. There was a documentary on the three-disk Seven Samurai (also Criterion Collection—what can I say?) about creating subtitles. It is very interesting if not surprising, and I highly recommend watching it if you get the chance.

I am happy to report that one area of my translated art ingestion is going as well as I could possibly hope: reading Samuel Putnam’s translaion of Don Quixote. I just started and have only read the Prologue and Chapter I, but it is lovely—and funny as hell. For example, in the Prologue, he is complaining to friend about how he has decided not to publish the book at this time because (in part) he cannot list the authors to whom he is indebted. (Cervantes would have us believe that he is simply an ignorant dolt who happens to have a flair for spinning tall tales.) He continues that he is, “unable to follow the example of all the others by listing them alphabetically at the beginning, starting with Aristotle and closing with Xenophon, or, perhaps, with Zoilus or Zeuxis, not withstanding the fact that the former was a snarling critic, and the latter a painter.”

His friend’s advice is just to fake it when possible and rip it off when necessary. He then goes on to make the most beautiful statement about artistic intent that I have ever read:

Let it be your aim that, by reading your story, the melancholy may be moved to laughter and the cheerful man made merrier still; let the simple not be bored, but may the clever admire your originality; let the grave ones not despise you, but let the prudent praise you.

Wow. I’m going to print that out and hang it on the wall next to me: right below my Mystery Science Theater 3000 mini-posters.

Reading Don Quixote, it is hard to believe that I am reading an English translation of a Spanish text written about the time of Hamlet. It is so modern: in style and content. Although I still hope to one day read the book in Spanish, I have little doubt that the experience I have now will be the superior, and dare I say it: more authentic. I fear that the original will be as far removed from modern Spanish as Shakespearean plays are from modern English. Thus I am glad for great men like Putnam.

When it comes to film subtitles, the situation is bleak for a number of reasons that I will not go into here. Nontheless, Alphaville is quite a good film. And the first scene from Scenes from a Marriage? Despite everything: it is amazing. I am looking forward to tonight’s scene.

More Don Quixote

Want to know more about Don Quixote and other 16th and 17th century literature? Check out my Don Quixote Page!

Our Mutual Friend

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Just to show that an evening spent with H W Fowler’s Modern English Usage can be dangerous, I am now going to spend a little time with the word mutual. Because I am a product of the United States where the only things that really matter are commodities, my first and most profound connection to this word is the Mutual of Omaha ad song, so familiar to viewers of Wild Kingdom:

Mutual of Omaha is people
You can count on when the going’s rough

Through force of will and years spent doing such uncool things as spending evenings with Fowler, I have a second, though less powerful, connection to the word: Charles Dickens‘ Our Mutual Friend. This is a more important connection, because I find more occasions to use “mutual” in a sentence than to break into a rendition of the Mutual of Omaha song.

I dare say that I learned everything I knew about how to use “mutual” in a sentence from Dickens’ title alone—until last night. What I found out last night was that using the word in this way is incorrect. And it isn’t just Fowler (dead almost 80 years) who says so. Only 58% of the most recent Usage Panel think that the construction “our mutual friend” is correct—a majority, but not a large one.

So what is the big deal? Let me quote Fowler:

The essence of its meaning is that it involves the relation x is or does to y as y to x, and not the relation x is as y to x, and not the relation x is or does to x as y to z.


This is, of course, useless; it sounds like a children’s rhyme. What he means is that mutual concerns two parties to each other and not two parties to a third. Thus, “They shared a mutual attraction” is okay; “Our mutual friend” is not.

The question obviously comes to mind: if Dickens uses “mutual” in this way, can it be all that wrong? It turns out that this use of the word was already quite common long before 1865, when Dickens wrote it. So we are talking some 200 years of this being common usage.

I think we should all make friends with this usage. Then it can be our mutual friend.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution

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I just read Terry Eagleton‘s Reason, Faith, and Revolution. It is largely an attack on the atheism books by Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great). In his typically sardonic manner, Eagleton refers to the two authors as a single entity he calls Ditchkins. The book is, like all of his “popular” writing, funny and insightful; but one would expect this regardless of his past work because almost no one would think Eagleton’s views about religion have anything to do with religion. Indeed, the book is mostly about politics. He seems to be fascinated with the Gospels because of the implicit and explicit political messages of Christ’s teachings. I must admit it is nearly enough to turn me into a Christian—albeit one that few would recognize.

Eagleton largely agrees with Ditchkins about religion. His complaint is that they do not argue against the best case that can be made for faith. In other words, they are committing the straw-man fallacy. However, it is hard to think too badly about Ditchkins when the vast majority of believers are nothing but fideists.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution comes down to an attack on liberal humanism, and as such, was helpful to me in seeing some of my own blind spots. I do tend to believe in the march of human progress without seeing that it is largely a matter of faith. (In my defense, there is a good rational argument in favor of it.) But I think Eagleton overstates how strictly rational liberal humanists are. I, for one, am well aware of the great amount of faith there is in my life; I have never wished for—or thought possible—a culture that was strictly rational. I’m afraid that he is at least as guilty of overstating the rationality of non-believers as Ditchkins is of overstating the irrationality of believers.

In the end, Reason, Faith, and Revolution leaves me where The Meaning of Life did: more committed to living a good life and working toward a culture that is just, forgiving, and above all, humane. Although I may quibble with Eagleton about some details, his book is a welcome reminder that my belief in the existence of this more perfect self and society is a matter of rational faith. This might be something that Eagleton, Ditchkins, and I could all agree upon.