\TMEE-sis\

The vocab I learned in gradfuckingschool coming back to haunt me.

My wife and I laugh at the local news in LA without fail. Got some rain today, so I am looking forward to tonight's man-on-the-street (MOS) interviews like this:

TV guy: So it's raining. How has this weather affected you, sir?

MOS: Well, I'm kinda bummed out. I don't like the rain.

Folks, I wish I were making this up.

One of the things that really surprised me after moving to Seattle from Msla, was that the local news is really just as bad. Hell, it might as well be Jill Valley and Skunk Boy up there yapping about nothing.
One of my faves was seeing a "reporter" up at Snoqualmie Pass during the winter exclaiming, "This is serious, folks." {dramatic pause} "It's snowing!" Uh, yeah, you're on a mountain pass in January. Or the "brutal cold snap" that is a bone-snapping 32 degrees. Sissies.
And, yes, they do the same thing here when reporting the traffic situation. "Car fire on 99, so you're facing a slow-down as you get to the bridge." "There's an injury accident, possibly fatalities, on the 520 floating bridge, so traffic is bottlenecked. I-90's the way to go this morning, Ed."

One of the things that really surprised me after moving to Seattle from Msla, was that the local news is really just as bad

Me too! I expected a quantum leap in professionalism for some reason. In Denver the anchors are a little less inbred-looking (Larry Frost always seemed like some sort of animal husbandry experiment gone awry), and the studio the set is a little more decked out. But really, it's the same pile of shit no matter who's serving it.

And I have yet to see a local sportscaster that isn't a total washed-up frat boy retard who delights more and more with each repeated uttering of the phrase "up the gut" (a phrase which needs to be retired forthwith).

Shit, I got a list a mile long of my complaints about local newscasts. Like the omnipresent "medical breakthrough" that seems to recur every week (from the New England Journal of Medicine!), or the retardo-tron names given to the weather systems (StormTrakker 2!), or the stupid wacky animal stories, to the agonizingly banal repartee between the anchors between segments, etc, etc. ad infinitum ad nauseam.

The vocab I learned in gradfuckingschool coming back to haunt me.

A question for you, resident Linguist-o-phile:

Isn't there something called an "infix," that's like a suffix or a prefix, but it's in the middle? Or did I just dream it? And if it does in fact exist, how is it different from tmesis?

I find few things more hilarious than when NewsRadio WOAI out of San Antonio tells me that they're tracking the weather with "the combined resources of the National Weather Service, WOAI's Storm Tracker Storm Team, and Doppler Radar, all within the confines of WOAI's NewsPlex."

I'm also fond of the recent improvement to the standard forecast. WOAI now offers a "futurecast," which is somehow better.

Isn't there something called an "infix," that's like a suffix or a prefix, but it's in the middle? Or did I just dream it? And if it does in fact exist, how is it different from tmesis?

No, my Precious, you did not dream it. Kinda tough to give you an example, because English doesn't have this kind of morphology, but you're pretty much right on with your understanding of the phenomenon.

Affixes are of three kinds: Prefix at the beginning of a word, Suffix at the end of a word, and Infix inserted somewhere in the middle of the word.

Tmesis is different because it's an irregular use, which is why it's kind of fun to use:
Two words - Ir Regular

Check it out. Here we have a prefix (un-), a suffix (-able), AND tmesis (-fucking-):
Un-be-fucking-liev-able

And they said all my education was good for was boring people at parties! (Of course, I cannot be held responsible for the absolute accuaracy of my explanation. Don't quote me, eh.)

My favorite suffixated tmesis, which is great with one finger held aloft: neverthefuckingless. As in, "Well, obviously the death penalty is unfair and requires serious reform. Neverthefuckingless, puppy rapists deserve to die."

No puppy-raping whatsofuckingever shall go unpunished.

The New Orleans local news has a segment called "Pothole Watch." Viewers call in with their nomination for the biggest pothole and the news crews go out and do a 30 second segment on the biggest pothole of the week. It's my favorite news segment.

Pothole Watch, that is truly awesome. Do they film people driving over it, or just look at it, or what? Local news stations need to embrace this kind of stuff if only to break away from the formulaic monotony. I think Denver's idea of shaking things up is having a paraplegic weather lady. Which is pretty cool, really.

Adjunct anecdote: I had a roommate in '97 who worked at KECI (Missoula) making local commercials. He was the guy behind all those bitchin' ads with Vi Thomson playing rugby. Anyway, he let me into the station one night and we sat up on the rafters while they filmed the evening newscast. It was really weird to see the news desk all alone out in the middle of the soundstage. But the best part was listening to the anchors when they went to commercial. There was some serious billingsgate going on, let me tell you. The weather guy was muttering something like, "you say tomato, I say fuck you" to nobody in particular. And then when the commercials were over, it was back to the big toothy grins.

And, as you may know, the weather dude can only see the maps and stuff on a monitor; he's really just standing in front of a blank wall. "Chroma-key" I believe is the term for the technique.

This same roommate also had me star in a commercial for Missoula Nissan. All I did was drive some gay little sports car up and down the street. You couldn't even see me at all in the final commercial. Which is fine with me.

Joshoarse, with the sore throat- just out of curiosity, why does a San Antonio station start with W? Was it grandfathered in?

And they said all my education was good for was boring people at parties

Shee-it man, I could listen you talk about Linguistics all day. Something about that field is just absurdly fascinating to me for some reason. In fact, if you ever wanted me to implement some sort of "Ask A Linguist" column here on the site, I'd sure as hell do it.

My degree seems to be useful for regaling people with my knowledge of world capitals. But I'll only oblige if they don't ask me any capitals in Africa or former Soviet republics.

I also wanted to mention the following: I have about 12 videotapes' worth of Simpsons episodes that I taped when I still lived in Missoulistan. It's really disorienting when I'm watching them and I forget that it's on tape and a bunch of '95-vintage Missoula commercials come on. What a weird sensory recall moment that is. Like some sort of quantum phase shift or something.

But you'll never hear me complain about having the Ole's Country Store song stuck in my head for a day or two.

They recently had a story on the local news here about it being legal to film up women's skirts (with a little camera that can be put on your shoe or something). The lead-in to the story was a picture of a girl's ass under a skirt (kinda fuzzied out) with the title "UPSKIRT CRACKDOWN!"

Classic.

In fact, if you ever wanted me to implement some sort of "Ask A Linguist" column here on the site, I'd sure as hell do it.

Fuckanaye, if that ain't a reason to live, I can't think of one. Fire that mother up.

But you'll never hear me complain about having the Ole's Country Store song stuck in my head for a day or two.

As your readers may or may not know, I did way too much time in the red apron of Ole's #7 (Higgins & Kent, yo !). Even now, when I answer the phone at work, there are times when I have to consciously prevent myself from blurting, "olesnumberseventhisismatthowcanihelpyou?"

My old roommate Erik used to be able to play the Ole's song on his acooustic guitar. I don't know how many drunken choruses of that song were belted out over a cube of PBR:

"We're havin' fun here at Ole's, the best one-stop something in town. Groceries and gas, convenient and fast (?), and the coldest beer in town."

(Big finish now)
"Ole's country store and beer depot, the best by a country mile. Come in and get a great big smile--"
"At Ole's!"
(Insert Oakridge Boys bass here) "We're doin' it country styyyyyyle."
Those lyrics might be totally wrong and/or jumbled, but that's how I remember 'em.

OK, what is it with the Simpsons tapes? I have one I've basically viewed down to the nubs that has a bunch of KTMF crap on it.

In Humpy we always bandied about the idea of covering the Ole's song. But we never got around to it. Too busy learning Nazereth covers or something.

Let me fill in the missing lyrics:

"We're havin' fun here at Ole's, the best one-stop something deal in town around. Groceries and gas, convenient friendly and fast, and the coldest beer in town."

"Ole's country store and beer depot, the best by a country mile. CONVENIENT TO YOU; VARIETY TOO! Come in and get a great big smile"

(Insert Oakridge Boys bass here) "We're doin' it country styyyyyyle."

That's another thing: when you see Missoula commercials after not seeing them for a long time, you forget how much goddamn western imagery they use in their ads. Every other commercial is narrated by some gruff, leathery-sounding badass who probably wears chaps and a bandanna even when he's just reading copy.

I did way too much time in the red apron of Ole's #7 (Higgins & Kent, yo !)

I fondly remember your fine work there. What would you say your yearly 3/$1 hot dog output was?

And I'll have y'all know that that very Ole's holds a very important place in the Yale Kaul Saga:

dim lights

It was June 1990. The Red Hot Chili Peppers could still credibly be referred to as a funk band. Household and casual use of the term "bitchin'" had not yet become the province of irony-seeking hipsters. Male ponytails were considered cutting-edge, as were dreadlocks. The domestication of the dog was continuing unabated. And I had just been betrayed by my high school girlfriend. About a week before our high school graduation, she abruptly decided that I wasn't cool enough anymore. She came up to my parents' house one afternoon and casually told me that she was pursuing hot monkey action with my friend Travis, who himself had recently become emancipated from a relationship with my sister, and had a very happening ponytail going for himself too.

My devastation was total. Not only had I gotten ditched and essentially cheated on, but I felt too humiliated to even consort with our group of mutual friends, who all seemed to have begun some sort of bizarre partner-swapping sex tryst. I had taken over Jeff Stetson's paper route for a month, and was keeping very weird hours, seldom emerging from my parents' basement, where I routinely watched Dobie Gillis and Carson's Comedy Classics in total darkness. When I did manage to skulk out of the basement, it was at 4am to do the paper route.

I had begun going to Ole's Country Store #7 after my route to eat donuts and play Black Tiger, one of my all-time favorite video games. By July of that year, I was going to Ole's #7 two and three times a day, spending hours upon hours honing my Black Tiger skills. Some days I'd walk out of Ole's and see my old group of friends driving down Higgins, on their way to some extravagant post-high school act of hedonism, which would send me into another spiral of loneliness and Black Tiger.

Many lessons came from this typical post-adolescent passage rite, but I'll be damned if I can think of them right now. The main upshot of all of this is that your buddy Yalestar is a world-fucking-class Black Tiger player to this very day. They eventually moved the Black Tiger machine to Village Inn Pizza, but through the miracle of MAME (Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator- described in further detail in the May 24, 2001 episode of Yalestar.com), I manage to stay in practice. In fact, my present Black Tiger skills are so far to superior to those of yesteryear, I can't even believe I took myself seriously back then.

For the record: Yale did a kick ass job on the paper route, didnt lose one customer. Thankful to this very day samIgoddamnam.

I would like to share what mhay-z and I think is perhaps the best tmesis around. A few folks might remember a special fellow who used to sit underneath the north basket at every griz bball game. Ray's unofficial helper job was to towel the sweat up off the floor after free throws and such. Anyway, here it is in context:

Can you believe Donald Rumsfeld's line of shit? Get a towel on the floor, cause that motherfucker is Ray Tarded.

If anyone needs further convincing that things are getting pretty far out of hand, let him please direct his attention to the following example of tmesis.

Wait, is that site a joke?
Oh my fucking god, what a severe level of retardation being exhibited. And I guess their noble cause didn't even merit a simple spell-check, eh?

I do however get a kick out of that usage "stopping the Terrorisms" and "fighting the Terrorisms". It sounds like the lyrics from some Japanese crustcore band.

Just saw on the news the other day, that a little town called French (in Missouri, I believe) has officially changed it's name to Freedom!

Yep, that'll teach those French bastards for standing up for what they believe in~I mean, that's anti-American, ain't it?

Direct quotation from the "San Freedomfrisco Manifestoe" (note the spelling on that one!):

Sign our "On-Line Pettition" and let the rest of the USA know that we want the France out of their so we can hold our heads up high and say "Non way, Frenchie LeFrench!"