Clearing Everything Right Up

So I started a mirror to this blog over on statesmanblogs.com. It's not really a mirror - I just copied & pasted six or seven entries over there, and figure I'll try to keep it updated regularly. I sort of have stage fright, though, because it gets a lot more daily traffic than this one. Which is also a bit depressing; I've been building readership on this thing for over a year and a half now, plus Google owns Blogger, so I get a lot of search engine hits through them. Still, the statesmanblogs stats are blowing mine completely out of the water.

But statesmanblogs won't let you post photos unless you're special (what, I'm not?!*), so I don't plan on abandoning Blogger anytime soon. Besides, I have no idea who those readers are. Probably a bunch of riffraff. Not cool like you guys.**

It was occurring to me, starting a brand-new blog in a brand-new place, that it might be helpful to the readership to put together a little glossary covering the unfamiliar terms I'll be tossing into my writing here and there. Here are a few ideas to start with.

10-keying: Symbolically, any mindless task assigned as a punishment to employees the boss doesn't like, in order to humiliate them and break their spirit. 10-keying might not refer to actual 10-keying; similarly, actual 10-keying might not be 10-keying, if you catch my drift.

Buttlickers: Cats! They're cats!!! For heaven's sake, people.

Going transportational: When state agency employees have had more than they can take!

Panicmonger: My supervisor, who is going to make us all go transportational one of these days.

PowerPoint: An excellent piece of recreational software, which I understand can sometimes be used for business purposes as well.

Stalker: Any male state agency employee who expresses any prurient interest whatsoever, however fleetingly or politely, in any female state agency employee.

Three-Martini Break Group, or 3MBG: Needs no explanation here, of course. Just an informal collection of the coolest people I've ever known.

Toupeedar: The ability to detect Donald Trump with the naked eye from other galaxies.

VW Ribbit: My awesome car.

Any more suggestions? Throw 'em in. The riffraff over at statesmanblogs are depending on you.

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*I am not proud.
**Statesmanblogs readers who have found their way over here and are reading this are, by definition, not riffraff.

How the Other Half Lives

Leaning on the railing of a balcony overlooking the pool and yard of a multi-million-dollar Westlake Hills mansion yesterday evening, I realized that Austin has an aristocracy. And the people who keep Austin weird aren't hippies, or garage band members, or Chronicle staffers, or art car drivers, or even, say, Leslie. Not that these people don't do a lot. But they're labor, not management. Without the blessings, programs, and campaigns of the moneyed ruling classes, all these feathers in the weird Austin cap would be just so much underground-movement riffraff.

"How do you know Scott?" I was asked several times over the course of yesterday evening. "Oh, he represented my sister's ex-boyfriend on a DWI charge," I didn't say.

The full story is that the band Margie's in plays at parties for Scott, who really is an extremely nice guy - certainly he has at least 300 close friends - as payment in kind for his services. The upper classes can be indulgent: certainly he had no difficulty affording a "real" band, an excellent professional bluesy roadhouse combo whose name I didn't catch. Teddy and Marge are not such a band. They typically play for exposure, not money, in any case.

There were two kegs of good beer by the front door, two more on the back patio, and a third pair at a drink station in the yard. There was a full bar in the wood-paneled den, better stocked than some restaurant bars I've seen. There were margarita machines and limitless bottles of wine. So Scott, being as I've mentioned a DWI attorney, rented out the parking lot of the nearby high school and hired a fleet of golf carts to shuttle guests back and forth from his house all night. Guests who had too much to drink could then easily be prevented from leaving.

Margie's ex-boyfriend, Bill, befriended Kay over barbecue. She's from Dallas and took an instant dislike to him. "How did you come to be here," she asked, "did you find a flyer on the street somewhere?"

I have never liked Dallas.

But Bill, who works for Waterloo, has been respectably outfitting Scott with vinyl for years, apparently. Scott is a connoisseur, and has a small room just off the entrance hall dedicated to his record collection. Bill is too good-natured to bristle. Kay became friendlier, asking how she might best dispose of her ex-husband's record collection, which she doesn't know anything about, except that he had loved it and supposedly had several rare and valuable items in it.

"Why did you get it, then?" Bill inquired.

Kay laughed. "Oh, I got everything!" she said. "Except the dog."

After we had eaten, Teddy and Marge relieved the roadhouse combo to do a set by the pool. I was apprehensive. "This is not the right scene," I whispered to Bill. "These people are going to hate this."

He laughed. "It doesn't matter," he told me.

We were both right, though at least Scott said he enjoyed the set. I did, too. And the aristocracy of Austin is too well-bred to be openly hostile. Afterwards we tore down and loaded up the trailer, and Grady (that's the Teddy of Teddy and Marge) capped the show by stripping down and leaping, splay-legged, hooting and naked, into the pool. Nobody batted an eye. I don't think they expected anything less from someone who had just played what they had just listened to him playing.

With gratitude to our generous and indulgent host, then, we headed out to Clementine's to hear Grady's girlfriend Lauren play accordion with the Seas, which was totally awesome, then back to the little eastside art co-op where Bill lives.

Money's nice and all, but I think the riffraff have more fun.

Crash Course

There's occasionally an ad on the sign-in screen for my Yahoo! mail that's been driving me up the wall. It says,

Spammers giveth
Yahoo! Mail taketh away

which, of course, with modernized verb endings, means "Spammers gives, Yahoo! Mail takes away."

This is obviously incorrect.

Worse by far is some fast-food ad on the homepage with a tie-in to yet another Shrek movie. As if that weren't bad enough news, the ad says, at the bottom - in what I assume is meant to be a second-person imperative* aimed at hapless web users like you and me: "Clicketh and drooleth."

Clicks and drools? Who does?!

So apparently it's time for me to have a cozy little sit-down with the Internet at large and give it a quick lesson in archaic English conjugation.

Alllll righty. So, I give. You/we/they give. He/she/it giveth. Thou givest. Got it?

Mind you, this is indicative mood. Imperative mood is different. For example, if I'm just telling you that, mmm! you go, honey, I'd say "thou goest;" but if it's a command, I'll say "Go thou!" (Prithee.)

"You," incidentally, is the plural of "thou," in the nominative case, with "ye" and "thee" in both the accusative and dative cases. Simply put, "ye" is to "you," and "thee" is to "thou," as "me" is to "I." So I don't expect to see any more of those errors online from now on.

Of course, "you" is also employed when addressing a single person formally. "You" is used for your liege lord, your boss, slight acquaintances, and respectable strangers. It's the equivalent of addressing someone by last name and honorific. "Thou" is familiar: use it for your lover, your family, your pets, or the kind of riffraff who'd only give themselves airs if you spoke respectfully to them.

God counts as a family member (and only one - so much for the Nicene Creed!) and is addressed as "Thou," but don't forget to capitalize it, or He'll smite your ass.

I trust this clears everything up.

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*Or, in soulless marketing parlance, a "call to action."