Whatever Happened to “Finna?”

WTF… nobody says finna anymore.

Fin•na \Fin’nə\
prep.
1. The state of being about to do something;
EXAMPLE:
“I’m finna go get me a kitten.”
SYN: going to

Update: Correction… Jonah says Finna.

Tags: haw, language

Proper Signage

Clear communication is important. Therefore i chose my words carefully when making this label.

Simple and effective; this statement is never not true… and normally the first thing people want to know when they find my cup mysteriously sitting on their desk.

Tags: design, graphics, haw, language

Back Door Bragging

from an episode of 30 Rock i saw the other day:

Kenneth: The personal essay is way harder than I thought, cause it’s not in my nature to brag on myself.
Jenna: Not even a back door brag?
Kenneth: What’s a back door brag?
Jenna: Backdoor bragging is sneaking something wonderful about yourself in everyday conversation. Like when I tell people it’s hard for me to watch American Idol cause I have perfect pitch. You try it!

Back door bragging… now that they’ve brought it to my attention, it’s all i hear. It seems like just about everybody does a little back door bragging from time to time… Others do it almost continuously and never even realize it.

In my ongoing quest to be a better person, often i am stopped dead in my tracks by the realization that somehow i have fallen off my path… and i am humbled all over again… which is frustrating because, just when you think you are on the path to enlightenment, you realize how far away from the goal you really are. This 30 Rock episode brought me to yet another one of these epiphanies… this back door bragging thing is a new hurdle, previously camouflaged by my own ego. How often have i done it? Have i ever been looked down upon at my job because of it? It’s like suddenly i’ve taken a microscope to all the minutia of my behavior.

The other night i rewrote an email 4 times before sending it, taking great care to remove every instance of back door bragging… and i was constantly amazed at how it would rear it’s ugly head in a new form, every time i tried to remove it. I finally got it right… but man, i cut the length of my email nearly in half. I was worried that all i’d have left to say is “lol” or something… but as luck would have it, i really do have real things to say… it just takes a while to undress them sometimes.

It depends on the audience too… you are probably not at risk of back door bragging in the company of certain friends… but just wait until you run into your ex one morning on your way to work… before you’ve had your coffee… on the one day you dressed like a total ass-clown… yeah chances are your insecurities are going to kick in, and some bragging is gonna slip out your back door… another good reason to invest in adult diapers now.

They say that within a demon’s name lies it’s power. And now i get what that means. Now that THIS demon has a name, i have conscious control over it. It’s important that i don’t back door brag, considering how enlightened i am to begin with… more than most people, actually. People often compare me to ghandi and it wouldn’t be very becoming of me to start back door bragging now. I probably only did it a FEW times anyway… which was probably due to the enormous stress that comes with being such a positive role model. It’s hard for someone like me to rest, you understand, because when you’re everyone’s favorite, people just constantly need your attention. Why just the other day i was blessing this baby while saving a cat from a burning tree… ah nevermind.

Tags: haw, language, psychology, spirituality, swami, television

On “HAW”

That’s it, i’m obsesseed.

Wikipedia says:
“The term haw has two meanings: In botany and horticulture, it refers to the fruit of the hawthorn (”Crataegus”). This fruit is red in color and is often eaten by birds [link]. In biology, the nictitating membrane possessed by some animals is also known as a haw. See also Lord Haw-Haw

it also taught me that HAW and GEE are directional commands for a draft animal…

Urban Dictionary says:
- A laugh; a form of retarded laughing. “This is yoooooouuuuuuuuuuu! Haw Haw Haw Haw Haw Haw Haw!”
- This is a brilliant way of laughing, often brought up by people in a humerous situation – it is spoken or laughed! in a guffaw-type fashion and is sparsely used…
- an interjection in common English vernacular used to express frustration or annoyance. “Haw! Can’t you just shut the fuck up? ”
- Weird food you can find in uwajimaya or china town. Sweet, pink to red in color. It is said to be composed of rasberries or berries of some sort. Often bought as “Haw Flakes”: hard, little, penny sized “flakes” of it. “Dude lets go be asian and buy some haw flakes!”
- When a woman is having a orgasim ragardless of nationality she screams “HAW!”, sometimes repeatedly. May also be used randomly as an entertaining add in to any sentence. It may also be used to confuse your enemy, especially if you pinch your nipples.
- “Haw” appeared in an episode of Lexx as a means of communication to the bridge crew from an alien intruder. It has been since co-opted in Kelowna, British Columbia by Bill and Philly whenever they sarcastically or otherwise affirm the absurd or painfully obvious. Deriviative of hot. “I think I’ll have a third kid… HAW”

There is definately an overwhelming tendency here for “Haw” to be thought of as a crass form of laughter. So it’s not just me.

Tags: donkey, haw, language, laughter, slang

Etymology of My Slang

sometimes i spell something wrong and i like the goof-up so much i adopt the misspelling as my own custom word.

Most recently it was “Aweseom”…. i pronounce it “Awe-See-Ohm” and i use it when something is TRULY FUCKING AWESEOM.

I used to get annoyed when people would type “hahahahah” because of that “H” on the end… somehow the H seemed lazy to me and insincere… “Breathy.” But now i totally don’t care. Sometimes i write “haaahahahhhha” when i’m in a hurry… Or sometimes i type “ahahah” instead of “hahaha” when i want to sound like the Count from Sesame Street. I don’t care about being proper anymore. Fuck proper. Proper is so 80s. We type with our thumbs now while driving. We don’t have time to backspace.

Anyhow… i also used to hate it when people would say “HAW”… this goes WAYYY back to childhood and comic strips. When a character would say “HAW” it seems condescending to me… it reads like something a donkey would say to you. Recently Becky pointed out to me that “Heh” is kinda snarky-sounding too… so instead of saying “heh” i switched to “HAW” just for shits and giggles… but now i am totally addicted to “HAW”… “HAW” is the new “HEH”… i’m telling you. If you’re saying it and not typing it, try slightly inverting the A and the W so it sounds kinda like “HWAH!”… kinda like how New Yorkers say “Hot Dwog”…. it sounds EXTRA condescending this way, trust me.

Funny thing is… this is how i end up adopting most slang terms that i use. I rarely pick up a new slang word because i like it from the get-go. Usually it starts with me and a friend mimicking someone who uses the word too much… after 1 week the mimicking becomes so frequent that there is really no difference. You are now using the word. A LOT. And after 2 weeks you come to embrace it.

Like when “Off the Hook” came out… I couldn’t believe how many times my friends Dylan and Cliff could say it in a minute and ACTUALLY BE TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING…

Cliff: Here dude. (handing the bong to dylan) off the hook –(Translation: you’re right. this pot is marvelous)
Dylan: oh man… (declining the handoff with a gesture) i’m off the hook. –(Translation: no thank you. I am already very high)
Cliff: Is you off the hook? –(Are you serious?)
Dylan: I’m off the hook. –(Yes)
Cliff: Damn that’s off the hook. –(Yes. Wow. This weed is remarkable!)
Me: Off the hook… –(You clowns are fucking retarded)

A week of mimicking this shit led to me using it just as frequently for almost a year. This is what linguist Martin Edwardes refers to as a “portmanteau word”… a word that can be used in place of any other concrete noun… (or in this case, an adjective)…

Portmaneau words are commonly found in the ever-expanding list of annoying business buzzwords… A great example of this is the word “Leverage”… “Leverage” is not a fucking verb. But it is used around the office here as such… and about as frequently as “off the hook” was used by my friends…

“hey can you leverage the circles on slide 6?”

What the fuck does that even mean?
Do you want me to apply the color and stroke-width of the circle theme elsewhere?
Do you want me to apply force to them with a bar or lever?
Or do you want me to take the look and feel of the circles and use them to apply leverage to my argument that this project sucks?

-Edwardes: “Just as whatsit can be used in place of any other concrete noun, so leverage can be used in place of almost any activity verb. This, of course, can lead to confusion (as is the case for whatsit): if an organisation is “leveraging a project” we cannot know, without other defining reference, whether they are starting it, ending it, or performing some intermediate process. But, at the same time, this obfuscatory aspect of the verb is an important part of its function and meaning … It is one of the useful little white lies that allow the business world to keep turning.”

Here’s a GREAT page from the author on the moronic use of “Spend” as a noun:
leveragethis.wordpress.com/2007…t-104

And don’t even get me started on “Capex.” Just like George Carlin said… “When people want something to sound more important, they just add syllables… once i heard the weatherman talk about a ‘rain event’… ‘man’ i thought… ‘i gotta get tickets to THAT!’”

Leverage –(alternatively: “use”)
Spend –(alternatively: “cost”)
Decisioning –(alternatively: “making choices”)
EOD and COB –(alternatively: “5:00″)
Bandwidth –(alternatively: “free time”)
Eyeballs –(alternatively: “visitors”)
Sync-up –(alternatively: “meet”)

Heh…

or HAW, rather…

Language is full of fun games, plays-on-words, pet-peeves and hoity-toity rules. There are even full “portmanteau” sentences! My least favorite of which is “Working Hard or Hardly Working?”…. At first glance, it’s a simple play on words… the joke and the punchline in one sentence… but we’ve all heard it a million times now. So It’s BECOME the catch-phrase of every corporate asshat who has nothing productive to say and nothing real to talk about. It’s a shortcut-to-thinking and is, in it’s very essence, nothing but slang… Just like Joe Executive who passes you in the hall and says “Another day in paradise?” Yes asshole. I mean No. Say something of substance. Make conversation. Even if you said “TGIF” it would at least tell me a bit about how you feel, who you are, and what day it is. Thanks for wasting my time. Your shit’s off the hook, fo RILLA.

Tags: buzz words, donkey, haw, language, slang, typos