Fritinancy

Barackollectibles

Our long national nightmare is finally over, mes amis. Let's go shopping! But not for just any old tchtochkes. Let's load up on Obama swag.

Thirsty? NPR's Morning Edition reports that Jones Soda has introduced Orange "You Glad for Change" Soda and that some D.C. bars are pouring Ale to the Chief. Brewery Ommegang of Cooperstown, New York, wanted to name its celebratory quaff Obamagang—a neat multiple pun—but the feds nixed it; the label now reads "Inaugural Ale." You can see the original label art here. (Hat tip: ETBWrites.) Prefer wine? Allow me to pour you a glass of 2005 Yes We Cab!—"elegant and stately, just like Obama himself." Love that illustration. (Hat tip: Karen at Verbatim.)

In the mood for something more caloric? Good news: Ben & Jerry's has created a Yes Pecan! flavor: "amber waves of buttery ice cream with roasted nonpartisan pecans." Proceeds will be donated to the Common Cause Education Fund.  (And in the true spirit of nonpartisanship, here are some suggested flavors to honor the Bush, uh, legacy. Hat tip: Karen again.)

Perhaps you'd prefer a more lasting memento. Uncommon Goods is selling an official ballot necklace in sterling silver for just $38:

The ballots featured are either standby-by ballots (used in case the voting machines break down) or absentee, military and special ballots. The double-sided necklace showcases two parties that supported Barack Obama: the Democrat [sic] party and the Working Families Party.

You'd better not be in a hurry, though: this handmade keepsake is back-ordered till Feb. 10. (The McCain-Palin necklace is available a little sooner.)

Uncommon Goods is also selling a framed paper ballot "printed specifically for the old-fashioned, pull-lever voting machines used in New York City": $350. On the opposite end of the spectrum: a Zortz note-holder featuring a slightly scary representation of Obama's head. It's a bargain at $25.

What's that smell? Why, it's Yes We Can fragrance, "directly inspired by Obama's acceptance speech." It contains "notes of celery seed, lavender, citrus accord, and pine," and no, I don't know what "citrus accord" is. The perfume is available for $34 on Etsy.

Another Yes We Can fragrance is for sale on eBay, with no description whatsover, for only $0.99. Tip: Change the name to Eau-bama (change is good!), add some flowery copy, and jack up the price to $25. It'll fly off the shelves.

You can even sleep with your new commander-in-chief. Obama jammies and nightgowns come in adult sizes small through XXL and are 100% cotton flannel. Don't forget the Obama condoms ("for the elitist penis").

And there's much, much more. For a comprehensive list, see Sarah Hepola's compilation over at Salon. She leads with the Obama dildo (talk about a stimulus package!) and proceeds:

There is the Obama votive candle, the Obama nesting dolls, the Obama wall hanging. And lest you feel hampered by details, rest assured that an Obama product doesn't even have to actually resemble Obama: It could resemble a rather frightening Bill Cosby. Or a very tan Ed Sullivan. Or, umm, whatever this guy is.

What a great country, huh?

Wordy Gifts

One week till Chanukah; 10 days till Christmas. Here's your almost-last-minute shopping list for lovers of language:

Everything You Know About English Is Wrong, by Bill Brohaugh, who writes a blog with the same title. You've got to love a usage manual whose subtitle is "Why English ain't from England, and 'ain't' ain't a bad word." Brohaugh, a former editor of Writer's Digest magazine, casts a skeptical and gleeful eye on bugbears like hopefully, decimate, and the verbified impact. But really, this is the sort of book you can open at random and be enlightened and entertained. I'm particularly fond of the section Brohaugh calls "Notymology, and Other Tales from the Bullshitternet."

Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic, by Elizabeth Little. Who wouldn't enjoy unwrapping a gift with such an intriguing title? Happily, the inside of the book lives up to the cover. "Languages are, without question, the great compulsion of my life," Little writes. She's turned that compulsion into "a collection of the quirks, innovations, and implausibilities of the world's languages"—for example, the fact that some inhabitants of New Guinea get by with just two color terms, "black" and "white." (The book's title, by the way, is the Chinese mistranslation of "Coca-Cola.") Charming illustrations by Ayumi Piland.

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea. I wrote about this delightful book last week, but don't take my word for it: it's turning up on several best-of-2008 lists.

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, by Rob Walker, who writes a blog called Murketing and the "Consumed" column for the New York Times Magazine. Not strictly about words or usage, it's nonetheless an essential (and well written) reference for anyone who works in marketing, advertising, or social media. Ever wondered how and why Timberland, a traditional New England shoe company, became the first choice of hip-hop artists and other "urban" (read: African-American) consumers? Or how a new energy drink, Red Bull, and an old Midwestern beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon, became surprise recent successes? Or how branding agencies have harnessed and monetized word-of-mouth? Read this book, or give it to someone who needs to know the answers.

Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme, by Calvin Trillin. Disclaimer: I haven't yet read it, but I did laugh my head off (there it goes, rolling down the aisle) over Trillin's previous collection of presidential doggerel, Obliviously On He Sails, and last week I listened to a radio interview with Trillin in which he read several of the new verses, so I feel qualified to recommend the book. Writing short, humorous verse is much harder than it appears and a bit of a dying art. Learn from a master.

Need more suggestions? Mighty Red Pen recommends a new board game, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Game for People Who Like to Read, which tests players' knowledge of the first lines of literary works. Former Boston Globe editor Jan Freeman picks the best some worthy language books of 2008 here (her blog) and here (her column). And Editrix alerted me to Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words, originally published in 1983 and updated in 2004. Bryson is not universally admired by Real Linguists, but I buy his books anyway (and keep a couple of cross-references on hand to check his facts). Bryson's memoir of growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, is one of the funniest books I've ever read—or listened to. Bryson himself reads the audiobook in the perfect deadpan; it kept me laughing during 12 hours behind the wheel from Oakland to L.A. and back again.

And Speaking of Diamonds...

...as we were only yesterday, Daddy Likey reminded me of the dazzling creations of Irina Blok, which I mentioned last year. This pendant says everything a two-carat rock would, but with waaay more wit:

  

Shrinky Dinks are a girl's best friend!

Still just $25 (plus $5.95 shipping)! Order here.

Eat Play Love

Not necessarily in that order:

But oh, woe, it's out of stock.

Merci beaucoup to Verbatim.

What I Want for Chanukah, Part Deux

From the author of The Encyclopedia Shatnerica comes this compilation of out-of-this-world names, from Anakin to Zardoz, from Barbarella to Neo:

Just $10.36 on Amazon.

(Via Freakonomics.)

What I Want for Chanukah

Because evocative copywriting is always in perfect taste:

   

Shrinky Dinks pendant on 17-inch leather cord.

Heck, it's only $25 (plus $5.95 shipping), so I may just be my own Secret Maccabee.

(Via Swiss Miss.)

Lucky

All things considered, I'm pretty lucky. All the key indices--health, shelter, friends, food--check out remarkably well. People actually pay me to do something I love--write and develop names--which I consider to be a stroke of insanely good fortune.

On the other hand, maybe I'm not lucky at all. Here is what the choreographer Twyla Tharp has to say about luck in her marvelous book The Creative Habit:

Look at the luckiest people around you, the ones you envy, the ones who seem to have destiny falling habitually into their laps. What are they doing that singles them out? It isn’t dumb luck if it happens repeatedly. If they’re anything like the fortunate people I know, they’re prepared, they’re always working at their craft, they’re alert, they involve their friends in their work, and they tend to make others feel lucky to be around them.

So how do you get luck? Here is Tharp's advice:

Be generous.

I'll repeat that: to get lucky, be generous. Here's why:

Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you’re generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It’s like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.

I'm thinking today about luck and generosity and the "community of good fortune" because my friend Jon Carroll has reminded me that it's time once again for the the Untied Way. That's not a typo: it's "untied," not "united." Each December for the last umpteen or so years, Jon has devoted one column in the San Francisco Chronicle to the Untied Way, an invention of his that makes a very important point about luck and generosity. Namely: if you're blessed with the first you have an obligation regarding the second.

What is the Untied Way? Glad you asked.

The Untied Way is a nontraditional charity. It has no officers, no headquarters, no brochures, no regional offices and no guidelines. It is not a tax-deductible organization because it is not an organization at all. It issues no receipts, nor do letters come in the mail thanking you for your generous contribution.

The Untied Way does not have a Web site. The Untied Way does not sponsor a fun run, a masked ball, a gourmet dinner, a silent auction, a noisy auction, a turtle race or a runway show. It does not have buttons, badges or stickers. It will not send you address labels in the mail. The Untied Way has no overhead at all, and 100 percent of its donations go directly to those in need.

All you need to participate in the Untied Way, writes Jon, is access to an ATM, and lucky people always have access to an ATM.

Go to your ATM and take out some money. How much money is entirely your business, but the sum should be sufficient for you to notice its absence. It shouldn't hurt, but maybe it should pinch a little.

Then--and here's the beautiful, simple thing about the Untied Way--"you take your fistful of dollars and stroll down the avenue. When someone asks you for money, you give him $20. You repeat this until you are out of $20 bills."

Oh, sure: you have objections to this methodology. Jon answers your objections. The bottom line is, anyone who asks you for money probably needs money. And you have excess money. Simple as that.

Every time I read Jon's column, which varies only slightly from year to year, I'm reminded of the Jewish philosophy of charity. Actually, in Hebrew there is no equivalent of the word "charity." "Charity" comes from the Latin caritas, meaning "affection" or "esteem." Christian charity is based on love. But the Hebrew equivalent of charity is tzedakah, which means "justice." You don't have to love someone to practice tzedakah. You just have to have a sense of what's right. And--get this--the very highest form of tzedakah is utterly anonymous. You don't know who's receiving your money, the recipient doesn't know where the money came from, and you get zero credit for your unselfishness. You do it just because it's the right thing to do.

Maybe that doesn't work for you. In that case, consider Twyla Tharp's advice: to get lucky, be generous. Don't pretend to be anything but self-interested. The person who gets your $20 won't care. He's self-interested too. He gets money; you get luck. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

See you at the ATM. And...good luck. Really.

Gifts of Gab

Nothing expresses the spirit of the season like gifts of words, writing, and wit. All right, a Cadillac Escalade, a 52-inch HDTV plasma TV, and TMX Elmo are probably closer to the mark this year, but what can I say? I cling to my traditions. Here are four literate gift suggestions that let you share the love without leaving your computer, spending a bundle, or yielding to fads du jour. And if you're opting out of the whole shopportunity, I round out the list with a gift that says, in so many words, "Ask me if I care."

My pals Julie and Susan at Imagineering, a boutique agency in San Francisco, wear several hats: they write ads, create clever packaging concepts, rear children, and--in their spare time--develop irresistible products like Words Cubed ("poetry for your table"), the Cell Phone Address Book (a paper address book that, yep, looks just like a cell phone), and Pat the Politician, a spoof of the kids' book Pat the Bunny. They're all for sale here, none for more than $20.

Visual Thesaurus, for which I'm an occasional unpaid contributor, has teamed up with Zazzle.com to offer T-shirts, mugs, greeting cards, and postage stamps customized with your choice of "word map." (See image at the top of this post for examples.) Go to the top of the home page and enter a word in the "Look It Up" field ("GIFT," for example, or "INTELLIGENT"). Watch the word map branch out around your word, then click "Share" to be redirected to the Zazzle site, where you can choose colors and sizes. T-shirts in 100% cotton start at $14.95.

Who says writing is a solitary pursuit? Julie Smith at WritersTrack.com (not to be confused with Julie at Imagineering) is offering a can't-beat-it two-for-one holiday special on her novel-writing teleclasses: buy one six-week course, get a second for free. That's a $250 value and a thoughtful way to share the agony and ecstacy of writing. Gift certificates also available.

On the top of my own list is the just-published Yale Book of Quotations, all 1,104 pages and 12,000 quotations of it. Who first said "I've been poor and I've been rich, and rich is better"? Did Mark Twain really say "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco"? I look forward to starting on page 1 and reading every page. (Extra points, by the way, for an elegantly designed cover.)

For those who Just Say No to the giftapalooza--now and throughout the year--I heartily recommend a used or library copy of Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, by Judith Levine. Levine and her partner, Paul, took a hiatus from consumerism in 2001, spending money only on what they defined as necessities (food, shelter, and gasoline, mostly, and they economized on the latter by using bikes, public transit, and cross-country skis). Levine is a perceptive observer and wonderful writer, and she turns this account into an enlightening--and very funny--investigation of the American shopping obsession.

If you have other gift suggestions for word lovers, I'd love to hear about them. Shameless self-promotion is not only accepted, it's encouraged.