For my year-end wrap-up I’m letting my pictures do the talking. Pictures with words, that is. My thanks for the inspiration to Nancy Nall, whose blog I’ve enjoyed for many years.
January
Covid boosters became widely available (I got my first booster in September 2021 and my second in March 2022). Humboldt Distillery saw an opportunity to seize the zeitgeist.
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I interrupt my regularly scheduled posting—word of the week, monthly linkfest—to bring you some notes and images from my recent trip to Denver. It was my first out-of-California trip, and first non-driving trip, since May 2019, and the most time (four full days) I’ve ever spent in the Mile-High City.
Continue reading "On the brand trail: Oakland to Denver (and back again)" »
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On March 15, a gunman killed at least 50 people and injured another 50 as they gathered in two Christchurch mosques. Minutes before the attacks, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had been emailed a 74-page document, variously called a “manifesto” and a “screed,” purported to have been written by the gunman. In it, the man – a 28-year-old Australian living in New Zealand – denounced immigrants as “invaders.”
Hours later, Donald Trump held a ceremony at the White House to mark the first veto of his presidential term, overriding the congressional block of the “national emergency” he had declared on the southern border of the U.S. During the event, he explained why he felt the veto was necessary, using language strikingly similar to that of the Christchurch assassin: “People hate the word ‘invasion,’ but that’s what it is,” he said, referring to migrants from Central America and Mexico seeking to come to the United States.
I still can't get over the fact that the Christchurch killer's manifesto plainly used the term "invaders" and hours later the President of the United States said "people hate the word ‘invasion,’ but that’s what it is" when talking about the US border.
— digby (@digby56) March 16, 2019
It's stunning.
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I inherited my love of factory tours from my late father, who rarely missed an opportunity to schlep us kids to something (a) educational and (b) free. Among many other jaunts, I clearly remember touring a Chevrolet factory (loud) and a Chicken of the Sea tuna factory (smelly). I’m sure Dad would have approved of the Huy Fong hot-sauce factory in Irwindale (Los Angeles County), California, where the tour isn’t just educational and free, but also concludes with a giveaway: a generous bottle of one of the three Huy Fong products – sriracha, chili-garlic paste, or sambal oelek.
What’s more, the founder of Huy Fong is an immigrant, as was my father. David Tran was born in Vietnam in 1945 into an ethnic-Chinese family that was exiled by the Communist government in 1979. The Taiwanese ship on which he departed was called the Huey Fong – “gathering prosperity” – and Tran adapted the propitious name for the company he founded in Los Angeles in 1980.
Figure of Huy Fong founder David Tran with oversize sriracha bottle, in the training room at Huy Fong headquarters.
Continue reading "Road trip: Huy Fong chili-sauce factory" »
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Libel tourism: “The act of suing a writer for alleged defamation in a foreign jurisdiction where there are weak libel laws.” (Source: Dictionary.com).
Often, that jurisdiction is Great Britain, as NPR reporter Ari Shapiro noted in a March 21 report, “On Libel and the Law, the U.S. and U.K. Go Separate Ways.”
The hook for Shapiro’s story is Going Clear, Alex Gibney’s new documentary about the Church of Scientology, which will have its premiere March 29 on HBO. (Shapiro said the film aired “last week.” Maybe for critics, but the rest of us will have to wait.) The film is based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright; the book was published in the U.S. in 2013 (and was short-listed for a National Book Award), but has not yet been released in the U.K. There have also been “serious challenges” to the release of the film, Shapiro reports, “because Britain does not have the same free speech protections as the United States.”
The libel tourism coinage is credited to the British media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who cited “the menace of libel tourism” in a 2010 opinion piece for The Guardian. The term had already been in circulation for at least a few years by then. It appeared in a January 2008 article by Doreen Carvajal in The New York Times about a Scandinavian case:
You’re an investment bank in Iceland with a complaint about a tabloid newspaper in Denmark that published critical articles in Danish. Whom do you call?
A pricey London libel lawyer.
That is called libel tourism by lawyers in the media trade. And Britain remains a comfortable destination for the rich in search of friendly courts, which have already weighed complaints from people who consider themselves unfairly tarred with labels like tax dodger, terrorist financier or murky Qaeda operative.
Russian oligarchs and Saudi billionaires have also found refuge in British libel law, Carvajal writes. Her succinct explanation:
Britain is a legal refuge because of defamation standards rooted in common law. They essentially assume that any offending speech is false and the writer or author must prove that it is in fact true to prevail against the charge.
In the United States, with its First Amendment protection for free speech, the situation tilts in the opposite direction: To succeed, libel plaintiffs must prove that the speech is false and published with a reckless disregard for the truth.
The expanded Dictionary.com entry brings us up to date:
After several high-profile libel suits filed in the U.K. against U.S. authors resulted in judgments against the authors—lawsuits that, in the opinion of many jurists, probably would not have held up in a U.S. court of law—Congress in 2010 passed the SPEECH (Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage) Act. The title of the act speaks volumes: foreign libel judgments are no longer enforceable in the U.S. unless they meet the same high legal standards in libel matters as required by U.S. law, including that they do not violate the First Amendment right of free speech of an American author.Thus the tourist must return home.
SPEECH is a masterly example of the bureaucratic backronym.
Besides libel tourism, there are a few other examples of the “X tourism” formula.
Birth tourism, also known as maternity tourism, is travel to another country for the purpose of giving birth. Reasons for the practice, according to a Wikipedia entry, “include access to the destination country's healthcare system, circumvention of communist China's one-child policy and (in countries that recognize jus soli) birthright citizenship for the child.” According to a CBS News story published February 9, 2015, the number of Chinese women giving birth in the United States “more than doubled to about 10,000 in 2012.”
Medical tourism is travel to another country for health care, often for economic reasons. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has estimated that 750,000 U.S. residents travel abroad for medical care each year; a CNBC report put the 2013 figure at 900,000, and noted that the worldwide market is $20 billion to $40 billion. Websites such as MedicalTourism.com (“Your Passport to a World of Options”) and PatientsBeyondBorders.com (“The Most Trusted Resource in Medical Travel”) provide information and patient accounts; companies like Planet Hospital (“A New Way to Care”) handle the logistics.
A subset of medical tourism is surgery tourism, and a sub-subset is plastic surgery tourism, which New Yorker contributor Patricia Marx touches on in her “Letter from Seoul,” published in the March 23 issue. Her subtitle: “Why is South Korea the world’s plastic-surgery capital?” Her answer:
“Surgery tourists” from abroad make up about a third of the business in South Korea, and, of those, most come from China. One reason is that, throughout Asia, the “Korean wave” of pop culture (called hallyu) shapes not only what music you should listen to but what you should look like while listening to it. Cosmetic transformations can be so radical that some of the hospitals offer certificates of identity to foreign patients, who might need help convincing immigration officers that they’re not in the Witness Protection Program.
Some of the clinic names Marx spotted on her visit: Small Face, Magic Nose, Dr. 4 Nose, Her She, Before and After, Reborn, Top Class, Wannabe, 4 Ever, Cinderella, Center for Human Appearance, and April 31 Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Marx’s translator explained “Small Face” to her: “Koreans, and Asians in general, are self-conscious about having big heads,” he said. “This is why in group photos a girl will try to stand far in the back to make her face relatively smaller.” Also popular in South Korea: the “Bagel Girl” look—bagel being a portmanteau of “baby-faced” and “glamorous.”
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Further journeyings in the land of the blend:
1.
Kidvasion is a month-long promotion of the San Diego Tourism Authority.
This blend is what The Name Inspector would call awkwordplay: a mismatch in syllable emphasis. In one of the blended words, invasion, the stress falls on the second syllable; but in the compound it’s “kid” that needs to be emphasized.
Aside from that, I wonder how many parents will read “kids free deals” and think “kids-free deals” and either be disappointed or elated, depending.
2.
I’m not entirely certain, but I think Waffullicious, coined by IHOP to describe the chain’s limited-time waffle offering (waffering?), is a three-way: waffle plus full plus delicious.
Here’s how IHOP describes the Bac ’n’ Cheddar variety:
Our traditional thick, crisp Belgian waffle with chunks of chopped hickory-smoked bacon and gooey cheddar cheese baked right in, then topped with more bacon for a savory waffle experience unlike any other.
The Very Blueberry version is stuffed with blueberries and cheesecake.
So what we have here are waffles full of delicious. I’d put the emphasis (semantic, not syllabic) on full: According to the Impulsive Buy blog, each order—that’s a single waffle—contains between 750 and 820 calories.
At least the Waffullicious name goes down smoothly.
3.
Affordaganic, a combination of affordable and organic, is Rodale’s contribution to the blendfest.
Until I discovered “affordaganic” via a Twitter hashtag, I hadn’t known that Rodale, Inc., the 84-year-old healthy-living publisher, had launched what they called an “eco-luxury online retail store.” Rodale’s has an apostrophe-s to distinguish it from the parent company. I’m puzzled by that “luxury” descriptor: I’d call the clothing, home, and beauty offerings moderately priced (a lip-balm trio for $12, dresses for $55 and $65, bras—mostly of the sport variety—for under $50).
“Affordaganic” sounds forced to me, and the whole concept of “affordability” is wobbly and subjective. If you have a lot of money, everything’s affordable; if you have none, nothing is.
At least they’re only trotting it out on Fridays.
Fun fact: Since its founding in 1930, Rodale has been based in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, a town founded in 1759 by Moravian immigrants whose name has a Biblical antecedent. In the New Testament, Emmaus—Hammat in Hebrew, Imwas in Arabic—is where Jesus is said to have appeared to two of his followers after his resurrection. In Hebrew, the word means “warm spring.” Two other Pennsylvania towns founded by Moravians have Biblical names: Bethlehem and Nazareth. Emmaus, PA, is pronounced eh-MAY-us.
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Mark Twain never said, or wrote, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” but few people would have contradicted him if he had. Now a new campaign for the North Lake Tahoe Visitors’ Bureaus takes the ersatz Twain quote to its logical conclusion.
“Winter, Spring, Winter, Fall.”
I like the stark simplicity of the headline, which evokes the faux-Twainism without recycling it. The four-word tagline echoes the rhythm and supplies the missing season.
A few days ago, when I shot this billboard, the thermometer read 58°F at noon, on its way up to a high of 61°. Yes, in late July. I spent some time over the weekend at the Dolphin Club in San Francisco, and everyone who wasn’t in the water was dressed exactly like those kids. People wear earmuffs and mittens to baseball games here. I am not exaggerating.
Lake Tahoe, four hours to the east, is spectacular, and I love it, but it isn’t exactly Death Valley, temperature-wise. In Truckee on the north shore, elevation 5,900 feet, recent highs have been in the mid-70s, and overnight lows in the 30s and 40s. It’s true there’s no fog, but there can be afternoon thunderstorms—unheard of here on the coast—and snow in August.
Still, the visitors’ bureaus can justify their pitch:
Ever been to San Francisco in the summer? Oh wait, there is no summer in fog-ridden San Francisco.
Another billboard in the campaign (from San Francisco agency School of Thought):
“Don’t Call It Frisco. Or Summer.”
Real summer is actually a lot closer to San Francisco than Lake Tahoe: drive 25 miles to the east or south and the fog vanishes and temperatures rise by as much as 30 degrees.
By the way, the San Francisco fog has a name, “Karl,” and a Twitter account with 22,000 followers. And the summer fog is not without aesthetic appeal, as this time-lapse video demonstrates.
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A couple of years ago, McDonald’s had a turn with the coldest-winter trope. See that ad here.
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HOHO: Acronym for “hop-on hop-off.” (Sometimes spelled HoHo.) Describes a type of sightseeing bus that allows passengers to disembark whenever they reach a stop that interests them, then re-board when it’s convenient. Tickets are valid for a specified period of time, typically 24 hours.
Hop-on hop-off buses are used by tour operators in many cities around the world (and even in the Grand Canyon), but the use of HOHO as a semi-official acronym appears most frequently in connection with the Indian tourist industry.
Above: logo for HOHO Delhi. From the FAQ:
Q : Can you explain me what is “Hop On Hop Off”
A : Hop-On Hop-Off tour, you have the freedom to spend time at each sightseeing. Your ticket will allows you to board any bus.
There are indications that the HOHO acronym is spreading to other parts of the world; see, for example, this query on TripAdvisor about a “HoHo bus” in New York City and this post on The Rome Toolkit, which notes that there are “no less than seven hop on, hop off tour (HOHO) sightseeing buses operating daily in Rome.” The London Toolkit also refers to “two major operators of the standard HOHO buses.”
A la franglais: “L’OpenTour” HOHO bus in Paris.
A British visitor to New York City reported in 2012 that “the HoHo bus” delivered “excellent value for money” and was “a brilliant way to see the city and get your bearings.”
HOHO buses are typically double-decker with open tops and a lowered rear platform for easy boarding and disembarking. One of the newer HOHO buses in London is officially called the New Bus for London (NB4L) and unofficially called the Boris bus, after Boris Johnson, the city’s mayor.
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