Feeling Qwerty?

A Key Question:

The button you press on a computer keyboard to go to the next line is, on my Mac, labeled return, with the word enter in smaller text above it. PC keyboards just say enter.

One can see the reasoning behind this. Once you have input data (typed shit), you then “enter” it by moving on to the next line. Never mind that the text you have typed already appears on the screen. What the cursor is doing, then, is “entering” a new, blank space in which one may input more data (type more shit). It often comes with a helpful bent arrow pointing to the left. This a visual remnant of an earlier age (see below.)

The Mac, on the other hand, which wants to be more intuitive and connected to older methods of inputting data (typing shit), uses a word which has lost all meaning with people young enough never to have known a manual typewriter: return.

Here’s how it worked: when you wanted to move down a line, you had to press in a handle on the cylindar the paper was rolled around (the carriage), and physically slide it back over to the left so that it could march, one keystroke at a time, back over to the right. If it was already in the far left position, disengaging the handle meant the paper would go up a notch, bringing the keys into a blank space. To write (type shit), you literally had to “return” the carriage to the left.

Nowadays, we don’t have metal keys on long, thin fingers waiting in a semi-circle like an orchestra to strike an impression onto paper through an ink-soaked ribbon or ink-lined plastic strip. We have a flashing cursor, a vertical hair awaiting our bidding on a screen. It’s temporal, like a ticking clock, blinking at you expectantly.

It appears when you move into a rectangular text entry area on Facebook, waiting patiently against the left-hand wall, ready to become a witty remark or status update. It used to be that Facebook required a deliberate click on a dark blue “comment” button to post your comment, which could just as easily have been called the “are you sure you want to say this?” button. It naturally assumed that anything you typed was in fact a comment, and not, say, a series of sad face emoticons or a joke ☹.

It had also been a “share” button, reinforcing the idea that social media is for “sharing,” rather than “showing off” or “desperately seeking attention.” The extra step of actually having to move your cursor over to the button and click on it gave the typist / smartass a few precious moments for reflection, in case he or she decided the comment wasn’t as witty as it seemed.

Now, Facebook has no button to share or comment at all. You simply type your shit, and hit return. Or enter. And ta-da: there it is for everyone to read.

↵  ↵  ↵  ↵  ↵  ↵ 

But what does it mean to deliver a comment, or join a hierarchical conversation via a button called “return”? Are you returning to the dialogue? Are you returning a bon mot like a verbal tennis ball? Are you returning someone’s sad face emoticons like an overcooked steak back to the kitchen from which it came? What of a button called “enter”? Are you entering the vertical narrative each time as if merging finto traffic from an on-ramp? Are you a character forever entering from stage left? Or entering it like deja vu, stepping again and again into that same room?

What we name our tools does not go unnoticed. OK, it does most of the time, by most people. But it’s worth stepping back every now and then and considering what we call the things which have become invisible to us. Take the carriage, for instance. It is a conveyance — a means by which to carry something. A carriage was usually pulled by horses until it became a railway car, which became, on a road, just a car. Car — short for carriage. In England, roads are still called "carriageways." The typewriter roll carries the paper. The paper carries the words. Our fingers carry the message. We speak with our hands. A typewriter neither types nor writes. A typist types, and a writer writes. Perhaps a reader will read. The word “text” has become a verb. We rarely use into our phones for actual speech. We enter and return, back and forth, in and out, all day long.

We’re forever typing shit. 

Obit / Orbit

Balls

My copy. December 1969.

To say someone has “balls,” means they have gumption, courage, insane bravery, perhaps. It means they step up to the plate and take that pitch knowing it might knock them flat on their ass.

This week we saw the end of two trajectories of men lauded for their balls, both named Armstrong. Lance, because he famously only had one, and Neil, because he had enough for a whole team.

Neil Armstrong, test pilot, standing next to the sexiest of creatures, the X-15

While it would be apt to note their accomplishments, it is for how they disappointed many with their post-career actions that contributes to their fame. Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, shied away from the spotlight he could have basked in to return to being a private citizen. Lance Armstrong all but ceded what many have long believed: that he (like many) cheated to achieve his goal of getting out in front of the pack, higher, faster, than anyone else.

A few weeks ago, I came across one of the more bizarre exhibits in a museum full of oddities in Cincinnati’s Museum Center. Among the display cases of Ohio’s various rodents and chunks of meteorites, there looms one of Neil Armstrong’s spacesuits, posed as if the man were still inside. It looks disarmingly primitive and out of place unless you know that he came from Ohio and lived in Cincinnati.

In the museum

When asked who the first man on the moon was, many of my former college students replied “Lance Armstrong.” They weren’t thinking about the cyclist, however; just the legacy of the name.

Goodnight, Mr. Armstrong. Good luck and Godspeed. 

It’s All In The Package

Stop Staring.

I am proud to report that my eight year-old son has the nicest underwear in his class. How do I know this, you ask. I am totally presuming. But really, which other eight year-olds are going to be wearing David Beckham boxer briefs? They are probably in Spiderman or SpongeBob Y-fronts.

The reason my son is such a lucky boy is that when I was making a purchase recently, of an armful of tops for fall at the local H&M, I was informed by the cute and impossibly young salesman that I would get 20% off my purchase if I bought some. I did the math. It just made sense.

My savings put me in a chatty mood, so I asked my charming cashier how old he was. I’d guessed 23. He said “23.” I said “I’ve been shopping at H&M for longer than you’ve been alive.” He seemed taken aback — though it wasn’t clear whether that was because he didn’t think I was that old, or that the company he worked for was that old.

H&M is pretty new in the US, and just about unheard of in Pittsburgh. But my conversation took me back to those early items I bought there, at the flagship store on Oxford Street in the 80s. This was well before the Primark era, and well before H&M’s flagship store moved to Oxford Circus.

No, really: stop staring.

Here’s what I bought (and what was considered fashionable back in the mid1980s): a completely floppy silvery fabric jacket, a royal blue tiered miniskirt, and a white string vest. I probably wore all three at the same time. With a headband. It was hideous.

Football players didn’t hawk underwear back then, though we all wondered what Gary Lineker looked like in his. Now, I am left staring at the box. I can’t quite bring myself to throw it away.

Mr. Lineker.

Wacky Weed

When I first moved in to the rented house in which I live, I attracted the attention of my neighbors by weeding the garden. This, apparently, was enough of an oddity to cause them to ask, with bewilderment, why I did such a thing; after all, it was a rental. They said it in italics, like that. The implication (in addition to a quick glance at the neglected, overgrown gardens all around), was that it was a waste of time; that it was probably someone else’s job; that putting in all this backbreaking work for a few years only to pass it on to some other tenant when I left, was madness. I answered their question the only way I knew how: I said “I live here.”

It’s not simply that I want the place where I live to look groomed, beautiful, welcoming, and to be productive (I grow a lot of herbs and vegetables); I genuinely like gardening. Weeding is my Yoga, my garden my Gym. All the back yards where I live are sort of joined together, and all back onto a deceptively rural looking alley that is bordered by a wooded slope among which prowl deer. The entrance to the alley is framed by a hill covered in old growth ivy, which is periodically interspersed with flowers, according to the season; snowdrops, lily-of-the-valley, roses, peonies, lilies, and more. It’s a very pleasant place to turn one’s car into. The alley itself is not made impassable by overhanging branches or vines; underfoot it is not obscured by trash or debris.

This is because I weed it, too. I do this — which benefits all of my neighbors — simply because I want to, and unless they caught me doing it, they’d have no idea it was me. That suits me just fine. I don’t even tell my elderly landlord, who lives in the house at the alley entrance, that I keep his clematis in check, his lawn from becoming choked with dandelions, and his hedge trimmed. Because weeds tend to procreate with windborne seed, I weed my neighbor’s unruly gardens too. And when, in the middle of winter, and no weeding can be done, I shovel the paths and sprinkle salt on his steps. Hey — I’m out there already, right? Might as well.

But I’m not writing this to slap myself on my back. It’s to complain bitterly, about the cowboys he hires to take care of the garden. They purport (according to the sign on the side of their truck) to be horticultural experts. They are not. Once a year at this time (mid-July), when the grass isn’t growing fast enough to mow (and charge him for), they have a thorough once-over with the weed-whacker. In fact, they use the weed-whacker to perform every single one of their horticultural functions. The general idea seems to be to reduce everything in its path to three inches in height, as if they were giving the property a military haircut. No matter what lies in its path, down it comes. Flowers in full bloom? Down. Tomatoes bearing big, fat fruit? Down. Actually, they didn’t fall down so much as slump, then turn limp before I noticed that the stalks had all been cleanly sheared off at ground level. Last year, they also buzzed my herbs, all of which were growing in what I assumed to be fairly obvious borders. And how did I know that they had not simply been chewed down to nubs overnight? Because the plants themselves lay scattered all across the lawn where the weed-whacker had sprayed them.

I have asked my landlord why he employs these guys, given that they clearly don’t know their ass from their elbow. I didn’t use those exact words. He said that he’d always used them. And that was that.

A few days ago I noticed that the stalks of the recently flowered lilies in the alley had begun to turn dry, and were ready to be plucked from among the ivy. I did not act fast enough, however. Today I went out to find the entire hillside had been defoliated, the remains making a thick, clinging layer that was suffocating the ivy underneath. The whole thing looked a mess, like a hurricane had come through. A lovely shady laburnum tree near the garages had also been subjected to a “trim,” and looked as if it was weighing up whether losing 60% of its leaves was worth surviving or not. It was buried trunk-deep with its fallen slender branches, like some grotesque victim of an unspeakable war crime. “What have I ever done to anyone?” is asked me. OK, it didn’t. Plants can’t talk. It they couldn’t they’d be screaming.

I went out and pulled the straw-like crud from the ivy bank, and pulled the thistle stubs and lifted up the branches. I made three black contractors bags full. This should have been the cowboy’s job. Instead, they just walked through and left it all there. This is because it can’t be blown away, but requires actual climbing up the hillside, bending over and stuffing bags by hand. It’s hard work. I have not yet mentioned that it was 100 degrees. While I sweated away, a neighbor maneuvered past me and said absolutely nothing.

“You’re welcome,” I said under my breath. “Have a nice day.”

Buttery Will Get You Everywhere

If you wanted to “butter someone up,” you would use words, not actual butter. Using actual butter would be inadvisable. Buttering up means paying someone a compliment in order to make them feel generous towards you. This is also known as flattery. It is not buttery. Buttery is a flavor reminiscent of the sweet, rich creaminess of high quality butter. To butter something up is a direct reference to making a dull slice of bread more edible with the application of dairy grease.

For flattery, a good approach is to remark on someone’s shoes — “I love those shoes, they do wonderful things for you,” you might say. You can’t go wrong with a shoe compliment. Male or female, doesn’t matter. The shoes could be hideous and do absolutely nothing for their wearer, but that’s beside the point. The point is to get what you want. It is an off-white lie with a tinge of gold. A lie the color of Lurpak.

People have been flattering one another for a very long time. “Those are a great pair of feet you’re sporting” was probably a pick-up line long before cobblers cobbled together shoes to hide them. “Why thank you,” the object of one’s affection probably replied, “your cave or mine?”

To flatter comes from the old French word flater, meaning to stroke with the hand or caress, from the Frankish word flat (palm; the flat of the hand). Humankind has no doubt been much advanced by such flattery, the good flatterers able to pass their suave genes on after a jolly night of buttering up and foot tickling.

But there is a downside to a diet of flattery: if you’re not careful, you could end up wanting both sides of your bread buttered, leaving you in a pickle. Or holding a pickle. (Or is it a hot potato?) On the one hand this; on the other, that. It would certainly make it hard to pick up your sandwich. While some social lubrication is good for making connections at a party (“excuse my greasy hands — oh! What lovely shoes you’re wearing!”), you can’t have too much of a good thing, or for the good thing to be spread too thin. We’re talking about butter here. Too cold and it’s reluctant; too warm and it wilts. Room temperature is just right.

While flattery is a handy tool to wield as part of your repartee repertoire, you must be sure not to overdo it and start fluffing it up. That is done to butter to accentuate its creaminess, but when done to people, simply makes things stiff. No-one likes to think you’re fluffing, or that they need you to do it. If you feel things start to get awkward, return your attention to the shoes. Cast your eyes down. “I’ve always wanted a pair of those,” you should confide. Then look back up. “Buttery will get you everywhere,” they’ll say. “Your place or mine?”

A Thing Wot I Wrote About Wit

A wit is someone given to being witty. If sarcasm is often referred to as the lowest form of wit, it’s because wit requires a more etymological basis for its humor than sarcasm, which relies instead upon delivery. Sarcasm might distract you from being able to guess which cup the penny’s under, but wit will actually make the penny disappear. In order to best the purveyor of sarcasm, one has to keep one’s wits about them, has to retain their mental acuity.

The lovely thing about a mongrel language such as English is that a singular word can contain within it many shades of meaning, all related. Wit comes to us from the Old English witt, meaning understanding, intellect, knowledge, and consciousness. Thus is can refer to both the brain, the mind and thought. The phrase “to wit” means to know, and has become a shorthand form by which to introduce facts; things that can be accepted as being irrefutably known.

To know — to wit — in the past tense, is to wist. To have wist. Wistfully. The singular form is to wot, or to wost. (To wast, on the other hand, is “to be,” making for an interesting homophonic link that appears to confirm Descartes’ assertion “I think, therefore I am. I wost, ergo I wast. It’s perhaps a witty version of cogito ergo sum, suggesting that Old English is a funnier tongue than Latin.)

The actual grammar of the word wot is a bit scary-sounding: it’s a preterite-present verb. Things can get quite complicated when one roots around the roots of a word. Today you don’t hear much about wit, and you certainly won’t hear it described as wot. The way you DO hear the word “wot” is in a wholly different, but related, context.

Contemporary wits employ the word “wot” instead of “what” (and in turn, “that”) in order to deliberately sound uneducated, in the manner of someone who has no use for the rules of everyday grammar. Hence the popularity of the phrase “that thing wot I did,” which has started to infiltrate the idiom. Just as certain derogatory names can only be employed by those to whom they might apply, the use of “wot” can only really be used by those smart enough to know they are trying to be humble.

In an age where the internet and social media insists that in order to keep up we must all become self-promoters, one can be pretty sure that if something is introduced by the invitation to come look at “some thing wot I did / wrote / said / drew” etc., the author is very proud of it. It is an example of humor being employed to imply seriousness — the very heart of wit.

Chocolate With Bread

Go On, Butter Me Up

While it has long been the practice of discerning gourmands to pair chocolate with bread — usually by inserting it into the bread, a la pain au chocolate, or by spreading it onto the bread — it has taken a rather long time for someone (a discerning chocolatier, say) to invert the concept, and put the bread inside the chocolate.

This is exactly what Minnesota chocolatier B. T. McElrath has done with its Buttered Toast Chocolate Bar. Lined up on a shelf of other exotic variations, including the now somewhat pedestrian chili, lavender, blood orange, chai, red peppercorn and even bacon chocolate bars, this one stood out to me for being so down to earth. Among all these bars which sounded like come-ons in a foreign language, this one spoke to me in terms I could understand. It said “come on — you know you want to.”

Brian McElrath describes the bar thusly: “We toast breadcrumbs in pure creamery butter and then drench them in our signature milk chocolate.” That would be 40% milk chocolate, which cuddles up to the rich and sweet side in the chocolate spectrum. It’s a richness that lives on in your chest for some time after you’ve eaten a few rectangles. An inspection of the texture reveals a crumbly, grainy solid, dotted through with tiny air pockets not a whole lot smaller than the toasted sourdough breadcrumbs. If I had an reservations about the success of this venture into comfort food, I would say the crumbs need to be a bit bigger so that they can be detected; here, they simply become part of the overall crumb. What’s the point in foregrounding a special ingredient if it gets lost in the mix? If I likened them to sand in a batch of concrete, that would be a bit mean because the bar is not nearly as bad as all that, but it might give you an idea of their role.

While I’m at it, I would suggest that the appeal of the butteriness of the breadcrumbs could be enhanced by toning down the cocoa butter content, which simply nullifies the whole “creamery butter” aspect. All I end up tasting is butter — when it seems I should also be getting a tang of the fruity sourdough to temper it. The addition of salt to chocolate gives it extra dimension; nothing appear added here.

At 65 cents per rectangle, I’d want this to be more special than a cheapo Nestle Chocolate Crunch bar, but ultimately, that’s what it reminds me of. Next time, I’ll just do it the old-fashioned way — spread some melted chocolate on buttered toast. After all, that’s what I really wanted, I suppose. Also, I’ll tell anyone trying to sweet-talk me by appealing merely to my id to take a hike, or in other words, “vamoose!”

Maker: B.T. McElrath (www.btmacelrath.com)

Bar: Buttered Toast Chocolate Bar

Size: 3 oz

Price $6.50

Calories: 240 per half bar (44% saturated fat)

Ingredients: Milk chocolate (pure cane sugar, full cream milk, cocoa butter, cacao beans, soya lecithin, vanilla bean), sourdough bread (enriched wheat flour, sea salt, malt, yeast), turbinado sugar, salted butter, natural flavor.