Alas, poor English; I knew it well

It's been a week of awful, disheartening and un-Christmas-like news. Someone in Brazil tried to kill Santa Claus, an old man was murdered while delivering Christmas cards and, proving that cultural hypersensitivity is gradually making us all into morons, an Ottawa school has edited a classic Christmas carol, removing the word Christmas from it. Brilliant.

But there's worse news. It's the worst news story of the year, and probably the worst thing in media and culture since TIME magazine's sausage-spined decision to make YOU the 2006 Person of the Year. That is that me and approximately 300 million other people like me have just become essentially irrelevant.

Why? We speak English.

For those of you remaining blissfully unaware, The English language was essentially declared moot on December 12, 2007 when the charlatans at Merriam-Webster - a dictionary publisher, mind you - declared "w00t" the 2007 word of the year.

It's actually hard to diagnose what's wrong with that BECAUSE IT'S SO OVERWHELMINGLY WRONG that I scarcely know where to start.

I guess I should start with the broadest strokes, that being that it's not even a fucking word. It's an expression of exultation, an acronym used by online gamers that means "we owned the other team." It's part of the "l33t" (another non-word, a bastardized form of "elite") lexicon, an online game language.

It's spelled with two zeros instead of the letter o, which instantly disqualifies it as a word. Words are spelled with letters. The zeroes are used for no logical reason, it's just to look cool and computery.

Furthermore, the word was concocted by hackers and gamers, the same subhuman mouth-breathers who concocted pwned, absolutely and irrefutably the stupidest pseudo-word of all time.

Not surprisingly, the word of the year was decided by an online poll, so slug-like computer nerds can stay congealed at home and make their mark on the world without venturing too far from the World of Warcraft tournaments. That doesn't let Merriam-Webster off the hook by any means, though. It accepted nominations for the word of the year, and it probably could have exercised the barest amount of editorial discretion and disallowed words that, you know, AREN'T WORDS.

For your edification, here's the list of word of the year finalists:

· facebook - as a verb, a vile usage. "Did you Facebook today?"
· conundrum
· quixotic - you're not hallucinating; that's two real words! In a row!
· blamestorm - fuck off. A stupid neologism; more on these shortly
· sardoodledom - a real word, as unlikely as it sounds
· apathetic
· Pecksniffian - a great Dickensian word. I'm gonna start using this.
· hypocrite
· charlatan - noun: fraud, fake, Merriam-Webster editor


Look at that, English users. A list of the top ten words of the year, and only seventy percent of them are real words. Facebook works as a noun, but using it as a verb should qualify you for summary execution. It's only slightly more inexcusable than "texted."

As for "blamestorm," it's a product of another great scourge of then English language: neologisms, or wannabe-clever "words" concocted by idiots. Examples include:

• awkword, noun - a word that's difficult to pronounce
• lexpionage, adj - Lexical espionage; the sleuthing of new words and phrases
• multidude, noun - The collective noun for a group of surfers

Terms like those are worthless on so many levels. Remember the Rob Schneider character on Saturday Night Live who made wordplay with peoples' names? That's exactly the kind of retard who thinks up things like "lexpionage." They're designed for maxiumum cleverness, but who the hell is ever going to use a word like "multidude"? If you liked any of the examples above, please please stop reading this and go to hell.

Of course, languages must change and evolve. English is a constantly growing and changing thing, and it has changed for the better in the past. I'm a fan of non-idiotic new words and co-opting foreign-language terms like schadenfreude or carte blanche. English rules can also be unnecessarily anal. I don't yearn for us all to simply speak Shakespearean English. I don't care that you didn't spot the split infinitive in the last sentence. But we have to have limits.

And w00t definitely fucking crosses them.

My art project: recontextualizing an idiot

As proof of my potent powers of prescience and my superior soothsaying skills, a strong new statement has been made against the tasteless and talentless ghouls who churn out contemporary art. You may recall my rant about it from some weeks back, but a Toronto-based idiot has thrown new fuel on the fire.

If you pay attention to Toronto news these days, you probably heard that the police found a fake bomb at the Royal Ontario Museum, courtesy of colossal idiot/art student Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson. His "art" project consisted of the fake bomb itself and a YouTube video showing a fake bombing of the museum.

Jonsson reportedly checked with a lawyer before carrying out the project and was told that it was fine so long as the fake bomb was identified as fake. Applause applause to the lawyer for his due diligence, but perhaps the conversation should have gone a different way, more along the lines of "How the hell is this art?" or "Can't you do something, ya know, worthwhile?" and "Get the fuck out of my office."

Jonsson defended his worthless project by calling it "recontextualization," one of the half-baked art theories created to allow worthless empty-heads to flourish in the art world. The premise of recontextualization is that placing an item in a different context changes its meaning. Or, to put it another way, it's a sophisticated-sounding pretense for really lazy people with no abilities, since it allows you to take any object, place it in an unusual context and say that it's art. For example, I might put a microwave on a church altar or Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson in a bonfire.

This explanation leaves me torn as to whether Jonsson is more lazy or just stupid. The project was obviously a simulation of a terrorist action and terrorists usually attack public places. Putting a "bomb" in a public place is not a matter of great unusual context.

Hell, he didn't even put much effort into it, hiding the package in a corner and slinking away. Let's recognize the real heroes of recontextualization: people like Matthew Murray, who brought a handgun into a church last Sunday and killed a few people. Bringing a handgun into a church… wow! What an unusual context! Or so many suicide bombers in the Middle East who bring real bombs into public markets and other unusual contexts. Now that's art!

Further complicating the "lazy or stupid" debate is this remark he made to Icelandic newspaper Fréttabladid: "This wouldn’t have been such a big deal before September 11, 2001. Everything has changed since then. The timing of the work is therefore important.”

Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson, how are you an idiot? Let me count the ways:

1. Somehow, I suspect that bomb scares were still a big deal before September 11.
2. September 11 of which year? Oh right, 2001. Six years later, Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson comes to blow the lid off everything and show us how the world has changed! Thank God, I was afraid we were unaware of the new climate of fear and terrorism. Forget that Hollywood's already had time to produce at least half a dozen movies relating to the subject, countless books have been written and rebuilding work on the site of the World Trade Centre began over a year ago. You're not late to the party at all.

Okay, maybe that's only two ways. But they're pretty big ways.

Jonsson's work is only art in the loosest sense of the word, like Carl André's stacks of bricks and wood or Christo and his idiotic wrapping. It's art because nobody can satisfactorily define art. But Jonsson's bullshit isn't really art; it doesn't make a statement, it's not interesting or compelling in any way, it isn't beautiful and it didn't take any talent.

Anyone who watches movies could probably come up with a reasonable facsimile of a pipe bomb and his crap YouTube video of the ROM "bombing" shows no effort at all. After the "explosion," the screen just goes black. With all the movie editing technology available these days, he could have done something visually interesting. Anyone could have done this garbage.

One Jonsson apologist was quoted in the National Post as saying, "It's art because it makes us think," an irredeemably lame excuse. Staring out a car window can make you think. A Toronto Maple Leafs game can make you think. Maybe it's what you think that counts. When I hear about Jonsson's trash, I think all sorts of things, like:

"What a moron."
"What the hell is wrong with OCAD that it admits this guy?"
"Was he going to blow up the ROM Crystal? Maybe he's not all bad."
"No, he's all bad. What a jackass."

Adding injury to idiocy, Jonsson's scheme also ruined a fundraising dinner for the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research that was projected to raise $100,000.

Just in case you're not fully convinced that this guy is an utter fool, take a look at this here video. In it, he explains that the police shouldn't have taken the package seriously since he thoughtfully attached a note reading "this is not a bomb." Just as car thieves used to be thwarted by those foolproof "No radio" signs, the police should have just trusted the anonymous note and gone on their way. Why do the police have to be so goddam suspicious?

Jonsson sure as hell isn't an artist, but he might be a work of art in itself, created by the admissions people at OCAD through the magic of recontextualization. They took a trite object (him), placed it in an odd context (an art school) and changed his meaning (into an artist). Well, not really an artist.

Incidentally, the Toronto Star's Christopher Hume just wrote an inspired indictment of this sort of worthless shock art. Have a look.

Pretentiousness penthouse: through the looking Gläs

Toronto is just Cleveland in Rhinestone drag. The city is drowning in its own pretensions.

- art critic John Bentley Mays

But how can a city be pretentious? People who've been to France might consider that a stupid question, but seriously; remove the people from a city and how do you classify its character?

Here's a test I devised today: look at condos.

Condos are fast becoming the bellwether of unbearable pretentiousness in this city. Today while walking along King Street, I saw the site of a new building called Gläs.

Fucking Gläs? What is that?

Several months ago, I went to a friend of a friend's apartment, situated in a building called Element. Upon seeing this sign, we both immediately remarked on the ridiculousness of the name. Aside from the fact that the building probably contains things found on the periodic table, there's no decent reason to call it Element.

That one struck me as stupid, but harmless. But as time goes on (and it has), I've noticed more and more. Here's a sampling of some other names I've seen lately:

Icon
Solara
Crystal Blu
Zenith
The New Yorker (in Toronto, natch)
Infinity

Names like this serve no purpose but to make the building sound cooler, allowing for inflated prices. Some people are likely willing to pay more to live at Crystal Blu than 66 Anywhere St., even if they're exactly the same. But those people are worthless, so who cares what they think?

Because I have nothing else to do, I spent a touch of time deconstructing the idea of naming your building something ridiculous like Gläs. Here's what I got:

Glas is Swedish for glass. But neither the architect nor engineers behind Gläs is Swedish.

It sure as hell isn't some tongue-in-cheek kind of joke. Condos and cars are some of the most humorless products there are (As an aside, it's worth noting that Element, New Yorker and Solara are also car names. So is Infinity, but, like Gläs, it's intentionally misspelled for maximum hipness: Infiniti).

That name is the deformed brainchild of a numbskulled marketing exec looking for something hip-sounding. He was shopping at IKEA one day and saw something made of glas, and thought "Wow, that' s so hip-sounding!" But it's too pedestrian to name a building after an IKEA product, so he throws an umlaut over it in hopes that it'll sound cooler. By adding it, he instantly makes it meaningless and throws credibility out the window for two reasons: 1) a real word would be more meaningful and 2) umlauts have not been trendy or cool since Mötley Crüe deployed them to similarly pointless effect.

But enough about Gläs and back to my original point: these names are nothing but awful, pretentious idiocy. Giving a residential building some hip name is completely pointless.

Here's a bet: try getting into a cab in Toronto and saying "Take me to Gläs." If the can driver actually knows what you mean and takes you there without rolling his eyes and smacking you upside the head, I'll give you $20. And then I'll smack you upside the head.

Canada and Toronto have an established history of boring names. Canada is just Iroquois for "village" and Toronto is Mohawk for "where there are trees standing in the water." Man, those natives sure can tell it like it is! Two of the city's most high-profile buildings have devastatingly boring-ass names: the Rogers Centre (neé SkyDome, a far more majestic name) and the CN Tower. Know what the CN stands for? Canada's National. Some cities have The Louvre, The Hermitage or the Prado and we have the Art Gallery of Ontario. Inspired names are not our style!

So I guess the important question is this: are these names just part of Toronto's desperate need for pizzaz? Well, I'm willing to bet that your average condo marketing idiot doesn't know the etymology of Canada and Toronto, nor do they care about the names of existing structures here, so they're just being a bunch of pretentious fucking dicks.