It's not a compliment

Nancy Friedman posted a 'tweet' about this somehow disconcerting page.

I skimmed through the copy and found myself constantly misreading "Twittad" as twitwad or twit wad.

Twit wad. I love it. It uses twit: a mild but nicely dismissive term. It evokes all the '___ wad' insults, especially shit wad. It hints at the very effective and very crass twat. I'm going to use it. But for what? What is a twit wad?

Google™ results:
Search term "twit wad" yields 7 hits.
Search term twitwad yields 48 hits.

So it's young. Let's give it a personality.

My first thought of course is to connect it to Twitter:

Twit Wad

That idiot in every meeting or class or audience that's constantly making little side comments that aren't nearly as funny as he thinks they are.

Raisins are dried grapes?!?

The episode "A Little Bit of Knowledge" on This American Life is one of the best ones I've heard yet.

The first story "When Small Thoughts Meet Big Brains" is about those things you find out embarrassingly late. Finding out at age 34 that Nielsen families are not all named Nielsen. Finding out in your 20s that <Xing> on a street sign is not pronounced 'zing.' Thinking that quesadilla is Spanish for 'what's the deal?' or that unicorns really exist.

When I was in high school one of my older sister's friends scoffed when I mentioned reindeer. They're not real she said accusingly. Yes they are I insisted. They're sometimes also called Caribou. Haven't you seen them? I explained that they live in northern regions and they look like a cross between a deer and a moose. Once she saw that I really believed my story she cautiously asked with skeptical realization: And they can really fly?

Last month Heidi Harley mentioned a blinding flash of light upon her realization several years ago

that the speech hesitations spelled "er" and "erm" in British texts are intended to sound just like the hesitations spelled "uh" and "um" in American texts. I'd been reading them internally as [əɹ], [əɹm], and if you'd asked me to read them aloud, that's how I'd have done it, even though never in my life had I heard anyone hesitate with such a noise. What a ninny.

And several commenters chimed in regarding the same surprise.

Lynneguist mentions her own related post from a month before.

(Shamelessly competitive aside: I posted on it about 20 months ago.)

Ray Girvan comments

For me, the epihany was recognising that the disapproving "Tut, tut", "Tch, tch" or "Tsk, tsk" said by comic-book characters represented a dental click. And yet, at least jokingly, people do say "Tut, tut" sometimes.

And in his own comment languagehat announces his own blinding flash of light caused by another comment mentioning Eeyore as a donkey's bray.

These blinding flashes of light are not worth hiding. It's great to admit that you've just learned something. It can be a little embarrassing but so what. It sounds a lot worse to say that you've always known everything that everybody your age knows. It's obvious that you're both bragging and lying.

So:

Just a couple months ago I learned that there were no rooms in ancient Rome just for throwing-up called vomitoriums (vomitoria?). Buffy informed me.

I had my B.A. in English before I learned that the Norman Invasion was not just another name for the Roman Invasion.

I completed my minor in psychology, had secondary ed certification in 2 states and had taught it for 3 years before I realized that I had been flipping the roles of the ego and the superego.

About 2 years ago I realized that in Old English writing, <ea> was probably a simplification of <æa> and was pronounced with an initial [æ] not [e]. (I know! Right?)

There are more. Many more. But I think you need to admit some now.

--

Oh yes. The real gem in the episode of This American Life: the prologue suggests that people who say a lot about a topic they barely understand sound like a magazine: Modern Jackass. The magazine doesn't exist of course, but people who don't admit ignorance are in abundance.

Nancy Updike: You know my mother sends me information about um partially hydrogenated oils. And then when somebody says Wait why is partially hydrogenated oil bad again? and I say Well It's an unstable compound. Which it is. It's oil to which hydrogen has been added in order to make it solid at room temperature. That I know. That's a fact.

Ira Glass: And why would that be bad Nancy?

Nancy: Well that's where we get into Modern Jackass territory. It's unstable and your body … your … your … you know … it … there … there's an extra hydrogen atom that can interact with uh … things …

I really hope calling Modern Jackass catches on. But so help me -- if one of you puts it in the comments...

Remind me not to do yoga with him

I've never been a fan of Jackass or any of those crazy-stunt shows that focus on attention starved boys kicking each other in the groin. I'm not sure what they do or say to each other to convince themselves that their little dares are worth taking. Perry Caravello must have known what he was getting into doing business with Johnny Knoxville. And at some point while putting his genitals a mousetrap he must have thought This might not be entirely pleasant.

Yes. He put his genitals in a mousetrap.

His lawsuit now claims that he was injured. Not a surprise. Wasn't that the whole point? I don't know how much tissue damage is necessary to constitute injury but even if there was no tissue damage I'm willing to go ahead and say that a mousetrap snapping on your slim-jim counts as an injury. So don't do it.

Here's the surprise. The lawsuit makes the following claim.

Plaintiff agreed to do so, and, much to his emotional tranquility and to his physical harm, was severely injured when the trap literally went on his manhood[.]

Is this a legal term? Emotional tranquility? Uhhh...what? Either this is a mistake or Mr Caravello is one hell of a Buddhist.

Or...
The phrase anticipates the phrase "was severely injured" and the sentence is trying to say that his emotional tranquility was severely injured -- he sustained severe injury to his emotional tranquility. But putting it alongside "physical harm" confuses the whole sentence. How can severe injury undo his emotional stability while at the same time furthering his physical harm? But if "and to his physical harm" is a parenthetical that isn't coordinated with "to his emotional tranquility" then we have a reading that makes more sense to me. Let's see if we can rewrite that just a little:

"In regard to his emotional tranquility (and this caused him physical harm) he was severely injured when the trap literally went on his manhood."

Now one last question. Did it hurt as soon as it "went on" his manhood or was it when it "went-off on" his manhood? It doesn't matter. It was a stupid idea from the beginning.

And according to the lawsuit he didn't get paid. Yeah I'm sure that stings.