If you put it in on your CD-ROM drive, there’s a little bonus “2020: The Year: The Musical” version of Chex Quest you can play.
Too raw, too real and too controversial for the Broadway Stage — where today’s cowardly gatekeepers demand that stage musicals include “talent” and “actors” and “music” and “good writing” and “not be 60 hours long,” — 2020: The Year: The Musical has now been released in the form it was always meant to be experienced on: as a two-part epically long WordPress blog post! It’s your chance to relive all your favorite parts of the year 2020 — dubbed by historians “best year ever” — from the crackling political intrigue to the daredevil adrenaline of epidemiological risk-taking, all over again. Finally, an FDA-authorized treatment for “nostalgia!”
Like John Cage’s “4’33” before it, producer/playwright/crude PhotoShopper Daniel Walters strips away the rhythmic distractions of a traditional musical, does away with the constraints of preening actors, and gives you the pure uncut glory of the heart of the human experience: endless walls of text. It’s the perfect way to pass the time in lockdown [TO DO: This is taking me way too long to finish so if we’re not still in lockdown by the time I’m done don’t forget to replace it with a current reference.]
You don’t have a “real” time machine to reexperience the glories of 2020, the year, so why not use the greatest time machine of all — your imagination! So come with me, gentle blog reader, back to the halcyon days of 2020.
SUMMARY
After sharing a New Year’s kiss, Tim and Amy, two young Portland friends with very different politics, are on the cusp of a potential relationship at the start of 2020, which everyone is certain will surely be the best year ever.
But they soon find themselves pulled apart by an ever-widening cultural chasm, as an entire nation, already hanging by a thread, is further frayed by a pandemic and lockdowns, police brutality and raucous protests, Proud Boys, Antifa and QAnon — not to mention the second-most important election of all time. And Tim and Amy’s is hardly the only relationship that will be tested: Before it’s all over father will be pitted against son, president against vice-president. Will Tim and Amy be able to resist the siren song of extremism long enough to start what is still certainly a doomed relationship? Will Donald Trump tell Donald Trump Jr. he loves him? Will Joe Biden sacrifice his son Hunter in order to win the election? Will Michael Pence be able to rediscover his faith long enough to stand up to the President of the United States? Is the greatest electoral college victory of all… unconditional love?
It will all come to a head on the last date of 2020: January 6th, 2021.
No music included. Your mileage may vary. Approved for emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. 2020: The Year: The Musical has no legal relation to 20/20: The Lasik Story: The Musical, D20D20: The Critical Hit Dungeons & Dragons Musical, or TwoZedTwoZed: The British Musical.
KIEFER SUTHERLAND VOICEOVER Previously… on 2020… The Year: The Musical….
America, from D.C. to Portland, is in chaos (though, we are contractually obligated to point out, the latter is still not completely on fire.) As a pandemic continues to sweep across the country, the deepening cultural divide has come between a fledgling young couple, Tim and Amy, who are totally and obviously wrong for each other but we still hate to see them fight. And though they have put their relationship on hold — ‘cause of that whole Antifa-Proud Boy street battle thing — more trials and tribulations are in store, for both them and the country.
Presidential Joe Biden’s troubled son, Hunter, has gone missing, while Trump’s son, Don Jr., is craving connection with his own distant father. Meanwhile, Vice President Michael Pence, haunted by prophetic nightmares and a sense of unexplained guilt, is privately beginning to question whether his undying loyalty to President Donald Trump is compatible with his Christian faith. Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci wants to remind you that, by the way, there’s still an incredibly deadly pandemic going on. Is Act II just going to ignore that?! Mostly, Dr. Fauci. Mostly.
After all, there’s the Second Most Important Election of All Time to contend with, a burgeoning and disturbingly sexy conspiracy movement whipping up radicalism, and a truly spooky scandal about to break.
And for our short-sighted characters who have made deals with the Devil?
Well, the Devil just sent them to collections.
We now return to your regularly scheduled WordPress-blogpost musical, already in progress.
If the Washington state vaccine website looks like this to you, you may have one or more comorbidities that qualify you for the COVID-19 vaccine
So some of you out there think Washington’s vaccine tier system has become “too confusing.” Ridiculous. If you’re confused about whether you are eligible to receive the vaccine, you can simply log on to Washington state’s Phase Finder, a website that no longer exists.
The good news is that on April 15, Washington state’s vaccine eligibility opens to everyone older than 16. So unless you’re dating hit TV sitcom star Jerry Seinfeld Rep. Matt Gaetz (update your references -ed.) vaccination will soon be within your grasp, if you’re not eligible already.
But what about until then? How do you know if you can be vaccinated now?
It’s quite simple, really: Washington’s vaccination eligibility system is made up of different phases called “tiers” and separately tiers called “phases.” Each tier has a sub-phase and each phase has an sub-tier, naturally, except in instances where super-phases and alternate variant shadow-tiers are more appropriate, of course.
The state moves from one vaccine sub-tier to another by hitting a certain calendar date, assuming that time progresses linearly in a forward direction, which, as of March 2020, is no longer a safe assumption. The state can also move to the next vaccine sub-tier when 50 percent or more (whichever is greater) of the current previously unvaccinated sub-tier is now vaccinated at present, at which point the offsides rule applies.
Each metropolitan statistical area then simply fills out a federal Emergency Declaration Of Vaccination Variation Waiver, waits 7 to 10 business days for the State Bureau of Local Federalization to issue a conditional Right To Apply Application, then it’s a matter of submitting forms B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 in notarized triplicate, at which point the Board of the Chosen Seven will assess the purity of a region’s devotion to the Visions.
Obviously, this is not to be confused with moving from a lockdown tier to a reopening phase in which case they must fill out forms B.1.427 and B.1.429 instead, and follow the steps in reverse order depending on population size.
“Okay, that’s easy enough,” you say. “Can you just a show me a list of who gets vaccinated in Washington and in which order?”
Ah, but there’s where things get a little tricky. Governor Jay Inslee can alter the vaccine eligibility list at any moment as a show of his massive power. The vaccine tier list is a living document, prone to growing and contracting in an instant, fond of sprouting entirely new penumbras and emanations depending on COVID patterns, weather conditions, astrological signs, Tokyo butterfly flight patterns and the fickle whims of the Fates.
So while we’ve provided the most up-to-date list of the state’s vaccination tiers here, know that it is subject to change.
After all Washington state’s vaccination tier system exists in a quantum flux state on a non-euclidean temporal plane where the fabric of space-time is thin enough that realities from ostensibly distinct multiverses leak into each other. Phases become tiers, tiers can become phases. For brief flashes “tases” and “phears” have even been observed, at which point everyone and no one is both vaccine-eligible and not vaccine-eligible at the same time.
Only by looking directly at the tier list will it remain constant in your frame of reality long enough for you to act.
Do not be distracted by the delights and horrors flickering beside you on the very edges of your vision! Do not pay heed to the breath on your neck or the whispers of secrets no one could ever know or the screams — oh god the screams — that grow louder and louder, shrieking to look away for just for a split second to make them stop. Ignore the dryness in your eyes or the heaviness of your eyelids, the sirens seducing you to blink or even to sleep.
Nay, steel your eyes, traveler, and do not turn from your path, no, not until you are anointed at the Shrine of Pfizer or Moderna, until you can lift this terrible curse. Godspeed!
WASHINGTON VACCINE TIERS
Phase 1A (Tier 1): Front-line medical professionals, doctors with kickass titles like “cardiothoracic surgeon”; nurses who have been up for 36 hours straight, McDreamy; McSteamy. Phase 1A (Tier 2): High-ranking hospital donors Phase 1A (Tier 5): Grizzled survivors of Washington state’s nursing homes Phase 1A (Tier B): Drs. Crusher, Frankenstein, Evil, Jay, Feelgood, Pepper, and Jill Biden Phase 1A (Tier 13): Mob doctors, Dr. Oz, doctors who give you a big ol’ wink whenever they write you a prescription for back pain, those sexist doctors who diagnose ladies with “hysteria” and “delusions of suffrage” from period dramas
Phase 1A (Alpha Tier): High-risk first responders: loose-cannon play-by-their-own-rules adrenaline-junkie cops with death wishes; hunky firemen whose smoldering eyes burn with dark secrets; ambulance drivers who are pretty sure, if they get enough speed, they can make that jump Phase 1A (Echo Tier): World-weary cops with one day ’til retirement; the hunky fireman’s more in-your-league roommate; responders who would have been first had they not hit a nasty stretch of traffic on I-90 near Thor/Freya Phase 1A (Epsilon Tier): Hot-under-the-collar police chiefs who are sick of having to put up with Rambo shit from the wildcards in Alpha tier. Phase 1A (Omega Tier): Mall cops, pet detectives, hall monitors, grammar police
Phase 1A (Kappa Theta Tier): Chad, Derek, T-Rob, Keytlin and those other chicks from the Gamma Gamma rager, anyone who brings a six-pack of Natty Ice to share
Phase 1A (Tier A1): Instagram influencers
Phase 1A (Tier 6): Top six finalists of the Washington state middle school “What Vaccination Means To Me” essay contest.
Phase 1A (Pier 1): Side tables, outdoor string lights, sunbeds, seasonal decor Phase 1A (Platinum Tier): All Washington state Governors 69-years-old or older Phase 1A (Gold Tier): 65-year-olds and older; people who get breakfast at McDonald’s at 5 am and dinner at Denny’s at 4 pm; people who call Washington “Warshington”; those old ladies who always pretend they’re turning “39” every birthday
Phase 1A (FAM Tier): All people 50 years old or older in multigenerational, mixed-race households with a boneheaded but lovable dad, a sarcastic and sassy mom, three precocious kids, a cranky and outrageous grandpa, and zany neighbor who invites himself over and causes all kinds of hijinks.
Phase 1A (RFK Tier): Anti-vaxxers Phase 1A (Tier ABC): Teachers union reps Phase 1A (Tier DEF): Teachers who know how to convincingly fake like they think “The Scarlet Letter” is an amazing book; math teachers who bring in pies for the whole class on March 14; cool teachers who sit backward in their chairs while explaining that “Genghis Kahn? Total badass. Like the LeBron James of raiding and pillaging, except the Steppe was his basketball court, and the siege of Beijing was his Space Jam 2,” ; “your fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Fowler who supported your writing even when you only wanted to write about the adventures of anthropomorphic fungus. Phase 1A (Tier GHI): Teachers who just put on the VHS copy of “Glory” and then sit at their desk watching the Cougar game on their cell phone; teachers who when you say “can I go to the bathroom?” say, I don’t know, can you?”; lame-o student teachers who take over the cool teacher’s classroom for an entire semester. Phase 1A (Tier JKL): Your middle school social studies teacher Mrs. Kramden who gave you a bullshit demerit slip for “undercurrent comments” after you made a perfectly innocent humorous wisecrack but she was in a bad mood and decided to use the moment to ruin your perfect record Phase 1A: (BB Tier): Childcare workers; babysitter clubs, con artists who house a bevy of adorable street orphans to serve as their pickpockets Phase 1A (Wheezy Tier) Those 16 or older with at least seven but less than nine of these conditions
Munchausen by Proxy
Moderate or severe asthma whenever you smoke to lose weight
The Heebies and/or the Jeebies
A case of the Mondays
Wanderlust
The yips
Baby in tummy
Greyscale
Racism
COVID-19
Vaccine addiction
Phase 1A (Tier 1337): Level 50 paladins or rogues w/ Tier 6 gear only plz no pubbies
Phase 1A (Starboard Tier) People still stuck on that Carnival Cruise ship
Phase 1A (Silver Tier): 60-year-olds and older; 16-year-olds who misheard “60” over the phone; prematurely balding 35-year-olds
Phase 1A: (Tier 65++): 65-year-olds and older again, one last time for old time’s sake Phase 1A (Black Bloc Tier): Antifa and off-label antifa equivalents
Phase 1A (1040 EZ tier): Married couples, filing jointly with no dependents
Phase 1A (Plumpy the Plumpa Troll Tier): If Washington state lands on this space, it must go BACK to Phase 1A (Tier 1) and start from the beginning
Phase 1A: (Orange Tier) High-risk critical workers who work in certain congregate settings: chocolate factory conveyor belt workers; clown car drivers, mosh pit bouncers, orgy quality testers, canned sardines
Phase 1A ($7.99 Tier): Grocery workers at Whole Foods, Huckleberry’s; and My Fresh Basket Phase 1A ($5.99 Tier) Grocery workers at Rosauers, Safeway, and Albertsons Phase 1A ($2.99 Tier) Grocery Outlet workers (vaccine stock and selection not guaranteed.)
Phase 1A (Red Robin Tier): Washington state’s remaining restaurant worker Phase 5C (Last Call Tier): The hoi polloi; the unwashed masses; the riff-raff, the common folk Phase 7F (“Sorry, Just Saw Your Text” Tier) : You, personally
IDAHO VACCINE TIERS
Phase 1 and only: Walk up to the front desk of any local Idaho hospital, medical clinic or Jamba Juice, stick out your arm, say “Vax me, baby!”
You’ll get your vaccine, but only if you can truthfully answer the following rigorous eligibility question: “You wanna Snoopy Band-Aid or a Hello Kitty one?”
Photo of me gazing into the wonderous promise that awaits us in 2021
Once again, as with every year, all my predictions for 2020 were 100 percent correct.
Unfortunately, unlike in 2016 and 2017, I got distracted and never got around to publishing them. In retrospect, the world may have benefitted from my intricately detailed prophetic diagrams explaining exactly how COVID-19 would spread and where the murder hornet nests were and the importance of keeping Rudy Gobert away from your microphones at all costs.
Oh, well! Live and learn.
But I’m not going to make the same mistake this year. This year, I’m chiseling these predictions into stone, making them impossible to alter without loading up the WordPress.com CMS editor and hitting update.
I’ve read the tea leaves (for the record, they say “hand picked black tea delicately blended with real oil of bergamot from Calabria, Italy”) and I know exactly what’s coming in the next 12 months or so. And believe me, this year could be even better than 2020.
If even one of these predictions are wrong you are entitled to a full refund will be entered into a raffle for a free SporadicallyPLUSdated membership.
HEALTH
Dr. Fauci will shave his head in an attempt to make people trust and respect him more
In a press conference in early May, President Joe Biden will approach the podium, hold up a corpse of a dead bat, and announce, “Ladies and gentlemen: We got him.”
In a major setback, the COVID vaccine will be shown to prevent people from getting the coronavirus, even if they change their mind and decide they want to try it after all.
Vaccinations will be distributed to people in order of best to worst.
Vaccine distribution will take slower than anticipated due to the regrettable decision to exclusive bundle the vaccines with the PS5.
Anti-vaxxers will finally agree to get vaccinated when they’re informed it only hurts for a moment and you get a Snoopy Band-Aid afterward.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will ease the pain of grief of the last year by sending a free copy of his book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, to each of the New York families his policies got killed.
The coronavirus epidemic will finally end when the appropriate Sacrifice is identified and fed to the Dark Maw that emerges from the Crimson Pits once an epoch.
Dr. Fauci will urge everyone continue wearing masks, except for “15-year-old Jennifer Underhill at Middlebury Junior High, she needs to take off the mask she’s been wearing for the last three years in an attempt to get the popular girls on the volleyball team to like her and just be herself.”
Public officials will encourage you to continue washing your hands until you can no longer see the blood of the hitchhiker staining them
Skeptics will dismiss a nasty new strain of flu by noting that it’s not nearly as deadly as the coronavirus.
The new variant of the Coronavirus will be more brutal, aggressive, and deadly than the original, with the ability to turn invisible and shoot lightning. Critics will dismiss it as a pale imitation of COVID-19’s original brilliance.
The CDC will draw a strong reaction when it names, as the worst crisis in the past decade, “the buggy launch of Cyberpunk 2077.” When critics suggest that perhaps, the coronavirus was worse, the CDC will shoot back that maybe they should come to your place of work and tell you how to do your job.
BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY
Elon Musk will continue to develop more and more innovative ways to flush his investor’s funds down the toilet
The lockdowns will continue until you have enough time to think about what you’ve done, young man.
This year, we didn’t go Grandma’s house for Christmas Eve. We didn’t go to her church service, we weren’t told to Go Tell It On the Mountain, we didn’t see any of the little church kids butcher the pronunciation of “frankincense.” My little nephew didn’t choose the Christmas presents for us to open first under the tree.
And, so that meant we didn’t repeat our yearly tradition of watching It’s a Wonderful Life — sometimes the whole thing, mostly just pieces — on the TV at Grandma’s house.
Instead, I swung by the Inlander offices, and flipped through our old archives, searching for one story in particular: the Holiday Guide from the very first year I started, the one with George Bailey on the cover.
Countless publications, I assume, have illustrated stories with screencaps from It’s a Wonderful Life. But I bet most of the choose that picture from the final scene, the one with George embracing his beautiful wife and perfect kids, the one where he’s beaming with a blissful blend of love and peace and joy and exhaustion, the one where his friends — in the 1946 equivalent of GoFundMe — have gathered around him to proclaim him the richest man in town.
But that’s not the picture we picked.
We used one with George getting shitfaced in a bar.
Yes, he’s got a friend embracing his shoulder, but he’s clearly not happy about it. He’s glaring off into the middle distance, looking too tired and broken to be angry.
After all, by the time that scene rolls around in the movie, George had lost the 2020 equivalent of over $100,000. He’d gone begging to the corrupt rich man who hated him, only to be threatened with jail time. He was going to lose his business, his reputation, even his freedom.
The picture we used comes just after Bailey gives a short prayer, not an eloquent or pious or profound kind, but the raw and desperate kind, the kind we stammer out between snot and tears, the kind that comes not because we have a lot of faith, but because faith is all we have left.
The picture comes a few seconds before Bailey gets punched in a face, a minute before he drives his car into the tree and a few minutes more before he staggers onto the Bedford Falls bridge, staring into abyssal froth swirling and surging below, consumed by his worthlessness, wishing he’d never been born.
Holiday guides are mostly fluffy affairs, all sugarplums and Santa photos and holiday light sightings. Any other year, perhaps, it would have been a weird choice.
But this wasn’t any other year. This was 2008, the year that Christmas came on the heels of the worst financial crash since the one that nearly took down Bailey Savings and Loan. (“Just remember, that this thing isn’t as black as it appears,” George starts to say amid the economic crash, before the crowd rushes over to hear a passing police siren.)
We were careening into a recession that would take us nearly a decade to recover from.
So Inlander writer Luke Baumgarten used that holiday guide to pen a Linus-worthy speech, one all about how, yes, things really are that bad, but maybe this an opportunity to decrying the commercialism of Christmas and calling upon us to rediscover the true meaning of love and family, about returning to “being a nation of friends and fathers and brothers and mothers” and not just “a nation of consumers. ”
These are old Christmas movie tropes, of course. But just like how, when you really fall for someone, the cheesiest love songs become profound, in our crisis those age-old Sunday School lessons about the value of friends and family are revealed to be bedrock truths.
A lot of people defiantly declared this year that they won’t let the fear of COVID-19 stop them from infecting their relatives with COVID-19
Everyone was hyped for this year — numerologists, eye doctors, hindsight fanatics. But so far 2020 has turned out to be the equivalent of the final season of Game of Thrones: a lot of stuff happened far too quickly, a bunch of people died, the characters made a lot of decisions that made no sense, and everyone watching from home was pretty angry about what they were watching.
But this miserable year makes a holiday like Thanksgiving a lot tougher: After all, giving thanks, research has shown, is even in the name of Thanksgiving. But what, exactly, do you have to be thankful for in a year like this?
Don’t worry. We’re here to help. Here are a few things you could show just a little gratitude for, for once.
1. Masks hide your unsightly nose.
2. COVID-19 not nearly as deadly as upcoming COVID-21
3. COVID-19 really puts in perspective what really matters: the deadly plague killing us all .
4. Angry anti-mask cell-phone-wielding customers finally gave hardworking Walmart clerks a chance to go viral.
5. Biden’s victory lets old, white men everywhere know that they, too, can grow up and be president. Representation matters.
6. Zoom church completely eliminates that horrifying “turn and shake your neighbor’s hand” part of the service.
7. In a big victory for educational equity, kids who skip school entirely now roughly on par with those who show up for online classes
8. Social distancing mandates have handed us entire new genres of ways to judge our neighbors.
9. Extremely persuasive new excuse not to try your Aunt’s cranberry sauce this year
10. We learned this year that even the smallest, most unremarkable bat can make a huge difference on the world.
11. Corporations of all types certainly made certain that we knew they were here for us in these uncertain times
12. Spared a year of insufferable European vacation Instagram photos from your college ex.
13. With a death toll of more than 1.3 million globally, there’s a pretty good chance that the coronavirus took out at least one Future Hitler.
14. Three of seven seals still unbroken
15. COVID shuttered your small business before rioters could burn it down
16. Still a few weeks left for Trump to really turn the corner, adopt a new tone, and become presidential
18. Had lots of chances to practice mask-wearing by the time wildfire season rolled around this year.
19. Sometimes good things can come from awful circumstances: For example, without COVID-19, we never would have gotten the COVID-19 vaccine. Really makes you think, huh?
20. We can finally move on from the tired, go-nowhere, conspiracy theory debates about whether Russia stole the 2016 election, and focus on more productive and rationale controversies, like whether Venezuela stole the 2020 election.
21. Trump’s defeat may finally put your father-in-law in his place, meaning Thanksgiving dinner arguments with him got a lot easier for you, Jared Kushner
22. Extroverts are finally experiencing the suffering they’ve always deserved
23. The way this year is going, there’s a decent chance that, as long as we don’t curse God, we’re going to get fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, a thousand she-asses, a brand new wife, and a bunch of hot daughters out of the deal.
24. Hopeful scenario in play where COVID is defeated after swarms of murder hornets force everyone to stay home; the murder hornets are defeated after the wildfires destroy their hives; then the wildfires are defeated after being doused by the unceasing rain of blood from the ever-darkened skies.
25. Celebrating Thanksgiving alone means the wishbone always breaks your way.
English is, by far, my favorite language, and not just because I’m not smart enough to speak any of the others.
English is a messy language, an international linguistic buffet, a melting pot of a dozen different languages and slangs and dialects. That’s one reason why it’s so tricky to spell anything.
But that’s also what makes it so beautiful: English has so many shades, so many textures and scents. There are round words and sharp words, crunchy words and silky words.
And frankly, some words are better than others. “Use” is a decent word. It’s not fancy, but it gets the job done. It’s useful. “Utilize” is not useful. It’s a kludgy mouthful of jargon.
So what makes a good word? Good words, stripped of meaning, sound like what they are.
Cacophony sounds cacophonous, at least at first. Euphony sounds euphonious all the way through.
Lugubrious is a bad word because it sounds a bit too fun and silly to be sad.
And “moist?” You may hate that word with visceral passion.
But I’m here to tell you that moist is a great word, precisely because it can spark that sort of revulsion. I think it’s the slimy sound to it:
It starts with an “mmm” as in “mouse” and there’s an oooooyyy in the middle there followed by the hissss of an s. But that’s fitting, because moist, in certain contexts, can be a little gross.
Every word has a flavor — and a level of salt, fat, acid or heat. And the thrill of writing is all about foraging for the perfect ingredients and combining them in the right order and the right time. Sometimes you want to use sparse words and short sentences. Clean. Fresh. Other times you want a rich and sumptuous feast of seven-course sentences that indulgently unfold over a long and luxurious procession of decadence, absolutely dripping with sinfully purple prose.
Or, wait — should that be, “every word has a flavour?”
Because, of course, America isn’t the only country that speaks English. It turns out that they also speak English in England.
Even as a 4-year-old, my first experience with the wonderous differences of language was on a trip to Scotland, where I learned, after a group of fellow kids mocked me, they didn’t refer to a mixed-gender group as “guys.” Still, they called fries “Chips” in the “Fish and Chips.” And that was pretty cool.
But now, with three decades of distance from that incident, I can finally objectively assess the merits between the two dialects, taking it word by word.
It’s like 1776 all over again.
ADDING AN EXTRA U VS. NOT DOING THAT
Occasionally, the extra U adds a little something special, a whiff of regality and pretension. So, for example, “honour” feels more like honor than honor does. The same applies to “valour.” “Harbour” has a maritime feel that “harbor” does not.
And the aforementioned “flavour?” The “u” adds a little bit extra, which is fitting.
But armour? Looks too close to armoire, which only works in the Beauty and the Beast context. The extra U adds an ornate fragility.
Colour? Only works for the snooty shades like “pomegranate” and “chartreuse.” Favour? Only if the favour is won from a maiden and not if, like, doing a bro a solid by spotting him a dollar for the vending machine. Humour? Humorless. Labour? Dull, and lacking grit and sweat. Vigour? Limp.
WINNER: Not Doing That (US)
SWITCHING THE R AND THE E VS SWITCHING THE E AND THE R
If you’re a theatre major, you probably spell it “theatre major” despite AP style insisting on “theater.” The Brits, particularly Bill Shakespeare, so thoroughly owned the “theatre” that all the Hamiltons in the world couldn’t wrest it from their grasps.
The superiority of the word “centre” is a little subtler. It just feels cleaner this way, with the round letters at the ends and the pointier letters centred at the centre. And Yeats reads better in his original English: “The centre cannot hold” beats “the center cannot hold.”
WINNER: Switching the R and the E (UK)
ELEVATOR VS. LIFT
Can we take a moment to just ruminate on what a terrible word “Elevator” is. It feels like “lift” was already taken so they went searching for an ungainly synonym.
“Lift” is clean, clear. Lift just works. “Elevator” breaks down halfway to the fourth floor
WINNER: Lift (UK)
APARTMENT VS. FLAT
Now, apartment is a bloated, ugly word. It smells like real-estate jargon. Flat is smooth, short and yet, exactly the opposite of what a flat is. A flat is not.
A flat generally isn’t one story. It’s multiple stories. Apartment wins by default.
WINNER: Flat (US)
TRUCK vs. LORRY
Truck clearly. “Truck” hits like one.
Trucks are solid, powerful, blocky. They have a clunk to them. A trucker frequently uses words that rhyme with truck. If it has 18 wheels and chases down a Steven Spielberg protagonist, you better believe it’s a truck.
“Lorry” has an almost comical trill to it. If you had a guy friend named Lorry, he would be the sort that would crochet hats and write poetry about the delicate contradictions of a summer breeze.
He would live in Portland.
He would not drive a truck.
WINNER: Truck (US)
HOOD VS BONNET
“Hood” sounds like a thud, like the noise it make when you slam it closed.
“Bonnet,” on the other hand, is twee. Both are homonyms for head-coverings of course. But a mechanic, the sort of hardscrabble guy who pops a hood, wears a hood. Who wears a bonnet? Laura Ingalls Wilder. The lead actress in the high school version of The Crucible. A big, dumb baby.
“Bonnet” might work for a buggy. But not for a Toyota Mazda.
WINNER: Hood (US)
TRASH VS. RUBBISH
The crucial distinction here is quantity. A dump is filled with trash. Oscar the Grouch lives in a trash can. The big garbage pile floating in the Pacific ocean? That’s a massive vortex of trash.
Rubbish is smaller. Rubbish is what you throw in the bin in the office. It’s crumpled rough-draft pages, an apple core, a plastic spoon, and gift-paper.
Similarly, they both work wonderfully as insults, but they’re different insults. “Trash” is scathing and venomous, implying filth and poverty and worthlessness. “Rubbish” is dismissive, as if you’re not worth the spot of bother necessary to get ones dander up.
“Trash” is the phrase a particularly cruel popular girl might use to savage the new girl who just moved from across town and thinks she can just come and take Trisha’s spot on the volleyball team.
“Rubbish” is the phrase used by the elbow-patched professor of literature dismissing the quality of argumentation of the doctoral thesis of a particularly daft tenure candidate. Both have their place.
And with that in mind, we’re going to take a cue from British “football” and allow ties.
WINNER: Draw
RUBBER VS. ERASER
For a moment, let’s set aside the fact that “rubber” is slang for “condom.” The bigger problem is that “rubber” is a clumsy descriptor for the material an eraser is made of.
And not even all erasers! Just some of them. Why not call certain types of balls or trees “rubbers?”
But “eraser?” Eraser tells you exactly what the thing does. Good word. Not flashy, but good. WINNER: US
FULL STOP VS. PERIOD
Now, obviously, “period,” has confusing menstrual implications. But full stop is just as clumsy — do you really need two words when a dot will do?
But let’s move onto the next test: How does it sound when used for emphatic punctuation as if to say, that’s all there is to it?
“The Queen is not a lizard. Full. Stop.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman or any other woman. Period.”
Fact is, they both sound pretty great.
WINNER: Draw
TORCH VS. FLASHLIGHT
Are we camping and looking for the restroom or are we medieval villagers laying siege to Frankenstein’s castle?
WINNER: Flashlight
MOBILE VS. CELL PHONE
Mobile just works. It moves. That’s the point of the portable phone, you can take it on the go.
Cell? Cell sounds like the opposite of movement. It sounds like a spot in jail.
Either that, or it sounds sciency. After all, the “cellular phone” was named after the network coverage map from the cell phone tower. But nobody wants to think about network diagrams when they turn on their phone. They just want it to work, wherever they are.
WINNER: Mobile
NAPPY VS. DIAPER
No contest. Diapers are for babies. So far better for the word for it to have a baby-sounding quality to it, like “mommy” “kitty” and “poopy.”
Nappy wins.
Nappy (UK)
MATHS VS. MATH
“Maths” feels like the persnickety distinction that a real nerd would geek out about. “Math” — diffuse, all-encompassing — is the phrase Barbie uses to lament the difficulty of the subject, suggesting instead a shopping excursion. Mathematics is about detail and precision. “Maths” it is.
WINNER: Maths (UK)
SPORT VS SPORTS
And here, by contrast, the US takes up the plural and the British leave it as the singular. And yet, once again, the plural wins. Now, to be fair to Britain, when you basically only have one sport, maybe it’s understandable to let the word “sport” fly solo.
But a real sports nut? The sort that paints their face and wears their beer atop their head? They know that yes, there’s football. But there’s also and hockey and basketball and baseball and murderball and rhythmic gymnastics. There’s a wide world of sports out there, Britain. Honor it by adding on the S.
WINNER: Sports (US)
QUEUE VS. LINE
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the English people love waiting around in long lines. Maybe it’s the fact that they just have a better word for it. “Line” is generic. It’s a shape — and not even an entire shape, just one piece of a larger shape.
But queue? That implies an orderly sort of waiting. It implies a system.
And look at the letters themselves. The single consonant, Q, almost resembles a man in a ticket booth up front, as an assorted crew of vowels waits patiently to be let in. Beautiful.
WINNER: Queue (UK)
TELEVISION VS TELLY
Here, it’s all about screen size. That 15-inch rounded egg-shell-blue set with cute little bunny ears? That’s a telly.
But the 7-foot-long plasma behemoth? That, my friend, is pure television.
“Television” sounds like it belongs in a spellbook alongside Astromutation and “Maximilian’s Earthen Grasp.” It’s the one word worthy of Mike Teevee.
WINNER: Draw
FRIES VS. CHIPS
Here’s the problem with “fries.” “Fries” is vague. A lot of things, as Paula Deen will tell you, can be fried. Corndogs. Snickers bars. Rats on sticks.
And yet, America invented fast food. And so few phrases are as thoroughly American as “Would you like fries with that?” Just wouldn’t flow right if you swapped it out with, “would you like fish with that?”
And yet, Fish n’ Chips is an equally iconic phrase. Fish n’ Fries has the advantage of alliteration, but said fast it collapses into a mushy middle that sounds like “fish fry.”
“Chips” feels appropriate for big chunky steak fries. Chip off the ol’ potato. But considering the diversity of the “chip” — can a “waffle fry” really be considered a chip? — fries seems a better fit for many of them.
WINNER: Draw
CHIPS VS. CRISPS
And here’s where the thickness of a potato slice comes into play again. If “chips” doesn’t make the cut when we’re talking about shoestring fries, it certainly doesn’t when we’re talking about barely-there sheer wisps of a chip. Far better to name it after the sound it makes when you crunch it.
They’re crisp. They’re crisps.
WINNER: “Crisps” (UK)
LAWYER VS. SOLICITOR/BARRISTER
They don’t call it “Solicitations and Order.” Solicitor sounds like the sort of word that’s written in loopy handwriting on a Christmas card. It sounds like a drunk sneeze.
Barrister is a wee bit better, it has that implied snooty trill to it in the middle, but why use the root word bar when the root word law is right there for the taking.
Lawyer wins.
WINNER: Lawyer (US)
AEROPLANE VS. AIRPLANE
“Airplane” is serviceable, yes. It has the word “air,” which is descriptive. But here’s the problem: “Airplane” removes the majesty from the miracle of human flight. It’s utilitarian and passionless.
But “aeroplane?” There’s magic in that word. All the vowels at the beginning convey the image of biplane, possibly being driven by Snoopy himself, carving loop-the-loops into the sky.
Winner: Aeroplane (UK)
JUMPER VS. SWEATER
I don’t think we ever really sit and think about what a weird word “sweater” is. Yes, I suppose, wearing a sweater in hot environments makes you sweat. But, unless you’re trying to make wrestling-weight, sweating isn’t really the reason why you wear a sweater.
But at least a sweater can make you sweat. A jumper sure as hell doesn’t make you jump. Unless it’s super itchy.
WINNER: Sweater (US)
ALUMINUM VS. ALUMINIUM
Al-u-min-i-um, what a wonderful phrase. It almost sings. And if this were a “fun word” contest, aluminium would win in a landslide. But is such a whimsical word the right word for a metal?
True, it isn’t the sort of dense and solid metal that would justify a caveman-strong lunk of a word like “STEEL” or “IRON.”
But we’re still asking a lot for this word: It’s got to be a word you can forge into Pepsi cans, conspiracy theorist headwear, and Boeing airplane frames alike.
Consider, then “aluminum,” to be the bowl of just-right porridge you ordered. There’s still a hint of musical lightness to it — “a luminescence,” if you will —without trading strength for zaniness.
WINNER: Aluminum (US)
BUTT VS. BUM
“Butt” is a pathetic compromise, lodged in the crack between obscene and puritanical. “Butt” is too spicy for your mom, your grandma, or your second-grade teacher. It’s the sort of word that would put your butt put in time-out. The church ladies among us still prefer you use “rear” or “buttocks” or “posterior.” The synagogue ladies among us prefer you use tuchus.
But, past second grade, butt is not exactly, well, badass.
“Butt” is a lesser Dreamworks movie’s idea of “edgy.” Unless you’re Samuel L. Jackson in Jurassic Park, you can’t use it and still sound cool.
Bum, on the other hand, is just a delightfully silly word appropriate for the subject. Tom Green thought so. So should you.
WINNER: Bum
ARSE VS. ASS
Again, context is everything. Tone at the gym well enough, do enough squats and spend enough time on the stairmaster, and maybe you’ll earn an “ass.”
Let it all go to hell like so many of us? Well, that’s an “arse.” What a filthy, hairy word. Sounds like a fart.
“Ass” is what that J. Lo and Captain America have. Arse is what Shrek has. Hey, man, I’m not judging. Both words have their own inner beauty.
WINNER: Draw
VACATION VS. HOLIDAY
Right away both words suffer the homonym problem. Each word has another meaning beyond just “getting some time off from work.”
But “holiday’s” other meaning fits. You get on holiday for the holidays.
But vacation? It’s nearly an antonym of itself: You get time off from your vocation to go on vacation.
Holiday sounds like “jolly-day.” It starts out already decked in boughs of “Holi.”
But vacation doesn’t sound like something you celebrate. It’s an absence of something. It comes with that ugly “-ation” that reeks of an HR manager’s spreadsheet. It says to me, “mark down Employee #3238 for having vacated the next two weeks.”
WINNER: Holiday (UK)
SNAKES AND LADDERS VS. CHUTES AND LADDERS
Snakes. Of course, it had to be snakes. St. Patrick didn’t drive the chutes out of Ireland, after all.
WINNER: Snakes and Ladders (UK)
OVERALL
I regret to inform you that British English is good, actually. Yes, it’s sillier. Yes, it’s more ornate. At its worst, it’s Mary Poppins’ purse — sometimes you just keep pulling out vowels.
But at its worst, American English dialect takes on the tone of a Microsoft PowerPoint. It’s always better to sound wee bit pretentious or silly than to sound like a corporate drone.
Remember: Language is always changing, always evolving. The next time this could have a different result. But right now, the verdict is indisputable. The Brits win it.
The difference between laser focus and blinders is in the laser-eyes of the beholder
The tipping point was a handwritten letter delivered one Monday evening. Deadline day.
The letter, from a woman I’d dated for two years, who I’d dramatically (and, in a moment, of tragic farce, accidentally and prematurely ) professed my love for, did not as I’d hoped, contain a confession that it turned out that she was actually in love with me this entire time but she had to keep it secret because of like, tyrannical father or an elaborate bet.
Instead, it informed me — in Spanish of all things (it’s a long story) — that she’d gotten engaged. To someone else. Someone who wasn’t me.
Just because you see a punch coming doesn’t mean it doesn’t knock you flat when it connects with your jaw. I was staggered, reeling, punch drunk.
I couldn’t focus. Worse, my deadline was approaching, and I’d suddenly lost the ability to write.
Writing is a bit like trying to catch a fly with chopsticks — not just any fly, the right fly. There are all these perfect words and phrases buzzing around in your head, waiting to be plucked from the ether with and pinned on a corkboard in a pleasing order.
But right then, it was like the chopsticks had snapped and the flies kept flying faster and faster and faster until they became a hazy blur, their buzzing hanging in my head like a hangover
Still, I managed — by sheer force of one-keyboard-letter-at-at-time-will to turn the story in. Late, but more or less coherent.
But the problem — my inability to concentrate — didn’t stop. It kept getting worse. I was losing my ability to write, my ability to think. I’d always valued intelligence — desperately hoped that I was smarter than I really was — but I could watch my INT stat degrade in real-time.
I was living through the second half of Flowers for Algernon. I was a rat who could no longer run the maze. I was losing my mind.
But I began to realize this wasn’t a sudden onset of stupidity. There was an arc to it. I could identify clues throughout my entire life.
That “absent-minded professor” nickname a teacher gave me in elementary school. The way I wouldn’t take notes in high school. The way I’d have to constantly ask questions or make smart-ass remarks in college simply to be able to pay attention. The overwhelming desire to interrupt slow talkers, as if to shout at them to hurry up, they were losing my attention.
I constantly fidgeted — holding hands with me wasn’t a peaceful gesture of affection, it was declaring hostility in a thumb war.
And I remembered my ex — the one who I’d just learned was “comprometida” to someone else — unfurling her long list of maybe-we-could-be-together-if-not-but-fors that included my forgetfulness, my fidgetiness, my tendency to have 10,000 Chrome tabs open at any given time. I remembered her expressing her frustration that at her sister’s wedding I hadn’t been looking in the right direction. It’s not like I was leering at bridesmaids or anything — I was just looking at the ceiling, looking all around me, like I was looking for, well, distraction.
The revelation didn’t come as an epiphany. It was a hypothesis that I gradually grew more and more certain of. A diagnosis confirmed it: I had ADHD. More specifically, I had “hyperfocus” ADHD, a particularly strange version that had actually allowed me to focus intensely on certain things, to the cost of all others. I was driving a racecar that topped out at 200 miles per hour, but was lousy at shifting gears.
That’s what allowed me to often excel in school, in journalism, and in writing projects. That’s why I didn’t realize I had ADHD for so long. My superpower and super weakness were the same thing.
The problem was, over time, my ADHD grew worse. Maybe it was Twitter, rewiring my brain to think in only 280 characters at a time. Maybe it’s lack of exercise or me putting on weight. Maybe my mind was balding along with my hairline. The reason didn’t matter. My livelihood was at risk. I needed a miracle.
And, at first, it’s a wild, thrilling frontier. Every question uncovers new sights. Every conversation is an act of exploration. Every date is an expedition. You two grab your machetes and plop on your pith helmets and set out onto an expedition to map this new land. You’re driven positively giddy by the delight of the new.
You’ve seen your share of gorgeous views, of course. But nothing like these. The Glistening Sea! The Three Canyons! The Yawning Desert! The Obsidian Ruins! Honey-Kissed Meadows! Serpentine Falls! The Windswept Steppes! The Searing Hot Springs! You christen each new discovery with a kiss — sometimes even multiple kisses, such is your passion.
As you return to the same conversational topics you’ve walked before, your footsteps end up stamping trails through the brush. Those trails become roads. Those roads become highways. Those highways become trade routes, bringing in exotic spices and ornate jewels and fine linens.
This is life’s true grand adventure. This is how a camp becomes a hamlet and a hamlet becomes a kingdom. This is how we fall in love. Intimacy is formed through revelation, researchers tell us, through gradual acts of mutual disclosure.
And so you hold banquets and tournaments. And so you hunt the white stag, maybe even catch him. And so you set out to build the greatest architectural achievement in the history of mankind. Your masons labor for months, maybe even years.
And then finally, Tallest Tower is completed. So high it sits above the clouds itself.
You acknowledge, as you walk up the endless flights of steps, that there are probably taller towers out there.
But as you crest that last step, as you look down at the kingdom below you, at all the vistas you’d explored and conquered, you don’t believe anything could possibly compare.
To you two, it’s the greatest wonder of a world full of them. One day you haul up two chairs up that long long flight of stairs, and turn the top of the Tallest Tower into a second throne room.
On many evenings, the best evenings, all you do is sit together, you and your queen, and look at life unfold below. Sometimes you’ll be up here late, late into the night, as the moon passes the sky, sipping from your goblets of fine wine, talking endlessly.
It’s amazing how fast the moon speeds across the sky when you’re talking.
You two fall into a luxurious rhythm. Your weekdays are for building the kingdom. Your weekends are for exploring. And your evenings are for relaxation, conversation and, perhaps, a bit of inebriation. You keep filling in the map, keep discovering new lands, and keep building your kingdom.
But bit by bit, you feel that something’s missing. On a clear day, when you peer through your spyglass from the top of the tallest tower, you can see almost everything. But when you turn your glass to the southeast, it’s never quite a clear day. There’s a fog. Or maybe it’s smoke? Whatever it is, it makes the hairs on the back of your neck all prickly.
You go to the oldest map in the kingdom — one from before either of you two ever met — and look to the southeast. What the hell? The southeast corner is missing. It’s not that the map is blank or incomplete, it’s been torn off entirely.
You call in your Court Historian, one of those ancient men with unruly eyebrows and wrinkles that seem to judge you.
“What happened to this?” you ask. “Carelessness?”
The Court Historian hesitates. For once, the sneer drops from his lips, and almost becomes a tremble.
“Ah, no, sire,” the Historian gulps. “That was, uh, that was intentional.”
“Wait? Are you hiding something from me?”
“Are you sure, you want to know? Some maps are better left unfin—”
The Court Historian nods very slowly, as if trying to give you time to change your mind.
He lights a torch and leads you deep, deep, deep down some stairs, somehow far older than the castle itself, to a musty old chamber of crumbling stone where bats perch and rats skitter. With eerie strength, he heaves aside a rusted portcullis, tap-tap-tap opens a false wall, and then brushes the dust off a stone chest, covered in padlocks. He goes through his entire ring of keys, unlocking one, then the other. You’re tempted to just take a cannon to the damn thing when it finally opens.
A hell of a lot of security for a little scrap of cloth.
But once you’ve made that long hike back up the stairs, and back to the map room, you see that it fits the southeast corner of the map snugly. And in the sunlight, you can see the details.
And first, the writing on the labels seems like it matches up perfectly, but as it gets closer to the edge, the penmanship shifts. The label “The Forbidden Swamp” looks like it’s been made by a different hand, someone less steady, less sane, almost panicked.
There are crude sketches of trees, looking twisted, almost angry. And is that splotch on the map dried blood? You try to hide your nervousness.
“The Forbidden Swamp? What’s so forbidden about it? What’s the problem? I mean, why don’t we just —”
The Court Historian hushes you with one of his pale, crooked fingers. He doesn’t say anything. He scrawls on the map, in jagged letters with a quill dripping with red ink: HERE THERE BE DRAGONS.
Ah. There’s the problem.
Every new relationship has a Forbidden Swamp. And every Forbidden Swamp has a dragon.
(Photo by Daniel Walters, though not of Daniel Walters)
A long drive is a dangerous thing. Especially if you’re driving alone.
You know, of course, that with a little inattention or distraction you could veer off a guardrail, merge into the path of a logging truck, or spin on black ice toward a charter bus.
But that’s not the type of danger I’m talking about.
I’m not talking about becoming a flaming wreck on the side of the freeway. I’m talking about becoming a flaming emotional wreck on the side of the freeway.
I’m talking about the chance that, in the gap between getting behind the wheel at noon and finally turning off the ignition at 5, you become someone else. Your journey isn’t just physical. It’s psychic.
There are few distinct stretches of time more transformative than five hours stuck alone in your car on the road And that’s what makes it so exhausting.
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
The mind tends to wander while driving through the Tri-cities. (Daniel Walters photo)
Yes, on the long drive, there are moments you can’t think of anything else but driving. You’re being tailgated by a pickup plastered with bumper-stickers helmed by a driver plastered with alcohol. You’re merging onto I-5 to a chorus of honking critics of your driving technique. You’re staring down headlights so bright that you can’t see anything but a tunnel of white, and you’re hoping like hell that you’re driving straight, the road is going straight, and that, failing that, you’ve got your religions straight.
And yet, those moments of terror in tension, can sometimes almost come as a relief.
Because other times you’re trapped in the middle of Washington state. You’re in the center of Montana. And then it’s just you and your car and your mind and the open road.
Sporadically Updated 