Wordsnobbery

According to the cartoon as I watched as a young child, "Monchichi" means "happiness." While I doubt the veracity of that claim, I'm willing to let it slide since it was in a catchy tune. They don't say anything about what "Monday" means though, so we're going to have to speculate. I think it means, "Oh crap, we're here again already?" At least that's what it feels like today so far. And yet, I'm happy to be sharing this glorious morning with you, gentle readers. I hope today finds you all well. Shaloha.

In the comments section either last week or the week before, my Bratty Kid Sister said that she saw graffiti somewhere that said, "Real lies, Realize, Real eyes." It's funny, because I was all set to write about something somewhat similar to that and the accompanying story before her comment. Then my camp story about Kanita kept going, and lo and behold, here we are in a whole new week. ("Lo and behold" is a very interesting phrase, by the way. I know Helena in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" uses "lo" without "and behold" in a line, but I'm not sure I've seen or heard it at any other point. Yes, I'm that drama-geeky I suppose.)

Before I get to the story with similar aspects to what BKS wrote in, I'm going to start with another connected story. And you can't stop me, so there. As you have no doubt come to learn from being a reader of UOPTA, wordplay is a gimongous part of my life. Every once in a while, there's something that comes along that I feel is (or should be) right in my wheelhouse. When I lived with my buddies in SB, our friend Sharyn crashed on our couch for a few weeks. To repay us, she did some chores around the house and got us a subscription to Maxim magazine. It was all her idea, I swear. One of the items in Maxim was a "Caption This!" segment. It was a funny or bizarre picture, and we were to write in or email with what the caption should be. The top three were printed in the next month's issue.

We usually looked at it and came up with some funny things for our own amusement. We never sent them in, which allowed us to say that ours were so much better than the crappy ones they were printing. One month though, I was pretty stumped. The picture had a large woman, a pig, and a sandwich somehow involved. Dave and I were at Super Cuca's eating burritos and attempting to come up with captions. I kept trying to think of something good along the lines of, "Wilbur didn't realize that his combo meal automatically came with a side of extra large thighs," but nothing was really sticking. Then Dave said, "How's this: Babe 2, something out of this world." According to Dave, I got a very angry look on my face immediately after those words came out of his mouth. "What?" I challenged. "Something out of this world? What the hell does that mean?" He started laughing. "No, I meant that we say 'Babe 2' and then put something really funny after it. I didn't mean that we'd actually put 'Something out of this world' in the caption." I felt a lot better, and he was quite struck with how truly angry I got because something wasn't funny when it was supposed to be. To commemorate the event, Dave once named one of his fantasy sports teams, "Something Out of This World."

That's not the only time I've been word-snobby at other people's usage attempts. At least I just misunderstood what Dave was saying. In this second situation, the person was serious. I've purposely avoided writing about my real job in this space, but I'm going to have to touch upon it in order to tell this story. Here are the bare bones of the story: there was a computer product for which a co-worker and I were trying to come up with names. I'll call said co-worker "Will." The undetectable program allowed people to view everything happening on another computer, from seeing emails and IMs to recording keystrokes and passwords. One could only legally put the program on a computer that s/he owned, by the way. In any case, we went back and forth for a day with all sorts of names.

Finally, I said, "I have an idea that I want to run by you, so hear me out. We take a word that ends in -ize but we spell it 'eyes' instead since the program is watching you. I just need to find the right word." Will understood, but thought it would be too confusing for the average consumer. I continued thinking about it, but everything I thought of sounded like an optometrist's office. I went through "OptimEyes," "ComputerEyes," and several others before I came up with my favorite. Here was my pitch to him: "Realize who your children are talking to online. Realize what sites your spouse visits while you're away. Realize when your employees are looking for other jobs before it's too late. Now you can with RealEyes Pro." I thought adding "Pro" would make it sound more like a computer product since the name itself didn't. Will thought it was ok but still too confusing, and I actually saw his point.

The next day, he came into the office beaming. "I've got it!" he said. "What?" I asked. "A name for the program - and the kind you were talking about too." "Well let me have it!" I said, obviously excited. He took out a piece of paper and started writing. After a few seconds, he pushed it over to me to see. Staring at me, quite literally, was the word "Watcheyes" with drawings of eyes where the Es belonged. Will looked at me smiling and nodding as if to say, "Yeah, I'm the shit." I snapped just a little. "Watcheyes? Watcheyes!? That's not a word! The point was to take a real, existing word and change the spelling of the end. You just put two related words together! And those eyes you drew mess it up more since they look nothing like Es. They're closer to Os, so it looks like you wrote 'Watchoyos' on that piece of paper. What the hell is Watchoyos? Protect your family's computer with Watchoyos!" He quickly took back the claim that he'd found the answer we were looking for, but for the rest of the time he worked there, I never let him live down the whole "Watchoyos" thing. We still say that in the office, and I even call a restaurant whose name I can't remember "Watchoyos" because it's kinda similar.

The thing that really gets me is that it's a frickin' catchy word. Way catchier than "Watcheyes," which still makes me shake my head in disgust. "Watcheyes" was even worse than even the joke ones I threw out there, including "Youth in Eyes" and "Sodom Eyes." Ok, maybe not worse that those two. I told my friends about the whole Watchoyos ordeal, and I think Dave's even busted it out where "booyah," "booyah shaka," "booyah kasha," or "Booyah Johnson" would normally go in everyday speech. Well, my everyday speech at least. It's a great exclamation, and I'd love to remember to use it more often.

And so, gentle readers, those are two stories linked by the common thread of me not appreciating others' attempts at specific wordplay. I usually try not to hold people to high word standards so I'm not constantly disappointed, but those two evoked such knee-jerk reactions that they stood out in my memory banks. Got more things that might piss me off? Send 'em to ptklein@gmail.com. I can't believe I'm literally asking for it. Enjoy your Monday, and I'll see you back here tomorrow. Watchoyos!