Twubstack Fight

Good afternoon. Today we take on current news, fearlessly engaging in a battle between social media titans, but first, a Gene Pool Gene Poll on an urgent matter we just urgently invented, requiring immediate attention and clickbait.

Warning: The correct answer will be revealed below and it will infuriate you. Meanwhile:

Many years ago, in what might have been a work of fiction — memory fails me, as it so often does these days — a Japanese American who was interned at the start of World War II was asked which side he was rooting for. He answered: “If your father and mother are fighting, do you root for one to kill the other? Or do you just hope it will stop?”

This is my feeling about the current rather dramatic fisticuffs between Twitter and Substack, my online parents. I feel completely neutral — on one side is my new mom, Substack. She is very pretty and smells poufy-sweet and has treated me great, with love and the milk of human lactation, and she is piloted in my case by Biff Wellington, a sane and decent man who allows me to publicly call him Biff Wellington, even though that is not his name. On the other side is Twitter, run by an entitled, pasty-faced, right-wing megalomaniac infantile jackass fart-potato. In short, I have no preference in this matter, only a fervent wish that my mom and dad find peace or that my mom kills my dad with an adz, which would be okay.

What has happened is that Substack, which carries the Gene Pool, has created a quasi-social media site called Notes, which goes public today, right here, which they claim does not remotely resemble Twitter, but they are obviously lying and wagging their butts in Twitter’s face nanny nanny booboo. The Elon Musk Twitter responded with typical maturity and sense of proportion, by threatening to destroy the universe. I will have more on this as it develops, but let’s just say it is exciting. Substack Notes debuts today, one hour ago, here.

In the months since Mr. Musk has acquired Twitter, and shown his avowed reverence for free speech by eliminating free speech except for far-right lunatics who advocate, say, exterminating chipmunks and gay people. It has been a zitshow.

Anyhoo, I have for years used Twitter to push out my intemperate ravings and poopy humor, and I respect them immensely and take no sides in this Manichean fight that I want Substack to win.

Okay, we have to move on to licorice. I am writing this early in the evening on Monday but know how you will respond on Tuesday. And now I am going to tell you the truth. Ready? Brace yourselves.

You pronounce it “lickrish,” right?

But … why? It’s like pronouncing the T in “often.” There is no sane explanation. Listen, glisten, hasten, christen, etc. Nothing sane in pronouncing the T.

There is no other word I have found in the English language where “…ice” at the end of a word is pronounced “…ish.”  We don’t say poleesh.   We pronounce poultice as poultiss, not poltish.   We don’t say servish or malpractish or offish or apprentish or dentifrish or malish.   You get the idea.  We simply always pronounce -ice as “iss.”  Except for this one word.

Why do you say licorice with a “sh”?  Linguistic historians are not sure, and some are disturbed by it; in the 19^th and 20^th century, many disparaged it as uneducated and immature.  And, in the end, puzzling.

I think I may have the answer.  According to speech therapists, up to the age of roughly four, children have a hard time pronouncing “s.”  They find ways around it, usually lisping out “th” and sometimes “sh,” which is not easy for them but slightly easier on the developing tongue than the full sibilant “s.”  It’s a transitional stage, employed right about the time the child might develop a taste for licorice.

Parents did not correct this, parents adopted it, and in time it becomes lingua franca.   These parents likely are unaware there already is a word, an actual grownup word, pronounced exactly the way they and their child now pronounce licorice.  It is “lickerish” and it means … lecherous.  Horny.   Is that that the sort of thing you want to be feeding your toddler? 

The dictionaries don’t care.   They are listening to you, and you are obliging them with baby babble, and “likorish” is their first listed pronunciation.  It’s the wrong one, and the best way I can support that is by urging you to listen to a lovely piece of romantic literature, available online as recorded by its author, the renowned British poet laureate John Betjeman. It is titled “The Licorice Fields of Pontefract,”  Betjeman is a scholar of the English language and a better wordsmith than you or I will ever be. I think you know how he pronounces licorice.  

Anyway, that’s my theory.   With “lickerish,” we have taken our literary instructions from three-year-olds.   And the dictionaries don’t care and “record” it. I

Dictionaries.  What wonderful, maddening things. I wait in fear every time I approach one now, with “lickerish” in mind, and toddlers.  I am cringing, waiting or the inevitable day I find the books declaring as “nonstandard” say, “aminal’ or, “hostipal, or, God help us all, “pizghetti.”

Important but boring boilerplate information:

After the intro (which you are reading now), there will be some early questions and answers  added on –  and then I'll keep adding them as the hour progresses and your fever for my opinions grows and multiplies and metastasizes.  To see those later Q&As,  just refresh your screen every once in a while. 

As always, you can also leave comments. They’ll congregate at the bottom of the post, and allow you to annoy and hector each other and talk mostly amongst yourselves. Though we will stop in from time to time.

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Okay, before we proceed to your questions and my answers, we move to today’s edition of Fud, in which I give recipes in four sentences or fewer, in defiance of modern online food sites, which stretch these things out for miles, to extend page views.

Every once in a while my lady and I decide to go on a diet featuring terrible tasteless food, so we hoard the recipes that actually are good. There are very few of them but here is one. It is Chicken Soup with Spinach Featuring Virtuaally No Calories but Actual Taste.

Fud Recipe: Chicken Soup with Spinach Featuring Virtually No Calories but Actual Taste.

Buy about five pounds of chicken breasts — only the breasts. Boil them with onions and bay leaves for literally six hours, initially on boil but mostly on simmer; the time is essential; toward the end add two tablespoons of Better-than-Bouillon chicken bouillon (this is not optional), a sprig or two of dill, a bunch of mushrooms and replacement fresh onions and, at the very end — two to three minutes before serving — a LOT of spinach. Serve with squeezes of lemon; that’s it. (Added line: Then have sexual intercourse with a loved one.)

Okay, we start now with questions and answers.

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Q: Why did you ignore Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAD) while discussing the sneezing orgasm joke and, more importantly, why is it called a disorder instead of, say, a blessing?

A: Okay, we are going to begin with seriousness. I did not mention it because it is not a joke. It had led to suicide.     In this case, the writer of the story, a fine feature writer whom I respect, faced actual depression afterward.

Q: I disagree with your answer that it is not possible to be condescending to a dog. It is possible, but you do run the risk of being humiliated if the dog gives a condescending response.

A: You are correct and I apologize.

TIMELY TIP: If you're reading this right now on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “Twubstack…”for my full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post from about noon to 1 ET.

Q: I noted your fleeting reference to The Great Curry Kerfuffle the other day. I watched that whole thing in real time and even tried to wade in before it became clear it was a metaphorical Charybdis. What’s your take, looking back? When your first tweet about it didn’t generate the response you were seeking, and you retweeted seeking a larger audience, obviously you had no idea what was about to unfold, but what would have been your ideal response? Let’s put aside the real-world consequences as I don’t think those were realistically contemplated. But you were actively seeking outraged responses, just not on that scale. Has enough time passed for a post-mortem on the matter?

A: I am going to address this at great length soon. It will be a pretty interesting analysis, one that I take seriously. But in the meantime, I am going to be mentioning the insane horror of criticizing Indian curry, at least once in every single episode of Gene Pool. I have accomplished my job here.

Q: Write a fake but hilarious one-star review of a gas station that a Karen might write and let us laugh in the lolness .

A: This place didn’t help my intestinal gas at all.  

Q: I read a review of a medication that said it makes you fart and it doesn't smell like roses. If there were a medication that you could take that would make you fart and it *would* smell like roses, would you take it? How would this change society?

A: Big pharma would enter into violent competition to create different and better fragrances.  Hot pepperoni pizza might become the biggie. 

Q: Hi, Gene, when is it ok to judge a recent or long dead public figure by later or even modern standards, and when should we merely say, “They were products of their time?” I’m thinking of folks like Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Woodrow Wilson, and even Bill Clinton. (I’ve got my own ideas but I’m curious about yours).

Q: Hi, Gene, when is it ok to judge a recent or long dead public figure by later or even modern standards, and when should we merely say, “They were products of their time?” I’m thinking of folks like Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Woodrow Wilson, and even Bill Clinton. (I’ve got my own ideas but I’m curious about yours).

A: I think you can’t do it, period.  This is a complex subject, and I see both sides.  Possibly the best way to analyze it is to move the discussion to today.  How should we judge Barack Obama, 50 years from now, for having held off on okaying gay marriage?  Is he a homophobe?  

Q: I am peeved with the NY Times Crossword for Monday March 27. The clue was "Winnie-the-Pooh's craving," and the answer was HONEY. But everybody knows Pooh spelled it HUNNY. Is this because it was a Monday crossword and they're dumbing it down for us?

A: That’s not even the big point.  BEARS DON’T LOVE HONEY.  THEY LOVE BEES AND LARVAE.  THE HONEY GETS IN THE WAY, THOUGH THEY’LL EAT IT.  I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH.   I am peeved with the NY Times Crossword for Monday March 27. The clue was "Winnie-the-Pooh's craving," and the answer was HONEY. But everybody knows Pooh spelled it HUNNY. Is this because it was a Monday crossword and they're dumbing it down for us?That’s not even the big point.  BEARS DON’T LOVE HONEY.  THEY LOVE BEES AND LARVAE.  THE HONEY GETS IN THE WAY, THOUGH THEY’LL EAT IT.  I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH.  

Q: Are Jews smarter than other people? 

A: This is a highly offensive question, racist and ethnist and stupid.   The fact is, thought, that Jews are smarter than MOST people, but not Asians. Or a majority of Polynesians. 

Q: If a portfolio increases from $100,000 to $300,000, it has tripled but has it increased 300% or 200%?

A: Both are true.  I confirmed this with Rachel, who is better at math than I am.  

Q: Do you hate the DH in baseball as much as I do?

A: No.  I am very conflicted on it.   On the one hand, it eliminates strategy, and I don’t like that.  On the other hand, it eliminates the idiot situations where you walk a guy to get to the pitcher with two outs.  

Q: if you had the chance to sit down with the world's most serious person, what joke would you tell to make them crack a smile?

 A: It might be Greta Thunberg  I’d ask her what time is it when you have to go to the dentist?

Q: So with “lickerish,” we have taken our literary instructions from three-year-olds. That makes more sense than a certain political party and millions of voters taking their political instructions from an acting three-year old--ya think?

A: I do.

Q: I am amused at the spelling you use - fud - for your utterances on the culinary topic. There is another thing out there called - if memory serves - Fude - with an umlaut over the u. It involves total strangers paying to eat a vegan dinner in the nude. I would NEVER participate in such a thing. The very idea. VEGAN FOOD? The nudity is fine.

A: I once spent six weeks eating only vegan fud. It was okay. Then I stopped real quick.

Hey, we’re down. Please keep sending in questions and comments. You’ll see them answered on Thursday when we load up the latest Invitational.

Preview YouTube video The Licorice Fields at Pontefract - John Betjeman

The Licorice Fields at Pontefract - John Betjeman