I was at a comic book store the other day, picking up the latest trade of Fables (it came out a while ago, but I’m always lazy about buying comic books). There was a brief discussion about the visibility of Dr. Manhattan’s glowing blue penis in the Watchmen movie. I think this may have been prompted by the Dr. Manhattan action figure box standing on their shelf, with a pair of alternate legs (and, one hopes, exposed genitals) barely visible through the box’s plastic window at box’s bottom. The woman at the counter said the penile euphemism “Wang” first, if I recall, but I echoed it, in conversation.

When I said the word, an employee, further down the counter, who had been in conversation with an older Asian gentleman said loudly, to this gentleman, “Wang”, and then looked deliberately at me. As if to say, “Check out this racist motherfucker.” This triggered a moment of reflection.

    Wang is only one of many human last names that have also become a word for penis. Wang, obviously, is a Chinese last name.

    Dong is a Vietnamese last name, and also a word for Penis.

    Johnson is an anglo-saxony kind of last name, and also means Penis.

    Willie is an English first name of German origin, and also means Penis.

    Ono is a Japanese last name, and doesn’t mean Penis. Yet. Think about it, though. “I walked into the room without knocking first, and I saw his Oh No!”

    Jonker is a Dutch last name, and the word Junk is frequently used for Penis (probably also testicles). Jonker is pronounced Yonker, and there is no evidence that it shares an origin with the word junk.

    Ding is a Chinese last name, and the Penis, has, on occasion, been referred to as a Ding-a-Ling. Ling is also a Chinese last name.

    Weiner is a German last name, and is also a word for Penis. Also, it is something that you can eat, sometimes in a bun.

It also means Penis.

I have another story up at Every Day Fiction. You can see it here: http://www.everydayfiction.com/dirty-laundry-by-andrew-leblanc/

This is the first thing I’ve sent out into the world that isn’t Science Fictional. My foray into the unfantastic present seems to have turned out alright.

I’ve finally finished exams… with any luck, forever. This puts me in a much better position to write, and work on super-secret projects.

I’ve sold two ultra-short stories to Jordan and Camille‘s new no-longer-super-secret project, Every Day Fiction. Starting in September, they’ll be publishing one new 1000 words or less story every day of the week. A good idea, I think. Attention spans are decreasing at an alarming rate, as idle web-browsing time at the office seems to grow with every passing year. Goldfish minded office employees need their quick stimulation, and the big boss men all across the country have started blocking Facebook and YouTube. Reading a new story every day will consume less traffic than email, so the the network guy should never catch on.

After my test yesterday, I went shopping for a Ukulele, but the music store only had those flimsy, Hawaiian tourist models with plastic strings, and I already have one of those. I want a real, honest-to-god instrument, dang it, not some gaudy confection of balsa wood and plastic. I will probably try Ukulele adventuring again on Monday. My need of a Ukulele specifically will be explained in the fullness of time.

Yes. I capitalize Ukulele. Like God.

I don’t think I’ve written the word Hopefully since my days doing technical support at the University of British Columbia. It is important for tech support people to be hopeful about all kinds of things. But hope in one hand…

We used it incorrectly. Some of us, knowingly. Always, we would write, “Hopefully these steps will resolve your problem.” Many clumsily constructed grammar sites will tell you that hopefully is banned at the beginning of a sentence because it is an adverb, that it ends with an -ly. The people who spread these lies don’t deserve to wear clean socks. We can use mercifully, or finally, or secondly, or quite a few other things as sentence adverbs without a second glance from even the grumpiest of grammar grandmas.

Hopeful, of course, means full of hope… who is full of hope? The… uh… the steps? Correctly, we might have said, “We hope that these steps will resolve your problem.” But that would make it too personal… it would make it too much about us… and really, you wouldn’t want to know what our expectations were, vis-a-vis your problem, nor would we want to lie to you.

To begin a sentence with some quality of hopiness, while attaching that hope not to a subject, but rather, to the sentence itself, to add an ambience of hope, we should look to what has already been established. Regret. “Regrettably, I ate the week old sandwich.” It is, in a general sense, regrettable that I ate the week old sandwich. “Regretfully I contemplated that week old sandwich, the sandwich which had cut my young life short.” Now on my deathbed, I contemplate that week old sandwich, and my thoughts are filled with regret.

And so the solution is that we must begin our hopeful sentences in this way: “Hopeably, these steps will resolve your problem.” Or perhaps hopably. Or hoppably.

Or, as I found myself doing, simply write, “These steps should resolve your problem.” It’s clean, there’s that tiny disclaimer contained in the should, but the sentence is more or less projecting confidence. This is the real reason to avoid beginning a sentence with hopefully. Hopefully is wussy. It makes your sentence weak, makes you seem wishy-washy, unsure. The real reason hopefully should be directly attached to the subjects, and never the sentences, is that the subjects are wussy enough to hope. We forgers of English, like Chuck Norris, know.

I have no idea what the point of this was. I was going to mention how I really really hate the word Healthful, and that even though in some fascistic way it’s the more grammatical alternative to healthy, usage both popular and historical would dictate that this ugly uncommon word and the people who use it should be dipped in concrete in sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

And now I’m going to make myself a healthy snack of late-night bacon.

Words of fiction since last time: not nearly enough