English - The Real Deal

当广播里第4815162342次传来Carrie Underwood的那首Before He Cheats后，我终于忍不住去查了歌词。不查不知道，一查吓一跳。这首歌里包含着相当多的文化背景知识！我不熟悉的主要有两点：
1. Louisville slugger
这是美国职业棒球大联盟（Major League Baseball）的官方棒球棍。所以，歌里的I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights其实就等于I took a baseball bat to both headlights，是说她拿了棒球棍去砸花心男友的车前灯。
BTW，baseball bat中文到底叫什么啊？棒球拍/棍/棒？
2. bathroom polo
这个似乎很有争议，不少人认为她唱的是bathroom cologne。我仔细听了之后，确定是bathroom polo。不过，这里的polo和cologne其实是一回事。

When Underwood sings about her ex putting on “bathroom Polo,” she’s referring to vending machines found in the men’s rooms of certain US drinking establishments that dispense low-grade cologne. […]

经常使用Facebook的人最近应该会注意到一个“低级错误”：

我的第一反应：肯定不是相关人员不懂基本语法，而是程序设置出了问题。果然，很快看到了Language Log给出的分析：
You can see how it came about: there’s a program that pulls the sex item (called “sex”, and not “gender”, by the way) from the user’s profile and then plugs in she/her/her, he/him/his, or they/them/their according to what it finds there. So if someone with no sex specified checks one or more boxes […]

推荐一篇来自Los Angeles Times的文章：Satire busts a hump
People endlessly complain that Hollywood is full of dopey, superficial films bereft of anything new to say. And they’re right. Anyone looking for art that is edgy or relevant — and inspires comment — is turning to Internet video, which has become the true engine driving our pop culture.
Nothing demonstrates […]

What are you laughing at?
经常看到有人争论Friends的“经典性”，我觉得这两段话是最好的回应：
The sitcom Friends, for instance, a show often dismissed by the cynical as “cheesy” or “schmaltzy” - and certainly capable of being both - was wholeheartedly adopted by the British public. So much so that two years after its final episode, a day barely passes without its inclusion in the schedules. […]

‘Yours Truly,’ the E-Variations
就这篇文章展开的讨论很有意思：
Kottke
Lifehacker
我比较常用的是Yours、Sincerely和Love，很少用两个词的组合（Yours Sincerely、Yours Truly、Sincerely Yours等等），从来不用Cordially和xoxo。很多人提到的Best regards和Thanks我也不用，因为我通常都是把它们放在最后一句话里，比如Best regards to so and so或者Thanks a lot for blah blah blah，到了真正署名的时候还是用Yours+名字。
BTW, go see this film. Also check out this interview with Lucy Liu.
Bonus video: Hanson - Great Divide

非常期待的这本电影终于在美国发行了（目前只限于NYC和LA地区）。没错，电影的名字就叫Fuck，宣传语是“The movie that dare not speak its name”。官方网站的网址是fourletterfilm.com，已经够含蓄的了，而有些地方干脆就用XXXX这个名字，绝了。这本记录片探讨了fuck这个独一无二的单词对社会、政治、历史、人文、艺术等各方面无所不在的影响。
摘自导演兼制作人Steve Anderson的采访：
Q: Why the F-word? What made you want to do this project?
A: I was always intrigued with the word as a writer because it’s a word that you can use at any time in so many different ways. That’s really where it first started: it’s a verb, […]