New Words
Posted: March 1st, 2009 | Filed under: New Words | 72 Comments »
It has been a little while since I have made my own pitiful attempt to add words to the English dictionary. Some say that Shakespeare invented 1,700 words — or at least used 1,700 words that cannot be previously found — and I am way, way behind, especially because it appears that “Diloneism” (noun, the misguided belief that your success is directly attributable to what is actually your biggest weakness) is not yet taking off.
So, here are three new and yet untested words.
Vegawalk, noun: A walk that by all appearances looks to be short but is actually preposterously long.
This word, of course, was inspired by the fact that every walk in Las Vegas is precisely 45 times longer than it appears. In Vegas, every casino looks to be roughly 25 feet away, when in fact it will take your roughly three days, 12 canteens of water and two camels to get to Caesar’s Palace. Any walk that seems reasonable at the start but at some point turns into a “Are we EVER going to get there,” experience counts as a Vegawalk*.
*I have written here before that the brilliant young Michael Rosenberg and I took the ultimate Vegawalk in Beijing when a cab driver dropped us off somewhere the appeared to be inside the Olympic Circle, and then it took us roughly two and a half hours to walk to the Press Center. Of course, the length of walk was in large part because we got tragically lost, but the point here is that there is something satisfying about a good Vegawalk long after it happens. Walking five miles or whatever in Beijing smog while seeing increasingly odd things (such as the sudden breakout of badminton matches in a parking lot) and having friends believe that we might be dead did not seem especially enjoyable at the time. But now, sitting in a hotel room in Arizona, it makes me smile.
Gleng, verb: The act of pulling the car door handle at precisely the same instant that the driver is attempting to unlock the car door, thus nullifying the unlock action.
This word is inspired by the sound I hear when someone pulls that door handle just while someone else tries to unlock the car. I do believe this can be a useful word because people gleng all the time. Just today, I was trying to unlock the car door for someone, and he glenged, thus causing us both about three seconds of aggravation. If someone can invent a blanket with sleeves, how come someone cannot invent a car door that will open even if the unlocker and the opener do not have the precise timing of Cirque du Soleil.
Volumate, verb: The act of using the remote control to constantly regulate the volume — raising it and lowering it — while watching a DVD.
Seriously, what’s the deal with DVDs? I mean, we are talking the height of technology, right? And yet, when we are watching a DVD, one minute the people on screen will be talking so quietly, I think about calling up and ordering a miracle ear. And then music will start playing, and I will like I’m inside lead tuba in the Florida A&M Marching Band. Then people talk again, and it’s a silent movie. Then a helicopter flies overhead, and it sounds like a Vietnam battlefield. I have become the official sound mixer at our house when we watch a DVD, I’m constantly turning the sound up. back down, up again … when the movie ends, I half expect to see my own name in the credits.
And don’t write in and say that I just need to fix the volume settings of my TV or DVD Player — I’ve tried EVERY volume setting we have. Nothing works. Maybe we need to get a better DVD player. Or hire someone.
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Volumate works. The others seem a little forced. Love the “Miracle Ear” reference. I was just thinking this blog needed to talk about that.
In any glenging, the person opening the door is the party at fault and not the unlocker.
I’ve always used “balk” instead of “gleng”. Sounds so much more natural. It matches baseball too, in a way – instead of making the move at the right time (pulling the handle, going to the plate) one does it in a manner that penalizes the participant (car – too early, has to wait, is humiliated, pitcher – deceives the runner, gives up a base, is humiliated).
So I would push you to adopt balk instead of gleng! Some people already use it!
Joe,
If you’re watching a DVD with surround sound, try boosting the volume on the center channel only (you might have to pull out your manual to figure it out). Most dialogue is on the center channel. A lot of music and helecopters are on the other channels. Then maybe you can get a rest from all that volumating.
I dont think that Volumate applies only to DVD, HBO is also horrible about this, so Im thinking it isn’t so much the actual DVD, but a horrendous trend of how volume levels are mastered in studio… Plus I have found that volumes are usually low when it is incredibly important dialog, the type of dialog that if you miss it will render an entire movie into 2.5 hours of HUH? So I think it is some kind of fiendish scheme to get people to buy surround sounds.
Volumate is constantly annoying me. I watched part of the Super Bowl in a small, theatre surround sound setting where I work. The picture was great but trying to hear the announcers (who were they, Gowdy and DeRogatis?) was practically impossible. I heard all of the crowd/field noise just great but what’s the point? Also, I missed all of the spoken words in the 1st half commercials. I went home at halftime and watched AND HEARD the 2nd half – by then Curt and Al had handed off the broadcast duties to Michaels and Madden. I did miss The Boss’ halftime show. Joe will hate me but I didn’t give one crap about Springsteen @ the SB. [Looking back on that game, it wasn't nearly as good in terms of quality as most experts believed immediately after it was over, and I'm a Steelers follower.]
Hearing movie dialogue can be terribly frustrating but that is one thing good about DVD. I have learned to just use the closed caption – It’s no different than watching a movie with subtitles and now we (my wife, who has exceptional hearing agrees) go closed caption exclusively and we rarely miss an important line.
I applaud gleng, as wonderful a piece of onomatopoeia as the English language has been blessed with in decades.
You should probably find a way to have someone assigned to oversee your volumation needs, preferably by court order, kind of like in “Jerry”.
Ha ha. I walked from Ceasar’s Palace to the Rio – in August. It looked so close. 45-minutes and 5 lbs. of sweat later…
Love the Al DeRogatis reference – haven’t heard that name in over 20 years.
Gleng totally works – Graphite nailed it.
Re: Volumate, it is the editing and printing of the DVD. I worked as a video editor and am 90% sure that some small inconsistencies on the audio track are leading to the problems. It is entirely expected even with very talented and professional editors.
One thing I’ve done to avoid volumation is dial the subwoofer on my surround way down and move it away from the wall. I’ve found that most surround systems have the bass turned up way way too high because it sounds cool or something to have ear-shaking explosions disturbing the neighbors. I also suspect since floor models are not anywhere near a wall, the overpower the subwoofer so the bass comes in really strong in the store.
I thought volumate was going to have something to do with when you’re watching TV and the “sweet spot” for your volume is unavailable.
You know what I mean. Twelve is too quiet, but 13 is too loud. You keep alternating between the two hoping to somehow get it to go to 12.5 where it will be just right. I swear there have been times where it seems like the difference between 15 and 100 is less than the difference between 14 and 15.
You know they have cars that auto-volumate? The radio automatically gets louder as you speed up, and lowers as you come to a stop. It sounds good on paper, I suppose, but neither Joe nor Shakespeare have invented a word that would accurately express how ridiculous and annoying it is.
Instead of constantly volumating I’ve just started watching movies with subtitles and shows with closed captions.
I had to laugh that “The Dark Knight” won an Oscar for best Sound Editing. On my home system, the volumation problems with that movie were so bad it was almost unwatchable. We later discovered a “Night Listening” mode on our home theater receiver. It is supposed to boost the quieter spots and flatten the louder spots, but it doesn’t seem to do much good.
I would also like to point out a possible correlation between increased volumation problems and the presence of sleeping children in the house.
Ever notice that your kids never complain about volumation? Old age sucks, don’t it?
I think your TVs and/or surround sound systems suck. I’ve noticed that volumating needs to be done at other people’s homes, but not mine, and I don’t have anything special.
The dvds we watch are edited and mixed in amazing rooms with state-of-the-art soundsystems. This would be wonderful if I weren’t forced to watch them on a 9-yr-old Toshiba 20-inch television on a corner of heavily-trafficked Union Square. There’s no way I win in this situation. So, Joe, your volumation woes will undoubtedly continue until your home-theatre system catches up with the editing booth. Good luck to us all.
My wife is the Glengmaster and now you’ve given me a way to articulate my frustration….sweet
Agreed about the volume problems. It is not fixable and I have two home theater systems. You can’t watch a DVD without the remote in your hand because if, god forbid, there is a shootout on the screen and I don’t lower it, the cops will be breaking down the door and looking for bodies.
I have a Bose lifestyle system that I set up to the Optimized, by the way, using the included ear speak headphones. Can’t get any more optimized than optimized. I mean, it sounds awesome, but if someone isn’t there to volumate, the ear drums will get destroyed.
Mr Posnanski–
Does it bug you when people IMMEDIATELY misuse your neologisms? It would me. I’m thinking in particular of Craig, Mark W., Matt H.(?), Mike S, Eric L., Ray C & erik in nyc in the case of “volumate”.
(Kudos to Old Man Duggan, Jarvis, Broocks, Aaron M. & John Comas for their own proper usage of the term.)
Joe,
The studios make you volumate, to probably paying attention to ad placement. Because the place where you have to volumate the most is, not during movie watching, but when you’re watching a sitcom, game or whatever, and then THE COMMERCIAL FOR SHAM WOW COMES ON REALLY, REALLY, LOUDLY!!! TO MAKE SURE THAT “YOU BUY OUR PRODUCT, OUR COMMERCIAL WILL BE 10-20 DECIBELS LOUDER THAN THE SHOW YOU WERE WATCHING!!!”
i have another definition for gleng: after years of marriage, the one thing my wife does that gets under my skin.
i honestly think i’m the luckiest man in the world, but one of these days i’m going to fire those car keys right at her head, or if i’m already in the car and she can’t get the door open i’ll just drive off.
as far as volumate goes – i think it has to do with how the sound is mixed for the theater. i don’t go to too many movies anymore because i have to take some aspirin before i go in to make up for the headache i’ll have when i come out. they want all the explosions or gunshots or coffe cups breaking or whatever to shake the seats, but they need to have the dramatic effect of lots of whispering… so you’ve got a ridiculous dynamic range that only works if you don’t mind having your eardrums ruptured during loud sequences or sealing yourself in a sound-proof booth to hear the quiet parts.
the opposite problem is just as bad, though – pretty much every bit of popular music recorded in the last 5 or 10 years sounds like mud because it’s TOO normalized and has no dynamic range, so that it sounds as loud as possible coming out of the ipod. at all times. even if it’s just a brush on a high-hat, it’s going to sound as loud as the 6-guitar superfuzz chorus.
really, the movie sound engineers and the music mastering people need to get together and settle on a happy medium that we can all live with.
alternate theory: i am just getting old, and that’s why these things annoy me.
I’m constantly volumating, so thank you for giving me a word to use when describing it. And since my wife is an audiologist and I regularly serve as her test dummy for various hearing instruments, I know for a fact that the root cause of my volumating has nothing to do with my ears.
By the way, it’s a genuine drag to have no feasible “Sorry honey, I didn’t hear you” excuse. I thought one of the subtle benefits of getter older was that I would get some mileage out of the presumed onset of hearing loss by pretending not to hear things around the house, like “Honey, did you take the trash out?”, or “Dad, can you help me with my math homework?” Instead I married someone who re-certifies my perfect hearing a half-dozen times each year. Big mistake.
Joe, thought you might enjoy this story.
I’ve never experience the vegawalk in Vegas, but have definitely had a similar experience during a misguided attempt to walk from one park within Disney World back to where our car was parked in a lot near another at the end of the night. Trust me, there’s a reason they have that monorail (“Please stand away from the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas.”) and all those shuttle buses. Not only did we hike for almost an hour, but we actually got stopped by on-site security who thought we were trying to steal cars or break into the park or something, because apparently (and for good reason), NOBODY walks from place to place around there.
Joe,
I think that Rich Hall would be very happy that you’re carrying the mantle of the Snigglet.
These things were very popular in the 80s when Hall was a cast member of HBO’s SNL knock-of, “Not Necessarily the News”.
BTW, I believe that Rich Hall was the real-life inspiration for Moe on “The Simpsons”.
And that, kids, is One to Grow on.
Wow, I have actually been on a VegaWalk in Vegas. Actually it was an ultra Vegawalk. My buddy and I were in Vegas for a bachelor party. He had some tix to see a band play at UNLV’s basketball arena. After the show, we decided that the cab line was too long and besides, we could see the Strip from where we were, so we decided to hike it back to the Strip. A couple hours later, having traversed a couple sewage ditches and quickly running through a couple not so nice neighborhoods, we finally made it to the Strip. This was July, so despite the fact that it was midnight or so, we were drenched in sweat.
Learned something about judging distance in a valley that day.
And my 9 year old glengs on purpose. That is truly annoying.
I meant you may have interest in this article.
Joe,
First time commenting, as “volumating” is near & dear to my heart. I admit I’m getting older(my 35 year old son got me into your blog), and I do have some hearing loss, from Viet Nam. I only watch DVD’s with subtitles, so that I don’t have to volumate as much. Regular TV is much worse, though, as mentioned in earlier comments. I understand, that the FCC allows commercial volume to be no louder than the highest decibel level during the regular program. For instance, on my local news, the theme music is extremely loud, then the newsreaders speak in normal tones. When the commercial break comes on, the entire commerical(ala “Shamwow”) is at that higher decibel level. My solution, is to hit the Mute button during commercials, but technically, that is still volumating. My other favorite option, is DVRing the few regular broadcast shows I do watch, and fast forwarding through the commercials. That doesn’t work as well for sports, of course, as you lose the immediacy, so I just use the mute button again.
Favorite Rich Hall Snigglet:
Carpetulation-While vacuuming one reaches to pick a piece of material which will not be vacuumed, examine it, then replace it to re-vacuum.
Cal Naughton, Jr.: Hey, when you have the stereo and TV on, how do you change the volume on the stereo?
Ricky Bobby: “If you have the stereo on…” Wait, why do you have the stereo on while you’re watching TV?
Cal Naughton, Jr.: ‘Cause I like to party.
The Vegawalk is similar to the pierwalk. You’re staying with a group of friends on the beach and after a few hours of laying in the sun and playing in the ocean, it starts to get a little boring. Then everyone decides it’s a good idea to walk down to the pier. It looks really close, and it’s a pier! Who doesn’t like to walk out on a pier?
Anyways, like the Vegawalk, the pier turns out to be really far away. Plus, you’re walking on hot sand and the sun is beating down on you. By the time you get to the pier, you realize that there really is nothing that great about the pier. Especially the ones that charge something like $0.50 to walk on them. Which leads to the worst part of the pierwalk – you then have to walk all the way back to your original place. The reverse-pierwalk!
Go Rattlers!!
Gleng works. One of the all time most frustrating occurrences in daily life that aren’t all that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but frustrating nonetheless. In fact, Joe should come up with a word for that. Things like splinters and papercuts…splut?
Hey guys – One way to not have that annoying gleng in your life quite as often is to be the sweet, perfect gentleman that your are (or can be) and remove yourself from the car, walk around to the passenger’s side and open and then close the door for your passenger. I understand that this is not always the situation but if it’s your wife, girlfriend, elderly person it is nearly always the best thing to do. Occasionally, benefits can be accrued by such behavior.
My wife’s family uses a word that I believe they either made up on their own or stole from some neighbors. They call a car with only one headlight illuminating and coming in their opposite direction a “padiddle” or something like that. I’ve never inquired too much about it so I’ve never seen it spelled. Is this a term that is known by any of you? New one to me when I was in my late 30’s. One of my sisters-in-law loves to use the term.
Thanks, Joe for what I hope is an ongoig exercise. As the son of an english teacher we (my sisters snd I) played a new words game with Mom all the time….great fun and very stimulating exercise.
Mark W. #38
Padiddle is a word that has existed as long as my memory can grasp….I know remember the word being used in 1952…..and that’s a long, long time ago…always the same meaning: car with one functioning headlight.
Joe,
Re: volume problems on TV broadcasts
A lot of new TVs offer a sound-stabilizer audio function that’s meant to dampen the SUDDEN DEAFENING commercial, although I think this function will not translate to a 5.1 system if the audio for your TV runs from a cable box to the 5.1 system. In this case, what you could do is connect your TV’s audio outputs to the TV input on your 5.1 system and maintain that stabilization functionality. The only thing you’d have to do, though, is make sure you hide your TV remote and never adjust the volume on the TV, otherwise one day some nincompoop is going to max out the TV volume and then absentmindedly start turning up the 5.1 system’s volume and blow out some speakers.
Re: volume problems on DVDs
Some movies are just mixed badly. There are some studios, usually more indie ones, that consistently put out mixes that sound like hearing the movie through gauze, except for the cheap no-name rock soundtrack, which is deafening. Or take British film and television before 1980: they almost ALL meet the definition of whisperwhisperwhisper+THIS IS YOUR HEAD INSIDE OF A BELL. It’s as if almost every audio mix in that country for decades (the 70s was the worst) was divided up, with a monk handling dialogue and the meth-regenerated corpse of John Philip Sousa handling all the brass.
I had a college roommate who called those one-eyed cars “palookas.”
Vegawalk is awesome. I experienced this after my wife and I got roped into one of those high-pressure timeshare sales things in Vegas. (Yes, we should know better, but they gave us free Çirque tickets.)
The bus taking us to and from the place was supposed to drop us off at our hotel, but I got impatient and told my wife I would run back. Didn’t seem that far…the hotels all looked so close together! What looked like something that would take me 10 minutes actually took me about an hour.
Joe, can we get some phonetic spellings of these words in parenthesis? I want to make sure I’m saying them right as I integrate them into my every day vocabulary.
As far as volumation for commercials, what’s wrong with the mute button?
Joe, another annoying phenomenon involving volumation — watching mildly crude movies with your children nearby.
Case in point: My brother bought Talladega Nights after being one of 2,312 people to see it in the theater. Thus, he knew every Will Ferrell line.
I hadn’t seen the movie. So with our kids playing in the background, he pops the movie in and tells me how much I’ll love this part and this part and this part — which is a terribly annoying habit, in and of itself. He then proceeds to lower the sound to almost inaudible levels.
This, of course, had two effects: It kept our young children’s ears from burning with every naughty word.
It also kept me from hearing ANY of the funny lines. So I spent the entire movie watching my brother chuckle and going: “What? What was that? What’d he say?” Only to have my brother repeat every line.
It was awful. Volumation Irritation, at its worst.
Joe,
You are a true Renaissance man.
Sports fan
Writer
Linguist
Music promoter
Political Junky
Humorist
Moral compass
Wow.
I love volumate. Nice work Joe. I personally think it needs to be done worse during TV broadcasts than during any movies I’ve seen. But, I’m hooked on closed captioning for any non-live TV shows and all movies which takes care of this problem for the most part. I grew up with a legally deaf grandfather and we always watched TV with him using the CC. It’s almost impossible for me to watch without it.
I love the concept of vegawalk, although I don’t love the word itself. Maybe it works when you’re actually in Vegas, but otherwise I think a more descriptive word would be better– “miragewalk?”
Anyway, I remember one very specific instance of this for myself. My husband and I were on a cross-country road trip and our car had just broken down outside of Wisdom, Montana (pop. 100). We could see a farm just down the road (reassuringly painted with the letters OK covering the barn roof) so we decided we’d walk down and ask for help. An hour later, that barn wasn’t any closer. We eventually got picked up by a bunch of guys on motorcycles, which helped a lot.. but that’s another story.
@ Mark W (#38), I’ve also heard people use the word “padiddle” to refer to cars with one headlight… as chuck (#39) said, I think that one’s been around a long time.
Sorry Joe, I’ve been using the urbandictionary.com version of “gleng” for quite a while now: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=prepull
Padiddle?
I heard that one back in high school. You were supposed to kiss your girlfriend when you saw one … at least that’s what we told the ladies. A padiddle was a headlight, a padingle was a taillight. Maybe we were just looking for kissing excuses at that point. Actually, there was no “maybe”, we were definitely looking for excuses.
Jarvis @ #14
I believe you’re talking about the “dopvol” — from Christian Doppler (who first described what has become known as the Doppler effect) and volume. And look out for the soon-to-be-released “doptone”.
I have one of my own (prompted by February being the hottest month of the year down under): “Esterhaze”. This is that uncomfortably sticky-sweaty feeling brought about by wearing polyester or polyester-blend shirts in summertime.
I am a big fan of “jeterate,” and I use it frequently. Internally, anyway. None of my colleagues understand the Jeter mythos well enough to realize it isn’t exactly complimentary.
Jake @ 26 & 31,
I don’t know about Joe, but I sure enjoyed the story/article.
I have a pretty good vegawalk story (although, like Melody, I’m not a big fan of the word itself, this process needed a word). We took my sister to Vegas for her 21st birthday and stayed in the Monte Carlo. We took a cab down the Strip to Margaritaville for dinner when we realized we had left our Spamalot tickets at the hotel. No problem! I said. I’ll just walk down and get them (this was on July 5th, by the way, so it was about 357 degrees outside).
An hour and half my body weight in sweat later, I retrieved our tickets and drove our car back to the restaurant only to find the parking a mile away. So I had to take another (shorter) vegawalk just to get from the parking structure to the restaurant. Good times.
Re: Vegawalk
I’ve never really done it in Vegas, I’ve always understood how far I was walking (and I have walked from Luxor to Paris), but it is important to understand here in Phoenix. Our admonishment to visitors:
Just because you can see it, doesn’t mean you can walk to it.
The cure is the Circle K 44oz. Thirstbuster. You buy one and start drinking it, and when you’re finished, you have arrived at the next Circle K… Repeat until you reach your destination.
[...] New Words [...]
Volumate should be expanded to include iPods and MP3 players. All of my music tracks that are taken from old CDs that have been ripped to the computer are much softer than tracks that are downloaded from Napster, etc., so I am constantly volumating in my car when I am listening to my MP3 player through the stereo. Some are so soft I have to crank the music up all the way, but then I have to remember to turn it down before the next track or suffer the consequences, such as a volume generated heart attack (volume attack?).
Joe,
Love the blog. A related Sniglet: “Ignisecond” – the split second after you slam the door when you realize the keys are still in the ignition. And from the Waahington Post Style Invitational – “Doltergeist” – a spirit that haunts something really stupid, like a septic tank.
Vegawalk is not as powerful a word as the term Vegas-Walk. In the same way that New York Minute has a determinable substance, so would Vegas Walk. Vegawalk sounds less interesting then if you leave the components of the idea exposed.
Volumate may be a perfect new word.
From the world of entertainment —
“Osmofan”, noun: Someone who becomes familiar with a TV show or movie while not actually wanting to. I first became an osmofan some twenty-odd years ago when my 11- and 13-year-old daughters had the movie Grease seemingly on a 24-hour loop. “You’re the one that I want, oo oo oo oo” and the rest of it got into my brain cells as if by osmosis. Currently, because the computer and the TV are in the same room and two adult females also reside in this dwelling, I’m unintentionally absorbing Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy.
I think “Ignisecond” is a term better used for that moment when the car/truck engine is already running but the driver can’t hear it and/or forgot that the engine was already started so the ignition is turned again and for that brief moment one would think that the starter under the hood had been replaced by a machine grinder.
The idea of locking the car keys in the ignition needs to have the keyword “key” in the new word in my opinion…”Igkeywoops”?
“igkeyfu*#”!!!
“igkeysh*#”!!!
Never mind…
I vegawalked from the Flamingo to the MGM one night. The worst part was trying to find a cab driver who would take us back to the Flamingo.
I have only read the 1st graf so far, and I must say you are being way too hard on yourself, Joe. Yes, Shakespeare may have invented, coined, made up, whatever 1,700 words, but that doesn’t mean that the contributions of all others are meaningless. I mean, Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs, but that didn’t make Duane Kuiper’s home run disappear from the record books.
Holding yourself up against Shakespeare is fine for motivational purposes (if you’re going to model yourself after somebody, you may as well start with the best), but it doesn’t diminish the contributions you have already made. Heck, the reason I came to this blog in the first place was a link to it from an article in the NYTimes about “jeterate”; trust me, that word alone cements your contribution to the English language.
And would you really feel that bad being the literary world’s Duane Kuiper to Shakespeare’s Babe Ruth?
Very entertaining. These words are reminiscent of “sniglets” from the HBO show, Not Nec. the News. Classic!
Volumation is absolutely necessary whenever watching a movie on TCM.
There I sit at 1am, attempting to balance chips and Rotel, all the while risking certain eviction as I reach for my root beer float, thereby leaving the controller temporarily unattended.
A sinister force is at work synchronizing my risky root beer reach with the precise moment when Hepburn (pick one), putting the tease on some lucky guy, suddenly cuts to the blaring horns of Broadway at rush hour. Something will be spilled.
Another tip: Turn the volume down 25% before you switch to The Golf Channel.
Haven’t seen this posted here yet. Another “sign of the apocalypse”.
http://www.snuggiepubcrawl.com/
And don’t write in and say that I just need to fix the volume settings of my TV or DVD Player
It’s not really that, but DVDs nowadays have their sound designed for home theater systems. Ie, Dolby 5.1 speakers.
If you’re running that over your stereo TV speakers, you’re going to wind up with volume issues because the sound map is designed to be perfect for six speakers, and you only have two. Thus, a sound that was supposed to go to “left rear” at volume average+10db will come out of your stereo speaker at average+10db, and it doesn’t have the spatial differences to make up for it.
It bugs me all the time too, but I ignore it because I’m too cheap to buy a home theater system.
Mirageamble. Never been to the Vegas strip, but the pier was a good analogy.
I will say up front that I’m a little slow, but I went back to the original “Diloneism” post, and I don’t understand why that word is named after Miguel Dilone. What was his biggest weakness to which he misguidedly attributed his success? Did he think his success was directly attributable to his lack of power, which seems to have been his biggest weakness? If that was his biggest weakness, it seems like the definition of the word would suggest he actually thought something like, “I’m a great hitter because I don’t hit for power, and I believe that so much that I’m going to actively try to not hit for power so I can be an even better hitter.”
I start to follow Joe’s logic in that Dilone thought he was a power hitter and tried to act like a power hitter, when in fact he was the opposite of a power hitter, but I lose it when trying to figure out how Dilone attributed his success to what was actually his biggest weakness.
A little help, please.
So, when you gleng twice in a row — it has happened to me — is that a doppelglenger?
If you’re wondering, the need to volumate is a somewhat recent phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
A valiant effort, but after reading the legendary Douglas Adams book “The Meaning of Liff” I feel your blog entry was somewhat lacking. Glenging is indeed an action that desperately needs a word, but I feel “Gleng” of “Glenging” isn’t it.
Seeing as it is easy to criticize without contributing, here is my suggestion for the word that best embodies the failed timing of unlocking and opening a car door:
Lonk.
Let`s try it in a sentence; “I can`t believe we lonked again! This time wait until you hear the sound finish itself off!”