THINGS THAT NEED TO GO AWAY RIGHT NOW, VOL. 12

• My habit of forgetting, exactly once every summer, that my good looks and rapier wit alone will not prevent the noontime sun from burning my pale skin. Now I can look forward to a week of explaining, "I don't have dandruff, my scalp is just peeling."
  
  
• Blood pressure follies. I went to see my doctor last week, and after a pleasantly short wait a pretty nurse escorted me to an examination room, where she immediately took my blood pressure.
  
  "Five hundred seventy-three over 2.718281828," she said. Those weren't the real numbers, of course, but it doesn't matter, because I didn't understand the significance of the real numbers. Unlike healthcare professionals, who spend hours every day worrying over blood pressure readings, I can't appreciate which numbers are high and which are normal when it comes to blood pressure. It would be like going to Tanzania and telling a Maasai tribesman, "Barry Bonds is batting .365 with 23 homers!"
  
  Wouldn't it make an awful lot of sense to post a blood pressure chart in the examination rooms? I guess I could have asked the nurse, but she was awfully pretty.
  
  After an unpleasantly long wait on the paper-covered table, the doctor arrived and did various things to me. "Various things" unfortunately included a urethra swab, which, while not technically a blood pressure folly, is another thing that needs to go away right now. MESSAGE TO ALL HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS: In return for your promise to never stick anything in my urethra again, I pledge to wear extra-thick, adamantium-reinforced condoms for all future activites of any kind, including Holy Communion.
  
  By and by, the doctor frowned at my chart and asked, "Have you ever had a problem with high blood pressure?"
  
  "No. Is there a problem?"
  
  "Well, it's a little high. I mean, you're not going to keel over from a stroke, but... well, let me check it again before we get too excited."
  
  He took my blood pressure and announced, "Forty-two over π³. That's fine, nothing to worry about."
  
  That made sense to me. The first blood pressure reading came right after a brisk walk through a maze of hallways to the examination room, so of course it was elevated. Also, my heart rate probably accelerated when the pretty nurse touched my arm. Wouldn't it make an awful lot of sense to have an ugly nurse take blood pressure readings after giving the patient's heart rate time to stabilize?
  
  
• Inappropriate capitalization of mom, dad, and other familial terms. You should only capitalize these terms when using them as though they were names:
  

  Afterward, Uncle said that what happened in the garage was a very special secret.

  Specifically, you should not capitalize these words when a possessive precedes them:

  My uncle said if I told anyone our secret, I would be sent away.

• Unimaginative sports nicknames composed of the player's initials only, such as AI (Allen Iverson), KG (Kevin Garnett), MJ (Michael Jordan), and TO (Terrell Owens). Only slightly better are monikers like T-Mac (Tracy McGrady) or J-Kidd (Jason Kidd), although A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez) is okay for some ex post facto reason I will make up later. Also unacceptable are meaningless nicknames dreamed up by shoe companies -- has anyone ever actually called Allen Iverson "The Answer" outside the Reebok marketing department?
  
  Come on, sports fans, think a little! Here are some great sports nicknames to spur your imagination:

  Babe Ruth (George Herman Ruth)
  The Iron Horse (Lou Gehrig)
  The Admiral (David Robinson)
  Dr. J (Julius Erving)
  Magic Johnson (Earvin Johnson)
  Crime Dog (Fred McGriff)
  Catfish Hunter (James Augustus Hunter)
  Sir Charles (Charles Barkley)
  Saint Patrick (Patrick Roy)
  The Dominator (Dominik Hasek)
  The Great One (Wayne Gretzky)
  Le Magnifique (Mario Lemieux)
  Super Joe (Joe Sakic)
  Rocket (Maurice Richard and Roger Clemens)
  The Intimidator (Dale Earnhardt)
  Sweetness (Walter Payton)

  If you can't think of a nickname that pops off the tongue and distills the essence of the athlete, don't fret. Barry Bonds and Barry Sanders played their games as well as anyone, yet nobody ever made a nickname stick to either man (although BB for Bonds would fit him well -- he drew his 2,191st walk on July 4 to break Rickey Henderson's career record).
  
  NOTE: We're only talking about sports nicknames here, so "KT" for "Kilgore Trout" is okay. I would prefer, however, that you stop using "WPS" for "Worthless Piece of Shit."
  
  
• Commercial attempts to channel authenticity via fake foreign words, like Taco Bell's gorditas and Chipotle's new low-carb "bols" (that is, bowls). "Bol" means nothing in Spanish -- the Spanish word for bowl is cuenco. I'd rather order a cuenco than a bol, although I'm sure that Chipotle has a mountain of focus-group research that better captures the linguistic-gastronomic desires of the gringo bourgeoisie.
  
  A variant of this technique is to introduce the fake accent. I used to work at a restaurant called Diamond Dave's in Mason City, Iowa. Diamond Dave's made "Mexican" food in the sense that the Tombstone frozen pizza people make "Italian" food. Anyway, the awning outside read "RESTAURANTÉ." But the Spanish word for restaurant is restaurante, with no accent. Adding the accent not only creates a misspelling, but changes the pronunciation, sort of like saying, "res-TAU-rant."
  
  A related silly story: the Mason City Globe-Gazette once published an ad placed by a Mexican family wishing to celebrate a family member's birthday. The ad featured a photo of the birthday boy with the caption "YO TENGO 29 ANOS!" The Spanish word for year is año, so the caption was meant to read "I AM 29 YEARS OLD!" But by leaving the tilde off the N, the Globe-Gazette had the man saying, "I HAVE 29 ANUSES!"

+posted by Lawrence @ 7/13/2004 04:15:00 PM