Repost: Lessons in Existentialism, Wedgies, and Trolls

originally posted 9/14/2009

It may well be that Retired Educator is going to go to ground and allow La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore free reign of this blog. It could happen.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Aw, shucks, who am I kidding? I monitor everything That Chica does, and love y'all just a little too much to allow her indiscriminate and total control of what gets written here.

It's not just Sisyphe that you must imagine happy. When the "boulder" is an audio clip of L'air des bijoux, more specifically a single line from the aria, sung over and over -- à haute voix, à voix haute, et très, très fort -- you'll more than likely want to give Camus a wedgie.

Yes, there is a French word for "wedgie." I just spent a few moments in wild laughter at the discussion over at the WordReference Forums. I do appreciate polite people, even in an incongruous moment:

Bonjour,

Qu'est-ce qu'on dit quand les culottes deviennent coincés entre les fesses?

Merci

I even flashed on Allen Ludden, the long-ago host of the gameshow Password. I can hear the announcer make his loud whisper: "The password is... wedgie."

Anyway, the first responders on the scene at WordReference provide faithful word-by-word translation, not helping matters one whit. Finally, someone arrives with the helpful suggestion of: "j'ai les rideaux coincés dans la fenêtre." I like that one; That would definitely soar over my head were I not in the loop, in the know, hip, and happening. Chouette...

Three months after the initial post, Benoit arrives to clarify things, and announces that the wedgie phenomenon is "faire un Luigi," at least in the north of France and in Belgium.** This, of course, begs the question: Who was the original Luigi, hmm?

Since only the good die young, and bad things often happen to good people, Walkyrie is next to come along. Evil, evil Walkyrie!

Vous le savez peut-être, mais l'anglais a aussi un mot pour désigner une culotte (ou un pantalon) coincée non pas derrière, mais devant, chez une femme. Je laisserai à un natif le soin de vous le divulguer, au cas où vous ne le connaîtriez pas. Ça a rapport avec le pied d'un animal, et là encore, je ne pense pas qu'il y ait d'équivalent en français, à part une traduction directe.

And my taxed brain flashes on the great CamelToe SNL skit!

The last hilarity? Two years after the deep thinking began, a Senior Member of the Forum suggests "un string" as a good translation for "wedgie," and that would surely work -- if it did not mean "thong"!

Even among the faithful, commentary often strays, and this is true of the Wedgie Work being done by these dedicated linguists. In the middle of it all, Quake3 demands to know how to translate the following pith: "My fondest desire? To give you a wedgie with your own lungs."

Hmm. It takes all kinds. That's what makes the world go 'round. And it's a small world, after all. People, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world. Right-o.

No one really questions the impulse to want to commit a wedgie on someone's lungs. No, they go straight to work. Junior Member Kwaw submits the following:

wedgie = something (usually underwear) pulled up through the cleft of the buttocks

= to pull your guts / innards / lungs out through your arse?

Mon plus grand souhait / désir ?:

Tirez-vous les viscères (par l'intermédiaire de votre anus)?

Se retirer vos poumons sortir (par l'intermédiaire de votre cul)?

De prendre vos viscères par le biais de votre cul?

De faire une lanière de vos poumons?

À faire pour vous une lanière de vos poumons?

de faire un string (entre vos fesses) de vos poumons?

Se retirer votre poumons entre vos fesses?

kwaw

Kwaw later opines, after the suggestion that his French is not up to par: "The one that manages to sound violent while making least sense is probably the most accurate..." I know that's the rule by which I try to live.

"Why, Retired Educator, friend to animals, children, and several adults from around the world, whatever is so wrong with you today? Goodness, gracious, girl! You are frothing at the mouth, caught up in a tirade about... wedgies! Surely something is amiss in Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé!"

Thanks for asking, Sweet, Darling Reader. {snarl} I would eventually have made my point, limpide comme l'eau, le diamant, le crystal. Since you're rushing me, though, I'll segue to the issue -- bring matters to a head, as it were.

"Certain troubling aspects of a too rich situation..." wrote Simone de B, about "consoling ethics"

-- those entities, often mammoth and institutional, that cannot live with or within the "ethics of ambiguity." The ethics of ambiguity? Believe it or not, but Simone de B has, as central reference for the concept of Bad Faith -- Our Beloved Flaubert's Emma Bovary. [see the remarkable
How I introduced a NYT editorial by comparing President Obama to Gustave Flaubert for more Flaubert antics.]

Emma, Emma, Emma -- how I have always loved Emma! She grates on the nerves, though, and I could use a break from the Emmas that seem to be surrounding me.

Actually, the institutional mammoths of which I'm thinking are more within the order of internet trolls than Emmas. Specifically, internet trolls who skulk in the pus-filled corridors of PopThatZit.com.

Yes, I am enamoured of zit videos. The neat thing? I am so not alone!

En tout cas, mes amis... read here, here, and lastly, here to get a vague sense of my unrest when in the profderien incarnation. Such retardation is -- thank God -- rare. In my better moments, I imagine the harping phenomenon as the work of one small, pin-headed individual that happens to go by four or five different names. Of course, the whole situation is rendered manageable by the capable management of one Emilbus, the site owner and all around good egg.

And it must be said that it's a question of a very vocal minority suffering from a narcissistic sense of entitlement. For the most part, everyone is quite nice, very sharp, and not interested in the dramas -- dramas that can, as you know, turn me into a rubber-necker, gaping at all the accidents on the side of the road.

Studied detachment remains the ideal virtual comportment -- and, normally, I can achieve it. These days, though? Daily fevers are now over 101 -- CRPS has kicked into high gear -- and infection continues to reek havok. [C-RP is 86, WBC over
15,000, sed rate of over 70-something]. When I spike over 100, it's not that I give up free will in order to make little girly whining noises, for I am overwhelmed with physical lassitude -- no, I fall into a strangely frenetic state of just-not-caring, just-not-giving-a-royal-shit.

A hell of a formula! My rude febrile inertia + all the rude PTZ Emmas = absurd, rude goings-on! Thank goodness for the overwhelming majority of stable people (who just happen to share one slightly fetishistic interest in zits).

I know that when a crowd arrays against me, my own conduct must be examined.

I have done this and conclude that I am perfect in every way! Ar ar ar! No, seriously. I know my faults, and they are legion.

However, I'll not be maligned as a pedophile and murderer.

We all have our limits, those tired lines in sand, and mine appear to be pedophilia and murder. I'm strange that way.

Oh, the humanity!

It's a little known fact that Sartre's eye deformity was the result of constant and unrelenting hazing by de Beauvoir, most often in the form of the wedgie. Yes, she kept putting a Luigi on him, until his eyes went haywire. Pity I don't have the supporting evidence -- as soon as I make some up, I'll post it.

L'oeil de Sartre. A rich source to punsters. We giggle to speak of his "trompe-l'oeil," throw the elbow, say, "Get it? Get it?" Much as kids will call out, "Mom! The television just said 'heinous'!"

Fred still snickers during the tedious introduction to the ubiquitous television show Law and Order.

"We can guess at the efforts he must have made to plaster a smile onto that hideous face, to forget and make sure others forgot the image of the marsh, to control that one eye that said shit to the other, the excess of the flesh, the erratic proliferation of the features." Bernard Henri Lévy -- what a card.

The words of a true friend.

Those of you in the know may take my mention of letting La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore have Head Author status at elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle as a threat. Of course, those of you in the know are not the stupid, provincial, assinine, dirty-minded, acephalic -- and just plain *rude* -- denizens of whom I speak.

Marx and Engels might rethink their whole concept if they knew some of The Workers I've met in the last 72 hours or so.

But then, I might be guilty of perpetrating noise pollution on your lent ears -- a crime that carries quite the penalty:

It is an offence under the EP Act to emit objectionable noise. A maximum penalty of over $250,000 may apply, while for a continuing offence a daily penalty of over $125,000 may be imposed.

You may also be liable under health legislation for noise emissions which are considered dangerous to health or offensive.

Qu'est ce qu'un troll ?
Uploaded by prodnouillesque.

**In Québec: avoir la strap prise dans la poulie