So long and thanks for all the classic trash
Since twitter is in chaos, I’ve been thinking about how much I’ll miss it. I’ve made a lot of good friends there, received a lot of great book recommendations, sold a few books, learned a lot, and for good or for ill, witnessed many world events. And a few events that don’t qualify as global, but felt that way in the moment, because we all knew who the Twitter main character was.
Like many writers and other creatives who rely on social media to sustain their businesses, I’ve been scrambling to figure out where I’ll live on the internet in the absence of twitter—other than here in your email, of course, which is genuinely my favorite place. Those concerns should be my primary ones, but I’m clutching my heart over the jokes. Twitter is the funniest place on the internet. (Tumblr is a close second, but brevity is the soul of twit.) It’s also a major source of new words in my family lexicon.
I’ve written before about how often I say “I didn’t go to metaphor school” (where “metaphor” can be replaced with any subject I’m disavowing my knowledge of) and “we should all be so lucky as to find something in this world that makes us happy,” both of which came from the now-defunct blog Videogum (RIP). I was only a lurker in the comments there. I’ve been much more active, for much longer, on twitter (RIP?). Here follows a sampling of twitterisms that have entered regular usage in my household.
(Is this just an excuse to post some great tweets? Yes, absolutely.)
Notes on method:
1. I excluded anything that I deemed purely a reference, that is to say, it could not be made into a verb or made to carry any meaning beyond “I am quoting a tweet that I know you also recognize.” For instance, my beloved and I might say “fuck him up socrates,” from
SOCRATES: I am wiser than this man; he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing—
DARRYL, SOCRATES' FRIEND: fuck him up socrates
but I am excluding it from my teeny-tiny lexicon because if you try to use “fuck him up socrates” in a different context by replacing “socrates” with some other name, then the joke falls apart. “Fuck him up, [name]” is a perfectly normal utterance of a friend hyping up a friend, so it’s not imbued with any extra meaning.
2. Some of these words and phrases have been adopted widely enough that they have their own explanatory pages on Wikipedia, KnowYourMeme, etc, and I have indicated that where possible. Other usages are specific to my weird little household.
3. Square brackets [ ] around an element indicate that it can be replaced.
4. I didn’t embed these tweets because who knows if they’d even load, but I did link my sources.
HUSBAND SMASH, v. To compress the contents of the trash can in order to fit more inside and avoid taking out the trash. “Can we husband smash the trash or is it too gross?” Originally “smush,” from
wifes don't know how to smush the trash down into the trash can so you can go an extra day or two without taking the trash out. fortunately, husbands are fucking insane at trash smushing.
JAIL FOR [MOTHER]; JAIL FOR ONE THOUSAND YEARS, expr. Used to convey a desire for a severe punishment in response to what is usually, but not always, a minor infraction. Sometimes spoken by the guilty party as a request for absolution. From
me, lightly touching miette with the side of my foot: miette move out of the way please so I don’t trip on you
miette, her eyes enormous: you KICK miette? you kick her body like the football? oh! oh! jail for mother! jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!
See also: “Miette” on KnowYourMeme
TO GET MILKSHAKE DUCKED, v. To be revealed as racist or otherwise objectionable after initially seeming cute or appealing. “You’ll never guess who got milkshake ducked today.” From
The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist
See also: “Milkshake Duck” on Wikipedia
BUDDY, expr. A verbal version of a disappointed nod of the head, used to indicate that an interlocutor is asking for the impossible. Usually followed by a significant pause in speech, but sometimes used in the format “buddy, they won’t even let me…” From
another day volunteering at the betsy ross museum. everyone keeps asking me if they can fuck the flag. buddy, they wont even let me fuck it
Well, it’s been a weird decade-plus, twitter. So long and thanks for all the classic trash.
I haven’t read any Capital-R Romance (for new readers, what I mean by this is anything in a Romance language, usually French, or sometimes I count works in translation) since I last wrote, but I did read some Capital-L Literature in English—see below.
My twitter timeline was curated for finding great small-r romance novels, and I’ll miss it dearly. In the meantime, thank God I periodically check on Aster Glenn Gray’s very lowkey internet presence so I never miss a work.
I have finished reading a few other things in the past two weeks, but they were published by subsidiaries of HarperCollins, so per the request of the striking workers, I’m going to hold my reviews until after the workers have a fair contract. If you’d like to know more about the HarperCollins union strike, the info is here.
A Garter as a Lesser Gift (bi m/bi m/? f, all cis?, historical, novella) by Aster Glenn Gray. This wonderful retelling of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” sent me running (okay, clicking) to the library to get Simon Armitage’s translation of the original poem, because when it seems like a retelling is having a good time with the source material, I want to be in on the fun.
The original poem, by the way, is gorgeous. (Yes, from the newsletter that brought you such breaking news as “Victor Hugo is good, actually,” you heard it here last: a famously beautiful poem is, in fact, beautiful.) The poetry is alliterative, which is a poetic device native to English (and Germanic languages in general), because the stressed syllable is often the first in the word. Rhyme is a poetic device native to Romance languges, where the stressed syllable is often the last. “Gawain” also has lines that rhyme at the end of every stanza, since English imported rhyme from French. Here is a lovely alliterative passage from Simon Armitage’s translation, timed perfectly with my Northeast US weather:
Then autumn arrives to harden the harvest
and with it comes a warning to ripen before winter.
The drying airs arrive, driving up dust
from the face of the earth to the heights of heaven,
and wild sky wrestles the sun with its winds,
and the leaves of the lime lay littered on the ground,
and grass that was green turns withered and gray.
Then all which had risen over-ripens and rots
and yesterday on yesterday the year dies away,
and winter returns, as is the way of the world.
Goddamn.
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is only in one surviving manuscript from around 1400. It’s at the British Library and this is one of the illustrations in it—Gawain beheading the Green Knight.
Okay, in case you’re not up to date on what happens to handsome young twink knight Gawain, nephew of King Arthur, in this poem, here is a summary. Gawain is with his fellow Round Table knights when a huge green guy bursts in and tries to start a fight. The Green Knight eventually gets Gawain to agree to a bet: any blow that Gawain deals him, he can deal to Gawain in return on the next New Year’s Day at a place called the Green Chapel. If Gawain doesn’t show, everyone will know he’s a coward. Gawain beheads the Green Knight. You’d think that would be the end of things, but the Green Knight picks up his head and laughs it off. Gawain goes off in search of the Green Chapel, which nobody has ever heard of. After much wandering, he finally arrives at a castle where the lord assures him that the Green Chapel is nearby, and he should stay and rest. Gawain is pretty sure he’s gonna die on New Year’s Day, so he hangs out at the castle to enjoy himself.
Because this guy just cannot resist a bet, when the lord says “I’m going hunting and at the end of each day, I’ll give you whatever game I hunt if you agree to give me anything you are given in the castle,” Gawain says yes. While the lord is out hunting, the lord’s beautiful wife gives Gawain a kiss, so that night he has to kiss the lord. And again. And again. On the last day, she also gives Gawain her garter (Armitage’s translation has “girdle,” but still: an undergarment), which is enchanted to protect the wearer from harm, and Gawain doesn’t give it to her husband because he wants to survive his scheduled beheading. Also because a sexy lady gave him her underwear, but honestly that seems trivial in this context.
When Gawain goes to the Green Chapel at last, it turns out the Green Knight and the castle lord are one and the same, and he knew about Gawain keeping the garter the whole time. It was a test and Gawain failed. The Green Knight just scars him instead of fully chopping his head off, as a reminder to be neither covetous nor a coward. Gawain wears the garter afterward, and so do all the Knights of the Round Table. (There’s a rank of knighthood called the Order of the Garter in real life, too.)
Anyway, I loved the poem, and obviously it’s a good gay time. But turning “a magic green guy and his wife tricked me and nearly beheaded me to teach me a lesson and for funsies” into “now the three of us live happily ever after” seemed like a challenging maneuver, so I was curious how closely Aster Glenn Gray would hew to the original. The answer: pretty close. She switched poetry for prose and the medieval setting for a World War II one, but she kept the beheading bet (it becomes a shooting-in-the-face bet) and obviously, obviously, she kept the kiss bet.
Gawain remains young and sweet and charming, and the lord and lady provide excellent hospitality, but as it’s World War II, their abundant table immediately marks them as other and raises Gawain’s suspicions. Unlike his RAF Round Table bros, he was raised to believe in magic, so he figures out his hosts’ fae nature in good time. He falls for them anyway, and who wouldn’t, they’re written with such warmth. And, in the book’s divergence from the poem, they do some classic romance grand-gesturing to win Gawain back after the whole bet/bargain/test thing goes wrong.
I think A Garter as a Lesser Gift would be an enjoyable read even for someone who hadn’t read “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” but I’m glad I paired them. The changed details are so playful—Gawain rides a bicycle instead of a horse—and knowing the poem enriched my experience of the book.
I wanted to record that my beloved suggested the subject line “Parting is such tweet sorrow.” I also considered “Requiem for a tweet” and “Swing low tweet chariot” and even “How tweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”
There are more new readers than usual, so: hello! Welcome! And this goes for new and old readers alike: I love hearing from you and if you ever want to hit reply to one of these emails and say, tell me your feelings about books you love, or what weird words and phrases you’ve picked up from your internet life, I would be delighted.
I have half a newsletter written about familects (things you say in your family or friend group) and I would love more examples. It’s possible my attention will be caught by some other, shinier word and I’ll send something entirely different for next time, but either way I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks.