Random access memories

General stuff from the past few days, including...

* Star-spot of the week: Simon Pegg at Team Albatross' pub quiz (not at the Winchester, sadly). Not that he seemed to be trying to hide: as the quiz neared its climax and teams cheered right answers, he and his mate leapt up to high five each other. In a very post-modern, ironic way, natch. We owned his ass, by the way.

* Pain of the week: All good things must come to an end. Still, ouch. But we shall have our revenge.

* Phrase of the day: Fit to be tied. Meaning to be very angry, livid

After an unfortunate experience this morning (my cab into work was an hour and a half late - no fun when you've got up at 4.30 expecting your ride 30 minutes later. We can go into how incredibly lucky I am to have transportation to work provided for me in the wee small hours another time but for today let's just accept it as an unquestioned perk of the job) I professed that I was "fit to be tied".

I was met with nothing but puzzled expressions. No one in the office had heard it before. I was amazed. I'd thought it to be a phrase from the north of England - turns out it's most likely from the southern states of the US.

* Word of the moment: Meta-bigot. First coined by Slate's Sam Anderson to describe the gorgeous (in all senses) comedian Sarah Silverman and those like her.

"Silverman has become an important member of a guerrilla vanguard in the culture wars that we might call the "meta-bigots"—other members include the South Park kids, Sacha Baron Cohen's "Ali G", and the now-AWOL Dave Chappelle.

The meta-bigots work at social problems indirectly; instead of discussing race, rape, abortion, incest, or mass starvation, they parody our discussions of them. They manipulate stereotypes about stereotypes. It's a dangerous game: If you're humorless, distracted, or even just inordinately history-conscious, meta-bigotry can look suspiciously like actual bigotry.*

First used here.

Cool.