Saturday, July 29, 2006

"Elastic Loaves:" Best. New. Band. Name. Ever.

According to an AP story, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "banning" the use of "foreign" words. Love it.

Love it. Love it, love it, love it. Loved it when the Académie Française (founded by Cardinal Richlieu!) tried to keep English out of French. Because "the box that has pictures and sound it in," is sooo much more intelligent and sexy sounding than, "le television."

Love it for a couple few reasons. One, it's a giant waste of time. And if Mahmoud is wasting time on trippy little crap like this, it means two things: 1) he's not focsing on building WMD, and; 2) he's becoming a more modern leader. Modern leaders in the 21st century focus on BS issues like gay marriage, flag burning, "freedom fries," violence in videogames and the horrible, horrible problems that can be caused by using a word for something that somebody else in another place came up with. Because, God/Jehovah/Allah knows, we can't have thoughts in our heads (or crap in our garage) that has been labelled by the people who invented it. Or by the people who popularized it. Or by anyone who looks different than we do. Or by me.

Also love it because it shows that Mahmoud is inching closer to "Tree Dwelling Loon" on the "Patented Andy Havens' Scale of Bug-Fuck Crazy Leaders." Now... you may think it's a bad thing to have the first Middle Eastern nuclear power (second if we count Israel, but she's soooo coy about those babies) led by a nutter. But, really... the quicker he goes totally yabba-dabba-doo, the quicker we can have some more Ruin in the Dunes. We've just about screwed ourselves into a hole too deep to get out of in Iraq, so it would be FABULOUS to have a really compelling reason to go, "Hey! We HAVE to pull out of Iraq! We need to get all those troops over to Iran immediately because their leader has just holed himself up in a rural "small room" and is lobbing various large incendiary devices all over the Holy Land. That would be cool. So. Crazy language policy = one step closer to "Iranian Stalemate." Or whatever we call our next Military Industrial economic bolstering maneuver.

But mostly love it because the new Iranian term for "pizzas" is "elastic loaves." And this, from a social, anthropologic and linguistic standpoint is what just cranks my noodle wide open and gives me a big grin. Pizza is... what? Traditionally, an Italian food. Made very popular in the great Satanic America. Variously, depending on the thickness of crust, you can apparently still have the Hated Western Devil Chicago Style Elastic Loaves (thick crust), or Godless Roman Infidel Crispy Elastic Loaves (thin).  Though the latter is a bit contradictory in syntax, as the Roman pizza / elastic loaves I've had is about as "elastic" as a Wheat Thin.

Iran has not called a jihad on the food. But on the words for the food. In the war for the minds of people, this means you have lost. You can not TELL people what not to think. From a memetic point of view, it's impossible. Because while telling them what not to think, you've just delivered the viral communicative load you're hoping to prevent.

Love it. And my next band is SO going to be called "The Elastic Loaves."

No comments:

Post a Comment