SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: One bluegill, one crappie, one carp.

Last week I posted a serious article, in which a small joke was inserted.

Culture, demographics and territorial pissings: "Gen X Is Having a (Very Gen X) Moment."

Thanks to Bluegill (or as they refer to him in France, Bleugill) for drawing my attention to this essay.

The reference should be familiar to anyone who has surveyed the salad offerings and wondered why English-speakers insist on misspelling the color blue.

You'll be dismayed to hear this, but the phrase “blue cheese” showed up in English a century and a half before the Frenchified “bleu cheese” version. In fact, the phrase “blue cheese” may have appeared in English before fromage bleu made its appearance in French.

NAC's co-editor emeritus long has been known for his nickname derived from the fish, but a regular reader took it a step further.

In France, the bluegill is often called "crapet arlequin”… for the little black spot by the fish’s gills. I think it’s from where we bastardized the name “crappie”.

So it would appear.

Crappie - Wikipedia

Etymology. The genus name Pomoxis derives from the Greek πώμα (cover, plug, operculum) and οξύς (sharp). The common name (also spelled croppie or crappé), derives from the Canadian French crapet, which refers to many different fishes of the sunfish family.

Fishing isn't my bag, and I have eaten neither crappie nor bluegill for many years. Carp is a different story. Not only is carp a fish that makes great, peppery soup when pulled from the depths of Lake Balaton, but it also is a very useful verb in New Gahania.

The verb to carp is synonymous with to complain. However, where complaining is usually understandable, carping about something is complaining to the extent that it annoys others and may make people uncomfortable.

At this juncture I'll let sleeping fishies lie.

Make no mistake: Jeff Gahan is the "driving force" behind the Bored of Works' inability to fathom street pianos, public art and modernity itself.

There always are self-assigned community pillars who believe it is their solemn duty to safeguard the community from terroristic threats, such as that posed by a painted piano on a downtown street corner.

In their interior worlds, where Velvet Elvii and Happy Meals define the very extent of artistic aspiration, there is a mortal fear that "respectable" folks will laugh at them for allowing modes of expression that cannot by categorized by dull conformity, and worse yet, expression that resists being linked to the address on the campaign committee flier for the express purpose of gathering the monies necessary for the next campaign, from whence their need to control ultimately derives.

When in reality, these officious guardians of neutered conformity are the ones being laughed at. In fact, they're plain silly, and getting even sillier. That they're Democrats makes me laugh even harder.

Daniel Suddeath explains that in New Albany, surreal small-pond bureaucratic Philistinism is an inexorably expanding universe: New Albany again delays street piano request.

It's been highly instructive to observe the Bored of Works contriving one bumbling excuse after another to cover for its down-low orders to maintain proper channels for expression.

We don't understand this art ... OMG, who'll tune the piano? ... wait, ask the preservation people for their permission, 'cuz, you know, the piano is old ... no, how about Develop New Albany -- yeah, that's right (chortles in corridor afterward), DNA does all that goofy merchant support stuff we see going on even as we're driving out to the Cracker Barrel in Sellersburg.

Earth to the Bored: DNA has, er, WHAT to do with any of this?

What's next, Warren V Nash?

Ask Animal Control?

Jeeves?

The Oracle at Delphi?

Tell you what: I'll personally make Hannegan's mandated "Gahan for Mayor" campaign donation FOR HER, even though I'm running against him, if that would somehow help you arrive at a position somewhere proximate to a CLUE.

Jeeebus. It's an art project and a street piano. Exactly what does nuclear physics have to do with it?

Of course, if Hannegan had only let the mayor think it was his idea, then we'd have a street piano on every corner in town -- player pianos, that is, just to make sure no one departed from the chosen street music and the top-down sacred political writ.

Here are previous NAC links to the street piano saga.

Life is like a street piano. What the Bored of Works gets out of it depends on how they "nay" it.

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 95: It's the return of 18-wheeler pinup porn and utter Bored of Works indifference.

Seattle alleys, New Albany street pianos and the overdue purging of bureaucrats.