Sue Bailey

Collins are to include the word ‘meh’ in the new edition of their dictionary, to be published next year. This is an odd little story. Elaine Higgleton, the editorial director at Collins Dictionaries, makes it sound like an ordinary vocabulary test:

We ran this campaign to encourage the public to tell us about the words that they use every day, but that aren’t in the dictionary.

But the piece reads more like Strictly Come Dictionary, with meh having somehow outdanced its fellow neologisms to make it to the hallowed pages. Its competitors – jargonaut, frenemy, huggles are cited – are John Sergeants of words: their ugliness makes them irresistable for a moment, but you know you’ll dump them for words that can really dance.

For anyone who *hasn’t* had a conversation with me recently, “meh” is an expression of extreme indifference or boredom. Its origins are disputed, though its popularity – like my other favourite embiggen – is almost certainly due to its use in The Simpsons. Episode 2F15 is the earliest I know of:

Bart: [whining] Oh, these renaissance fairs are so boring.
Marge: Oh, really? Did you see the loom? I took loom in high school.
[Marge hums, quickly weaves "Hi Bart, I am weaving on a loom"]
Bart: [pause] Meh.

But perhaps more importantly, episode CABF09 for the actual spelling:

Homer: Kids, how would you like to go to … Blockoland!
Bart & Lisa: Meh.
Homer: But the TV gave me the impression that –
Bart: We said, “Meh!”
Lisa: M. E. H. Meh.

I’m so delighted, I think I’ll get one of these to celebrate.

D’oh made the OED back in 2001

So if you’ve missed the story, here it is: Abraham Biggs, a 19 year old man from Florida broadcast his death by overdose via webcam. He had previously stated his intention to commit suicide on a bodybuilding forum, and then had posted a link to his webcam stream over justin.tv.

Piecing together exactly what happened when is difficult. It’s not clear from the press reporting whether people were watching this video stream for hours, or for about 30-40 minutes. Some of the forum’s users, apparently including a moderator of the site, did not take his threats seriously because he had talked about suicide before on several occasions. Others called the police. Still others – apparently – called Abraham Biggs himself, and told him to “do it”. Some commentators almost seemed to hold the internet itself responsible:

Montana Miller, an assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said the circumstances of Biggs’ suicide were not shocking, given the way teenagers chronicle every facet of their lives on sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

“If it’s not recorded or documented, then it doesn’t even seem worthwhile,” she said. “For today’s generation it might seem, ‘What’s the point of doing it if everyone isn’t going to see it?’ “

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Some things don’t even need a comment.

The Rt Rev Patrick O’Donoghue, the [Catholic] Bishop of Lancaster… [says] “What we have witnessed in Western societies since the end of the Second World War is the development of mass education on a scale unprecedented in human history [...] these intellectual trends have resulted in a fragmented society that marginalizes God, with many people mistakenly thinking they can live happy and productive lives without him.”

It reminds me of this overheard conversation:

“If you get a bachelor’s degree,” the seasoned student reassured, “you’ll probably be okay. But my professor said that when you get a master’s, and definitely if you go beyond that, you can lose your values. He said that college students have to be watchful because if you get too much education, you could turn – LIBERAL. He’s seen it happen to a lot of good Christians.”

And for the sake of balance, here are several hundred arguments for the existence of god. If I had to buy anyone’s line, it would be Ben Franklin’s: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

We caught him in a water bottle, and put him in the damp grass by the shed. I hope he’ll be okay.

Five points to the house of your choice for the title.

Last night’s Horizon, titled How mad are you? seems to have stirred up some feeling. If you didn’t see it, think Big Brother only with crazy people… hmm, maybe not.

The premise is this: ten people, five with diagnoses of various mental illnesses, and five allegedly normal, have been ensconced in Hever Castle, along with a panel of three mental health experts. The experts have to tell, by observing the inmates doing a variety of tasks, who has which of their list of mental disorders. Will they label perfectly sane people as mentally ill? Will people with mental illnesses convince the experts that there’s nothing wrong with them? I think we can probably guess that the answer to both of those questions is “yes”.

Many of the complaints I’ve seen about the programme – and most of them were before it was aired – have been along the lines of “how the label is going to damaged this person’s life”: being called bipolar or depressed or socially anxious on national television is, it’s said, far far worse than being thought only eccentric, individual or just plain odd. And what if a normal person gets labelled mad? Back in the closet with you, mentallists!

In the event, the strongest argument against this was the participants themselves. Two were ‘outed’ on last night’s first show: the experts spotted Dan with OCD, who said he ordinarily made no effort to conceal it, washing his hands fifty times a day and refusing to touch other people, and – if not exactly proud of his condition – then he was absolutely not willing to be ashamed of it. Good for him.

Their diagnosis for Yasmin, on the other hand, was wrong. They diagnosed her as not mentally ill, but she is (we haven’t found out yet what her real diagnosis is), and she was delighted to have fooled the experts. She might have a mental illness, but she’s every bit as normal as the rest of us.

Did it trivialise mental health issues? Though the slightly game-show format isn’t the best, I still don’t think so. When the typical mad person in the media is a released-from-hospital-too-soon schizophrenic who’s committed murder or worse, it was very nice to see some people who were a less flamboyant kind of crazy: ordinary, functional people who just happen to have this diagnosis. And it was very, very nice to see that a diagnosis of a mental disorder isn’t some kind of death sentence, but something that might, in fact, have its uses in understanding just what’s going on in that head of yours.

I’m sticking the rest of this post – the “where I’m coming from” part – behind the cut, so that those who want to avoid perhaps TMI about the inside of my head can do so. The second part of Horizon: How mad are you? is on next Tuesday on BBC2, and the first bit can be watched online, at least by those in the UK.

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1. However much my conscious mind knows that there is a power cut, my unconscious mind will still make me reach for the light switch when I enter a room.
2. The ability to make fire is more important than I thought it was.
3. There is a point to washing windows after all: it’s so they can let light through.
4. A generator that’s sitting in a barn, not connected to anything, is just a lump of metal.
5. Being disconnected from the internet feels like having my eyes plucked out.

Conclusion? You can send the girl back to the middle ages, but you can’t take the twenty-first century out of the girl.

[part one of, I hope, not too many more]

ASQ: Have you got another xxx as mine arrived damaged? I thought there might be a bit of a problem with it when I saw the tire track across the front of the envelope.

Man, at checkout in bricolage: And these please.
Checkout lady: Four steel tape measures?
Man: Yes, that’s right.

After he’s paid, he turns solemnly to the three children waiting for him.

Man: Right, I’m giving you each one of these. It’s not a toy. Your job is to wait until I’ve lost mine, and then lend me yours.

Photo by Mulad

and now I’m going to bed. When I was little, I had a theory that if you stayed up all night, you’d get to tomorrow (instead of just waking up today), and something magical would happen. And I was right.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

Welcome to one day.

please

Me: I’m calling on behalf of the Labour Party to remind you to vote in the local elections today.
Her: I’ll vote alright, but it won’t be for you.
Me: That’s cool, just so long as you vote.

My name’s Sue, I’m a cheese-eating surrender monkey, and I approve this message.