Nevermore

I recently saw a trivia question asking what a group of ravens is called. You may already know that a group of crows is a "murder," which is one of the most famous of the oddball animal group names. But I hadn't heard of a group of ravens before, so I had to look it up. It turns out that a group of ravens is an "unkindness," or a "conspiracy." That's certainly better than my deduction that it's a "manslaughter" of ravens.

What's interesting is that my Google search also turned up this article from the Audubon Society, arguing that it is, in fact, a "group" of crows, ravens, and whatever, since that's what people actually call them. As a birder, he's never used or heard any of the obscure group names, so you can't really say that a group of ravens is called an unkindness, since people in real life call it "a group of ravens." At most, you're just saying that people centuries ago called it by the obscure word. He goes further and asks experts on various animals if they've ever used or heard the group names, and not one had.

Most interestingly, the wombat expert pointed out that wombats don't get into groups, thus begging the question of how anyone devised that they should be a "wisdom" of wombats. I would further point out that although these group names come from the middle ages, no English-speaker set eyes on a wombat until centuries later. So someone out there is just arbitrarily coming up with more of these names, and now has slipped up by including animals that don't group together.

But back to the original idea that these names aren't real. I hadn't really thought about it before, but he's got a point. I mean, here I am, a trivia fan, and yet I've never found the groups of animals interesting, or made much headway in remembering them. I guess that's why; trivia isn't just random info, it has to have at least some importance to be interesting, say, by linking to some other facts. I can remember that the Baltimore Ravens football club is named after the poem because it was written by local boy Edgar Allan Poe. But I'm never going to remember an unkindness of Ravens, even after writing this blog entry about it.

On a similar note, can we lay off the phobia name trivia? I hate it when people ask, "What is 'flentaphobia' a fear of?" I think what you mean is, theoretically, what would it be a fear of if it actually existed. Yes, that's what it theoretically would be called, but just because you can put some Latin roots together, doesn't mean it's an actual thing. I could just say that I have inaniaephobia, the fear of inanity.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #39

You'll see Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness perform "I'm an Adult Now" on TV at age 58.

Das Boo

It's an occasional custom in hockey for fans to boo a hated player whenever he touches the puck. There are numerous reasons why this can happen. Usually it's because the target has committed some sort of dirty play against a member of the home team.

But often, the booing has a mob-mentality to it that waters down its meaning. Years ago, Toronto Maple Leafs captain Mats Sundin was suspended for throwing a stock into the stands. Later, Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson broke his stick mid-play, and jokingly mimed throwing it into the stands. Leaf fans took offense, and gave Alfredsson the booing treatment for years to come. For one thing, the original act wasn't really offensive. But also, hockey is a sport where grave injustices are often left to stand, and booing is the only recourse for fans. It's depressing to think that the punishment given to an unstable cheap-shot artist is the same one given to a guy who did a mildly insulting joke.

Even more unfair is when the crowd turns on a member of the home team. One of the most embarrassing experiences I've had as a sports fan was when the Leafs "fans" decided veteran defenceman Larry Murphy was so personally responsible for the team's woes that they began going him everytime he touched the puck. It was one of the great justices of the game that he was traded to Detroit just in time to win a couple of Stanley Cups.

And this week, the Leaf faithful extended the booing treatment to Nashville's star defenceman PK Subban. Of course, that was a little awkward, booing a guy who's not known for dirty play, and happens to be the only black guy on the ice. To be fair, there's never been a clear, irrefutable explanation for why many people don't like Subban. He may be a different race than most hockey players, but he also differs in other ways: he's a very outgoing individual in a sport that usually values people who fit in. In the past, I've argued that is actually an interaction between the two causes: people cast an especially critical eye towards him because he's of a different race.

So was there an element of racism in the fans' booing? We can't say definitively, so instead, I'd like to look at a different question, which may also say some disturbing things about the sport's culture. I may think there is a racial component to the hockey culture's treatment of Subban, but for the sake of argument, let's say I'm wrong. Let's say this is nothing to do with race. That still leaves the question: why do so many people in hockey hate PK Subban?

Like I said, he's not known for dirty play. He also seems quite friendly in interviews, and is famous for being very charitable. So the only way left to explain it is his personality. Or more specifically, we're talking about the way he expresses it. The hockey world is okay with players like Brent Burns, who are eccentric in ways that fit the hockey culture better, with beards and good-natured oafishness. But charismatic fashionistas are not welcome.

This could be a problem for the sport in the future. For all its dominance in Canada, you can see that the powers that be in hockey are worried, given how many ad campaigns are trying to encourage kids and their patents to get into the sport.

If Subban's treatment is racist, that's bad news for these recruitment drives. We're talking about a sport that's hugely white, in a country that's becoming less so. It's clear that hockey's long-term health requires getting more diverse. But if Subban's treatment is not racist, that may be less bad morally, but it would actually be worse for the sport. If kids don't perceive the rejection as being about colour, they'll see it as being about personality. The lesson will be that if you want to be your own person, then you're not welcome here. To generations that will grow up with more and more avenues of self expression, we'll be selling a sport where your individuality may only be expressed through degrees of aggression.

With The Price Cut, It's Less Frivolous

Yesterday, I strolled through The Bay. Do people still call it that? The store wants to be called "Hudson's Bay," so I don't know if any normal people call it that. Anyway, I often do this, even though I never buy anything. I guess I find it relaxing; I can go through looking without pressure, knowing I probably won't find anything tempting enough to force a difficult decision.

I can't remember the last time I bought something there. For one thing, the prices are pretty high. I find that when they have a sale, all it does is reduce the prices down to what would sound like a good starting price.

And then there's the brands. I think I've made clear that I don't really understand rich-people brands. Surely buying explicitly expensive stuff makes you look desperate. Buying a brand that everyone knows is associated with wealth? That's something poor people would do. So it doesn't make sense for them to exist. But apparently, lots of people will pay big bucks for Ralph Lauren, game theory be damned.

But on this day, I did find a shirt which met all the criteria I was looking for:

• reasonable price
• looked good
• non-bourgeois brand
• doesn't make me look retired

So I took it off the last-chance clearance rack and headed for the fitting rooms.

And they were locked, with no one in sight. Of course, there's no bell like there was at Sears. I wondered around for a bit looking for an employee, but couldn't find one. In retrospect, I suppose I could have just gone back to the cosmetics department at the entrance; there's always plenty of people waiting there to pounce. But of course, that would have been futile. One of the many perks of masculinity is being invisible to them.

So in the end, I gave up and went home, with my never-buying-anything-at-the-Bay streak intact. But on my way out of the store, I happened to notice another shirt on a sale rack, which I took a photo of for posterity:

I'm sure I've seen that pattern before somewhere. Now where could it be?

Not cool, Hudson's Bay. My generation doesn't have much, don't commoditize our touchstones. I should have gone to the women's section to see if they were selling the anarchist cheerleader outfits from the video.

Hey, does this count as cultural appropriation? Excuse me while I call some human rights lawyers.

This Post Might Be A Tide Ad

After the Superbowl is over, you can tell how good a game it was by how much talk is about the game and how much is about the commercials.  This year it was a great game, so there's relatively little talk about the ads, but here's a few thoughts.

First, can we declare a moratorium on meta ads? They can be funny, But enough already. Let's admit that Tide made the ultimate meta ads this year with their ads disguised as other ads, and leave it at that. I hope all the other advertisers appreciated what that did for them, forcing viewers to pay attention to each new commercial for a surprise switch.

But I was also surprised by the Very Serious commercials. For instance Budweiser highlighted their supplying of water to disaster-afflicted areas. They demonstrated this by showing some engineer flip a switch causing the machinery to go from producing cans of Bud to cans of water. I had trouble hearing the rest of the commercial over the sound of everyone in Canada making "what's the difference" jokes, but I saw them list the various places they've provided water. I was pleased to see they included Puerto Rico, despite it being an embarrassing point for the current administration. Now if they'd also included Flint, I'd have gone right out and bought a case just for that.

The biggest fumble had to go to Dodge Trucks - oh, I'm sorry, "Ram" - who set their ad to a recording of a Martin Luther King speech on the importance of service. How could they possibly think that was going to work out for them? Did they somehow find that the demographics of their market happen to line up with the people who look up to King, but wouldn't find it tacky for a corportion to co-opt his image?

There was a similar problem with an ad for Hyundai, bragging about donating a portion of sales to cancer charities. It was a hold-nothing-back heartstring-tugger, but it really felt awkward. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they are donating money to a good cause, though I am troubled by the fact that they just paid $5 million to tell us that they give to charity. But besides that, it seemed almost as tone-deaf as the Ram ad. In both cases, they didn't understand that as a corporation, there's going to be a certain cynicism inherent in the audience, and they have to respect that. It's okay to show your company doing good things, and even congratulate yourself a little for it. But when you go into full tearjerker mode, no one's buying the idea that you're that idealistic.