This was the era in which we were known as “Conectiv”. It was an era of some crazy, flashy marketing. One of these marketing devices was a series of commercials that featured Jason Alexander (yes, really–George Costanza).

In retrospect, he may have been the perfect spokesperson for the company at the time.

I just found the following video of an outtake from the filming of one of these spots (and some other work done by the video marketing company):

His latest email, though, had me smiling throughout and also taught me a thing or two.  So I deemed it worthy of a blog post.  (This is obviously a rarity.)

Dear Friends,
Please read no farther if you are in any way offended by very vulgar language.

—————————————————————————————————-

Once again something has happened to remind me that we are never too old to learn (or, more brutally, that it’s possible to be wrong all your life.) Back in the 1950′s, when I was about 20 and a student at the University of London, I had a job for a few days doing manual labor on a construction site. My fellow workmen were all regular laborers, a different class of people from those with whom I normally associated, and their manner of expression was to my ears shockingly coarse.

Until then, I had led a rather sheltered life, and in my family any word stronger than “damn” (which my father uttered only in moments of great stress) was absolutely taboo. But these men seemed to use those nasty words, and in particular the various conjugations of “fuck,” as a kind of punctuation. The one thing I have always remembered most vividly from that entire experience was one man saying to another in a loud voice:

“I FUCKIN’ SWEAR I’VE SEEN YOU SOMEWHERE BE-FUCKIN’-FORE.”

I have carried that memory all these years, not just as an example of extreme verbal vulgarity, but also because such a linguistic construction was totally new to me. And since I have never heard its like again, I had always thought that what I heard must have been a somewhat rare and creative use of language.  I have never dared to share this recollection in print, and would not be doing so even now, had I not just discovered that, far from being rare, that kind of expression is so familiar to scholars that there is actually a name for it. What’s more, there is even a poem celebrating it! And the poem itself is so celebrated (at least in Australia) that it has apparently given this type of expression an alternative name..

The official, or traditional, name is TMESIS, which goes back to ancient Greece, and means “inserting a word into another word for intensifying effect.”  The much newer term is TUMBARUMBA, which is the name of a small town in New South Wales.

My eyes were opened to all this quite recently by a new book by Roy Blount Jr, called “ALPHABET JUICE,” which fanatical lovers of word meanings, origins, and usages (of whom, generally speaking, I must say I am not one) will surely find endlessly fascinating. Mr. Blount gives various examples of TMESIS, such as “IM-BLOODY-POSSIBLE” and “ABSO-BLOOMING-LUTELY” — although he makes it clear that vulgarity is not a prerequisite, and the expression can be as mild as “A WHOLE NOTHER” and “ANY-OLD-WHERE.”

The celebratory poem is by the popular Australian writer John Patrick O’Grady. (1907-1981) Apparently he originally titled it “The Integrated Adjective” — but for good reason the poem, (and by now, if not since long before the poem was written, the town itself) is famous as TUMBA BLOODY RUMBA.

I will give you the entire text, in which you will notice that “bloody” (originally a religious oath — “by our Lady” — and for some reason much more repugnant to Brits than to Americans) is the expletive of choice, rather than the purely sexual (and thus I suppose even more reprehensible) “fuckin’”.of my youthful remembrance — but otherwise the general concept is just the same:

“Tumba Bloody Rumba”

I was down the Riverina, knockin’ ’round the towns a bit,
And occasionally resting with a schooner in me mitt,
And on one of these occasions, when the bar was pretty full
And the local blokes were arguin’ assorted kind of bull,
I heard a conversation, most peculiar in its way.
It’s only in Australia you would hear a joker say:
“Howya bloody been, ya drongo, haven’t seen ya fer a week,
And yer mate was lookin’ for ya when ya come in from the creek.
‘E was lookin’ up at Ryan’s, and around at bloody Joe’s,
And even at the Royal, where ‘e bloody NEVER goes”.
And the other bloke says “Seen ‘im? Owed ‘im half a bloody quid.
Forgot to give it back to him, but now I bloody did -
Could’ve used the thing me bloody self. Been off the bloody booze,
Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos.”
Now the bar was pretty quiet, and everybody heard
The peculiar integration of this adjectival word,
But no-one there was laughing, and me – I wasn’t game,
So I just sits back and lets them think I spoke the bloody same.
Then someone else was interested to know just what he got,
How many kanga-bloody-roos he went and bloody shot,
And the shooting bloke says “Things are crook -
the drought’s too bloody tough.
I got forty-two by seven, and that’s good e-bloody-nough.”
And, as this polite rejoinder seemed to satisfy the mob,
Everyone stopped listening and got on with the job,
Which was drinkin’ beer, and arguin’, and talkin’ of the heat,
Of boggin’ in the bitumen in the middle of the street,
But as for me, I’m here to say the interesting piece of news
Was Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos.

*****

Auatralia has always been one of my favorite countries — and not just because I seem to have a disproportionate number of fans and customers there. But any country that could take on the entire force of world scholarship and single-handedly replace TMESIS with TUMBARUMBA. is good e-bloody-nough for me.

All the best,
Ashleigh Brilliant

P.S. Bitumen is what Australians call asphalt — and no, I do not condone the shooting of kangaroos.

ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT, 117 W. Valerio St. Santa Barbara CA 93101 USA. Phone (805) 682-0531 Orders:(800) 952-3879, Code #77. Creator of POT-SHOTS, syndicated author of I MAY NOT BE TOTALLY PERFECT, BUT PARTS OF ME ARE EXCELLENT. 10,000 copyrighted BRILLIANT THOUGHTS available as cards, books etc.World’s highest-paid writer (per word). Most-quoted author (per Reader’s Digest.) Free daily Pot-Shot cartoon: www.ashleighbrilliant.com CATALOGS:[h&m included]. Starter $2. Complete Printed version: $18 Electronic Text-Only (emailed $25, on CD $30). Electronic Illustrated Catalog/Database (CD only) $105 (includes shipping anywhere). Details: www.ashleighbrilliant.com/IllustratedCatalog.html

P.S. I learned about it via GeekDad.

(Please excuse the advertisements in the beginning and end, the Herald is merely trying to monetize their work. Rightfully so…It’s a really good video..of a really bad scene.)

It’s tuned to Zappa’s Similar Artists. (Purportedly, the music you hear will be Zappa-esque. We shall see…)

Let’s see:

(See also: http://americanhistory.si.edu/subs/operating/aboard/habitability/index.html)

• Surround yourself with a few people you don’t like
• Find a dumpster, paint it black and rig it so the door can be locked from the inside. Get a dozen of your best friends and cram everyone inside. Tie it to a car and have someone pull you around at high speed for three months.
• Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Two to three hours after you fall asleep, have your roommate whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble “Sorry, wrong rack.
• Repeat back everything anyone says to you.
• Spend as much time as possible indoors and avoid sunlight. Only view the world through the peep hole on your front door.
• Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level. Shower once a week. Use no more than 2 gallons of water per shower.
• Buy a trash compactor but never use it. Store garbage in the other side of your bathtub.
• Sit in your car for six hours a day with your hands on the wheel and the motor running, but don’t go anywhere. Install 200 extra oil temperature gauges. Take logs on all gages and indicators every 30 minutes.
• Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it to “High”.
• Watch only unknown movies with no major stars on TV and then, only at night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch, then watch a different one.
• Leave lawnmower running in your living room six hours a day for proper noise level.
• Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
• Take hourly readings on your electric and water meters.
• Invite guests, but don’t have enough food for them.
• Buy a broken exercise bicycle and strap it down to the floor in your kitchen.
• Eat only food that you get out of a can or have to add water to.
• Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread. (Optional- cold beans and weenies, canned ravioli or soup).
• Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator.
• Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as you can, then run to your kitchen with the garden hose while wearing a scuba mask.
• Once a month take every major appliance completely apart and then put them back together. Ensure you have parts left over.
• Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 or 6 hours before drinking. Never wash any coffee cups.
• Store your eggs in your garage for two months and then scramble a dozen each morning.
• Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
• Check your refrigerator compressor for “sound shorts”.
• Put a complicated lock on your basement door and wear the key on a lanyard around your neck.
• Lockwire the lugnuts on your car.
• When making cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it is baking. Then spread icing really thick on one side to level off the top.
• Every so often, yell “Emergency Deep!”, run into the kitchen, and sweep all pots/pans/dishes off of the counter onto the floor. Then, yell at your family for not having the place “stowed for sea”.
• Put on the headphones from your stereo (don’t plug them in). Go and stand in front of your stove. Say (to nobody in particular) “Stove manned and ready”. Stand there for 3 or 4 hours. Say (once again to nobody in particular) “Stove secured”. Roll up the headphone cord and put them away.
• Tag out the steering wheel, gas pedal, brake pedal, transmission and cigarette lighter when you change the oil in your car.
• Use Kool-aid on all your breakfast cereals for 2 months.
• Fill laundry baskets with oil. Lay in them, on your back, and change the washers on the water spigots.
• While doing laundry, replace liquid fabric softener with diesel fuel.
• Buy bunk beds (3 high type) and convert the narrowest hallway in your home into a bedroom.
• Knock a glass of water out of someone’s hand and yell ‘SPILL’. Shout at them the entire time they clean it up, tell them how worthless they are, then do it again.
• Request ‘permission to enter’ whenever you go into the kitchen.
• Buy all food in cases and line the floor with them.
• Replace all doorways with windows so that you have to step up AND duck to go through them.
• Whenever someone enters a room you’re cleaning, shout “up and over!” at them so they’ll go through the attic to get to the kitchen.
• Paint the windshield of your car black. Make a family member stand up through the sunroof shouting directions at you on where to drive.
• Start every story with “This is no-shit“.
• Install a Furnace and Air Conditioner that blows directly on you while you are sleeping. Have the controls so they will cycle to hot and cold in a matter of seconds.
• Go to the market and buy 100 quarts of milk. Pour them into a large white trash bag and secure. Put the bag into the refrigerator and rename it “The Cow”.
• Have week old fruit and vegetables delivered to your garage and wait two weeks before eating them.
• Prepare all meals blindfolded using all the spices you can grope for, or none at all. Remove the blindfold and eat everything in three minutes.
• Periodically, shut off all power at the main circuit breaker and run around shouting “fire, fire, fire” and then restore power.
• Remove all plants, pictures and decorations.
• Paint everything gray, white, or “sea foam” green.
• Buy 50 cases of toilet paper and lock up all but two rolls. Ensure one of these two rolls is wet at all times.
• Make sure every water valve in your home has two backups in line which must all be operated to obtain water.
• Repaint the interior of your home every month, whether it needs it or not.
• All communications with outside family and friends is limited to 40 characters or less. Unplug all radios and TVs to completely cut yourself off from the outside world.
• Run a tube from your car’s exhaust pipe into your living room, yell “prepare to snorkel”, and start the car. You must breathe the fumes for one hour.
• Mount as many sharp-cornered lockers as you can in all the most traveled halls of your house. Leave almost no room to squeeze by.