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In a survival of the fittest world in which social networking, full QWERTY keypads, and 500 channels in a basic cable package contribute to the multiple birth and quick death of new expressions, "Good Times" has adapted and thrived.

Linguists originally categorized the expression as an Interjection-by-Proxy. Jimmie Walker in the 1974 Chicago ghetto situation comedy (Chighetsitcom) "Good Times" was fond of the interjection "Dy-no-mite!" and the series title grew to become an interjection in its own right.

(Expressions-by-proxy are common in Norman Lear-developed programs. The slur "Meathead" as uttered by Archie Bunker against his son in-law, Michael Stivic, evolved to the point that schoolchildren of the era would insult each other with "you All in the Family.")

But after "Good Times"' cancellation in 1979, the expression needed to accommodate the uncertain climate of hostages in Iran, the Grenada invasion, and heightening Cold War rhetoric. "Good Times!" dropped its exclamation point and became to language-watchers a Muted Ejaculation.

It was the supernova of snarker irony following the September 11 attacks, however, that saw "Good Times"' most dramatic flowering as an Ironic Gesture.

"I have the lowest approval ratings of any President since Richard Nixon went trick-or-treating as Andrew Johnson," George W. Bush said at a Rose Garden ceremony in 2007. "Good times."

Scholars have not identified every catchphrase and idiom as progressing thusly from Muted Ejaculation through Ironic Gesture, probably because the space between new editions of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language contained the birth and death of what has come to be known as Bloggerese.

"The only good thing about bloggers is they leave a relatively small paper trail," said OED editor Sir James Blemage. "Unless they pay some service to print their LiveJournals."

So "Good Times" as Ironic Gesture might die off as hipsters get jobs and/or morning drive teams find their shows replaced by "Breakfast with the Beatles."

With daily predictions of the death of Hipster Irony confounded by the trend's heroic will to survive, however, "Good Times" has nevertheless jumped ship and changed form, this time to a transitional adverb or Disjunct, joining catch-all sentence modifiers like "Hopefully," "So anyway," and its closest sibling "LOL."

"Good times, the family and I are planning a trip to the Grand Canyon. Hope the car makes it LOL" - e-mail from sister, 2008
"With Karmiazin's death, good times, came news that the borders had opened" - Vilnius Bee, 2009
"I meant to say 'memories' but I said 'mammaries,' phew, good times" - National Air And Space Museum press release, 2008

Whether "Good Times" will again mutate according to the changing cultural landscape, stay for decades feeding at the rich adverbial buffet, or slowly fade into quaintness like "By gum," "Greedy Jew," or "God's Wounds" is uncertain.

What is for sure is that I will probably shoot the next person who says it to me.

Labels: language

It was bound to happen. The nation's first Web 2.0 president (Al Gore and Howard Dean didn't count), elected with such high expectations, was fated to encounter System Errors.

If Obama doesn't act now, people will say "blackberry" when they mean "phone." And by the time the tech hysteria has abated, ice will once again cover the Earth.

First there was Timothy Geithner who, as Obama's nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, hit bumps in the confirmation process when mistakes were found on his income taxes. The problem? Geithner said he didn't understand Intuit's TurboTax software. (Geithner was confirmed, but to have let Health And Human Services nominee Tom Daschle and "Chief Performance Officer" designate Nancy Killefer dodge the tax bullet, too, would have been like repeating the same joke at a party.)

Then there was the proposed delay in recovering the nation's precious analog spectrum. Didn't you have plans for your share of the spectrum? I did.

But now Obama is in danger of shepherding into the language a term that can only help Research in Motion.

Candidate Obama was rarely scene without his Blackberry smartphone during his 17-month campaign, but the Blackberry's encryption limitations concerned the Secret Service and NSA, who at first gently requested he give up the phone so 14-year-old Malaysian hackers couldn't read his e-mail.

"They're going to pry it out of my hands," Obama actually said to CNBC, which seemed about as cavalier as Bush's "Bring it on" remark.

But the Secret Service and National Security Agency have found a way to allow a first smartphone to live in the White House. The issue is that it can't possibly be a Blackberry.

The Blackberry does not support the type of security that would be required for the president's top secret correspondence. While it runs its own operating system, the Blackberry is only capable of handling For Official Use Only (FOUO) data, nothing classified, and only uses Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) encryption, which is easily hackable (though I couldn't do it).

So Mr. Obama will probably use the clunky but secure Sectera Edge from General Dynamics, currently in use by the military and paranoiacs worldwide, and certified by the NSA.

Unfortunately, "Blackberry" has been bandied about so much in the media that the word is in danger of becoming synonymous with "smartphone" and "phone" the way generic flying discs are all brand-name Friebees, colas are "Cokes," and performing WWW searches has become googling, with a small "g."

It is up to the Big G himself to not refer to his Sectera Edge as his "blackberry," if for no other reason that that's a couple of short hops to "nucular."

Labels: blackberry, general dynamics, language, obama, RIM, smartphone

-- Thursday, February 19, 2009 --

Good times for "good times"

-- Thursday, February 5, 2009 --

Did Obama make "Blackberry" the new "phone"?

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