Sunday, August 30, 2009

On the subject of silly nicknames

by Smitty

Commenter 'Random' inquires concerning the whole Porch Manqué schtick.

First, I'll point you to Wikipedia, which discusses the term.

There used to be a bit on that page saying that Robbie Williams had been alluding to "manqué" on the track "Me and My Monkey" off of Escapeology.

This cut is a silly, over-the-top shaggy dog story. Note that it ends with an F-bomb at ~7:20. Other than that, it's a hoot, and worth watching in the HQ mode for better audio:



By putting "porch" in front of "manqué", we get a distinct handle. When first invited to be Vice Deputy Assistant Under-Secretary to the Spitoon Wrangler on this blog, I wanted to have a term to explain the relationship between Stacy and me. If I completely tubed a post, that was because I was an embarrassment; a failure.

The term "porch" allows all sorts of (hopefully comic) allusions to toiling away in abject squalor.

There is also the bit that the term veers quite close to a racial slur. Having served several years in the military, I'm about as un-racially biased as anyone. To the extent that every time I use it, I can play the Alinsky Rule #5 card and mock the ignorance of racism, it's a good thing.

Of course, every time you use the symbol, you exhaust a bit of its meaning. One day, Porch Manqué Productions may collapse into PMP. Nature of the symbolic beast, really.

5 comments:

  1. So a tubed post by the Porch Manque would be manky or mank or mancus? Porch Manque mank? Manky Porch Manque mank most mancus?

    Sorted.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Try
    Porsche Manque

    It's so much more insidious...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rage, rage against the exhaustion of meaning. Make further addition to the Porch Manque lexicon: Porch Manquere, Porch Manker, whisky tango manque, Porch Manquiest, Porch Manquier, Porch Manqued, Porch Manquissimo, Porch Manquessential.... give it tongue!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh! I had assumed it was an homage to Florence King's character, Gonad Manque.

    ReplyDelete
  5. No, haven't read Florence King, sorry.

    ReplyDelete