Catachresis, My Old Friend

I've come to talk with you again. In the delirious post-bee afterglow, in discussing memorable observations of nonstandard English, Jonathan Lill treated us with his sighting of an extermination company's truck that proudly blared out along its side "TERMINATE CONTROL." The popular dance music exhortation to "lose control" is taken to the next level -- control must not merely be misplaced, it must by eliminated. We imagined that perhaps it was a kind of New Agey extermination company that instructed clients to "be free" in order to rid themselves of roaches. "Look man, as long as you've got this uptight micromanagement vibe in your apartment, the roaches are gonna be here because they feed on that negativity. If you want them to go, you need to terminate control, embrace hegemony, really be free, man. When you can just let go you won't have this problem any more. Terminate Control!" Although the "terminate control" sighting gave us all a lot of laughs, it was clearly not nearly as important to Jonathan as his recent shiv sighting. Apparently, somewhere in the East Village, a butter knife which has been sharpened on both sides, and whose handle has been reinforced with tape, has been abandoned in the gutter. And Jonathan sighted it.

On a tangentially related note, I have recently become aware of the Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum.