Thursday, January 06, 2005

Has that Twink finished working on my Wang yet?


Bottle of Twink School Mate (next to Virgin Mary for scale)
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Words are funny things.
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In a fit of iPod jealously I decided to paint an old pair of head phones white with typists correction fluid. The plan was to then travel on public transport and jiggle my puffy, aged body round in an exaggerated parody of the iPod dance with the headphones connected to a c.1986 JVC Tape Walkman.
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Stage One - Find a bottle of typists correction fluid

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No problems there. I rummaged around my desk drawer and out came …
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A bottle of Twink
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I laughed. I laughed because I am a pathetic wee goblin of a manchild who finds that sort of thing funny.
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What was going on here? Could it be that everyone at Papermate was so out of tune with developments in the English language that they didn't know what a twink was. Did the brand name Twink predate the now common usage, as in the now long defunct Ayds slimming biscuits? I wouldn’t know, I've always been a Tippex man myself.
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Or, as I would like to believe, did someone at Papermate know exactly what a Twink was and decided to have a giggle pulling the corporate chain? Kind of like those guys who get the sack and stay at their posts long enough to record obscene customer service messages or paint dogs humping in the background of pictures on biscuit tins.
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Or maybe the contemporary meaning of Twink is not widely known. Just in case it isn’t, here are a couple of clues in the form of competitive explanations for the derivation of the word:


  1. Twink comes from an acronym T.W.I.N.K. "Teenage, White, Into No Kink.
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  2. Twink is a shortening of the name for the famous "TWINKIE" snack cake: a tasty, cream-filled snack with no nutritional value. The phallic shape of the "TWINKIE" snack cake should not escape the reader's attention.
If you're still not sure what I'm talking about just do a Google image search but only, and I stress only, if you're OK with gay porn.
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Yes, words are funny things. West Side Story was on TV as part of the Christmas Festivities and there we were listening to the now famous line:
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'I feel pretty. Oh so pretty. I feel witty and pretty and gay!!!'
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which has morphed in subsequent productions into:
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'I feel pretty. Oh so pretty. I feel witty and pretty and wise!!!'
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to reflect the change in the meaning of a certain word post 1961. As a relevant aside, West Side Story saw the first use of the word 'cool' to mean 'cool' as in 'Cool, Daddy-O', which was invented specifically for the show. Cool.
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All these thoughts of Twinks, Gayness and Coolness also reminded me of my first few months working in a firm of accountants in the late 1980's. The firm was fully equipped with state of the art word processing facilities. Word processing facilities produced by the Wang Corporation. This was back in the Happy Days when companies still employed pools of typists and mere mortals were not permitted to use word processors. Only they weren't called typists. To reflect the high-tech cutting edge nature of the equipment they were using they were referred to as Operators, Wang Operators. Yes, those first few difficult months knuckling down to the world of accountancy were occasionally brightened up by lines like:
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Go down and see my Wang Operator, Mavis, she should have finished working on my stuff by now
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Does anyone know how to use a Wang?
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Is that ready for Wanging yet?
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Like I said. I am a pathetic wee goblin of a manchild
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