submissions
| Frank Zappa – Flakes Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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This is a reply to BarnabyHughes\' comment about "flake" meaning "idiot" in the US, and "an unreliable person" in the UK. The Reply composer doesn\'t allow paragraphs, and always inserts a backslash ("\\") before an apostrophe.\n\n________________\n\nHmmm...I live in the US, and in my experience, "flake" has always meant "someone who is unreliable", as in, "Yeah...the guy flaked out on me". A "flake" makes commitments and then doesn\'t honor them.\n\nThat appears to be the usage intended by Mr. Zappa in his song "Flakes". The song clearly refers to people who represent themselves as being able to perform certain jobs, but they don\'t deliver what they promise, and they don\'t deliver on time. \n\nThere is often an implied element of incompetence, at least in the examples FZ uses in the song. The outcome of the flakes\' efforts is often worse than the original problem they were hired to fix: the motor was eaten by snakes, they wreck it some more, the toilet blows up.\n\nThe song also disparages the concept of guaranteed pay for bad work; flakes expect to be paid for their time, not for actually accomplishing anything. Hence the reference to "We\'re protected by unions"...\n\n...which is NOT to say that all unionized workers are incompetent. Rather, it appears to be a reference to the fact that, in cases wherein a flake works incompetently or inefficiently, their jobs generally are not at risk. The companies they work for might eat the loss if the customer doesn\'t pay, but the unionized workers get paid anyway. \n\nI hasten to repeat that such a condition is not a condemnation of all unionized workers, many of whom are competent, and have sufficient integrity to do professional work. The truth is that many don\\\'t have a choice. There are places where union membership is a prerequisite for getting certain jobs. \n\nBut that\\\'s a result of political interference, which typically guarantees that there will be an outcome that is worse than whatever problem that interference is intended to solve. That theme appears elsewhere in FZ\'s work.\n\nI am unfamiliar with the use of "flakes" as a term meaning "idiot" here in the US. I am not saying it\\\'s not used that way in some areas; perhaps that\'s a localized usage. \n\nThere may indeed be "too" (meaning "also") other meanings that are different as you have indicated, depending on where you live in the U.S. Or there may be only "two" (meaning 1+1) meanings. \n\nIn any case, I appreciate knowing that the "unreliable" meaning is the one that will be understood as such by those in the UK. It is definitely important to use the same semantics as the message recipient if you want to communicate effectively, |
submissions
| Frank Zappa – Flakes Lyrics
| 3 years ago
|
|
This "Reply" composer does not allow the use of carriage return to separate text into paragraphs. Instead, it enters the text string "r\\n\\r\\n", glomming everything together into an unbroken wall of text. How idiotic. |
submissions
| Frank Zappa – Flakes Lyrics
| 3 years ago
|
|
@[BarnabyHughes:41260] - Hmmm...I live in the US, and in my experience, "flake" has always meant "someone who is unreliable", as in, "Yeah...the guy flaked out on me". A "flake" makes commitments and then doesn\'t honor them.\r\n\r\nThat appears to be the usage intended by Mr. Zappa in his song "Flakes". The song clearly refers to people who represent themselves as being able to perform certain jobs, but they don\'t deliver what they promise, and they don\'t deliver on time. \r\n\r\nThere\'s often an implied element of incompetence, at least in the examples FZ uses in the song. The outcome of the flakes\' efforts is often worse than the original problem they were hired to fix: the motor was eaten by snakes, they wreck it some more, the toilet blows up.\r\n\r\nThe song also disparages the concept of guaranteed pay for bad work; flakes expect to be paid for their time, not for actually accomplishing anything. Hence the reference to "We\'re protected by unions"...\r\n\r\n...which is NOT to say that all unionized workers are incompetent. Rather, it appears to be a reference to the fact that, in cases wherein a flake works incompetently or inefficiently, their jobs generally are not at risk. The companies they work for might eat the loss if the customer doesn\'t pay, but the unionized workers get paid anyway.\r\n\r\nI hasten to repeat that such a condition is not a condemnation of all unionized workers, many of whom are competent, and have sufficient integrity to do professional work. The truth is that many don\'t have a choice. There are places where union membership is a prerequisite for getting certain jobs. \r\n\r\nBut that\'s a result of political interference, which typically guarantees that there will be an outcome that is worse than whatever problem that interference is intended to solve. That theme appears elsewhere in FZ\'s work.\r\n\r\nI am unfamiliar with the use of "flakes" as a term meaning "idiot" here in the US. I\'m not saying it\'s not used that way in some areas; perhaps that\'s a localized usage. \r\n\r\nThere may indeed be "too" (meaning "also") other meanings that are different as you have indicated, depending on where you live in the U.S. Or there may be only "two" (meaning 1+1) meanings. \r\n\r\nIn any case, I appreciate knowing that the "unreliable" meaning is the one that will be understood as such by those in the UK. It\'s definitely important to use the same semantics as the message recipient if you want to communicate effectively, |
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