OG

OG

Original gangster.

When my friend’s four-year-old calls “I Feel It Coming” his OG jam, I’m fairly certain he’s not referencing a hip-hop record from 1991. And yet, his statement shows a Kyrie-caliber handle on Ice-T’s patented slang. So how can someone know what a word means without knowing what it means? That’s the nature of abbreviations—the caterpillars of the word world. The untethered, continuous term they will become can only be realized via a departure from their dotted form. And like German vocabulary, the metamorphosis that fades the black spots between the lonely letters yields meaning that extends beyond the aggregation of their previously seperated parts. To know the butterfly is to erase the caterpillar, and it is in this way words like laser, scuba, and OG define comfortable homes in the dictionary—by forgetting what they used to mean. 

Oh gee

A mild reaction.

The Serie A recently pioneered a punishment that exists in the rare and innocuous space between a slap on the wrist and a free pass. Their two match supporter ban of Inter Milan, imposed following racist chants aimed at Kalidou Koulibaly, is the ugly emblem of a game currenlty inept at eliminating discrimination. Forget the embarrasingly mild nature of this action and the fact remains—the action being taken is reaction. Footballing organizations are bureaucracies to govern and struggle by nature with both immediacy and proactivity. But humans don’t, and humans are the ones in the tribunals allowing these chants to continue. We, the fans, need to do better and confront discrimination—on sight and on site.