Waste / Waist

Note: I originally posted this a year ago and then deleted it. It's worth re-posting, I think.

Funny story. It involves homophones.

Today an acquaintance and I were talking about our various little strategies for maintaining our weight. I said, "I eat an egg every morning!" She said (or rather, I heard):"I measure my waste every day."

?????!

For four hours, I believed that this woman scooped her waste out of the toilet and either laid it down along a ruler or weighed it on one of those little scales. Do people really do this?? And if they do do it, do they mention it casually to an office acquaintance? It was only when I got home and was telling the story (with relish, I confess) to my husband that I realized my mistake. As soon as I heard the words leaving my own mouth, I understood what this woman had said:

"I measure my waist every day."

Still a bit over-diligent perhaps, but A Lot Less Weird.

Atheist Game

Have you seen this game by Zefrank? Cute.

Stephen Fry reading "The Letter"

Just look what I found on YouTube. It's a baby Stephen Fry. What joy!



Some of my favorite lines:

I tipped the delivery boy out of the window with more than ordinary generosity.

Prudence had demanded that I leave her behind, so I was alone.

Of all the hideously disfigured spectacles I have ever beheld, those perched on the end of this man's nose remained forever pasted in the album of my memory.

Walking with a pronounced limp -- L-I-M-P, pronounced "limp."

And my favorite:

I asked him the nature of the Count's business but he made the sign of the cross and said nothing. I asked him why there were no mirrors in the castle, but this time he made the sign of the very cross indeed and spat.

Begging the Question

T-rex always puts it so much better than I can. Awesome.

"I select you"

A day late....

skepchick has posted some Darwinian Valentine's Day cards. Things like: Your secondary sexual characteristics bring all the boys to the gene pool. Have a look; it's a cute idea. (But they're not nearly as funny as I'd hoped!)

Ever better is G. Pullum's Language Log post from last year: The Prescriptivist Valentine. ("And remember, when a grammarian kisses you, you stay kissed").

Hall

I came across The Hall of Documentation Weirdness again recently, a great site by a Vancouver writer called Darren Barefoot. It features unintentionally hilarious technical illustrations from around the world, made all the more humorous by Barefoot's quizzical captions.

The site has been around for a few years now, and it's as good as ever, although I notice that it now includes some ads. (I remember its popularity spiked back in 2002 or 2003 when it got slashdotted: Barefoot was probably inundated with offers that he could not refuse.)

Anyway, it's wonderful; you must check it out. Here's a teaser:



"From a Dell computer box. I believe the caption should read 'If you drop this box on a dog, don't trip over its tail'."

Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates

Spotted off the starboard bow of Language Log. Did you know that today is Talk Like a Pirate Day?

I looked up avast, by the way. According to Merriam-Webster, this is "a nautical command to stop or cease." Sort of like the seafarin' version of ESC.

Don't Forget the Chicks This Time

I am thinking of getting my boss this t-shirt for Christmas. She will LOVE it. Shhh... it's a secret.

Available in assorted sizes from the fine fellow who brings us Dinosaur Comics.

T-Rex is damn sexy!

Surely you agree! Enjoy more of his awesome exploits at qwantz.com.

Fry and Laurie on Language

Language Log posted this recently. Hi-lar-i-ous. Even funnier is that Fry and Laurie probably were around 30 at the time.

But sometimes I want to keep them

Omit needless words. So say Strunk and White. And so do many others who write on writing. Be concise; be direct. These are the virtues.

God knows, it's a proud day for me when I can turn something like this:

To maintain synchronization between the two controller cards, the operating system occasionally performs an automatic reload of the standby controller card. To facilitate the automatic reload of an controller card, the auto-boot variable must be set to true.

Into something like this**:

To synchronize the controller cards, the operating system occasionally reloads the standby controller card automatically. Set the auto-boot variable to true to enable this process.

(I ran a word count on the before and after, I confess. Don't scream, but sometimes I'm tempted to include this type of data in my annual self-appraisal at work. So far I've refrained. I suspect that's been wise.)

Now I want to show you something else. Something wordy. Something that would cause any measure of the FOG index to choke. And yet something from which not a single word could be excised. It's from Stephen Fry's Paperweight; it's from a review Fry wrote of Bernard Levin's book, In These Times:

I have to confess right here and now that my feelings upon being called upon to review an anthology (and it is Levin himself who says that the volumes are collections of pressed flowers, and we all know that an anthology is, if it is to be taken au pied de la lettre, nothing more, nor indeed less—and who would have it otherwise?—that a posy or, mutandis mutandis, nosegay—though no doubt the gentlemen who busy themselves with instructing us how to live and speak would have words to say, nay, shriek, on the subject of how gay or otherwise the nose may, or, come to that, may not be, for as sure as eggs are graded ovular Euro-units there will lurk in some dank council cupboard a malevolent creature whose 'nosegay' is now proscribed, look with a spot I damn it—of flowers, and if you, having followed the wild and twisting path of my clauses to a successful conclusion, can sight, in the purple distance, the welcoming beacon that promises an end to this parenthesis, then Levin is the writer for you—five hours of reading Levin and the plain English sentence is only a dimly perceived memory, if I can just find my way out of this clause, I will join you....) are not unlike that of a schoolboy on being called upon to write a report on his schoolmaster.

That's 231 words, kids! In one sentence. I wouldn't omit a single one. But perhaps it all comes down to how one defines needless.

**Yes, this is what I do all day. I know some of you repair injured bodies, enlighten young minds, preserve our environment. Some of you create businesses, look after children, rescue animals. Some of you take care of the aged, drive our economy, define public policy. Some of you create music, create art, create dance. Some of you design buildings, write books, program computers. Some of you study the stars. Unclog drains. Breed mosquitoes.*** Police our streets. Search for a cure for cancer. Lead Expotitions to the North Pole.**** But I, I...well, I turn this (that nobody reads) into that (that nobody reads). But that's OK!

***Ha ha! Did you notice that this one isn't virtuous? I do know someone who does this. He does it with a surprising amount of enthusiasm.

****Who Am I Kidding? Obviously I am getting carried away. I have 6 readers that I know of. And none of you likes long cold hikes.

LOLCats and LOLCode

Although I am an avid reader of a few blogs (see sidebar), I don't read many blogs. This means that when people talk about what is going on in the blogsphere*, I usually have no idea what they're talking about. I rely on the blogs I read to do the legwork and bring tattered fragments back to me. The biggest source of information for me in this area is Language Log, a blog that has an insane number of readers, many erudite posters, and a keen interest in how language is evolving in the, um, blogosphere.

It's thanks to LL that LOLCats and LOLCode have come to my attention. LOLCats are captioned cat photos; apparently they're all over the place. Did you know about this? I saw this comic from xkcd a couple of weeks ago, and I Totally Did Not Get It. I do now.

What interests LL posters about these cats is the grammar. Here's what Linguistic Mystic has to say:

Cats have bad grammar, and it’s funnier that way. In many of the pictures I found, I’ve noted pretty significant deviations from conventional English Grammar. Ranging from the incorrect application of language rules ("eated"), to internet style contractions ("plz" for "Please"), to out and out incorrect verb agreement ("I are serious cat"), many of these captions use blatantly bad grammar. The fact of the matter, though, is that the bad grammar somehow makes it funnier.

And now, we have LOLCode. Here's a canonical example from the lolcode site:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE

Four syntax elements in four lines:
- HAI and KTHXBYE are the start and stop block delimiters.
- CAN HAS is a feature request, like require or include.
- VISIBLE is a print statement.

I wonder if this will take off. Or if they'll develop an object-oriented version (cats and kittens!)

KTHXBYE

* Yep, I feel the same way when I say blogosphere as I do when I swear. Or say the word bling**.

**One of my more embarrassing moments lately was when I found myself explaining to a friend in a very UNCOOL WHITE LADY kind of way what bling is. My much cooler friend watched my pathetic writhing in mounting horror for a few minutes before she put me out of my misery. Told me I was a very sad loser and at least 8 years behind the times. And that I was a loser. A very behind-the-times sad one.

Official God FAQ

You've probably seen this. I know you cruise the Internet for just this kind of thing. In fact, I think at least three of you have sent it to me.

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, enjoy: http://www.400monkeys.com/God/

Strawberry tart!

Did you know that Tim Hortons has strawberry tart on the menu? It reminds my very silly friend Pete of this:

Woman: (Switching the radio off) Liberal rubbish. Klaus, What do you want with your jugged fish?
Man: Halibut.
Woman: The jugged fish is halibut.
Man: Well, what fish have you got that isn't jugged?
Woman: Rabbit.
Man: What? Rabbit fish?
Woman: Yes. It's got fins.
Man: Is it dead?
Woman: Well, it was coughing up blood last night.
Man: All right I'll have the dead unjugged rabbit fish.
ONE DEAD UNJUGGED RABBIT FISH LATER
Man: Well that was really horrible.
Woman: You're always complaining.
Man: What's for afters?
Woman: Well there's rat cake ... rat sorbet ... rat pudding ... or strawberry tart.
Man: Strawberry tart?!
Woman: Well, it's got some rat in it.
Man: How much?
Woman: Three (rather a lot really).
Man: Well, I'll have a slice without so much rat in it.
ONE SLICE OF STRAWBERRY TART WITHOUT SO MUCH RAT IN IT LATER
Man: Appalling.
Woman: Moan, moan, moan.

From Episode 29, Monthy Python's Flying Circus.

As for me? Lawks, before today, I didn't even know Tim Hortons had strawberry tart. I never go there. It has nothing to do with the missing apostrophe (I'm trying really hard not to mind about that; can you tell?). It has nothing to do with anything, really, I just... well, I never go there. So there. It's not deliberate. Stop going on about it.

Anyway, Pete: thanks for the laugh. And thanks for making sure we don't go too many days without a new rat recipe.

Rat fricassee

My family and I just had a lovely visit with our friends Mich and Pete and their two darling daughters. The kids spent a lot of time playing make-believe. One of the games that I think my 7-year-old came up with, bless her, had the kids piling the rat toys that M&P have lying around (I'm just going to let that go without much comment, but yes, rat toys plural) into a large cast-iron frying pan. This reminded Pete, and Pete reminded me, of this:

Blackadder: [suspicious] What's on the menu?
Baldrick: Rat. [shows him a big black rat] Saute or fricassee.
Blackadder: [peers at the rat] Oh, the agony of choice. Saute involves...?
Baldrick: Well, you take the freshly shaved rat, and you marinade it in a puddle for a while.
Blackadder: Hmm, for how long?
Baldrick: Until it's drowned. Then you stretch it out under a hot light bulb, then you get within dashing distance of the latrine, and then you scoff it right down.
Blackadder: So that's sauteing. And fricasseeing?
Baldrick: Exactly the same, just a slightly bigger rat.

Black Adder IV, Episode 1 (Captain Cook)

Are you hungry? Angry?

This is my favorite comic at the moment. I love xkcd's comics in general (see sidebar for a link), but this particular one is special—it is funny, involves a famously annoying puzzle, takes the hatless one down a peg or two, and has a satisfyingly gory outcome (as gory as it can get for stick figures, at any rate).

Do you get excited when I say "Cray"?

Geek chic. For about a week, I thought I might have invented the term. And then I got around to googling it and, um, no. No. It's been around awhile and seems to be in wide use. It gets nearly a million google-hits, in fact.

Be that as it may, I got a taste of what it is to have this mysterious quality a couple of years ago when I worked for Cray. At parties, rather than leading a conga line (tiring) or tying a maraschino cherry stem in a knot with my tongue (impossible), I found I got quite a respectable circle of admirers when I said these four words:

"I work for Cray."

[Inevitably, this would be received with awe and amazement. And confusion: I live in Canada. It wouldn't have had nearly the same effect in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, where everyone works, or has worked, for Cray.]

Responses were along the lines of:
"You mean, Cray as in the supercomputer company?"
"Oh My God Are You Single?"
"Didn't SGI buy them?"
"You guys running Linux on the dual-core Opterons?"
"How many teraFLOPS are we talking about?"
"Whoa."
"What the hell are you trying to do with that cherry stem?"
...and so on.

I suppose this says something about the type of parties I go to. Everyone always knows who Cray is. Everyone can quote the Dead Parrot sketch. Many prefer to do complex calculations in hex rather than tired old decimal. And many will happily discuss their recent Risk victories in much the way that Rimmer did on Red Dwarf: "Anyway, to cut a long story short I threw a five and a four which beat his three and a two, another double six followed by a double four and a double five. After he'd thrown a three and a two I threw a six and a three."

I'm sorry I don't work for Cray anymore. The technology was cool, the people were amazing, and I loved those trips to the mid-West, but—in all honesty—it's that look of awe from thin bespectacled male strangers that I miss the most. I just don't get the same sort of attention anymore.

P.S.: Did you ever see that Simpson's episode in which Homer is temporarily replacing Smithers as Mr. Burns's assistant? In one scene, Homer is trying to bring Mr. Burns all the things he asks for and failing miserably. Mr. Burns scorns it all:
"You call this breakfast?" [flinging plates to the floor]
"You call this a tax return?" [sweeping papers off the desk]
"You call this a supercomputer?" [using a crowbar to smash a large machine that is very clearly marked CRAY across the top]
...and on and on. I thought it was hilarious.