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Query

Does certified mail ever bring good news?

I’m thinking… no.

xtra normal

Thanks to Ashley Awesome this is how I spent an hour of my Friday night.

This is a lame movie. The dialog is based on a brief exchange by a colleague on Facebook. But xtra normal’s Text-to-Movie^TM claims “If you can type, you can make movies.” My typing leaves much to be desired….

New Words Are New Worlds

Every day on the way home from work I see a large sign:

Learn to Bartend

with a phone number. And every day I grumble to myself, “It should say, ‘Learn to Tend Bar,” but, of course, the sign isn’t going to change. [Nor on this point will I.] It rankles me. Not as much though as when colleagues suggest we should problemsolve….

Some months a go I was [half] awake way too early on a Sunday morning and ran across a British series from a few years ago called The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language hosted by Melvyn Bragg. I liked the style of the show — not a deep, scholarly approach but lots of fun facts. I liked what I saw enough that I bought the book based on the series.

Bragg writes:

As far as England is concerned, the language that became English arrived in the fifth century with Germanic warrior tribes from across the sea. They were first invited over as mercenaries to shore up the ruins of the departed Roman Empire, stayed to share the spoils and then dug in.

And then:

The “-ing” ending in modern place names means “the people of” and “-ing” is all about us — Ealing, Dorking, Worthing, Reading, Hastings; “-ton” means enclosure or village, as in my own hometown of Wigton, and as in Wilton, Taunton, Bridlington, Ashton, Burton, Crediton, Luditon; “-ham” means farm — Birmingham, Chippenham, Grantham, Fulham, Tottenham, Nottingham. There are hundreds of examples. These were straightforward territorial claims. The language said: We are here to stay, we name and we own this.

English was nearly extinguished by French, battled Latin in the churches [or was that battled the churches in Latin?], spread through commerce and conquest, and thrived in part by evolving and integrating words from other languages along the way. English is a bastard. And, I’ve been told by several people who have learned it as a second [or third, fourth, fifth...] language, English is a bitch.

We invent new words and redefine old words all the time. This malleability is a wonderful attribute [even when I hate some of the more vulgar new words]. English has at every turn refused to be limited to its “correct” form. I will probably always hate bartend and problemsolve. I hope they fall out of favor. [Note that I did not say, "Hopefully they will fall out of favor," even though I think the battle over hopefully has already been lost.]

English is fun. English is a toy. English is a game. Where we bump up against other languages we get pidgins and creoles and dialects. And the more I learn about these varieties, the more I appreciate their beauty.

Sweet Madness

I’m not much of a sports nut. But I usually watch at least part of the NCAA® Division I Men’s Basketball Championship — March Madness. On the one hand I think school sports [and sports in general] are way over-rated. How many people do you know that chose the college they went to based on the record of the sports teams there? [Do I need to point out what I think is wrong with that?] On the other hand, I like basketball when it’s played as a team sport. The stars at the professional level have all but spoiled the game for me. There’s less of that [usually] in school sports. And this time of year, it’s easy to get a basketball jones….

Jammies Session

Quick survey: “pajamas” or “pyjamas” — which do you say? Are they pronounced the same?

When I was growing up we called them PJs most of the time, but it was always pajamas if we didn’t shorten it. Lately I’ve read a lot of references to pyjamas, which I understand to be the British form. Is it more wide-spread than that or do I just read a lot of anglophiles?

The classic two-piece pajamas never fit me like this:

[Nothing about me ever looked like that.] I was always tall and skinny so the sleeves ended well above my wrists and the pants well above my ankles. They were never comfortable to wear at all much less sleep in. Shorts and a T-shirt became the sleepwear of choice for a long time. These days more often than not I call my PJs… nothin’. [smirk]

SinCerely

May all your sins be sins of O’Mission.

Happy St. P-day

If an Observer is Run Over by a Train and Nobody is There to Hear it….

I was recently directed to the blog ZERO out of FIVE – But you get an ‘A’ for Effort, self-described as,

Since high school I have always answered every question on every test, even if that meant making something up. I always hoped for, but never received sympathy marks. This blog is my collection of tests from other people that tried the same.

Reading back through the archives I found this post — one of the funniest (and truest) student answers I have seen:

A train is blowing it’s [sic] whistle while traveling at a speed of 22.0 m/s. The speed of sound is 343 m/s. Observer A is directly in front of the train, while observer B is directly behind it. Find the whistle frequency heard by A and that heard by B.

The student deduced from the fact that Observer A is directly in front of the train that:

Observer A is dead.

Knock Would

I’d brush your hair.
I’d rub your feet.
Like that.

I’d dance with you.
I’d write bad poetry.
Like this.

I’d stay if you said, “Yes.”
I’d ask a different question if I knew that you’d say, “No.”
Like then.

Beware the I’ds of March….

He Out-Bopped the Buzzard and the Oriole

Posts on Twitter are called tweets. If it had come before IM would be calling it cheating instead of chatting?

I’ve never tried Twitter. I don’t see the appeal. I read the articles. I read the blog posts of Twitterers Tweeters Twitter users. I see the invitations to “follow me!” and then I look at the Twitter feeds. Yeah, um… thanks but no thanks.

I don’t mean to disparage those who use and enjoy it. It must work well for some people [or it's about to flame out really soon otherwise]. Well, here’s where I begin to disparage some Twits, but they’re politicians so they should be used to it….

In this article for the National Post Stephen Marche states,

Finally the Web has generated a product that is shallow and narcissistic enough for their needs.

I think perhaps he has nailed it there. I found it interesting appalling when I heard that audience members were Tweeting during President Obama’s recent address to a joint session of Congress. Was it efficient use of technology to keep the electorate informed or just rude?

Had I known about Tweet Congress at the time I might have given them the benefit of the doubt and monitored their comments. I’m glad I didn’t though. Take a look at the Congressional Tweetstream here and on nearby pages to see the level of discourse. Here are just a few [with my comments added].

• Congress is spending at a rate that now would embarrass most drunken sailors and we can’t allow that to continue. [Most drunken sailors, but apparently not all of them....]
• Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren’t going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour. [Followed shortly by, "Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer." -- Will the real congressman please shut stand up?]
• Families and businesses across this nation have had to tighten their belt, it is time Congress do the same. [Great! How many of you are taking a pay cut this year?]
• Interesting challenge to us all to train and educate ourselves [If you can Tweet this, don't thank a teacher....]