writch's wramblings

Miscegenation

Heh, I've been pronouncing it all these years like an idiot Texan (I think I was led astray by someone who should have known better, Dr. Mel Bradford, who was both a professor of English, and a Klansman).

For all those who years I said, 'mis-seg-nation' I clear it to 'mis-se-ge-nation'.

Anyway, if you aren't familiar with it (not that it's used much anymore), here's a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation

I realized I never posted that after mentioning it while I was in Dallas.

So, here's the item that brought that back to mind:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadroon

Quadroons, octaroons, quintoons, and hexadecadoons are all words that one will likely never hear uttered again.

English is a BLUNT OBJECT

I mentioned earlier about the confusion over a soft cheese taco. Here's a better one:

Jeb and Jethro live in the hills, about 5 miles outside of town. Jeb asks Jethro to go in to town to pick up some lumber. Jethro walks the 5 miles to town to the local lumberyard.

"Jeb says we're gonna need some 4 x 2's" Jethro tells the yardman.

"Do you mean 2 x 4's?" asks the yardman.

"Well, I don't rightly know, I better go ask Jeb" says Jethro and walks the 10 miles to the hills and back to town.

"Jeb says we're gonna need 2 x 4's" Jethro tells the yardman.

"Now, how many 2 x 4's will you need?" asks the yardman.

"Well, I don't rightly know, I better go ask Jeb." says Jethro, and again walks the 10 miles to the hills and back to town.

"Jeb says were gonna need about 40 of 'em" Jethro tells the yardman.

"Now, how long will you need them?" asks the yardman.

"Well, I don't rightly know, I better go ask Jeb" says Jethro and yet again walks the 10 miles to the hills and back to town.

Upon returning Jethro says to the yardman, "Jeb says you better give 'em to us for a while . . . we're gonna build a barn."

Prelim Wreview

I am starting Anti Patterns, and I had to look up the originator of Patterning Language in order to have context for the section I was going over.

His name is Christopher Alexander, and what he did is simply miraculous.

Absolutely fabulous, as they used to say.

He's developed a simple pattern language with 253 elements. It allows for the full description of the potential arrangements (theoretically).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander

And you, gentle reader, can verify this yourself.

You see, the originator of Patterning Languages wasn't describing CODE.

He's an architect.

It defines a cultural arrangement. Very very interesting. I'll have to return to this one.

One of my assignments in school was to read, "Existence, Space, Architecture" by Christian Norberg-Schulz.

I guess someone took him seriously.

Very, very seriously.

And I thought Sim-City was fun.

http://www.ahartman.com/apl/

(note that each 'element' of a culture's architecture is numbered in the column on the left—it's terribly convenient that he stopped at 253, BTW)

It's an Extreme Example, granted

But one of the things that I was noting over the vacation was an article that I read in Nat Geo at the dentists' office just before I left on Neanderthal.

I also was looking at issues with genetic mutation and autism spectrum disorders. It has been speculated from time to time that I express symptoms of 'Asperger Syndrome':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome

I mean, face it, I am kind of clumsy, I don't care much for 'subtleties' in interactions (figuring if the other won't talk, I don't care what kind of nonverbal shit they dream up), I don't have a whole lot of empathy for people who have painted themselves into corners (especially when I've previously warned them), and I am a geek.

But I'm sympathetic to other events, and I have lots of talent in practiced physical movement (just not very good at impromptu things in general).

I'm NOT House, M.D. in other words, or much like him (other than being a near genius at times).

I'm really closer to Tony Stark:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man

Anyway, what I was really getting at here is that I think there might be some real genetic basis to my stance, and I might have had a few genes tweaked as a kid that maybe not everyone had poked on.

I'm often rather slow on the uptake of verbal (spoken) word. This is due to a sort of 'dyslexia' in which I hear not just the meaning, but ALL the meanings of words.

It's kind of a 'mix and match' in my head.

So when a menu lists "Soft Cheese Tacos", even though I know intellectually that it's most likely that these are regular cheddar-cheese tacos in a soft-corn shell, the part of my brain that holds that thought has to differentiate it from the hard shelled taco filled with Philadelphia, or perhaps Limburger cheese.

Even though I *know* it still takes me a bit (and sometimes I have to stifle laughter in doing so).

It's a little more complex when one lives in Punland.

It's a state of Pundamonium here.

Flipper Sends a Funny Pile of Stuff

All sorts of them at:

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

Here's just one section (the one that I liked the best). The question remains, however, is the first 'dishonorable mention' the real 'winner' here?

Winner: Vile Puns

Vowing revenge on his English teacher for making him memorize Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," Warren decided to pour sugar in her gas tank, but he inadvertently grabbed a sugar substitute so it was actually Splenda in the gas.
Becky Mushko
Penhook, VA

Runner-Up

The Jones family held their annual family reunion on Easter going through over six dozen spiral-cut, hickory-smoked hams and several bottles of a fine Australian shiraz, before Farmer Jones, the head of the family, took the leavings back to Manor Farm to slop Napoleon and his other champion hogs but the seventy-six ham bones fed the pig's tirade.
Michael L. VanBlaricum
Santa Barbara, CA

Dishonorable Mentions

Jan Svenson, having changed his fortune in the annual "Scandinavian King of the Beach" in Santa Cruz with a bottle of black hair coloring and thus standing out in a sea of fair-haired rivals to win the coveted title, realized the ironic truth of the old adage "That in the kingdom of the blonde, the one dyed man is king."
Matthew Chambers
Parsons, WV

Dimwitted and flushed, Sgt. John Head was frustrated by his constipated attempts to arrest the so-called "Bathroom Burglar" until, while wiping his brow, he realized that each victim had been robbed in a men's room, thereby focusing his attention on the janitor, whose cleaning habits clearly established a commodus operandi.

Jay Dardenne
Baton Rouge, LA

Nell Gwynn, a descendant of the famous English actress and friend of King Charles II, decided she would help French aristocrats, who were being decimated by the guillotine during the French Revolution, cross to safety in England by hiding them under her voluminous skirts and putting off French customs inspectors by confronting them with a face and arms covered with angry red pimples, earning for her the sobriquet of Scarlet Pimple Nell.

Alec Kitroeff
Psychico, Greece

Grand Panjandrum's Special Award

Upon discovering that Miles Black, the famous phrenologist from Yorkshire was going to take up yodeling to lonely goats in Bali, James White decided to balance four planks of wood on a beer keg and call it an abstract work of art in the style of a famous fourteenth-century architect, just going to prove that people will read any old garbage if they think there will be a good pun at the end of it.
Stefan Croker
Bury, Greater Manchester, UK

Troll Sends Neo-Logisms

Dear Friends,

I just thought this was So Funny, I just have to pass it on!

neologisms

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words.

The winners are:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3 . Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

It's Up To Us (from my Brother)

Can you read these right the first time?

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce .

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse .

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row .

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France .. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this too .

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UPexcuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be ressed UP is special .

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP ! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP , look the wordUP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will takeUP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more.. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP .

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP .

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP , so....... Time to shut UP.!