logophilius

Jerry and Gary, Conjoined Twins

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:52:00 +0000

"I have good news and bad news."

Diane inhaled deeply, emptied her lungs slowly, a tenuous calm settling over her. She had known that the surgery to separate her fiancé Gary from his conjoined twin brother Jerry would be risky, but the doctor's assurances had propelled them this far. Now she was just seconds away from learning what kind of future she and Gary might have.

"Give me the good news first," she said.

Image via Wikipedia

"The good news is that the separation surgery was a success. After some recovery time and some rehabilitation therapy, Jerry and Gary are both going to be just fine as two separate men."

"Thank God." Diane's tensed muscles relaxed. "So what's the bad news?"

"Well," Dr. Benway began, "we had a bit of a complication during the procedure. We couldn't separate them in exactly the way we had planned."

"What do you mean?"

"From the outside, they were joined at the hip. Internally, of course, their bones and organs were convoluted in more complex ways. We thought we had everything charted out well with the x-rays and MRI, but once we got in there, things weren't exactly the way we though they were. In the end, we weren't able to divide them, well, evenly."

"I don't understand," Diane asked. "Are you saying that one of them has, like, both spleens or something?"

"Notspleens."

"Then what?"

"In order to make the surgery successful, we had to —" Dr. Benway looked left and right, then lowered his voice, "— we had to give Gary both penises."

Diane stared into the empty space to the left of the surgeon. The elevator dinged open and a janitor pushed his cart onto the floor. A nurse filled a paper cup with fresh coffee and then sat in front of the computer at the nurses' station. A balloon-laden family crossed from the stairway to a patient's room across the hall.

"Sooo . . . " Diane looked into Dr. Benway's blue, embarrassed eyes. "So what's the bad news?"

2012 Resolutions, Month One: Infinite Jest, Definite Failure

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:37:00 +0000

I failed at my first New Year's resolution.

I even failed at the revised version of my first resolution.

I had originally planned to read both Infinite Jest and REAMDE in January. After realizing that finishing just one of those would itself be a chore, I revised the resolution to reading just Infinite Jest.

February started today, and I've read 437 pages (including end notes) of Infinite Jest. A great number of novels don't have page numbers in the 400s, and for many others, p. 437 would put me just a couple hours' reading away from finishing.

"A fellow of infinite jest who is disappointed with me"
Image via Wikipedia

But this is Infinite Jest.The fact that I've read 437 pages means that I have just under 1,000 pages left to read.

As my son would (annoyingly) say: FAIL!

But I'll keep truckin' along. I'll get to the end of the book eventually.

But that doesn't mean I will put off February's resolution: Write a solo for unaccompanied clarinet. I've been tossing ideas around, and come this weekend, I'll start putting them on paper. The as-yet-unwritten piece is currently titled "For the Birds" and comprises three short solos, each depicting a different avian friend: "The Hungry Owl," "The Woodpecker," and an undetermined third bird.

The third bird should be something regal, reserved, calm, and calming, but I don't want it to be a swan. That's just too overdone. Suggestions are appreciated. When you think of a calm and regal bird, what do you think of?

The Charmless Drudgery of Answering Dictionary Correspondence

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:25:00 +0000

I am horrifically busy this week and have little time to work on anything personal, this blog included. But I don't want to leave my readers out in the cold this week, so I'll let someone else do my infotaining for me.

Check out lexicographer Kory Stamper's post "Dear Merriam-Webster" about why, if you're writing to the editors of a dictionary, you should start and end the letter with "I love you" and should include a coupon for free chocolate . . . or at least a cute lolcat picture.

At least, that's how I read it.

A Three-Word Wednesday Limerick Twofer

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:50:00 +0000

Today, I offer you two limericks using the words bubble, lumber, and wreck for Three Word Wednesday.

This wreck of a girl at the club'll

Hop around like she's light as a bubble.

When dancin' she goes

(Oh her poor partner's toes!)

She lumbers like drunk Barney Rubble.

Image by curran.kelleher via Flickr

My ego could burst like a bubble.

I'm a wreck of a poet in trouble.

The way my words lumber

Might induce you to slumber,

Plus I'm not very good at rhyming.

Today's word: virga

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:20:00 +0000

Pronunciation: Virga is pronounced not with a soft g, as in "*I'm on the verge o' losin' my job!" but with a hard g, like "I'll never get over Gus tattooing my grandmother's name on his inner thigh!"

If you don't know what the word means, you might try to compare virga with words like criteria, phenomena, and curricula — plurals all. But no, virga is neither "two sets of twins" nor "two virgins"; as it turns out, virga and virgo aren't even etymologically related. Virgo is from Latin for "young woman"; virga — from New Latin meaning "rod or twig" — is a meteorological term that has to do with things falling from the sky.

And not young women, either, even if the idea of virgins falling from the sky might seem exciting. And it would be, for a while. That excitement would quickly turn to horror because of the sudden stop at the bottom.

Unless those gravity-plagued virgins, like virga, never hit the ground.

Have you ever wondered why sometimes the news station's Doppler radar says it's raining on your house, but the view from your window disagrees? That's virga. You see, virga is a wisp of precipitation that evaporates before it hits the ground. Virga often falls from clouds in columns or shafts, rod-like (hence the derivation), but can be curved back by the wind, creating clouds that look like they have tails.

An beautiful example of virga. Note the lack of falling virgins.
Image by 0olong via Flickr

The more I look, too, the more I find that the Latin virga has led to all types of words that refer (sometimes obliquely) to a great many straight and skinny or twig-like things:

In Gregorian chant notation, a virga is a note that looks a lot like a quarter note, but with the stem on the wrong side (the stem gives it its name).

Then there's the virgule, that straight diagonal slash that separates the numerator and denominator of a fraction.

Vergatus is a fairly common species designation for both plants and animals, presumably because of their striped coloration or stick-like appearance. They have fun and mystical names like the perplexing scrubwren (Sericornis virgatus), the snake-eyed skink (Cryptoblepharus virgatus), the Tiki fern (Asparagus virgatus), and the golden threadfin bream (Nemipterus virgatus).

And sometimes virga is less abstract — not rod-like, but an actual rod or staff, as in this quotation from Francis Bacon:

Præcipue autem lignum, sive virga, versus superiorem partem curva est.
(Every staff of empire is truly crooked at the top.)*

But you word nerds probably know (or suspect) some other words that are etymologically related to virga. Gimme what ya got!

And thanks to Chuck Lofton of WTHR for mentioning virga. It might be the first time I've ever learned a new word from a weather forecast.

* Source: http://www.eudict.com/?word=virga&go=Search&lang=lateng

SOPA/PIPA

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:48:00 +0000

My contribution to the SOPA/PIPA protest. Feel free to use this image as you please.

Today's Word: seel

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:11:00 +0000

"Marco!"
Image by Kieran Gillard via Flickr

When you seel someone's eyes shut, you also seal their eyes shut — though normally for only a short time.

And it isn't normally done to people. I hope.

Medieval falconers went to great trouble to train their falcons and hawks well, and it was even worse for the birds themselves. One of the first things a falconer would do to train a new bird was to seel its eyes — that is, sew its eyes shut. The trainer would then carry the calmed bird around on his arm, getting it used to being around humans while also preparing it for the hood that would later be the falconer's greatest tool for controlling his raptor.

The eyes would gradually be reopened during the process of training — blind falcons not being the best hunters — and would eventually be opened fully.

It sounds like a horrible ordeal for the bird to me. If only PETA had been around 1,500 years ago.

Seeling is believing

Cenobites aside, people get their eyes sewn shut only in extreme cases, and I see no evidence that physicians refer to this type of surgery as seeling.

Still, after learning about seel, if I find a Seel Ophthalmology or Seel Optometry, I think I'll look elsewhere for my vision correction needs.

A Slew of Slews

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

A certain dictionary includes four separate entries for the word slew. Two of the entries say that slew is an alternate spelling of slough (a bog or marsh) or of slue (to turn something on a fixed point). So feel free to use slew instead of slough or slue — but only if you want to piss off a copy editor.

Image via Wikipedia

Slew is also, of course, the past tense of slay, and what a great confluence of sound and meaning that is. Slew has a suctiony sound, like the sucking noise you might hear on a Medieval battlefield as you extract a battle axe you sank into the stomach of a now pulseless foe, opening a sluice that sends forth a slurry of gooey juices and severed viscera that soaks into the soil.

Slew is more fun to say while inhaling.

But what drew me to slew today wasn't this grisly battlefield scene, but the fact that I had used slew to mean "a great number," as in, "There are a slew of zombies roaming the mall." I've used slew in this capacity for years, but only today did I wonder where this usage came from. So I looked it up.

This type of slew comes from the Irish word sluagh, meaning "a host" — as in "a lot," "a great number," and not as in the person who invites you into his home, tosses your coat into the master bedroom, serves you six strawberry daiquiris, and then acts surprised and shocked when you drunkenly spill some of that sixth daiquiri onto his white carpet.

That's a different kind of host altogether, though he does have a host of problems to deal with. One of whom is probably his wife.

Evil scientist Sue Lecher, in her secret lab beneath the streets of Chicago, created a quick-cloning machine and, in Pinky-and-the-Brain-like fashion, decided to create an army of Sue clones to take over the world.

Fortunately, our hero, Lou Whitesmile, caught wind of Sue's plot and sought out her subterranean lair. He disabled Sue's cloning machine, but not before she had created two dozen angry copies of herself, which she unleashed on Lou.

But Lou did not venture into the labyrinthine tunnels beneath Chicago unprepared. Armed with his trusty HistoryMate® Eighteenth-Century Samurai Sword Authentic Reproduction, his well-worn Alpha Tau Omega cricket bat, and a tin of expired anchovies, Lou slew a slew of Sues in the sewer.

(cue rimshot)

The Importance of Honesty in a Happy Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:24:00 +0000

It's Three-Word Wednesday! Today's words are brutal, sullen, and trust.

If marriage is to take the wanted course —
Avoiding sullen nights of great remorse —
Just tell the brutal truth
Even if it seems uncouth,
And I trust you'll find — forsooth!
That your dreadful wife will grant you a divorce.

A Slight Downward Adjustment to My Resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:19:00 +0000

You might recall that the first of my 2012 project-based resolutions was to read both Infinite Jest and REAMDE in January. I knew it was a lofty goal &mdash both of these books are monsters — but I underestimated just how lofty it was.

Turns out it is simply too high for me to reach.

I started with Infinite Jest. My Nook Color says that this novel is 1,427 pages long. Assuming we omit the table of contents, title page, half-pages at the end of chapters, etc., the number of actual pages of reading comes down to about 1,394. I started reading on December 29, so I ultimately have 34 days in which to complete my first resolution project.

Not actual size.
Image via Wikipedia

Simple math shows that I must read an average of 41 pages per day to finish Infinite Jest by month's end.

And that's just the first book. Add REAMDE's 1,042 pages, and I would have to ingest 71 pages a day to read them both before February gets here, while keeping up my day job, my freelance work, my participation in the Indiana Wind Symphony, my responsibilities as a father, and this blog (to which, you might have noticed, posts have become rarer since I started this resolution project).

Infinite Jest is not an easy book to read, either. Reading 41 pages a day from this tome takes more time and more brain power than reading 41 pages a day of, say, the Hunger Games trilogy, or Stephen King, or even Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.

Today, I'm on page 230, plus another 20 pages of endnotes. Under the original resolution, I should have gotten this far some time on New Year's Day.

I've come to the conclusion that I set myself up to do the impossible, so I am downgrading this resolution project to make it possible. Or at least plausible. If I can finish Infinite Jest by month's end, I'll be content. I'll read REAMDE after that, at my leisure, while I work on a clarinet solo.

This way, I'm only 281 pages, or about week, behind.

Nascence, Renaissance, and the Birth of Nation

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:03:00 +0000

The Latin infinitive nasci, "to be born," gives us nascent, "coming or having recently come into existence." It also gives us nascency and nascence (and occasionally naissance), which all mean "birth." One step further removed and we get renascent, renascence, and renaissance, which mean "rebirth" (though renascent, according to Merriam-Webster's, seems to be less about a return to life than about a return to vigor).

Image via Wikipedia

The "rebirth" of the Renaissance period was a revival of interest in and study of ancient Greek and Roman scholarship, philosophy, and culture, known today as "classical studies."

And while we're birthing and rebirthing things, how about the word nation? It, too, comes from nasci, from Latin to Middle French to Middle English to us. So, in a way, that trite phrase and controversial old movie, "birth of a nation," is redundant.

In a way, of course. Etymology does not dictate meaning; it tells you where a word comes from, but not what a word is.

Book Review: Dracula

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:54:00 +0000

SPOILER ALERT: A spoiler alert for a novel that's over 100 years old might seem silly, but if you haven't read Bram Stoker's original — if your knowledge of vampires comes secondhand from Hollywood, Anne Rice, or (shudder) Stephenie Meyer — then there really are some spoilers here.

I finally finished reading Dracula just a few days before 2012 began, and my overall response is this: My but Bram Stoker is long-winded!

Dracula is another great example of why I avoid Victorian fiction. I prefer the Kurt Vonnegut style of writing (e.g., "Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action."), so the logorrhea (some might call it grandiloquence) of Dracula and of other novels from the same era are, to me, difficult to bear. Bram Stoker and his contemporaries, it seems, take every opportunity to say in ten words what could be said in two.

To wit,

Image via Wikipedia

I was so absorbed in that wonderful diary of Jonathan Harker and that other of his wife that I let the time run on without thinking.

So I don't like Stoker's writing style. The story, though, is brilliant, made more brilliant when one remembers that all this vampire stuff didn't really exist before Dracula. Hollywood's vampire stories draw (vampirically) from Stoker's magnum opus, and this is the original. Dracula is to vampires what Alexander Graham Bell's first working telephone is to smartphones, or what Edison's first successful light bulb is to a 60-inch flat-panel 1080p HDTV, or what The Simpsons is to Family Guy.

There's no denying that it's an important story, but I did have some problems with it. With the ending, mostly. The chase through eastern Europe was, I thought, building up to a final, exciting, nail-biting confrontation between Dracula and Van Helsing et al. Sure, there was an Old West–style stagecoach chase, but when the vampire hunters finally stopped the gypsy's leiterwaggon and knocked Dracula's coffin to the ground, were we treated to a final face-off with the soulless Un-Dead?

Nope. Dracula stayed in his box (the sun was still up), got his neck slashed and his heart pierced, and turned to dust.

Bram Stoker
Image via Wikipedia

No battle. No test of will. No facing down death. Just killing a vampire in a box, like shooting vampire fish in a barrel.

Modern writers, I think, tend to agree with me on this, altering their adaptations to make the climax more, well, climactic. Exciting. For example, in Steven Dietz's stage adaptation of Dracula, which I recently got to see at the Indiana Repertory Theatre, Dracula had the opportunity to attack his pursuers, but was ultimately done in by Mina Harker's "betrayal" — a kiss while the Eucharist was still on her lips — giving the men the opportunity to strike. In Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, the title character actually dies by Mina's hand — she is the one who plunges a sword through Dracula's heart (and, through an odd feat of strength, into the marble floor).

In both of these versions, the relationship between Mina and Dracula is more overtly sexual, and Mina is more complicit (whether mesmerized or not) in that relationship. In the book, on the other hand, Dracula forces himself on a struggling Mina:

With his left hand he held both Mrs Harker's hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thing stream trickled down the man's bare breast. . . . The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.

She never shows any sexual interest in him — only the pull of "her master." Throughout the race to Transylvania, Mina simply serves as a hypnotic GPS, and not a good one at that. She is otherwise just a deadweight.

So I didn't like the writing style, and I didn't like the ending. But still, there is something in this story that kept me coming back, moving forward to see what happened next. Maybe it was just to see how the original compares with Hollywood, I don't know. But whatever it was, Bram Stoker's Dracula was worth reading.

Once. It's worth reading once.

It's also a great source for learning some new words. For example, it was interesting to see that what we normally hear called a strait jacket is called by Dr. Seward a strait waistcoat. And then Dr. Seward writes what I see as a nice bit of wordplay:

There is a method in [Renfield's] madness, and the rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration! [emphasis added]

We might expect Seward to write, in his building excitement, "oh celebration!" But, instead, he goes with "unconscious cerebration!" a term introduced in psychology in 1842 that would evolve into what we know today as the subconscious. (Cerebration is simply "using the mind.")

We also find a use of the word diligence that we don't see often:

At three tomorrow the diligence will start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you.

Here, a diligence is a stagecoach.

And a few more uncommon words from Dracula:

calèche: a light carriage
case-boffle: a bottle specially made to fit in a suitcase
daffled: crazy or stupid
drouth: thirst
hobnails: nails used in the soles of shoes or boots
London cat's-meat: horse meat
trituration: crushing or grinding

You get all these great words, plus a fair bit of French and Latin. And some nice bits of linguistic comic relief from Abraham Van Helsing, a doctor from Amsterdam for whom English is a second language:

Whereupon the captain tell him that he had better be quick — with blood — for that ship will leave the place — of blood — before the turn of the tide — with blood.

Perhaps Van Helsing has blood-sucking vampires on his mind a bit too much. Here, he's misinterpreting a discussion with a longshoreman, misunderstanding the British use of the word bloody: "bloody quick," "bloody place," and "bloody tide." Hilarious.

Or at least as hilarious as Dracula gets.

A New Twist on New Year's Resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:38:00 +0000

It's New Year's Resolution time! Most of us, at some point, have made New Year's resolutions, and the majority of those who have done so have, at least once, failed to meet a resolution.

I'm no different. Every time I've resolved to lose weight in the coming year, for example, I've failed. Practically the only times I've been able to keep my New Year's resolutions is when I have resolved only to not break my New Year's resolution.

The problem is that most resolutions are too general, with no clear ending point or concrete indicators of success: lose some weight, watch less TV, not murder the in-laws in their sleep. While those are all nice things to strive for, there isn't really a plan there. There's no accountability, no consequences. They're easy to forget about two days, two weeks, or two months into the year.

So I'm not going to do that anymore.

This year, I'm approaching my resolutions from a different angle. Instead of broad, general resolutions, I'm creating project-based New Year's resolutions. Twelve, to be exact — one for each month.

The idea is simple: By the last day of each month in 2012, I will complete one project. I will list today the type and scope of each project, thus planning an entire year of creativity and productivity from the start.

If all goes as planned, by the end of December 2012 (which, if you believe the Mayans, is December 21), I will be able to look back and say with certainty, "I did these twelve things; the year was not wasted."

Honestly, how many people can look back at the last twelve months and name twelve accomplishments that they're proud of? I hope I will number among those people a year from now, and 2012 will become a year to remember.

So here's the list of what I want plan to do in 2012. I'll be reporting on my progress from time to time as the year passes by.

January: Read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Neal Stephenson's REAMDE

Neal Stephenson -- Image via Wikipedia

I'm starting off relatively easy, I know. But if you're thinking sarcastically, 'Read two books in January? Big deal,' bear this in mind: These two books combined comprise 2,148 pages. They're both monsters.

February: Write a solo for unaccompanied clarinet

In case you don't know, music was one of my first loves, and the one I pursued in college. I hold a Bachelor of Music in clarinet performance from Ball State University. (If I could do it all over again, I would double-major in Music Composition and Creative Writing.) I've always intended to write a clarinet solo, but this year I'm going to actually do it. Even if it sucks.

March: Finish the first draft of Circles

Circles is the working title of the novel I started for NaNoWriMo 2010. I made it to around 30,000 words, which turned out to be about half the novel. I've pecked at it from time to time — both expanding it and editing what's there — but I haven't made a purposeful effort to get the thing finished. Whether I have to force myself into a NaNoWriMo-like writing regularity or not, I will finish the thing by the end of March.

April: Post on this blog at least five times a week for the entire month

I've tried to be pretty regular with my blog posts, but I haven't always succeeded. (In fact, there's an expressway to Hell paved entirely with my good intentions.) In April, I will plan and focus more than I usually do and post five times a week.

I'll admit now, though, that I will cheat by working ahead and scheduling posts days or weeks in advance. The outcome is more important than the process here.

May: Cross something off my bucket list

Image via Wikipedia

There's a link to my bucket list at the top. The first thing on it is "Write a novel." Since I plan to cross that off in March, I'll be trying to cross something else off the list in May.

This could be a tough one because a number of those things involve someone else doing something that affects me. I fear that I might be forced into a tattoo, but I've got a few months to prepare.

June: Create a web comic

This is something I've always wanted to do but have always been apprehensive about. I love web comics like xkcd, Dinosaur Comics, and My First Dictionary, and I've always wanted to be a part of that. In June, I will be.

But I'm not going to aim super-high here. I will consider this project a success if I can post at least five comics. And then I'll decide whether to keep going.

July: Enter a short-story contest

I get a lot of personal pleasure from writing, so I mostly just write for myself. If I ever want to make a career out of writing, though, I know I need to start getting my stuff out there. I haven't entered any writing contests in my adult life, and it's time that changed. It's time to see if my skills can hold up against others'. A short-story contest seems like a good place to start.

August: Get this blog off Blogger and onto a proper domain

I have few problems with Blogger, but I really want my own place for this stuff, if only to give myself room to expand. The main barrier right now is just finding the money.

September: Collect and edit my short stories and consider self-publishing them

I have trepidations about self-publishing, and I have to surmount a learning curve before I can self-publish anything in e-book format. But I do want to bring my stories together, edit them, and prepare them as best I can for future publishing. I'll decide what to do with that collection at the end of September.

October: Draw the sphinx and dragon picture

Earlier this month, my boys and I were talking about neat things that I might be able to draw. We came up with what I think is a great idea for a cute picture of a sphinx and a dragon (it will likely be a wyvern if you insist on mythological accuracy). In October, I will attempt to create this picture in secret, and then present it to them as a gift next Christmas.

November: Write a duet for clarinet and trombone

Image via Wikipedia

This will be another Christmas gift, to my elder son, the budding trombonist. He just started playing this past August, so the trombone part will be simpler than the clarinet part, and it will take a while for him to learn it. I hope we can perform it for the family during Christmas 2013. (I'm thinking of calling the piece "The Hound and the Chihuahua.")

December: Finish the first round of editing for Circles

By the end of 2012, I should have a novel that I am ready to show to people and get feedback on. Then I have to decide what to do with it.

What's missing

I said before that one of the problems with regular New Year's resolutions is that there are no real consequences for failure. To keep me motivated, I need to come up with some consequences for failing to follow through on these projects, but I'm stuck. I hope you can help. What type of consequences should I suffer if I fail to live up to my plans? (Punishments that include the loss of a body part will be ignored — unless it's my appendix or vas deferens.)

And feel free to prod me from time to time to make sure I'm staying on track.

Today's Word: gadoid

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 03:02:00 +0000

A gadoid codpiece?

In a regular week, I see a lot of words. Over my three-and-a-half centuries, I've seen millions. But still, every once in a while, I find I new word that amazes me simply by its existence.

Like the word I found today: gadoid. Pronounced either GAY-doyd or GA-doyd, it sounds like something a big dumb bully might call a gaunt bespectacled child prodigy on the playground. Although I wouldn't exactly want someone calling me a gadoid, it wouldn't be the worst thing someone's called me.

Gadoid is part of a list that includes porcine, leonine, ursine, lupine, ovine, and especially piscine, though without that characteristic -ine ending. It means "resembling or related to a member of the family Gadidae," aka the cod.

There's a word that means "resembling a cod."

Words are the best toys.

'Twas a Sight Before Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:41:00 +0000

A Three-Word Wednesday post. Today's words are belief, festive, and rumple.

'Twas a Sight Before Christmas

or, She Came Upon a Midnight Clear

I bought a festive DVD,
A marked-down Christmas flick
Whose cover was a rumpled mess,
Its face a faded pic.

I took it home and put it on
And stared into the screen.
The story that the movie told
I ne'er before had seen:

From The Chive

Mrs. Claus was crying, sad,
Alone on Christmas Eve.
There came a rapping at the door —
What's next you won't believe!

One by one, they filed in:
Eight tiny little elves
Dressed up as half-nude reindeer men
And playing with themselves.

She worked her Christmas magic then,
She held them each in thrall —
On Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, yes,
The vixen rode them all.

Then in walked Santa Claus himself
Beneath his beard, a grin.
He gave a hearty "ho ho ho!"
And then he joined right in!

It was a Christmas miracle
Those naughty elves weren't fired,
And by the time the movie stopped
My arm was sorely tired.

Now I'm too old for fairy tales,
I don't buy all the buzz.
I know that Santa doesn't come —
But Mrs. Claus sure does!

Today's Word: teetotaler

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:30:00 +0000

In a graveyard at St. Peter's in Preston, Lancashire, England, is a tombstone that bears this inscription:

Beneath this stone are deposited the remains of Richard Turner, author of the word Teetotal as applied to abstinence from all intoxicating liquors, who departed this life on the 27th day of October, 1846, aged 56 years.

Some people wrongly believe that a person who advocates complete abstinence from all intoxicating beverages is a tea-totaler, offering the mistaken explanations that tea-totalers drink nothing stronger than tea or that people are encouraged to drink tea instead of alcohol.

But the word is actually teetotaler.

The word teetotal apparently existed before it was used specifically for alcoholic humbuggery. The first three letters are a reduplication of the first letter of total — T-total, or total-total — meaning absolutely everything. It's an intentional redundancy along the lines of "last and final," "each and every," and "absolutely positively."

Have yourself a groggy little Christmas
Image via Wikipedia

The unfortunately named Dick Turner used the word in a speech to a temperance society in Preston, arguing "[n]o half-way measures here. Nothing but the tee-tee total will do."^* The founder of the group, Joseph Livesey, liked the word, and immediately proposed that it become the name of their society. The others agreed, and the men of the temperance society of Preston came to be known as teetotalers.

It's believed Turner gave this speech in September of 1833, months before the ordeal of Christmas was on his mind. Had he given the speech on, say, December 19 — in the midst of Christmas shopping and planning for extended visits with in-laws — he might not have been so gung-ho about total abstinence.

* From http://www.online-literature.com/amelia-barr/winter-evening-tales/8/.

Today's word: scuttlebutt

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Scuttlebutt, simply put, is gossip. It's the embarrassing moments that people talk about when you're not in the room. It's the raison d'être of the quidnunc, what coworkers gab about over the office water cooler.

It's a fun, weird little word, a compound of scuttle + butt. Scuttle is from Middle English skottell and refers to a hole with a cover. Originally, it referred to a small opening in a wall or roof or on the deck or side of a ship. The verb to scuttle, which refers to destroying and abandoning your own ship, comes from the idea of putting holes in the bottom of the ship to sink it.

The butt part of scuttlebutt refers neither to what rams do with their heads nor to what you find at the opposite end of a ram. It comes from the Latin buttis, a large cask. (The diminutive, butticula, led to the word bottle, and is not, as you might think, a blood-sucking, immortal, Transylvanian anus.)

So a scuttlebutt is a large cask with hole in it that has a cover. Specifically, the scuttlebutt holds the drinking water on an oceangoing vessel, and it's where sailors would go to talk.

That's right, the scuttlebutt is the ship's water cooler.

I just think that's wild.

Caption Me! A Little Monster for Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:53:00 +0000

Our department had a nice little luncheon today, after which we did a white elephant gift exchange. I walked away with a nice Chia Donkey that will soon stand where my Sea Monkeys used to live (they all died).

I pitched in the hand-drawn picture shown below.

Too late came the idea (from @BKWordNerd) to have him dragging a decorated Christmas tree behind him. My title then would have been "James Cameron's How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Maybe next year.

But this one still needs a title or a caption. So please, stretch your imagination and put some text with this image in the comments!

Gary Blum, Age 6

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:30:00 +0000

or, Putting Kids' Shit on the Refrigerator

"I made this for you." Gary held out a thick piece of warped paper smeared with color. It had a pungent odor to it.

"Well thank you sweetie," Diane said. "It's beautiful." She examined her son's artwork. A swash of finger-painted brown across the top, swirls of light green punctuated with splotches of yellow, orange, and red across the middle, and a bright yellow patch spreading out from the bottom corner.

"Oh . . . " she said. "It's . . ."

"It's upside down, silly," Gary said. She rotated the picture in her hands and held it lower so they could both see it.

"It's the forest behind Gramma and Grampa's house," Gary said. "See? Here's the sun. Here's the trees. And here's the ground." He pointed to a bright cluster of colorful smears in the trees and said, "And these are birds in the trees."

"Oh, of course." Diane said. Now that the picture was right-side up, she could see the landscape. Gary was obviously an artistic wunderkind. "Did you make this at school?" she asked.

"Nope. I made it upstairs last week. I kept it in my closet so it would dry."

"You have paints upstairs?"

"Nuh-uh!" Gary giggled.

"What did you use?"

"Mrs. Hurley, um, told us last week about, um, about re-. . . reez- . . . restickled art."

"Recycled art?"

"Uh-huh, restickled. It's where you make pictures and stuff from stuff that's just laying around or that you'd just throw away anyway."

Image via Wikipedia

"So you made this picture from . . . ?"

"The trees is a bunch of the grass left over after daddy mowed the lawn. I rubbed it on the paper really hard to make it green. I made the birds out of that stuff you put on your fingers."

"On my fingers?" Diane spread out her hand over the picture. "You mean nail polish?"

"That's it."

"Okay. What about the sun?"

Gary's smile dropped and he looked at something on the floor. "Um, that's just crayon. I guess I cheated."

"Oh, that's okay, honey. It's still a beautiful picture."

His face lit up again. "Will you put it on the 'frigerator?"

"Certainly!" Diane walked to the refrigerator, held the picture against the door, and popped a monkey-shaped magnet on top of it. They both stepped back and looked at it with pride.

"So what's the brown stuff you used for the ground?" Diane asked.

"Oh! I almost forgot! That was my favorite part!" Gary's smile widened as he whispered conspiratorially, "I used poop."

He giggled.

Double Titles

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:00:00 +0000

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Commitment Issues

Pay attention; there will be a quiz.

I enjoy coming up with names for things — stories, poems, warts, whatever — using puns, alliteration, homophones, and other sorts of wordplay. Maybe I enjoy it a little too much, because I often find myself giving my stories and poems two titles. This annoys some people who think it's done out of pretentiousness or narcissism. I hope I'm not doing it out of some subconscious narcissism; I just think it's fun.

Sometimes I do it because I have two great puns and can't choose just one of them (like Crimson Tithe; or, Orange County Whoppers), sometimes it's so I can add a little wordplay to a known phrase (like Love in an Elevator; or, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Office Park), and sometimes I add a second title and then, a week later, I can't remember why I decided to use both (like The Darkness That Grows Within; or, Even Hypochondriacs Get Sick).

Usually, though, when I double-title something, the first title is what I ought to call it, and the second title is what I want to call it, and it often takes the form of The Title; or, This Other Title That Is Entirely Too Long but Is More Descriptive, Witty, or Downright Hilarious.

Not many writers are double-titling their works these days. But after doing a little poking around, I find that I'm in pretty good company. Famous double-titlers include Mary Shelley, Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melville, William Shakespeare, and my role model, that paragon of brilliant simplicity, Kurt Vonnegut.

Granted, most of that company is long deceased — in fact, Cormac McCarthy was the only living author I could find who had double-titled a book* — but still, I find some comfort in knowing about this tradition among literary greats of giving a piece a second title.

So don't expect me to bow to the current trend of giving a piece just one little ol' title anytime soon.

It's just not my style.

But now, the promised quiz: Match up the well-known title on the left with its second title on the right.

1. Blood Meridian	A. The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
2. Breakfast of Champions	B. The Evening Redness in the West
3. Candide	C. Goodbye Blue Monday
4. Frankenstein	D. The Impostor
5. Moby-Dick	E. Life Among the Lowly
6. Slaughterhouse-Five	F. The Modern Prometheus
7. Tartuffe	G. Optimism
8. Twelfth Night	H. The Whale
9. Uncle Tom's Cabin	I. What You Will

* As opposed to books with subtitles. There are plenty of those around, especially in nonfiction. But subtitles are really a second part of the main title, not a second title in its own right.

Drag your cursor here to see the answers: 1B, 2C, 3G, 4F, 5H, 6A, 7D, 8I, 9E

Today's Word: quidnunc

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:30:00 +0000

You know those people who hang out at the watercooler (either literally or figuratively) who are always anxious to find out who's doing what with whom, who's doing whom with what, and which office they got caught doing it in, and then pass that information along to any ear that comes by? Almost every office has one, but what do you call them?

If you're indifferent to their actions, you might just call them gossips. If they irk you, you might call them busybodies or, if you're feeling particularly Dickensian, mumblenews. If they really annoy you — and especially if they're a bunch of rotten kids and a talking dog — you might call them meddlers.

Image via Wikipedia

If their constant chatter has landed you in a serious meeting with Human Resources, you might need something a little stronger: buttinsky, perhaps. Or even scandalmonger.

Of course, the people spreading the "good word" believe that they are only transmitting Truth, and that if you didn't want to get fired, you should have kept it in your pants, so it's really your fault in the end. It isn't fair of people to brand them with negative epithets for offering such a great service to their coworkers.

And when the inevitable hearings begin, and they are called upon to tell the mediator (or worse, the lawyers) what they knew and when they knew it, they will surely prefer a more neutral moniker. Something suitable for a legal preceding. Something more, well, Latin.

Something like quidnunc.

Quidnunc doesn't have a very complicated etymology. It's from the Latin quid nunc?, meaning "what now?" — the constant question on the lips of every good gossip.

In The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the people of the town loitering in their business on an overly cool and disagreeable summer day while two characters pass through with a secret:

What a treasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along with them! But their two figures attracted hardly so much notice as that of a young girl, who passed at the same instant, and happened to raise her skirt a trifle too high above her ankles.

In Ulysses, James Joyce makes an aptronym (or, if you prefer, aptonym) of quidnunc, mentioning a Sir Milksop Quidnunc and his cohort, Sir Fopling Popinjay. (I think he just named my next two pets.)

Herman Melville — a man who really enjoyed exercising the English lexicon (have you read Moby-Dick?), used the word in Billy Budd:

About as much was really known to the Indomitable's tars of the Master-at-arms' career before entering the service as an astronomer knows about a comet's travels prior to its first observable appearance in the sky. The verdict of the sea quidnuncs has been cited only by way of showing what sort of moral impression the man made upon rude uncultivated natures whose conceptions of human wickedness were necessarily of the narrowest, limited to ideas of vulgar rascality . . .

Quidnunc is a good word to know. First off, this eight-letter word would be an amazing bingo in a round of Scrabble (a base score of 20 points). Secondly, not many people know what it means, so you can use it freely to call out the more blabber-mouthed of your coworkers.

On second thought, maybe not. You might just be the subject of the next round of scuttlebutt.

No Surprises

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 05:13:00 +0000

Today I offer a rather dark bit of flash fiction. If you're already depressed, don't read it. If you do read it, I leave it to you to decide how the story really ends.

Jeremy exhales slowly, trying not to cry.

He stares at the picture hanging on the wall in front of him. It's a family picture taken during a trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania. In it, Jeremy has his arm around Jeanine, her curly red hair blown diagonal in the breeze. In front of him stands Eric, at ten years old, in his favorite Star Wars T-shirt. The sun glances off his hair — red, like his mother's, but lighter and shorter — giving him a devilish half-halo. His freckled cheeks have started reddening from their day in the sun. Next to him is little brown-haired Ronnie, almost eight, eyes half-closed from blinking at the wrong time. His big smile is missing a front tooth, and his dimples are so deep that they could be mistaken for a smudge of dirt on the photograph.

That sunny day seems so long ago; the family in that photo looks so happy.

Jeremy's eyes sting. The image blurs. He closes his eyes, creating two wet parallel lines down his unshaven cheeks. He rests his hand on the cold, gray lockbox sitting beside him on the couch, cooling his damp palm.

He wonders what Eric and Ronnie are doing right now, hundreds of miles away. Wonders what kind of summer vacations their new step-father takes them on. Wonders if they think about him as often as he thinks about them. He wonders if they miss him.

Moments pass. The furnace kicks off, and the sounds of weeping fill the small apartment. He can't stand to listen to it.

On the cabinet where his TV used to sit is a cheap digital clock with a built-in CD player that holds the last CD from what used to be a large music collection.

Jeremy stands, still sniffling and gulping for air. He pushes the Play button and advances the Radiohead CD to the fifth track. The first notes ring from the small speakers as if from a tarnished celestial harp.

He returns to the couch, his last convulsions dying to whimpers, and pops open the lockbox.

A heart that's full up like a landfill . . .

He removes the revolver, holds it in his lap, and stares at it. Stares and listens.

. . . a job that slowly kills you . . .

It wasn't the job that killed him; it was losing the job. First, he was "down-sized" from his corporate job. Then he took that minimum-wage fast-food job; that restaurant closed down a week ago.

Meanwhile, bills came due, payments were missed, collectors came knocking—

But Jeremy knows these are scapegoats. He got where he is — sitting on his couch, caressing a revolver — because he is a failure. He failed as an engineer. He failed as a husband. He failed as a father.

He failed as a man.

  . . . bruises that won't heal . . .

He wonders what Eric's and Ronnie's lives will be like after he's gone. How quickly will they get over his death? How will it affect their relationships with their children?

With Jeremy's grandchildren. Grandchildren he will never meet.

In a rush, he imagines all the moments of their lives he'll miss: birthdays, graduations, weddings . . . .

But no. They're better off this way. His life insurance will take care of his boys better than he could. He had paid only half his child-support payment last month, and another is due. And he doesn't have any way to pay for it. For anything. All the money is gone.

Better to end it now, before he defaults on his insurance. Before they shut off his electricity and repossess his car. Before he's evicted. It's better to end it now, and give his children a future, instead of becoming just another deadbeat dad, another loser.

He lifts the gun. It feels heavier than it did just moments before.

  You look so tired and unhappy . . .

He puts the barrel in his mouth. The bitter metallic taste makes him salivate. Its smoky, unctuous, unnatural odor makes his nose twitch.

  . . . bring down the government . . .

His hands tremble. He closes his eyes. More tears flow, but silently.

  . . . they don't, they don't speak for us . . .

The gun sits uncomfortably between his teeth. His tongue touches the bitter front edge of the barrel, where the bullet will come out.

  . . . I'll take a quiet life . . .

His quivering fingers are trying to turn themselves into jelly. He flexes his whole arm trying to keep his fingers stiff, and it makes his shoulder ache.

  . . . a handshake of carbon monoxide . . .

He squeezes his eyelids together. His face is hot. He fingers the smooth trigger under his finger. He concentrates on the music.

  . . . no alarms and no surprises . . .

He takes what he knows will be his last breath. He pictures his sons smiling at him. 'I love you,' he thinks.

  . . . no alarms and no surprises . . .

'And I'm sorry.'

  . . . no alarms and no surprises . . .

He forces his entire body into stiffness, fighting against trembling. Little by little, he puts pressure on the trigger. He feels it moving back . . . back.

BANG! Someone is knocking on the door. BANG! Jeremy's body jerks abruptly. BANG!

  . . . s i l e n t . . . s i l e n t . . .

Today's Word: nightmare

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:50:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Last night I had a horrible dream.

I dreamed that I was lying in a cool, open field of dewy grass, staring up at the stars in the night sky. Light began seeping in around the edges of the horizon — not just in the east, like a sunrise, but all the way around. The light at the edges grew inward, creating a hazy, undulating edge with star-filled night on the inside and blue sky on the outside. Brighter and brighter the sky grew as the night shrank toward the zenith, until only a small patch of dark sky remained.

The wavering edge separating day from night hardened, and I could see that the last remnants of night had taken the shape of a magnificent dark horse, and it was galloping toward me, the steam from its breath casting off nebulae and galaxies into infinite space.

And then I woke up.

The dream wasn't a nightmare — that has nothing to do with horses — it was just a horrible dream. Thin plot, no character development, predictable symbolism. Just horrible.

Back when the BCs were fixin' to turn into the ADs, people believed that horrible, frightening dreams were caused by evil demons who visited (and, ahem, consorted) while their victims slept. A woman was visited by a male demon called an incubus, and a man was visited by a female succubus. Both words come from Latin: incubus comes from in + cubare, "to lie upon," and succubus comes from suc (or sub) + cubare, "to lie under." (Apparently, demons stick to the missionary position.)

This belief extended into the Dark Ages. The Old English word for an incubus was mare, so the demon that visited people in the night came to be called a nightmare, along with "night hag" and "the riding of the witches."

The "lady-horse" mare also comes from Old English, but from mere; nightmares and equine mares aren't etymologically related.

The Complaints Department

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:52:00 +0000

It's three-word Wednesday time! This week's words are impetus, solace, and vindication.

The Complaints Department
Her impetus for communication
Was to get some retail vindication,
But she found no solace
When she tried to call us
'Cause we were all out on vacation.

Today's word: loophole

noreply@blogger.com (4ndyman) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

All politicians claim to hate loopholes. Tax loopholes, regulatory loopholes, legal loopholes. But you know who really hates loopholes?

Medieval infantry.

The original loopholes were vertical windows on medieval castles and fortifications. They were thin on the outside, but they widened on the inside, giving archers inside the castle the ability to fire on advancing armies over a wide angle without exposing themselves. The development of gunpowder marked the beginning of obsolescence for these Old World loopholes.

Lego^® Wall Street
Coming Christmas 2011for all game systems
Image by Joriel "Joz" Jimenez via FlickrOf course, loopholes are alive and well today. In a seemingly rock-solid wall of legislation, the loopholes are those small gaps through which slick-tongued bigwigs manage to get around the rules that everyone else follows.

Loopholes certainly loomed large in the lead-up to our current economic woes. When I hear the word loophole, I imagine Wall Street fat cats safely ensconced in their high-rises, raining down deadly thoughts upon the Occupy Wall Street protesters banging on their castle doors below.