the ragbag

week 13: ptr what is striking about the few ptr words in the oed...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:00:00 -0400

week 13: ptr

what is striking about the few ptr words in the oed is how many of them relate to the ladies. and of the ones that i chose to round out my most licentious fantasies (female captors, corruptors, and redeemers) none have the same ending (-ress, -rix, and -rice respectively). while you are using your word skillz® to try and figure out why this is, me and my captress will be playing such titillating games as “find the key,” “cavity search redux,” and “ooops, my prison grade soap has slipped from my grasp and landed on the mildewy floor, i guess i will bend down to retrieve it against my better judgment, oh my, is that footsteps that i hear behind me?”

captress · a female captor
corruptrix · a female corrupter
dissceptre · to deprive of kingly authority
redemtrice · a female redeemer

this is a post in the ragbag word summer series. for this series, i search for words in the oh ee dee that contain a randomly generated string of 3 letters and report my findings. it is a thrill ride.

week 12: uia quia timet translates to “because yo...

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:00:00 -0400

week 12: uia

quia timet translates to “because yo fears”. it is used in the science of law* as a way of saying that whatever dirty deed that yo is alleged to have committed, yo did so because yo’s life was in imminent danger.

raynor, you cannot being doing wheelies on your ducati motorcycle through the mall. quia timet, beyotch. raynor, it is forbidden to eat panda meat, especially with that horrid kc masterpiece™ bbq sauce. quia timet, beyotch. raynor, sideburns like that are illegal in 5 states. quia timet, beyotch, et cetry, et cetry.

alloquial · pertaining to the action of addressing others
biloquial · speaking with two different voices
equiæval · of equal age
exequial · pertaining to a funeral
gastriloquial · pertaining to a ventriloquist
reliquiæ · literary remains; unpublished or uncollected writings
sesquialter · a 3:2 proportion
sub-unguial · underneath the nail

*raynor ganan is not (yet) licensed to practice law in your particular state or country. if you need actual legal advice from a bona fide attorney, the dudes that do their own commercials that run during all my children are usually the most qualified people on the planet with which to consult.

week 11: cow hahaha…..bovines. of the 500+ words in the...

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 10:00:00 -0400

week 11: cow

hahaha…..bovines. of the 500+ words in the oxford english dictionary that contain the letters see, oh, and double you, close to 90 per cent are related to that most mammalian of mammals: the cow.

why our ancestors chose the cow as the de facto provider of milk—a substance which a billion other species (even monotremes) are capable of producing—nobody knows for certain. but what i know beyond all doubt is that the dairy industry is the most sexist industry going. if you are a bull looking to find some work in the dairy biz, more power to you brother.

accoward · to make faint-hearted
contacowre · a quarrelsome contentious person
cow-cloom · a mixture of cow dung and clay
cowscape · a painting of a rural scene involving cows
mancowe · a baboon
scowbank · to loaf
scowles · of mine-workings, to cave in
worricow · a scarecrow; a hobgoblin

gone til september unless you are a subscriber of my weekly...

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:19:00 -0400

gone til september

unless you are a subscriber of my weekly email newsletter or a confirmed buddy of mine on orkut, you probably don’t know what it is that i do professionally—or even if there is a professional component to whatever it is that i do. there is, and because of a few non-disclosure agreements that i signed while buzzing on armagnac and mood stabilizers, i’m not entirely able make this part of my life explicit. but what i can tell you is that it has something to do with zinc, zinc isotopes and (my personal favourite) zinc radioisotopes.

so when a vast repository of naturally occurring ⁶⁴Zn was discovered in a ravine north of calgary, you can imagine my extreme ecstasy. now as far as the zinc biz goes, i’m relatively small potatoes, so i when the world’s preëminent zinc researcher called me on my iphone and was like, “raynor, will you help us study this motherfucking zinc?” i was like “dur!” and then tucked my erection into my waistband and started giving howie mandel fistbumps to everyone around me even total strangers and people who wear oversized t-shirts with giant corporate logos on them.

i now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play with as much ⁶⁴Zn as my pockets will hold. to put this opportunity in perspective: most people, even the super handsome and even the most zinc-gifted don’t get an opportunity like this until they are 65 and want to retire (or are lured to the darkside of cadmium study). but there is one downside to this boon—because i will be working non-stop in northwestern canada for two months, regrettably, i don’t anticipate that i will be able to update the ragbag until september 1st.

what this means: i might twitter a tweet before then, i may email an email, but as far as ragbagging a ragbag, i honestly think that i will be too exhausted from all this zinc. plus: i’m not entirely certain that the information superhighway has come to the canadian wilderness yet. but don’t worry: you can still expect a word summer series entry to ooze out of this website fridayly—starting this friday with [spoiler alert] words that have the letters see, oh, and double you in them.

i look forward to september first when we can again engage in our one-sided raynorcentric dialogue and i can direct you to which scholarly zinc journal will be publishing my groundbreaking *fingers crossed* study on ⁶⁴Zn.

until that time gentlemen and curvy womenfolk, i will remain your handsome colleague,

raynor ganan

week 10: scl when i mince about in my size 38 juicy sweatpants...

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:04:44 -0400

week 10: scl

when i mince about in my size 38 juicy sweatpants and a lime green snuggie that doubles as a bathrobe/smoking jacket, i fear (from the ghastly looks that i receive) that it’s time to buy some better fitting clothes. from my adventures in the oh ee dee, i now know that such clothing is said to transclout—to change one’s appearance from trim and neat to mis-shapen and untidy.

this word is a weird one, even for me. in fact it was only ever used once in 1647. here is the citation from the simple barber of aggawam:

it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive, how those women…disfigure themselves with such exotic garbs, as not only dismantles their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into barnacle geese, ill-shapen-shotten-shell-fish…

day-yum! it seems that the author, nathanial ward, liked to coin his own words—words that the editors of the oh ee dee thought were worth preservation. in addition to transclout, ward gives us: exadverse, directly opposed; fool-fangle, a silly trifle; nudiustertian, the day before yesterday, and perquisquilian, thoroughly worthless.

here are a few more scl words. while you read over them, i will be transclouting myself with a mylar garbage bag.

crepuscle · twilight
disclander · public disgrace
esclandre · unpleasant notoriety
floscle · a flower
miscleping · misnaming
opuscle · a literary or musical work of a small size
rascle · to yawn
sclaff · in golf, a stroke which scrapes the ground before hitting the ball

the cost of a grill in the year 600

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:17:00 -0400

i had to go back to the salon this morning because my bro-zilian wax didn’t take. and while mai ly poured boiling wax over gonads, i pored through more medieval royal decrees. this time it was æthelberht of kent’s laws from the year 600, the earliest written code in any germanic language.

æthelberht’s code established a series of fines for all kinds of personal injuries. here is what he thinks that your teeth are worth:

for breaking a man’s front tooth: 6 shillings
for breaking a man’s molar: 1 shilling
for breaking a man’s canine tooth: 6 shillings

however, æthelberht’s people petitioned their king saying that the molar is basically a double tooth and that it is very serviceable besides. the goodly king listened to his subjects and decided to raise the price of a molar to 15 shillings.

assuming the anglo-saxon dentists categorised the biscuspid as a molar, this means that if a rowdy saxon hooligan got into the age-old quarrel with his neighbour about who was a bigger hunk—the michael j. fox teen wolf or the jason bateman teen wolf—and busted every single last one of his teeth, he would owe him £4 and 12 shillings before æthelberht changed the law and (an astounding) £18 and 12 shillings after.

adjusted for inflation and the weakening pound, this works out to just about 78¢ in modern u.s. currency.

monopoly men

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:16:28 -0400

i was getting a bro-zilian wax yesterday in preparation for the big brazil v. chee-lay soccer match and reading through tudor-era royal charters when i came across a few interesting deets. apparently, the monarch had the power to grant legal monopolies to a group of her cronies. thus, queen elizabeth could—say—give bill gates an exclusive license for making operating systems or allow mark cuban to be the owner of every basketball team in the nba. here are a few of elizabeth’s buddies and the industry in which she granted them a monopoly:

flask making · reynold hexton (15 year grant)
transporting shreds of woolen cloth · symon farmer (21 year grant)
anniseed importing · robert alexander (21 year grant)
buying linen rags · john spilman
selling felt hats · [name redacted]
transporting ashes and old shoes · ede schets (7 year grant)
licensing taverns · sir walter raleigh

i can only imagine my delight upon learning that the virgin queen had decided to give me exclusive rights to the transportation of ashes and old shoes!!!! think of all the glittering guineas that would soon be lining the ganan coffers! think of all the comely wenches that would sit on my lap in taverns despite all my small pox sores! think of how my status would elevate amongst my peer group. who is raynor ganan? raynor ganan is the baron of ashes and old shoes—an industry that will no doubt flourish well into the next millennium.

here is a chart that i made, trying my darndest to represent the...

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:21:00 -0400

here is a chart that i made, trying my darndest to represent the win-loss-draw relationship between the four teams in each of the eight world cup groups. if there were only three teams per group, this type of visualisation would be relatively straight forward. with four teams (and two spatial dimensions), things get a little dicey and the visualisation turns into a topological math problem. in the end, i wound up with this shield design based on a solution to a similar problem by john venn. i hope it is not overly confusing.

week 9: uno what intrigues me most about diy prison culture is...

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:37:19 -0400

week 9: uno

what intrigues me most about diy prison culture is the same thing that intrigues me about the oulipo: that creativity can persevere, indeed it can flourish even under the most severe constraints—be they the inability to use multisyllabic words or the lack of access to metal forks.

some of the objects that jailbirds have been able to craft during their time in the big house are absolutely genius. but alcohol? is improvised prison wine even possible? like great scotch, pruno has many different methods of preparation and flavour notes, but the basic recipe is the same:

mix warm water, fruit juice, sugar, ketchup and moldy bread (for yeast!) in your prison toilet. cover, heat occasionally, wait a month et voilà, enough hoochy booze to inebriate a mastodon!

i was going to make a batch and force my handsome friends and orson to test it out. thankfully this has already been done. what i can do is give you the hook-up on some other words that have uno in them.

ceraunoscope · an apparatus used by the ancients to imitate thunder and lightning
chaunoprockt · wide-breeched
crunode · a point on a curve where it crosses itself; a node with two real tangents
cunopic · dog-faced, shameless
eunomic · law-abiding; socially well adjusted or ordered
lacunose · of a manuscript: full of gaps or hiatuses
lacunoso-rugose · wrinkled with irregular furrows
nounou · a wet nurse
unodorable · incapable of being smelled
unorn · of persons: plain in manners or appearance

excerpts from the 1904 edition of "a dictionary of etiquette"

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:09:00 -0400

a man should remove his hat in a parlor-car, but not in a day coach.
toothpicks should not be used in public. if necessity requires it, raise the hand over the mouth, with the hand behind it, using the toothpick as quickly as possible.
salted nuts are eaten with the fingers.
smoking a pipe in the street is becoming more common. it is poor taste, however on a fashionable street.
men are not to wear gloves at high tea.
when riding horses, it is customary for the woman to set the pace, and for the man who always rides on her right to accommodate himself to her—trotting, galloping, or walking his horse as she may do. if at a fox-hunt, this would mean that he must be ready to sacrifice much of his personal pleasure that she may enjoy herself.

from: a dictionary of etiquette by w.c. green (1904).

words wholly unrelated

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:48:26 -0400

dog & dog

the word for dog in mbarbaram, a recently extinct australian aboriginal language, is dog. it is pronounced the same way as in english yet it is not a loanword—it is completely coincidental.

given the limited number of sounds that can be made with one’s mouth, the amount of basic words in any given language, and the 3.2 million languages currently spoken in our solar system, uncanny coincidences like this do crop up from time to time.

for bestiary: a wulver, a mellow werewolf the wulver is a kind...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:37:47 -0400

for bestiary: a wulver, a mellow werewolf

the wulver is a kind of werewolf native to the shetland islands in scotland. he is not aggressive and won’t get up up in your business unless provoked. he keeps to himself, spending much of his day fishing from his favourite rock. from time to time he leaves fish on the window sills of poor families. he is the keanu reeves of werewolves.

week 8: syt before you get all all hot and bothered over the...

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 11:01:28 -0400

week 8: syt

before you get all all hot and bothered over the fact that i picked sythe over the hilarious-looking assything, you should know that it isn’t actually pronounced assy-thing (it’s assyth + ing). sythe on the other hand, has not one but two great definitions. besides the one that i went with, there is also, “fortune on a journey.”

assything · the giving of satisfaction for an offence
busyty · fussiness
epassyterotically · one after another
sythyche · an oath meaning “may i prosper!”

if you still think that i made the wrong choice, i will thumb wrestle you all epassyterotically. sythyche!

previous entries have been: acyrological (incorrect in use of words), lobcock (a blundering fool), crwth (an ancient celtic violin), pfuiteufel (an exclamation of contempt or disgust), tenebrio (one who lurks in the dark), agathokakological (composed of good and evil), and ville lumière (an exciting modern city).

hanno the navigator and the wild people of the southern horn

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:03:59 -0400

way the heck back in five hundred bee cee (or thereabouts) hanno the navigator, a carthaginian explorer set sail for the african coast to see what there was to be seen. mostly it was boring trees and ugly beaches. occasionally, he would come across some dismal marshes. but then things began to get juicy. here is his account from two point five thousand years before you were born:

Following the rivers of fire for three further days, we reached a gulf named Southern Horn. In the gulf lay an island like the previous one, with a lake, and in it another island. The second island was full of wild people. By far the greater number were women with hairy bodies…We gave chase to the men, but could not catch any, for they all scampered up steep rocks and pelted us with stones. We secured three women, who bit and scratched and resisted us.

it is now generally regarded that hanno’s “wild people” were actually chimpanzees.

translation of hanno’s periplus: cary and warmington (1929).
source: “knowledge of the ape in antiquity,” by ashley montagu, isis (1940).

turtle-ka-bob if you are like me and have a pet turtle and...

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:20:23 -0400

turtle-ka-bob

if you are like me and have a pet turtle and haven’t gone shopping for groceries since parsnips were in season, this recipe for turtle (from the indian ocean island of mauritius) may come in handy:

Skewered Turtle Meat

Marinate 1-inch cubes of turtle meat in lemon juice, salt, crushed garlic, and a little oil. Alternate on skewers with pieces of turtle liver and grill over charcoal. Serve with boiled turtle eggs, a hot chutney sauce, and rice.

disclaimer: i did not actually eat this recipe. i don’t really like rice, so i served the turtle meat on toast points instead.
from: unmentionable cuisine (1979) by calvin schwabe

the kafka of nafka guess which of your homeys is now a card...

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:07:00 -0400

the kafka of nafka

guess which of your homeys is now a card carrying member of the north american fighter kite association! hint: it’s raynor “kite daddy” ganan, that’s who.

while feverishly popular in countries like india, pakistan, and afghanistan, the noble art of severing your opponent’s kite line by deftly manœuvering 300 feet of string encrusted with glass powder attached to your own kite is only now becoming a minor fad in boston, massachusetts.

on windy days, you can find me training in danehy park and i will take all comers. but—fair warning—i lace my kite string with titanium carbide razors, ¼ carat diamonds from pawned patriots super bowl rings, and the ground-up vertebræ of my vanquished foes.

here is another highly destructive world sport that we can play on days with no wind.

the first bloom(sday) bloomsday, the ancient celtic fertility...

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:39:00 -0400

the first bloom(sday)

bloomsday, the ancient celtic fertility festival, has not always been about watching theatre majors strut around in period sportswear, or listening to music majors strum the celtic harp, or (worst of all) enduring english majors as they grab you by the shoulder and tell you how to read ulysses is to see the face of god. indeed, bloomsday used to be about lowbrow carousing under the pretense of discussing highbrow literature. take for example this account of the first bloomsday:

The day was 16 June, 1954, and though it was only mid-morning, Brian O’Nolan [Flann O’Brien] was already drunk. This day was the fiftieth anniversary of Mr. Leopold Bloom’s wanderings through Dublin, which James Joyce had immortalised in Ulysses .

To mark this occasion a small group of Dublin literati had gathered …just below the Martello tower in which the opening scene of Joyce’s novel is set. They planned to travel round the city through the day, visiting in turn the scenes of the novel, ending at night in what had once been the brothel quarter of the city, the area which Joyce had called Nighttown.

Sadly, no-one expected O’Nolan to be sober…The rest of the party, that first Bloomsday, was made up of the poet Patrick Kavanagh, the young critic Anthony Cronin, a dentist named Tom Joyce, who as Joyce’s cousin represented the family interest, and John Ryan, the painter and businessman who owned and edited the literary magazine Envoy.

Kavanagh and O’Nolan began the day by deciding they must climb up to the Martello tower itself, which stood on a granite shoulder behind the house. As Cronin recalls, Kavanagh hoisted himself up the steep slope above O’Nolan, who snarled in anger and laid hold of his ankle. Kavanagh roared, and lashed out with his foot. Fearful that O’Nolan would be kicked in the face by the poet’s enormous farmer’s boot, the others hastened to rescue and restrain the rivals.

With some difficulty O’Nolan was stuffed into one of the cabs by Cronin and the others. Then they were off, along the seafront of Dublin Bay, and into the city. In pubs along the way an enormous amount of alcohol was consumed, so much so that on Sandymount Strand they had to relieve themselves as Stephen Dedalus does in Ulysses… Eventually they arrived in Duke Street in the city centre, and the Bailey, which John Ryan then ran as a literary pub.

They went no further. Once there another drink seemed more attractive than a long tour of Joycean slums, and the siren call of the long vanished pleasures of Nighttown.

from: flann o’brien, an illustrated biography by costello and van der kamp (1987)

pictured above on the first bloomsday: john ryan, anthony cronin, brian o’nolan (flann o’brien), patrick kavanagh & tom joyce; (1954). source.

the great day

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:43:00 -0400

my niece, who is a famous 2nd grade novelist, just sent me her latest memoir. it’s called the great day and its virtuosic twist at the end is an m. night shyamalan movie waiting to happen.

the great day (2010)

the date is may 25. one day i was having a horrible, bad yucky day! it was may 24. i was walking in the grass. i sprained my ankle. “ouch!” i screamed.

i put a wet paper towel over it. it felt better.

so i went outside. it was dark. i bumped my head

i had to go inside. i had to go to bed. it was a great day! everything went great. the end.

analysis: the plot twist works so well because the author tells you in the opening page how the day was “horrible, bad and yucky” BUT THEN the reader discovers in the last paragraph that it was actually “a great day” and that “everything went great” (the wet paper towel and the drawing of gallagher are red herrings). finally, it all hits home with the title “the great day” and the reader realises that the greatness of the day WAS KNOWN FROM THE OUTSET!!!!!

week 7: mie what i am finding in the seventh week of this series...

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:03:56 -0400

week 7: mie

what i am finding in the seventh week of this series (besides the realisation that there are more words in the oh ee dee than grains of creatine powder in the five gallon jug that i keep on my nightstand) is how we can see the influence of other languages on english in just three little letters. rwt words were exclusively welsh, ufe words were heavily german, neb words were dominated by latin/romance languages, and ako words were greek to the extreme. this week’s 210 mie words also clearly come from another popular language. here are a select few, please enjoy them with a croissant and a jerry lewis movie.

anomie · absence of accepted social standards
au mieux · on the best terms with somebody
doomie · a prophet of doom
faute de mieux · for want of something better, used for lack of an alternative
ville lumière · a brightly-lit city or town; an exciting modern city
nimiety · excess, redundancy
petite amie · the female friend of a middle-aged man
premier crû · a wine of the best quality
prosai-comi-epic · combining the prosaic, comic, and epic
samiel · a hot, dry, suffocating sand-wind which sweeps across the african and asiatic deserts at intervals during the spring and summer

previous entries have been: acyrological (incorrect in use of words), lobcock (a blundering fool), crwth (an ancient celtic violin), pfuiteufel (an exclamation of contempt or disgust), tenebrio (one who lurks in the dark), and agathokakological (composed of good and evil).

hanging with hipsters

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:04:13 -0400

them: the party tonight is going to be so epic.
them: the way he slipped in the grass was an epic fail.
them: i just got an epic text.
them: this milkshake is epic.
me: the nibelungenlied and orlando furioso are so epic, amirite? and the shāhnāmeh, that’s about as epic as it gets. ha ha ha, i’m such a kidder.
them: who invited this guy?