from the comments
I’m also picturing one of those pet-toys where the big, battery-driven head rolls erratically over the floor with the little, empty skin of a body flipping and flapping around, following along behind it.
from the comments
All our accents derive from Britain.
Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America
My same friend Susan who brought us the critically acclaimed Omega Institute in Your Pants, 2010 edition today supplied the following list, from the book Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David L. Wagner, Dale F. Schweitzer, J. Bolling Sullivan, and Richard C. Reardon:
Sordid Snout
The Herald
Feeble Grass Moth
Dead-wood Borer
The Betrothed
The Little Wife
Serene Underwing
The Consort
Dejected Underwing
Inconsolable Underwing
Tearful Underwing
Sad Underwing
The Penitent
Sappho Underwing
Youthful Underwing
Darling Underwing
Read more
tweet of the day
You can’t abbreviate lasagna.
— Mary Jeys (@maryjeys) January 26, 2012
dear clusterflock
Here’s the thing. Pronouncing “Gyro” like it’s spelled makes you sound like a rube, & pronouncing it the right way makes you sound pedantic.
— @joeks (@joeks) January 25, 2012
What are other words like this?
Not my super-heroine persona,
but I am thinking that somebody should assume the mantle of The Sanitizer.
¡Cuidado! Hay empanadas.
Each empanada is unique in the way that it is shaped and the way that the dough is crimped and folded. I got a bit confused when I tried to differentiate between all of them. Many places offer a helpful empanada key, showing the shapes for each individual one. And now I think that the verdura is actually the caprese: mozz, basil, tomatoes, and olives. It seems that I’m missing more than just the tuna. Hmm. Maybe my español isn’t as foolproof as I thought.
One day, while the kitchen door was open, I spied a counter full of circles of dough and little heaps of filling in their centers. So rest assured, these are all handmade by real Argentines. And fresh!
As my friend Charlie titled his maldita lengua post, My Life in Empanadas.
Enjoy every empanada.
Dream name
Esther Blunderstruck.
Blues in the Night
There’s a twisted thread that leads to my recalling this song, but I will not even try to unravel it, merely to recollect a boy named Danny Stevens, whom I knew when we were age seven or so, who used to sing this song as he loped down the halls of our school.
Except he only kept repeating the one line:
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Danny also used to say to his classmates, “Shu-u-t up. Beat-cha brains out.”
At the end of second grade, Danny and his family moved to a state he called Organ.
from the comments
If I can catch all of this fishes, and then put them in a barrel, I already have the fish, before I put in a barrel, I do not need to shoot them, they are already here, in my bag, in my big bag of plastic.
Like shooting fish in a barrel
Films sans subtitles
My friend Charlie is now living in Buenos Aires in a house full of folks from all over the world, and among them is Lauren Stephenson, whom some of you may know. The other night Charlie and Lauren went to the movies. Their command of Spanish was not up to the task of following the film as its makers intended, and Charlie reflected on the experience of watching a talkie without a solid grasp on the words the characters spoke.
There were a lot of solitary and broody fishermen in boats and seaside bars. And one mouthy whore. There was a girl thrown into the mix, but her character stared vacantly into the distance so often that I wondered what she was looking at. Was she psychic? Did she make that guy have a heart attack just by squinting through the window? What was she looking for in the distance anyway? Did she like to find beavers in clouds? Again, not sure.
from the comments
My Aunt Audrey was a telephone operator in the sticks of Tennessee. We would visit relatives and I would get on the phone to act out, forgetting about Aunt Audrey or just being defiant. Until I heard a distinctive voice that I was sure was her say, “No playing on the telephone, Miss.”
Mr. C. said that even earlier, all calls had to go through the operator. So if you were trying to reach them, the operator might say things like, “You won’t be able to talk to them until Tuesday. They’ve gone to the river to see Nam Becky,” or some such.
I still am convinced telephone operators know everything.
How to Pronounce Stieg Larsson
And other pronunciation guides from Pronunciation Manual.
(thanks, Dave)
Phonograms
Patrick Feaster studies the culture of early phonography (the recording and reproduction of sound) and blogs at Phonozoic, where I’ve been hanging out for the past hour or so. At the 2011 conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, Feaster shared “Phonogram Images on Paper: 1250-1950.” You can listen to his presentation and download slides here. Just scroll down a little ways and you’ll find the links.
(via Excavated Shellac)
tweet of the day
“Diarrhea” is one of those words that really looks like what it means.
— Garrett Miller (@heyitsgarrett) December 16, 2011
from the comments
The 15-20 seconds starting at 2:20 are my favorite, that’s where he rises above language altogether to some sort of celestial machine code.
Damar, Mon Amour (out of context)
In context: Starlingo ii.
Damar torn from the flock.
What is Damar? Who is Damar? What is Damar?
The Titanic Taxonomy of Wrestler Names
From Pop Chart Lab: A celebration of 382 noms de guerre from the world of professional wrestling.
headline of the day, IV
Microsoft to revive ‘squirting’ on Windows 8, Windows Phone
dear clusterflock, serious edition
How do you move through your grudges? Is it a process of letting go? Giving in? If you focus on forgiveness, do you feel that you’ve metabolized your anger?
from the comments
The seeds that fell off are the footnotes.
from the comments
I said hoary rime and it felt good.
coming out of sleep
I like my sentences like my women: with colons.
from the comments
Uppity. Adj. Applied to those presumed inferior by those who presume themselves superior. Application of the adjective uppity implies a defensive judgment on the part of the speaker that the individual thus characterized exhibits presumption by virtue of some act or acts presumed to demonstrate the individual’s presumed sense of equality with or even superiority to the speaker. Traditionally applied by pig-ignorant Caucasian-American supremacists to African-Americans deemed insufficiently humble and deferential. (“That uppity Nigra don’t know his place.”) Appropriated self-consciously by American feminists in the 1970s (see slogan: “Uppity Women Unite!”) to uncertain effect.
