OOO Donuts!

As my friend so aptly reminded me this week, I've only written three posts in March. I realize that I've been slacking, but it's because I'm not working! While I was at work I wanted to futz around, so I had a reason to post all the time. But now that I'm not working, I have all sorts of other ways to waste time, like by watching movies and playing fantasy baseball. Okay, obviously I'd still be doing fantasy baseball at work, but still. Anywho, for all my loyal readers, I humbly beseech your forgiveness on this, the day of my daughter's wedding, uh, I mean at this holiday season (See "Family Guy," season two, episode 16, "There's Something About Paulie"). I'll try to do better. It's my new year's(?) resolution.

Az, as everyone knows, I'm not only anal about grammar, I'm also really good with standardized grammar tests. Hold on, lemme break my arm patting myself on the back for a sec. Ah, there we go. Anyway, so I got a perfect score on the SATII Writing exam, and even back in high school, they made everyone in the entire grade take the same grammar test, and I got the highest score with a 98.5. What happened to the other point and a half, you ask? I still claim the teacher made a stnank. Whatever, who cares? Ehenyway, today I received a request for to bring, and I quote, "wine or grape juice and fruit?" for a Shabbos meal. Az even though I completely understood the request, I had to be the consummate mathematician/grammarian and responded, "I assume that's (wine or grape juice) and fruit." Another words, in order to determine exactly what was requested of me, I reverted to the old school Order of Operations. I thought that was sufficiently nerdy of me. I was quite pleased.

Az I was recently having a conversation with a certain acronymably delightful young lady about donuts. Just as an aside, during the course of this conversation, she asked me what kind of donut I would be if I was one, az I replied that I would be a glazed cream filled: all smooth and shiny on the outside, and all sugary sweetness on the inside. Ehehenyway, I just finished a book called "Beyond Numeracy," by John Allen Paulos. Basically it's just a collection of short essays on various topics in mathematics, ranging from Calculus to humor. In the entry on topology, he explains that a coffee cup is topologically equivalent to a donut. Another words, without tearing the donut, you could theoretically stretch it to resemble a coffee cup. I thought that was a nice way of explaining a relatively esoteric topic. Just to reinforce my coolty, allow me to explain the difficulty I had with this book. In one of the entries, he discusses Fermat's Last Theorem as being one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in mathematics. I immediately went to check the copyright date on the book, and to my immense chagrin, I saw that the book was published in 1991, a full three years before Fermat's Last Theorem was proved by Andrew Wiles. I don't think I can read a math book containing modern topics that was written before 1994. I just find it weird is all, unsettling... Wow, that's two references to the same part of the same Strong Bad e-mail two posts in a row; I'm starting to get repetitious. I'll try to mix it up next time; I'm a bit out of practice. Yep, that was two sentences in a row with semi-colons.

By The Numbers

Remember a few posts ago when I mentioned I was having difficulties with my computer keyboard? Well, my new keyboard came in the mail today and I just installed it. Yay! Not only does this one actually work 100% of the time, but it also matches the rest of the computer; it's black! And anyone who knows me knows how I feel about matching. Plus, the buttons on Christina here press oh so smoothly, reminiscent of the HCHPAC, a reference which exactly one of my readers will understand. I'll explain that in a minute.

Az in an effort to break in Christina, I went to latimes.com to do a Su Doku. Now, for those of you who think that people who are good with numbers are better at Su Doku than other random folks, you're wrong. All those numbers in that big square (that guy. Unsettling! See SB e-mail #114, "The Facts") might as well be letters because you don't need to perform any operations on them. You just need to use each number between one and nine once in each row and column. Another words, they might as well be the letters between A and I, or for that matter the letters between K and S, or for that matter, the symbols: !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, and (.

Anyway, while I was doing that Su Doku, I was using the new number pad on my keyboard, and it occurred to me that number pads on keyboards are different that number pads on touch-tone telephones and on Automatic Teller Machines. On keyboards the 1, 2, and 3 buttons are on the bottom while the 7, 8, and 9 are on the top. But on telephones it's the exact opposite. If anyone has any idea why that is, please run it through my idiot filter "Edga Jr." (See SB e-mail #127, "Long Pants") before submitting it in any comments, and certainly if you wish to share your thoughts with me in person.

Okay fine, I'll tell the HCHPAC story, not like it'll improve anyone's opinion of me. Back when I was at CTY (The Center for Talented Youth. Yes, I'm a bloomin' genius. I know.) the summer after 10th grade, I took a three week course in high school level Number Theory. Now my professors, Timmer and Quimby, were pretty crazy guys, and they realized that we were studying Mathematics over the summer instead of playing sports like normal children, az they tried to keep class exciting by doing various skits and making lots of jokes. Anyway, my roommate loves to shower. Anyway, they liked to have each student come up to the blackboard to solve problems all the time, and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE wanted to go up to solve the problem when the rights to the HCHPAC were at stake. Nothing draws on the blackboard as smoothly as the Highly Coveted Hot Pink Artist's Chalk. So smooth...
There, happy now? That's all it is with you people; take take take. Ah well, I couldn't resist.

Now That's Just Irresponsible

At the end of last night's post, I carelessly mentioned that I was copying all of my posts onto facebook because I was jealous of my friend's readership, but clearly this merits further discussion. I mentioned that it wasn't fair of me to enlighten only my few devoted readers, so facebook provides a platform where many, many others will have access to my musings. It's all about the advertising. There's also a minute chance that someone will offer me a writing job somewhere, like espn.com. Even Bill Simmons had humble beginnings. Meanwhile, facebook.com has this feature that will allow you to update your blog here on Blogger, and facebook will automatically receive the data feed and print it on there too. It will also post up all of your existing posts. I just tried to do this, and facebook only received 25 of the posts, and the software that gets the feed from Blogger can't find the others. This is gonna be an enormous waste of time, but I guess I'll just have to manually copy and paste each entry onto facebook. Can't nobody say Strong Bad never did nothing for the peoples. Now it is my intention to sit down and play video games for several hours (See SB e-mail #64, "English Paper"). I just took a nap so I'm in no condition to be coming up with deep philosophical reasons for posting up on facebook, but I'll work on it later.

Just as a side point, I had endless trouble typing that paragraph, partially because I had no idea where I was going with it, but also because I ran into some keyboard issues last night. For whatever reason the ergonomic keyboard I bought a couple of years ago didn't come with a USB plug, and my one year old computer didn't come with a ps/2 port, az I was forced to buy one of those USB to ps/2 adapters. Anyway, sometimes the connection between the keyboard and CPU resets itself and the keys get stuck. Last night I got so frustrated with it, I just unplugged Kiki (yes, I just named my keyboard) and plugged in my standard keyboard, not realizing that once you go ergonomic you never go back. Az now I'm trying to reacquaint myself with Kiki; I'll be fine in an hour or two. Maybe I should just switch to Dvorak and be done with it.

And now, a word on friendship. Many of you saw me leave a party at around 1:30 am with little or no explanation. There are some times when you have to just drop whatever you're doing when a friend calls you and tells you to meet him/her somewhere, even when he/she doesn't tell you why. And no, I'm not writing this so people can pat me on the back and say "what a good friend you are." I'm writing this so that all of you out there that were ever in the same position realize how honored you should be to receive such a phone call. It's a fantastic feeling to know that someone considers you to be such a close friend that they would ask you to do something like that, no questions asked.

***Spoiler Warning*** (Tee-hee, I feel like one of those people who has nothing better to do than write video game walkthroughs so that other players don't have to do any work.)

This is gonna sound uber-cheesy, but on a recent episode of "Grey's Anatomy," Christina decides that she needs to tell Meredith that she and Dr. Burke are engaged before she tells anyone else. Why? Because if she ever murdered someone, Meredith would be the person she would call to help her drag the body across the floor.

***End Spoiler***

Do all of you have a friend like that?

Early Week Update

It's only Monday, but it's already been a productive week. My life potentially changed twice today. This morning I received a call from a recruiter who's trying to get me a job in investment banking. He asked me how much I'm making at my current position (he thought I was still working), and when I told him, this was his response, verbatim: "Dude, you need to get outta there." Tell me about it. So he said I really should get into one of the training progrums (see SB e-mail #s 113, 120, and 167, entitled "pizzaz," "radio," and "the movies" respectively) at a big bank; it would change my life. I told him "yes" and "yeah" so many times, I think he thought I was obsessive/compulsive. And just now, in preparation for tomorrow morning's interview at the ISE, I finally took the plunge and learned how to use Pivot Tables in Microsoft Excel. Man, if any of you out there don't know how to do these, make it a top priority. Now all (=2) the spreadsheets I have on my computer can become all kinds of fancy, those being my non-existent spreadsheet containing data on all the girls I've dated, and the spreadsheet with the list of the scotches I'm gonna buy when I become rich (and maybe I'll have a seat by the eastern wall!). Ooh, I also found a pair of glasses to buy. They're really hot; I might have to really set aside some sticks before Shabbos to ward off the girls. Az, I clearly made several positive strides in improving my career situation today, and it's only Monday! Additionally I got to hang out with some top quality people, eat some top quality Hot Dog / Laffa, and watch some top quality Jack Bauer action. It's amazing how even when life is really stinky, it's still only slightly less awesome than it usually is. Also, I got jealous of my friend, so I decided it was time to have my blog visible on my facebook.com page. News of my brilliance needs to get out; it's only fair to the amei ha'aretz out there. I'll discuss this in detail shortly, but not now; I just received word that there's tons of free sushi available. In my current financial state, it would be criminal of me not to partake.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Today I watched "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," a highly underrated comedy/action/mystery starring the underrated Robert Downey Jr. In a scene early in the movie, we have the following exchange between Downey Jr.'s character and his love interest:

Harry: I feel badly...
Harmony: Bad.
Harry: Bad? Sorry?
Harmony: You feel bad.
Harry: Bad?
Harmony: "Badly" is an adverb. So to say you feel badly would be saying that the mechanism which allows you to feel is broken.

What a brilliant discussion! Nonetheless, Harry ends up getting the girl. Is that the secret to how it's done? I didn't know correcting grammar was an aphrodisiac. All I need to do is start correcting every girl's grammar and they'll be throwing themselves at my feet! (assuming I give them a thorough scrubbing beforehand.) Especially if I looked like Robert Downey Jr.... wait, is he cute? (did you notice the period for the "junior" abbreviation followed by the ellipsis? Yes, that's right, there were four dots there.) I don't think so. I'm more of a Jude Law man, or Josh Holloway. Speaking of which, my buddy mentioned his top five female celebrities to me last week, az I think I need to come up with my own top five. I'll work on that this week. One thing that definitely won't be on my top five? Dry T-shirt contests (absolutely no H2O! See SB e-mail #133, Bottom 10). Hmm, I might have set a new record in parentheses usage; that was my third pair. Sounds like an ancient Greek hero, doesn't it? And Parentheses smote the Kerrek, and all was laid to burnination! (See SB e-mail #62, Interview). Okay, that's just about enough of that. Monster.com here I come!

dnL

Az, I just left my friend's place, and as I was hitting the button for the lobby in his elevator I noticed something odd. Apparently the lobby button was broken so they needed to replace it, however they were out of "L"s. I kid you not, in the place of the "L" button they put an upside-down "7." Now, normally I would give the superintendent a pat on the head, a tuna-flavored treat, and some sage advice (see SB e-mail #130, "Do Over"), but in this case, I can only thank him for adding more hilarity to the situation. Once I noticed the upside-down "7" I examined it more closely, and then I realized that you could turn the button around to make it a normal "7." Obviously, anyone smart enough to read will know that to get to the 7th floor you need to hit the "7" above the "5," but still. By the way, as an aside, "yeah, but still," is the best comeback in the English language according to Bill Simmons. So, on my way out of the building, while I was contemplating this 7-L phenomenon, I was reminded of the dnL era. Remember dnL? The upside-down 7up? It came in a green bottle with a green label, and the website listed on the wrapper was www.dnL.com. I wonder if the site is still up? Lemme check. Aha! Interesting. Normally, I would say that typing in www.dnL.com redirects you to the regular www.7up.com website, but it doesn't; the address in the navigation bar never changes to www.7up.com, it just stays as www.dnL.com even though it's the exact same website. Reminiscing about old sodas brings back some memories. Like, remember Crystal Pepsi? I remember it tasting almost exactly like plain ol' Pepsi, but that might just be me. Also, for some reason I remember the commercials for Cherry Cola Slice and Apple Slice. I need to investigate these to see if they ever actually existed. I'll do it tomorrow. And yes, I mean tomorrow, Friday, it's still 11:53 pm. Let's make these last seven minutes productive. Happy last seven minutes of Nirvana Day!

Stupid Gifts and How My Mind Works

Az I was at my friend's place last night, and sitting on her table she has a post-it pad shaped like her first initial? Now, what on earth is the point of that? Yes, it's cute the first couple of times, but who wants to have a wall-full of pink letters near her desk? And furthermore, let's say your first initial is a "B," "D," "O," "P," "Q," or "R." You'll be writing your note on the paper and all of a sudden you'll come to a hole on the sheet. Do you continue writing on the other side of the hole, or do you continue writing on the next line? Give me a plain ol' yellow post-it any day. Oh, and I promised she could be a potential hero for giving me the idea for this post. Moving right along.

I was in synagogue yesterday morning praying the silent prayer, when I started to examine the stained glass windows at the front of the room. By the way, I'm recounting my thoughts here to give you all an insight into how my brain works. Anyway, earlier, one of the people sitting nearby mentioned how something on one of the windows evokes the old Milwaukee Brewers' logo, the one with the "m" and "b" made to look like a baseball glove. Az while I was praying I saw the logo look-alike, and I remembered an old ESPN.com article, which discussed potential nicknames for the newer baseball parks. Since the Milwaukee franchise is the Brewers, and brewers make beer, the sponsor for their ballpark is Miller. In the ESPN.com article, they jokingly referred to Miller Park as "The Keg." Brilliant. As soon as I thought of "The Keg," I immediately remembered one of the older Strong Bad e-mails, #44 entitled "Lures & Jigs." When Coach Z asks Strong Bad which lure he's using to attract the fish, Bad responds that he's mostly been using this one: "Hey fish! Hey fiish! I'm gonna, I'm gonna recommend that you guys come up here in the boat. We've got a, uh, a keg! Of worms! And, uh...phytoplankton!" Anyway, all of these thoughts were going through my head during the silent prayer. It's no wonder G-d is too busy laughing at me to actually grant any of my requests. That's okay, He'll come through for me in the end; He always does.

Blogorrhea

Tuesday's urbandictionary.com word of the day: blogorrhea. Definition: To write a [blog] entry just for the sake of posting an entry, not because you have done anything interesting today.

That's not to say that I don't have anything interesting to say, I just thought it was a fun word. Anyway, over that past two days I've had to drive uptown to Washington Heights from the upper east side twice. Both times driving on the highway would have been poorly planned routes, so instead I pulled the ole' Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard routine. The "R" in "routine" stands for RRRRRRONG! you raving racketeer of recondite routes! (See SB e-mail #54, Morning Routine) Apparently, depending on the time of day, the sequence of traffic lights changes! That's right! Even though it's a two-way street, the light sequence works in your favor if you are driving downtown in the morning. At other times of day the lights work like every other two-way street, either all green or all red. (Disclaimer: This next statement could be viewed as being racist. I do these things to attract more readers.) This is the kind of brilliance I expect in higher-class neighborhoods like York Avenue or Central Park West, but not for a relatively unknown street existing only between 110th and 155th streets. But I paid the price for my racism. This morning I headed back to the heights along ACPJB only to realize, to my immense chagrin, that I got caught in the wrong sequence. Whereas last night I only hit two lights from 125th to 155th, I hit a light every five blocks this morning. This is not a mistake I intend to repeat; it was a lesson well learned.

Sorry, One Last Thing

I know I said I finished Bill Simmons's book yesterday, which is true, but at the time I wrote those words yesterday I actually still had a few pages left. Az this is really going to be the final word. While discussing Boston's signing of Josh Beckett, he quotes Jack McKeon, "this guy has got the guts of a burglar." Then Simmons says in his own words, "I don't even know what that means, but I'm excited." What a fantastic nickname! Allen Iverson is "The Answer," Karl Malone is "The Mailman," Gary Carter is "The Kid," and now Josh Beckett can be "The Burglar." I love it for a couple of reasons. a) The word "burglar" is an extemely funny word. The "rgl" construction makes for high comedy. More on funny words in a minute. b) I always associate the word "burglar" with the Hamburglar from the McDonald's family. Also, Bilbo Baggins is commonly referred to as a burglar by Gandalf and the dwarves in "The Hobbit." Az this goes back to the nickname post. I still haven't come up with anything for myself, but "The Burglar" is a really good one. I'm gonna keep working on it.

Now onto the inherently funny word buisness (not misspelled, see SBe-mail #104, Theme Park). Most inherently funny words have some sort of inappropriate overtone or at least sound like they do. Examples of such words are: derriere, masticate, jiggery-pokery, thespian, and hormone. Other ones just sound funny because of the letters, like: tomfoolery, kerfuffle, kumquat, fisticuffs, and callipygian (If you look up "callipygian" you'll see that it means "having beautifully proportioned buttocks" as in "the quest for the callipygian ideal." Ladies, get to work.) I'm investigating some websites to find other funny words. Here's what else I got: cromulent, bonkers, crapulence, gubernatorial, phloem, polywog, platypus, whirligig, hootenanny, brouhaha, malarky, smarmy, fulcrum, nincompoop, bamboozle, cheese, penal, barnacle, garbanzo, rutabaga, doppelganger, fork, egg, duty, trousers, fondle, squeegee, flibbertigibbet, sasafras, gerbil, doohickey, syphylis, ointment, flan, and noodle. If anyone has any comments about this endless enumeration of entertaining expressions, feel free to add to the list. Until next time, help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered. Heh, add "neuter" to the list.

Random Thoughts of The Day

So after a grueling nine days, I finally finished Bill Simmons's book. My final thoughts are as follows: During the afterword, Bill mentions that it was a great feeling when he was standing in Barnes and Noble, and someone picked up his book to buy. I think I want to feel that at some point. To think that someday, someone might actually spend money to read something I wrote. Cherish these days my friends. One day I might start charging $9.95 per month for access to my musings.

So, I was doing the crossword puzzle today, and one of the clues was something like "friends with Tinky-Winky." Now I rarely cheat at the crossword by looking something up online, but I knew we were talking Teletubbies, and I really wanted to remember the other three (Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po). If I ever meet a purple creature named Tinky-Winky, I'm demanding a hug. Oh, if anyone wants to offer professional help in exchange for tutoring in math, let me know. ASAP.

So yesterday was just an awful day. Before I continue with that train of thought, I'm noticing that I start paragraphs with the word "so." All the time. Not only that, but I'm also typing a few sentence fragments today. You're gonna have to let those fragments slide. The "so" thing is valid; it was just something I noticed. I think I'm going to replace the word "so" with the word "az," in homage to a great man, one of my heroes. Az yesterday was just an awful day. Aside from a catastrophic, collective brain-fart by 3/4 of my fantasy football team, there were also a bunch of little things, which drove me up the wall. Ever try to take public trans on a sunday? It's the worst feeling in the world to JUST miss the subway, because you know you're going to have to wait another 17-29 minutes for the next one. Twice. Reason number two: Garbledina (See SBe-mail #114, The Facts). Anyway, the day was just unpleasant. But it's amazing how a word here, or a joke there, or an IM mixed in that can make everything alright again. At the end of the day, it's just money, or it's just a girl, or it's just a smashed up car, or it's just an extra 17-29 minutes. Things will work out; they always do.

Az I signed up for urbandictionary.com word of the day a week or two ago, and the word today was "pre-walk." A pre-walker is someone who positions himself or herself on the subway platform so that he or she can get off the subway in the optimal place to exit the destination station (Ooh, that's like conjunction junction except not at all!). The listing claimed that this phenomenon is especially true of the New York subway system and its riders. I do this; I'm definitely a cool cool guy. This can also be evidenced by the fact that a friend quoted me on her faceblog (read: facebook note). Not only am I cool because a cool girl quoted me, but also the quote was very funny. "Just call me Captain Transition-Lenses." Yep, definitely a cool cool guy.

This weekend I visited my Alma Mater. Now, my friend claims that I'm still a household name there (I even got a shoutout during a speech), but I think that's totally false. Either way, I learned that I could still throw my weight around over there. I can still drink them all under the table, and I can say whatever I want to whomever I want. What are they going to do, expel me? What's gonna happen, I'll freak out the 17 year old first-year girls who didn't go to Israel? They'll get over it. It's a great feeling to know that you absolutely OWNED a place for a year or two.

Ok, az that's all for today. Until next time, happy Nigeran Republic Day.

1 Comments

So my friend was reading my ridiculous post, and as he was scrolling down the page he noticed that below the "Observing Thanksgiving" post was printed "1 Comments." I was so excited about this for a few reasons. Firstly, it strengthens my claim that when it comes to grammar, the blogger people have absolutely no idea what's flying. Another words, when I sue them for removing a space each time I put a period, the only way they'll get off is with an insanity plea. I mean, anyone who can't program their websites to correct such a simple error as "1 Comments" must have a few gears loose. Secondly it provides an extremely smooth segue into talking about one of my favorite Strong Bad e-mails, which makes fun of the very same thing. Now, I mentioned e-mail #122 earlier when I was expounding on the "another words" phenomenon, but this e-mail has so much more good stuff in it. Anyway, when SB begins to describe his "dreamail" in accordance with Danny's request, the dream begins with the lappy turning on and happily declaring in her sexy, robotic voice: "Good morning, Strong Bad. You're looking prooty hot. You have one unread messages." According to hrwiki.org, this is a reference to older computer programs and answering machines that would use the word "messages" as a default and would not correct it when there was only one. Another words, the people at blogger are LAZY. The programmers, g-get some real programmers. G-get some real gloves. (See Halloween Costumes '03) There all sorts of other fun things in that e-mail. The "dreamail" he would like to receive reads as follows: "Dear Mssr. Eleganté, You left your pocketwatch in the hot tub. When will you be back to retrieve it? -128 Hot Katies" And during his response he comes up with several gems, such as: "I will triumphantly/abundantly return to the chateau for my ruby-encrusted pocketwatch. I have plans tonight, however, but I will, furthermore, heretofore, be back on morrow next. Please tell Adelaide that the poached eggs were tremendous." I really like the "triumphantly/abundantly" and "furthermore, heretofore" business. The rhyming/archaic language makes me feel all jangly. (See SB e-mail #130, "Do Over")

The poached eggs being tremendous also reminds me of the main writer for firejoemorgan.com, who calls himself Ken Tremendous. This has all the makings of the perfect nickname; it's short, self-explanatory, has alliterative qualities in that "Ken" rhymes with "men," and the word "tremendous" happens to be quite humorous. So, in homage to Ken, and in an effort to cement my legacy in the blog world, I decided that I need to come up with a nickname for myself, so I don't have to keep referring to myself as "Schmutter." So, if anyone has any ideas, feel free to send them in. Only serious responses will be considered. Another words, "Noah Croatoan," or some other such nonsense will only get a cursory glance. That was actually pretty impressive that I was able to come up with an adjective that sounded like my name so quickly. If anyone wants to know what "Croatoan" is, a link is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Island

So last night, I watched the movie "Match Point," starring the sublime Scarlett Johannson. At one point, one of the characters asked another if he was cross. Apparently, words I thought were used only in fantasy books are also used by the British. I'm not sure how I feel about that. If all fantasy books were written using British style English, then maybe when I finally get around to starting my fantasy novel, I'll write using American English and it's treasury of idioms. I'll need to think about it. Meanwhile, I'll be back in my doghouse crying myself to sleep. Happy Thai Father's Day.

Funny Word Things And Something Else

So you know how some letters should never be doubled in words? Like in the word "vacuum." There should never be two Us next to each other, because you would want to pronounce both of them, like you would want to say "vakyoo-um," because that's what it looks like. I was trying to find some words/letters, which should not exist. Here's what I found. Going back to U for a second, I found the word "squush." This is pronounced "skwush," with the U pronounced like the "oo" in the word "book." "Squush" is a fantastic word, up there with "floppy." So this whole thing got started when my friend was describing his father's lack of business sense. I recommended he use the word "savvy" instead. Two Vs should never be together like that. I didn't find any other great examples with "vv," but I'm on the lookout for other letters. "Bazaar" is a pretty good one. It's too difficult to find many others because when you search for things like "cc" online it shows you trivial words like "success" and "accentuate," while you want to find words like "soccer." Anyway, it was a fun exercise while it lasted. For some reason, while I was looking up the "aa" words and filtering through foolishness like "aardvark" and "salaam," the word "gaol" popped into my head as a terrific word. Now "gaol" is just a British way of spelling "jail," but they are pronounced the same; they are homophones. Okay, enough of this masochistic, maniacal mayhem.
I have to apologize. In one of my recent posts I mentioned some of the hilarity from this year's homestarrunner halloween costume commentary. Somehow I neglected to note the picture of the young woman wearing a hooded sweatshirt in a The Cheat pattern. Strong Bad's comments are as follows: "Hey, it's The Cheat's hot mom...dressed up as... The Cheat's hot mom! Is she giving out frozen margar-a-Cheat-as again? Ah, The Cheat's hot mom. Always in and out of prison." For some reason I didn't find that mind-bogglingly hysterical until a week or two later. Now I find myself referring to all sorts of people as being "always in and out of prison," even newborn babies and other G-d-fearing folk. I sometimes go one step further and mention conjugal visits, but you don't need to know about that. Okay, so until next time, have a happy Albanian Liberation Day!

Superb

Anyone ever notice that the word "superb" is just the word "super" with a "b" at the end? I wish I could get away with tacking on a letter at the end of a word. "My cell phone isn't really that smallk." "My pants are too tighth." "The window shades are pulled downt." And that's the best stuff I could come up with. I realize it's been a few days since I last posted, but there's really nothing about which I feel strongly enough to write. In fact, the elections took place yesterday and I felt the opposite of strongly about them. If someone were to ask me how I felt about the elections, I would say "weakly." Much like when W.C. Fields replied to the question, "how do you like children?" with the response, "fried!" By "much like," I mean entirely different, except for the fact that both our responses didn't answer the questions at all. But I digress. "From what?" you ask? Who can really say.

I watched the update to homestarrunner.com yesterday, which was the third annual installment of Strong Bad's commentary on fan holloween costumes. These are the highlights from those three episodes:
-A man in a Strong Bad costume is punching a man in a poorly constructed Homestar costume. Strong Bad comments: "Here I am beating up some kind of...mashed potato man."
-A man wearing a very large Homestar costume is seen standing on the front lawn. Strong Bad: " Oh man, if I saw that thing runnin' around my back yard, I'd get out the compound bow."
From the second season:
-small pictures of Marzipan, coach Z, Homsar, and the KoT are painted onto what appear to be squashes. Strong Bad: "Oh, and next on the worthless arts and crafts shopping channel, the least popular Homestar Runner characters gourd collection. Nothing completes an old lady vestibule quite like them."
And from this season:
-Well, I just like the one where Strong Bad asks Homestar if he ate Luigi.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share some of that brilliance with you. Oh, if I ever say "I wike candies," it's from there too. I think I once responded to an e-vite like that.

I need to go purchase a compact disc. Chevra 3 came out today. I hear it's not as good as the first two. But everyone who says these things likes only the first songs from the albums, which aren't always that good in the first place. I mean, "Yehei" is a good song, but it's certainly not the best one of the album. It's probably more like fourth or fifth best. And "Lecha" is also a good song, but once again, not close to the best on the CD. I wish I had brought my headphones to work today so I could listen to the excerpts they have on jewishjukebox.com. I'm going to buy the album anyway, I just hate that some people have heard it and I have not. Like I know I'm going to miss Lost tonight, and it bothers me that some people will have seen it before I have. It's the same thing.

Alright, that's all I have for now. I'll try to be coherent next time. If anyone asks, I can just feign inebriation. Happy St. Demetrius's Day.

Another Words

Wow, I'm going for the trifecta today. Good for me. The only reason I had so much time to blog today is that I was up $352 at about 10:00, and then proceeded to lose $230 of it about $20 at a time for the next two hours. I then decided to stop trading for the day. Next time you see me, give me a hug, unless you're a girl. (At this point I should say something inappropriate like, "...unless you're a girl, in which case nothing less than a reached-on-error will suffice," but I won't. I'm strong willed) Anywhosie, I realize that I never explained the whole "another words" phenomenon. Once again allow me to call upon the services of our friendly neighborhood, red-masked, multi-purpose criminal element, Strong Bad. In e-mail numbo 122, Danny asks him what he looks for in an e-mail. "Another words, describe that dream e-mail that you would like to recieve one day." Now, Strong Bad disappointed me by not correcting Danny's spelling of the word "recieve;" as we all know, Strong Bad is almost as maniacal about spelling and grammar as I am. Anyway, Strong Bad responds with a ridiculous fishing metaphor involving the many e-mail fish out there in the e-mail sea, and then finally makes fun of "another words" a-like-a-this-a: "Another words, please allow me to ditch the fishing metaphor and hit you with the pink border." Hence, instead of using "in other words" like a normal human being, I choose to use "another words."

Grammatical Pet-Peeves

I know everyone makes a big deal about my correcting their grammar, but seriously, inasmuch as they went out of their way to make English the most difficult language ever, we might as well repay their magnanimity by speaking it properly. And plus, it really pisses off the British when we try to do it the right way. So here's a few of my grammatical pet-peeves. They're denturific!
1. At what point in our relatively short history did we quit using adverbs? They should be a viable option when it comes to the parts of speech. The only one anybody still uses on a consistent basis is "very," and that's really the least impressive one. Not only that, but people also replace adverbs with adjectives, like "you're driving too fast!" No, I'm not; I'm driving too quickly.
2. Here's a huge one. People need need NEED to start using the word "fewer." The word "less" can only be used to describe a substance lacking in number. Par example, "you have less water than I do," but "I have fewer bottles of water than you do." "My brother has less hair than I do." "He has fewer hairs on his head than I do." It's really quite simple.
3. Everyone knows how I feel about this one. You absolutely cannot end a clause with a preposition. This is entirely inappropriate. As the great Benson & Hedges, Nextel Cup Churchill once said, "this is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put." People screw this up so so so often (there were 3 adverbs in that sentence; they were all the word "so."). Just fix your sentences, my friends. It's really not that hard once you get used to it.
4. This one doesn't make any sense at all. The space for neologism in this language should not be filled with foolishness like the word "'nother." As in, "that's a whole 'nother story." You are allowed to say "that's a whole other story," or "that's an entirely different story." What's the big freakin' deal?!
Ok, these other ones have to do with writing and typing, but they're still really bad.
5. This one is more a still up for debate, but I'm taking a stand, like the X-Men. Whenever you type a period at the end of a sentence, you absolutely must put two spaces after it. One space just won't suffice. Even though it doesn't appear that way in my blog, since the website fixes things the way it wants to, I always have two spaces after my periods. ALWAYS. In this case, as in all cases, less is not more. Even fewer isn't more. More is more.
6. The English language has a magical word called "which." It can be used as a question; "Which way did he go?" It can also be used conjuction style, which is the one which troubles me (the second one there was a pronoun). It gives me conjunctivitis whenever I read a sentence which contains "which" as a conjunction when it is not immediately preceded by a comma, which is necessary.
6. This one is really a no-brainer, but it's still all over the place. Allow me to transcribe a ditty from the inimitable Dr. Bad's e-mail #89 entitled "Local News." In response to Dan's question, Bad sings, "If you want it to be possessive, it's just "I-T-S." But, if it's supposed to be a contraction then it's "I-T-apostrophe-S," scalawag." That pretty much says it all.
Please my friends; I wouldn't ask you to fix these things if I didn't have faith that you could. Pardon me whilst I go bring maaser sheni.

Important Things

I've decided not to post anything about my personal life on here. This is partially because most people probably don't really care about my personal life. But mostly because of something I saw on an episode of "Will and Grace," a television show which I never watch, although gay jokes are very funny. Anyway, on this particular episode, Will comes to the realization that he wants Grace to call him to tell him the little, unimportant details of her life, because those are the things that he really wants to hear, which makes them actually important. I think that the fine folk of the National Broadcasting Company hit the nail right on the head. So, I'm just going to keep posting my random thoughts, so that one day I can look back and conclude, along with my faithful readers, that I am, indeed, quite hopelessly insane.

Cross

I read a lot of fantasy books, and I'm quite upset that I haven't updated my vocabulary to include words that should only appear in fantasy books, such as "cross." And I don't mean like "cross the street," but more like, "If you keep flicking my ear I'm going to become cross." I'll keep posting up some more words I need to be using more often.
Oh, also in my last post I thanked the Brothers Chaps for use of their material. I neglected to mention that in the title of my previous post, "Credit, where credit's dew," the spelling of the word "do" appears as it did in Strong Bad e-mail #94 entitled "Video Games," in which Mr. Bad describes various games in which he'd be likely to appear. One of them, a MUD game (multi-user domain, for those of you who are cooler than I am) features a man who wanders around a dungeon typing in commands. One of the questions on the screen is "What wouldst thou dew?" Just so I don't have to keep doing it, let's just say thanks to the Brothers Chaps and to www.hrwiki.org for all they have done for me and all they will continue to do, enriching our lives, providing us with laughter, and wasting countless hours that should be devoted to learning Torah. This Cold One's for you.

Credit, where credit is dew.

Just so everyone knows that I'm not nearly as funny as the funniest people in the world, aka the Brothers Chaps, I'd like to give them credit for the description of my blog. In Strong Bad e-mail #63 entitled, "Fingers," Our esteemed Mr. Bad corrects the e-mailer, Lee Conrad, when he types "Costume Place." "Palace, Lee. I think you mean costume palace." Thanks also to http://www.hrwiki.org/ for the exact transcript.