weak nights

Fun Holiday Traditions

BRING THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON INTO YOUR WORKPLACE!

If your co-workers forget to wear green on St. Patrick's Day, pinch them!

If they aren't wearing a pumpkin on Halloween Day, scare them!

If they don't wear red on St. Valentine's Day, kiss them!

If they wear white shoes after Labor Day, step on their feet!

If they aren't wearing red, white, and blue on the 4th of July, shoot them with fireworks!

If they don't kiss you under the mistletoe on Christmas, give them herpes!

If they aren't grateful on Thanksgiving, poison their gravy!

If they don't wear a sweater on Grandparents' Day, throw them down the stairs!

If they don't see their shadow on Groundhog's Day, bury them alive!

If they don't look for eggs on Easter, boil them alive!

If they don't blow up Parliament on Guy Fawkes' Day, RAPE THEM.

No court in the country will convict you. Have an Irish day!

HALF A DOZEN WORDS I USED TO NOT KNOW

When I read, I tend to write down words I do not recognize, or words that I can only understand in a reading context but could not myself define or use in a sentence. Later I look up the definitions of the words, and any other interesting details. Here are a few.

flaneur - This word is supposed to have one of these ^ over the letter A but I can't figure out how to do that. It's a great word though: it means a lounger or saunterer, an idle man about town. What a great ambition! From it we get the verb to flane which means to saunter or laze (which is what I'm doing today, as I write this in my jammies). The dictionary includes a quote from a 1969 issue of Computers & Humans magazine: "The electronic age may yet se every man a flaneur." Still waiting.

vitiate - Lots of definitions, none of them complimentary. It means, variously, to render incomplete, imperfect or faulty, to impair or spoil. To corrupt by carelessness or introduction of foreign elements (shades of xenophobia in this definition?). To render corrupt in morals, to deflower or spoil a woman. To render air impure. (Still going.) To invalidate, adulterate, or alter feloniously! So if somebody offers to vitiate you, say NO!

facticity - I laughed at this definition. It's the quality of being a fact, factuality. Sounds totally fake; it's a buzzword from 1945. Saying that something that is factual has "facticity" is like saying something made of pudding has "puddingocity."

pelagic - Of or pertaining to the high or open seas, as distinguished from shallow water near the coast. Specifically, something living on or near the ocean's surface and NOT in its depths. It can be applied to marine life at any depth, though, so the song "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid might just as easily have been called "Pelagic." I would like to point out that the seldom-used word thalassic means "pertaining to bodies of water, especially lakes." They sort of complement each other.

volte-face - The act of turning so as to face in the opposite direction, which I would like your mom to do so I don't have to look at her ugly face. BOO YA. It also means a complete change of attitude or opinion. This would be a good word for candidates to fling at each other instead of "flip-flop" because it also has a Germanic flavor to it, so it's like you're calling them an inconstant Nazi, which is the worst kind of Nazi.

plimsoll - There's a band called the Plimsouls, I think, but this word has nothing to do with it. The first definition refers to a line marking the load capacity on the hull of British ships; this line is named after some Lord and it's called the Plimsoll Line but it's also called the Plimsoll Pancake. Hee hee! More common is the rubber-soled canvas shoe.

HALF A DOZEN WORDS I USED TO NOT KNOW

When I read, I tend to write down words I do not recognize, or words that I can only understand in a reading context but could not myself define or use in a sentence. Later I look up the definitions of the words, and any other interesting details. Here are a few.

ravening - I started the last entry with "revenant," as I'm sure you all recall, so I guess there's a precedent for leading these sporadic articles with r*ven*** entries. This is kind of an intuitive one; it means like a raven, taking goods by force, robbing, plundering, despoiling. "Despoiling" is interesting because it kinds of means its opposite: when you take away all the spoils from someplace, you ruin it, and then it's spoiled. Also, "ravening" means madness, rabies, or a fit of madness. A rabid raven? Foaming at the mouth while it croaks, "nevermore."

Irredentism - You're not going to have much of a chance to use this one in everyday speech, I'm afraid. It's a political term: any policy seeking recovery and reunion to one country of a region or regions being subject to another country. Sound confusing? There's a reason: it's Italian! After 1878, the Irredentists they wanted Italy to absorb all other Italian-speaking districts. I think now is the time for the neo-Irredentists, who are iridescent dentists. We need to make sure Mexico doesn't catch wind of this trend or they'll reclaim California in a hot second.

succour - This word has a TON of definitions. It seems like there's a succour born every minute. They're all related to aid: help, assistance, a means of assistance or aid, auxiliary military forces, shelter, refuge... you never see a hobo on the street holding a sign that says "SUCCOUR." If I did, I'd give him a buck. Take heed of that hobos: I know you're reading this on the computer at the library, because you always sit next to me and your overpowering body odor makes the seams in my clothes weaken and tear.

sidelocks - I read this word in an article somewhere used to refer to payess, the curly sideburns of the Orthodox Jew, and I was not at all sure this word was kosher. Sure enough, it's not in my dictionary, so I don't know if it's a nonce word the author thought was correct, and if so if it is derived from "Shylock," which would be bad. If anyone's ever heard this word before, leave a comment.

rictus - The obsolete meaning (always the more interesting one) is the orifice or throat of a bilabiate corolla. It's from the world of botany. Its modern meaning is the expanse or gape of the mouth. Think of Guy Blank (Jerri's father) from Strangers With Candy.

calyx - The plural is "calyces" but the dictionary says "calyxes" is an acceptable plural but "rarely." The OED will grant you only so much leeway. It's from the Greek word referring to the outer covering of a fruit or flower, its shell or husk. Thing is, the word got mixed up with a similar Greek word, calix, which means goblet or drinking cup, so a calyx is often erroneously described as a "flower-cup." Of course it has nothing to do with a cup; it's a whorl of leaves forming the outer envelope of flower still in the bud. Cup doesn't fucking enter into it.

Seems Like the Aunt Bette Thank You Note Season Starts Earlier Every Year

Last year:

Sighted at the Courthouse 2

Okay door, you're under arrest.

Sighted at the Courthouse 1

Jury duty isn't so bad if you bring a camera!

Where were you?

That's the last time I let you build me a Doomsday Clock

For one brief moment I was like, maybe it’s partly my fault. He’s still very new to clockmaking, and most of his training was in the more traditional vein, in fact, he’s only ever made wristwatches before. I asked him to take on an ambitious project outside his comfort zone, I should cut him some slack.

The Wonka Memo

LEGAL MEMORANDUM
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

TO: Squire, Squire, Hackham, and Dudley 

FROM: Tobias Squire Esq. Re: Wonka Prize 

Attn Partners,

Imagine my surprise upon returning from vacation only to discover news of client’s brainstorm in, oh let me think, EVERY NEWS OUTLET EVER CREATED. I did leave explicit instructions on how I could be reached while at Brighton; I can only assume that, yet again, Mr. Wonka et al did not see fit to draft his proposal by legal before going to the public and we must now once more pick up the pieces.

Some Multiple Choice Answers

Multiple Choice Answers Starting with Letters G-I

I’m very lucky, I love my work. My job is to write and produce scavenger hunts for private parties, frequently companies seeking team-building events. To learn more about this awesomenessitude, please visit www.thegogame.com. 

The game is played on wireless web-enabled cell phones that direct players from location to location and ask questions (we call them “missions”) about details we find or conceal in the game zone. Players answer either with multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank responses (I’m not adequately expressing how rad the whole enterprise is, but I’m just focussing on one particular aspect of what I do, so bear with me). I scout the game zone, write the questions with my own zesty style, and, in the case of multiple-choice answers, write 4 wrong choices for each right one. 

My computer has a long memory for fields you fill in-- or did, at least, until a recent unfortunate clear re-install. When I start to type in a multiple-choice answer field that will later turn up on a players’ phone, I see all the other answers I’ve ever entered in that field that begin with that same letter, not as many since before the re-install, but still a fair amount. Here are some of the multiple choice answers that start with G,  H, and I. The questions I’ve long since forgotten, but bear in mind that about 1 in 5 of these is correct.

Real Life Gaming

As some of you know, I work for the fabulous Go Game, a real-life gaming outfit, and this past August I decided to check out some of our competition, Urban Dare. I'm not too afraid of giving them a plug (though I'll make their logo small just to make plain where my allegiances lie) because I discovered we're really not competing for the same market. I decided to give them a try when they were in town on Aug 25th, and here is an archive of my game experience, in which I will give away some of their trade secrets. Yahoo!