August 2009
38 posts
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ø, denmark
is a real place. imagine all the hours of your life you will save when writing down your address as a little null set sign. also: quiffins live there!
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yo looks like a freak
here is some interesting news about kids in baltimore [deflator alert: it has nothing to do with the wire or omar little]. it concerns a grass-roots trend of adopting yo as a gender neutral pronoun.
[The] Street term ‘Yo’ is being used by kids as a gender-neutral replacement for ‘he’ and ‘she’, according to researchers. Language experts in the US say since at...
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middling talents
certain writers elect to go by their middle name. usually this is because the mafia forced them to do it or a company holds a copyright for their first name and threatens to take them to court. other times it is because of medical conditions like 1. dyslexia or 2. chronic boogers. whatever the reason, here is a list of these individuals and their actual first names.
(william) somerset maugham
...
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my world of warcraft nom de guerre
kennings have been on m’mind ALL WEEK. here is a tasty little trivia-nugget brimming with kick-ass eths and thorns regarding recursive kennings »
The longest kenning found in skaldic poetry occurs in Hafgerðingadrápa by Þórður Sjáreksson and reads nausta blakks hlé-mána gífrs drífu gim-slöngvir “fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed”, which simply...
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the international committee on sexological...
yesterday, i relayed a scintillating tidbit to you about how i became a hapless voyeur of some freaky-deeky raccoon sex. because of this i got several emails (brimming with the most puerile and base puns that one could imagine). but then i received this treasure (the capital letters are not mine):
Dear Raynor,
[blah blah blah]… as you are a self-proclaimed authority on animals,...
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while we are on the topic of autological words...
here is one of my favourites (it also has great mouthfeel).
elelendish - of another land, foreign. from old english eilland (foreign land)
look at the first five letters of elelendish and tell me truthfully that the word does not describe itself. but beware of elelendish’s autological paradox: the more you use it, the less autological it becomes.
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just before midnight on august 19th
i was able to work the word, ostrobogulous into a sentence. orson and i were exiting a local pub when we heard a clang from the alley. the source of the noise, we soon found, was two raccoons on top of a dumpster® brand trash receptacle boning eachother. we stared at the raccoons (our jaws in slack formation) for ten seconds or so before the dominant raccoon resumed his awkward arrhythmic...
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a character study
perhaps the only honor for an author greater than having his or her name adjectivised is having the name of his or her characters adjectivised. here are a few that i was able to find (irregulars are italic):
Arthurian, Bunyanesque*, daedal, Dryasdustic†, Falstaffian, Faustian, gargantuan, Herculean, Holmesian, narcissistic, Œdipal, Panglossian, Pecksniffian, pickwickian, quixotic
for the...
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auctorial descriptives -or- literary eponymous...
i have always been fascinated by demonyms and so i compiled this fairly* exhaustive list on similar terms related to authors. what really tickles my pickle are: 1. the irregularities (given in italics) and 2. the authors that have not been adjectivised:
Asimovian, Austenian, Baconian, Ballardian, Balzacian, Borgesian, Brechtian, Bunyanesque, Byronic, Carrollian, Cartesian, Chaucerian, Checkovian,...
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tomorrow's to-do list
work the word, ostrobogulous into a conversation of any type. it is used to describe something that is “bizarre, unusual, or interesting.”
if there is such a thing as mouthfeel for word pronunciation, ostrobogulous would rank up there with ineluctable.
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Fwd: FW: HUGE VIRUS COMING: PLEASE READ & FORWARD
despite constantly telling my mom that the more greater than signs that a forward has, the more fraudulent it is, i get weekly emails from her like this:
> > > You should be > > > alert during the next few days. Do not open any > > > message with an > > > attachment entitled ‘POSTCARD’ regardless of who sent it > > > to you. It is a...
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if you aren't a millionaire yet
here is another quick trick for raking in the big bucks:
fact: canadian pennies are only worth 91.06% (or 910.6‰) of u.s. pennies [true]
fact: canadian pennies LOOK ALMOST IDENTICAL to u.s. pennies [true, except they replaced abe “linkin park” lincoln with a pot leaf]
business plan: duh, this plan writes itself. [cha-ching!]
if you STILL are not a millionaire: there is also the...
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words wholly unrelated
cleave & cleave
both are pronounced the same. both are spelled the same. and each is the opposite of the other (cleave means “to separate”; cleave means “to stay together”). they each come from completely different old english words (cleofan & clifian respectively).
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diæresis pieces
i think that we can all agree that english is a pretty bitching language and i don’t want to be overly diacritical, but i amn’t alone in wishing that english orthography contained at least a few more interesting characters.
here is a wikipedia list of the small number of english words that actually have diacritical marks. most of these are loan words from klingon and old elvis but a...
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from the diary of william byrd
July 30, 1710
In the afternoon my wife and I had a little quarrel which I reconciled with a flourish… It is to be observed that the flourish was performed on the billiard table.
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the hammer
i brought a few friends along to my 95 year-old grandfather’s 95th birthday party. this is a more or less accurate transcription of their introduction:
raynor: grandpa, i’d like you to meet my friends, doug, orson, and peter. doug, orson, and peter: nice to meet you, sir. my 95 year-old grandfather: do you fellahs ever take showers together? doug, orson, and peter (looking at me...
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sapless like a withered flower
wiener problems are embarrassing to write about but usually make for a very entertaining read. such is the case with john wilmot’s “the imperfect enjoyment” which tackles the heavy-hitting subject of premature ejaculation (or for discretion when talking about it with your doctor: pee period ee period).
proceed with caution: the following excerpt is enn-ess-eff-double-you in the...
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yo mama jokes for linguists
English is essentially German spoken in the mouth rather than the throat.
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are actually the same language. It’s just that the Norwegians can’t spell it, and the Danes can’t pronounce it.
Spanish is what happened when Moors tried to learn Latin and said “screw it.”
Tagalog is essentially Visayan spoken by Kapampangans.
Franche est...
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words wholly related
testicle & testify
both are from the latin word testis meaning witness or evidence. to testify is to give evidence and a testicle is evidence of one’s virility.