May 2010
23 posts
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ragbag miscellany
none of the 2,000 wikipedia tabs that are still open in my netscape browser window merit their own post. but perhaps if i aggregate them into a larger collection they may somehow combine like voltron robots into something greater than the sum of their parts.
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gangkhar puensum is the world’s 40th highest mountain. more importantly, it’s also the world’s highest unclimbed...
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an ode to my abs, an echo poem by raynor ganan
in keeping with the form, i got mythological up in here.
who among us is so mighty, he doesn’t need a trainer? ……raynor. and what does he hone on his diet of cheez whiz mussels? ……his muscles. and what of his, causes girls to stop their taxi cabs? ……sick abs! sing muse, of these abs. do they inspire the oracle delphi? ……aye. do they summon shapely...
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echo, echo
the echo verse is an ancient form of poetry based on wordplay. in it, a speaker in a quandary shouts out his questions to the nymph echo who then responds by repeating the last few syllables in a way that seems to answer his queries. while many dismiss the form as false wit (at best and nonsense at worst), several of history’s greatest writers have composed echo verses. to namedrop a few:...
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words wholly related
jehovah & yhwh
i don’t mean to get all religious on you BUT the name jehovah and the sacred tetragrammaton are basically the same name. once yhwh (pronounced yahweh thesedays) is transliterated to english “jhvh” and its vowels are restored, pretso change-o yhwh becomes jehovah.
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two peculiar epitaphs
this one from victorian england:
Here lies Lady O’ Looney, Great niece of Burke, commonly called “The Sublime.” She was bland, passionate, and deeply religious; Also she painted in water colors, And sent several pictures to the Exhibition, She was first cousin of Lady Jones, And of such is the kingdom of Heaven
and this one from gold rush-era california:
Here lies the...
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words wholly related
bowel & pudding
gasp! these words don’t even share any letters and their meanings have no overlap. could my favourite butterscotch treat and the part of my body that i use to dispatch it actually come from a common word? the answer is yes—they both come from the latin word for sausage, botulus.
the bowel (from french boel) was said to resemble a little sausage and before pudding (from...
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how to play "badger in the bag"
Pwyll turned up the sides of the bag, so that Gwawl was over his head in it…and as they came in, every one of Pwyll’s knights struck a blow upon the bag, and asked, “What is here?” “A Badger,” said they. And in this manner they played, each of them striking the bag, either with his foot or with a staff. And thus played they with the bag. Every one as he came in asked, “What game are you playing...
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proof that boring linguistics papers are not...
i know what you’re thinking. you’re thinking that boring linguistics papers are always boring. but it ain’t always so, slacker! as evidence, i submit the paper* on the aforementioned adverbial prefixes in klamath. here, scott delancy discusses the prefix sg- (act with the penis) as it appears in several klamath myths.
the concluding line is the best line that ever appeared in...
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body parts of speech
one of the more compelling reasons to study another language is so we can learn how to say dirty things to people who aren’t familiar with it. for this, the native american language of klamath is especially well-suited.
klamath has a peculiar system of bodily adverbial affixes which is a ñerd’s way of saying that speakers of klamath can jam a prefix onto a verb to show which body part...
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