a confession

when i was just a semi-literate small fry, i made the honest mistake of reading the highlights magazine tagline (fun with a purpose) as “FUN WITH A PORPOISE.”

and after getting to the end of every issue and never encountering the promised dolphin, i would become enraged and scream, “where is this goddamned porpoise and how come everyone but me gets to have fun with it?”

when the next issue would arrive, i would begin my search anew, earnestly hoping that this time the merry porpoise would finally present itself to me. it never did.

this is why i became a marine biologist.

stand with me, my brothers, in solidgoldarity

while i am on the subject of academic æsthetical honours… it just so happens that yesterday, the aglets on my armani snow-jogging shoes blew out and i went to the internet in search of replacements. one click lead to another and i wound up at goldenlaces.com (like goldenpalace.com, but without a p and a, and with an extra s). it seems that the alchemists at this site learned how to aurify laces—much to my glee. pictured above are the sweet summa cum laude gold laces that are currently ups-ing their way to my handsomely pedicured hoofs.

BUT WAIT: it has just occurred to me that this retailer is engaging in a nasty price fixing scheme. notice that: 100% of the jock-related laces are priced at $4.50 and all but one of the scholar-related laces (spelling bee champion, honor roll, etc.) are priced at $7.50. this is just another example in a long (shoe)string of academic biases that i have been combating throughout my life. as much as i am eager to golden lace my alligatorskin armanis, i think i must, on principle, return my new 24 carat strings to sender until such time as academics are afforded the same low low cost of golden novelty shoelaces as their meatheaded colleagues.

as i gaze out my window, i am reminded of one of my favourite f-words of all (and one that is very useful this time of year):

• filemot · the colour of a dead leaf (from french feuillemorte, literally dead leaf).

photo credit: the internet

a fruitful idea

i woke up this morning with an idea for the kind of blog that might score me a fat book deal. i made this image for my new site, it’s called pregnant-chicks-on-tv-pretending-they-isn’t-really-pregnant.com and it could make millions.

more here.

if your logo:

• has an ’80s colour scheme
• utilises a typeface from the ’70s
• includes weird geometric lines representing a style of house that was en vogue in the ’60s

it might not be as 21^st century as you are hoping. (just sayin’)

the ratio of horatio

an open letter to people with widescreen televisions who insist on forcing everything they watch into a 16:9 proportion (eg. my parents):

look, raynor ganan is as liberal as they come (i had a caricature of noam chomsky tattooed on a prostitute that i see occasionally)—but just cuz you shelled out the yearly wage of a tajikistani rodeo clown for a television the size of a surfboard does not mean that you should be plasmafying every last pixel on your set. the proportions of the female form are dumpy and out of whack and the ratio of horatio makes him look like a whiskerless gimli. there is nothing wrong with 4:3! indeed it is the same ratio of gin to tonic in the beverage that i am enjoying right now.

sorry for getting so political, but this topic really gets me hot and bothered.

fact: according to “statistics” the price of bread rises about 30% per year [TRUE]

fact: “grocery stores” are in the business of selling bread [TRUE]

duh: buy $500 dollars of bread now. sell your bread for more than $1,800 in five year’s time. [WALL STREET]

bonus: if you can wait 25 years before cashing in your bread portfolio, it will be worth upwards of $350,000 [CHA-CHING]

the other day, a friend and i decided it would be a hoot to watch leatherheads. boy were we wrong! at-any-rate, at some point during the snapless dialogue, i remarked that renée zellweger was probably the most periody thespian in modern cinema. once the actual sentiment of what i was saying registered with my companion, he immediately countered by throwing a cate blanchett in my face. and thus the seeds of this chart were sewn.

mean periods: ms zellweger—1923. ms knightley—1812. ms blanchett—1942.

notes: certain quasi-period pieces were omitted: star wars (ms knightley was in star wars?) and lord of the rings. also, both of ms blanchett’s elizabeth films (ca. 1570) and ms knightley’s arthur (ca. 460) have been left out. when an actress was in an epic movie that spanned multiple decades (ms blanchett in benjamin button), i selected the decade that best matched the actresses’ actual age during filming. as always, it is within your power to click this image and DOUBLE its girth.

money laundering

some time around 13:32 on saturday, august 15th, my piggy bank exceeded 1000‰ of its capacity. this meant that it was time to smash it open, convert its guts to u.s. dollars, and take it to the bank (BUT NOT BEFORE rigorously cataloguing its contents). here are the oddities contained therein:

a. metal trinkets of unknown provenance: a golf divot tool with a red cross on it and an etched ring that is too big for any of my fingers (i have not tried it on my toes however).

b. tokens: $500 in casino funny money, a nashua, nh carwash token, an arcade token, MBTA and SEPTA tokens.

c. foreign currencies: 7 rupees, 4 eurocents, and 1.19 in canadian fun bucks.

d. archaic u.s. coinage

e. mystery keys (i have no recollection of putting these keys in piggy nor what strange locks that they open)

f. because i was curious and because it is a productive outlet for certain obsessive psychological effects of my meth habit, i checked the minting date of EVERY coin. the oldest: quarter (1965), dime (1965), nickel (1940), penny (1920).

observations: 1. there is a direct correspondence between the colour of a penny and how old it is. whether this is because the u.s. mint changed the sekrit formula for pennies over the years or if pennies have short halflives, i cannot say (nor am i that interested in spending 30 seconds on google to find out).

2. there were almost five times more pennies than any other coin. i assume this is because i am more apt to reüse the other coins but seldom will use a penny for anything other than making a wish at a fountain or buying penny candies.

3. in the end, the u.s. treasury has valued piggy’s guts at $179.53. i have not yet deposited this at the bank but don’t even think of trying to burgle me, i sleep with a blunderbuss under my pillow.

and you thought that taking the know your dvořák quiz was the maximum amount of mirth that you could have on the internet… well guess again, pipsqueak. i give you the know your odyssey translation quiz.

the following are seven famous translations of the epic’s opening line. can you match them to their translators? (note, for each answer that you get wrong, poor odysseus must wait an additional year before returning to his special lady friend (and to ratchet up the gravitas, he’s not allowed to engage in any autoerotic proclivities))

αʹ Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

βʹ Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.

γʹ Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man
Who, having overthrown the sacred town
Of Ilium, wandered far and visited
The capitals of many nations, learned
The customs of their dwellers, and endured
Great suffering on the deep

δʹ The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,
Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;
Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall
Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall

εʹ Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.

ϝʹ The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way
Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay;
That wander’d wondrous far, when he the town
Of sacred Troy had sackt and shiver’d down;

ζʹ The man, my Muse, resourceful, driven a long way
after he sacked the holy city of Trojans:
tell me all the men’s cities he saw and the men’s minds,

the translators: george chapman (1616), alexander pope (1713), william cullen bryant (1871),  robert fitzgerald (1961), richard lattimore (1965), robert fagles (1996), and edward mccrorie (2004).

answers can be found here. also: which translation do you think is the tops? (for my money, it’s fitzy-fitzgerald’s but maybe this is because this was the first interpretation that i read. related: doesn’t it always seem that the first version of a song that you hear is always the standard and all covers become inferior?)