Useless Blogging

Official website (link courtesy The Sun).

In French, “No Trans Fats” translates (for the purpose of packaging) as “Sans Grans Trans”. None of those final S’s gets enunciated.

Stole from Jay-Jay.

1.Multimedia Developer
2.Set Designer
3.Costume Designer
4.Website Designer
5.Computer Support Person
6.Sport Psychology Consultant
7.Lobbyist
8.Rehabilitation Counselor
9.Technical Writer
10.Special Effects Technician
(more…)

[12:31] Julie: love you ltos
[12:31] Julie: lots
[12:31] Julie: I love you so much I can not spell

Linguistic Advice in the Lavatory via the Language Log.

Still today, in colloquial parlance, FANGBIAN can mean “go to the toilet,” and DA4BIAN4 (“great convenience”) indicates defecation, while XIAO3BIAN4 (“lesser convenience”) signifies urination.

That SO needs to work its way into my vocabulary.

The background: ‘Speak-out’ urged over noose at UM (baltimoresun.com)

The reaction: WHA?

I like to imagine myself as a pretty tolerant fellow, and one who can recognize intolerance when it rears its ugly head. But man, the media circus that’s following around the indignant outrage circus has got me totally baffled.

The assistant editor of the Black Explosion newspaper, who reported the noose to police Friday, said Monday that it appeared even smaller in person than it did in a photo published this week in the Diamondback student newspaper.

“Whoever tied it wasn’t a great noose-maker, let’s put it that way,” said Ajan Brown, 21, a sophomore journalism major from Seattle. Still, Brown said it resembled a lynching noose “enough to be offensive to me.”

There’s a frenzy over a small poorly-knotted rope. An honest-to-god frenzy. I’m still shaking my head at this. There are calls for a community forum to voice outrage over a badly-made noose that no one noticed for two weeks.

Here’s what you should take to the forum: the knowledge that you’re looking at a piece of rope, as well as the knowledge that reading any more into it than that ascribes more to the onlooker than the ropemaker. If the ropemaker is a racist (which I’ll conjecture for the purpose of the rest of this sentence), you can say that he is a pox on society and does not represent his fellow racists well, as he can’t fashion a good noose, nor put it in a more visible area to express his racism.

It’s a rope. If it were put there by a racist, then the racist did a poor job, and you have nothing to fear from his narrow (and apparently small) mind. Please get back to class.

It was pointed out to me that I have been derelict in posting. Yes, Julie is better. She had a stomach-ick-thing that knocked her down for a day, but she has ling since been back to her old self.

This past weekend included a trip north into two states (PA and NY), and with said states visits with the family on Julie’s side of the tree, including my sister-in-law’s parents (going a little further out on the family tree limb than we usually do) and a stop at Knoebel’s amusement park. Overall, a fine labor day weekend.

School has kicked into gear in earnest for both girls. “First Day of School” pictures available on request. On the kid front, we’ve also purchased dresses for them to wear at Ian’s wedding. So now aside from a tux for me, all that should be left is packing and getting on the plane.

Thus ends the silence, and this update.