As a kid, you weren't cool unless your soda drink of choice was a suicide. This of course meant that you mixed a bit of each of the available drinks. And apparently I was not the only one. Check it!
Perhaps reminiscent of those care-free years of my life, I was moved recently to pour all of the bits of remaining cereal into one container and shake it up creating cereal suicide. And it is delicious. A bit insensitively named, but as a throwback to my childhood days, I gotta go old school in the name.
So imagine my surprise when recently I saw the 'Say Something' episode of the Gilmore Girls and lo and behold--Rory Gilmore (and her friend Paris) are, when near the dorm cafeterias magical wall of all possible cereals, of mixing it up and getting a bit of several. Do you know they have whole restaurants devoted to cereal? In real life, not in Stars Hollow. Man, I wish I lived near one.
Showing posts with label Awesome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Awesome. Show all posts
Friday, April 25, 2008
"I like how your verbs that are things. I think I'm going to sandwich after I sofa here for a bit." Love it!
My Boys comes back in June. I am thrilled. Who did P.J. take on the trip? As you may recall--the possiblities were 1) The cute ex-cubbie, 2) Thoo-rn, the sing-songy named recently returned ex, 3) The adorable botanist. My vote: Bobby, the hookup turned friend, turned friend that she hooked up with--hes a peach.
On that note, recent article on msn: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=VerbsGoneWild>1=27004
Verbs Gone Wild Are we taking too many liberties with language?By Martha Brockenbrough
A while back, I wrote about the most annoying office jargon ever. And while that might have been a slight exaggeration, it is true that most people I surveyed despised the use of "dialogue" as a verb above all else -- including the vaguely dirty-sounding "low-hanging fruit."What's more, people chided me for failing to include "monetize," "productize," "incentivize" and other supremely grating words. And then I realized what these sucky little mosquitoes have in common.They're all verbs made from nouns. Or, as the experts say, they're "denominal" words.I have a least-favorite denominal word of my own: gifted. As in, "She gifted me with a designer knockoff handbag." I once even ranted about it to the Wall Street Journal on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. I called "gifting" all sorts of things that didn't get printed (and a few that did). After the fact, though, I turned to my dictionary, where I learned that my distaste was misplaced. Encarta links "gift" as a verb to the 13th century, where it comes from the Old Norse gipt. The Oxford English Dictionary, which traces usage in English, has found several appearances that date back to the 1600s. Something called "The Wife in Morel's Skin" says this: "The friendes that were together met He gyfted them richely with right good speede." I can't resist pointing out that the OED found a spelling error in this same dusty old sentence. "He gyfted them" was printed as "Be gyfted them." Oops! Careless scribes. It's tempting to say that sort of sloppiness goes hand in hand with the English abuse that is verbing.But I don't think I'd win that case. Shakespeare verbed -- with the word dialogue, no less. In Act II, scene ii of "Timon," he writes, "Dost Dialogue with thy shadow?" This is from 1607, just a year before "The Wife in Morel's Skin." If you're a writer looking to criticize language, you're not going to get very far by picking on Shakespeare -- unless your name is Stephen King, in which case you wouldn't bother anyway, because you're too busy building a fort out of money.This is too bad for my fellow gifting haters, and for fans of Calvin and Hobbes, who no doubt recall the classic "VERBING WEIRDS LANGUAGE" comic strip. Like it or not, we're living with a language that verbs words. What's that thing you use to get the dog hair out of the carpet? It's a vacuum, right? And when you're using it, you're ... vacuuming. Try to find a single word that means the same thing. Likewise, when you're putting butter on your bread, you're buttering it, no? Does anyone, besides a vegan or a dieter, have any objection to that? So the question isn't, "Is it OK to turn nouns into verbs?" We do this all the time. The question really is, "Why is it sometimes so irritating?" As far as I can tell, no one has conducted research into why certain words are annoying. That said, people have researched which nouns we tend to verb, and why. A 1998 paper written by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Michael H. Kelly argued there are two types of denominals -- ones that are rule-derived and relatively predictable, and ones that are idiosyncratically derived.For example, when we ride a bicycle, we say we are bicycling. When we ride in a boat, we are sailing or boating. There are exceptions, but you can see this is a pretty predictable -- and understandable -- way to extend our vocabulary. Other types of nouns aren't so easy. We know what it means to monkey around. But what does it mean to "iguana"? And why does "to fish" mean to catch a fish, but "to dog" means to chase tirelessly? That's what Kelly means by idiosyncratic derivation. You don't necessarily know the meaning of the noun once it's been verbed.And it's not just animals that are kooky. Foods can act that way, too. You can pepper someone with questions, for example. But what would it mean to oregano someone? Would that be a-salt? (Sorry for that. Sort of.)Kelly found that people are a bit more likely to verb a noun if it follows rules, possibly because it's easier for listeners to understand what we mean, and possibly because it's easier to invent them. And maybe, just maybe, that's the most important word of all here: inventing. English has more words than any other language. Who are language purists to block invention? What would we lose by ostriching? The next Shakespeare?That would be a pox upon us! Happy dialoguing.
On that note, recent article on msn: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=VerbsGoneWild>1=27004
Verbs Gone Wild Are we taking too many liberties with language?By Martha Brockenbrough
A while back, I wrote about the most annoying office jargon ever. And while that might have been a slight exaggeration, it is true that most people I surveyed despised the use of "dialogue" as a verb above all else -- including the vaguely dirty-sounding "low-hanging fruit."What's more, people chided me for failing to include "monetize," "productize," "incentivize" and other supremely grating words. And then I realized what these sucky little mosquitoes have in common.They're all verbs made from nouns. Or, as the experts say, they're "denominal" words.I have a least-favorite denominal word of my own: gifted. As in, "She gifted me with a designer knockoff handbag." I once even ranted about it to the Wall Street Journal on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. I called "gifting" all sorts of things that didn't get printed (and a few that did). After the fact, though, I turned to my dictionary, where I learned that my distaste was misplaced. Encarta links "gift" as a verb to the 13th century, where it comes from the Old Norse gipt. The Oxford English Dictionary, which traces usage in English, has found several appearances that date back to the 1600s. Something called "The Wife in Morel's Skin" says this: "The friendes that were together met He gyfted them richely with right good speede." I can't resist pointing out that the OED found a spelling error in this same dusty old sentence. "He gyfted them" was printed as "Be gyfted them." Oops! Careless scribes. It's tempting to say that sort of sloppiness goes hand in hand with the English abuse that is verbing.But I don't think I'd win that case. Shakespeare verbed -- with the word dialogue, no less. In Act II, scene ii of "Timon," he writes, "Dost Dialogue with thy shadow?" This is from 1607, just a year before "The Wife in Morel's Skin." If you're a writer looking to criticize language, you're not going to get very far by picking on Shakespeare -- unless your name is Stephen King, in which case you wouldn't bother anyway, because you're too busy building a fort out of money.This is too bad for my fellow gifting haters, and for fans of Calvin and Hobbes, who no doubt recall the classic "VERBING WEIRDS LANGUAGE" comic strip. Like it or not, we're living with a language that verbs words. What's that thing you use to get the dog hair out of the carpet? It's a vacuum, right? And when you're using it, you're ... vacuuming. Try to find a single word that means the same thing. Likewise, when you're putting butter on your bread, you're buttering it, no? Does anyone, besides a vegan or a dieter, have any objection to that? So the question isn't, "Is it OK to turn nouns into verbs?" We do this all the time. The question really is, "Why is it sometimes so irritating?" As far as I can tell, no one has conducted research into why certain words are annoying. That said, people have researched which nouns we tend to verb, and why. A 1998 paper written by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Michael H. Kelly argued there are two types of denominals -- ones that are rule-derived and relatively predictable, and ones that are idiosyncratically derived.For example, when we ride a bicycle, we say we are bicycling. When we ride in a boat, we are sailing or boating. There are exceptions, but you can see this is a pretty predictable -- and understandable -- way to extend our vocabulary. Other types of nouns aren't so easy. We know what it means to monkey around. But what does it mean to "iguana"? And why does "to fish" mean to catch a fish, but "to dog" means to chase tirelessly? That's what Kelly means by idiosyncratic derivation. You don't necessarily know the meaning of the noun once it's been verbed.And it's not just animals that are kooky. Foods can act that way, too. You can pepper someone with questions, for example. But what would it mean to oregano someone? Would that be a-salt? (Sorry for that. Sort of.)Kelly found that people are a bit more likely to verb a noun if it follows rules, possibly because it's easier for listeners to understand what we mean, and possibly because it's easier to invent them. And maybe, just maybe, that's the most important word of all here: inventing. English has more words than any other language. Who are language purists to block invention? What would we lose by ostriching? The next Shakespeare?That would be a pox upon us! Happy dialoguing.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
My so called life thoughts...
I loved this show when it came out--I felt like it spoke to my generation and was an honest depiction of what it was like to be a 15 year old in the mid-90s. So, I offer up a few of the best quotes, cause I am feeling a bit angsty and a bit out of place.
"Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison, and the crime is how much we all hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while and admit the truth -- that when you really look closely, people are so strange and so complicated that they're actually beautiful. Possibly even me."
"It just seems like, you agree to have a certain personality or something. For no reason. Just to make things easier for everyone. But when you think about it, I mean, how do you know it's even you? And, I mean, this whole thing with yearbook -- it's like, everybody's in this big hurry to make this book, to supposedly remember what happened. Because if you made a book of what really happened, it'd be a really upsetting book."
"What I, like, dread is when people who know you in completely different ways end up in the same area. You have to develop this, like, combination you on the spot."
"There are so many different ways to be connected to people. There are the people you feel this unspoken connection to, even though there's not even a word for it. There's the people who you've known forever who know you in this way that other people can't because they've seen you change. They've let you change."
My parents keep asking how school was. It's like saying, "How was that drive-by shooting?" You don't care how it *was*, you're lucky to get out alive.
This life has been a test. If this had been an actual life, you would have received instructions on where to go and what to do.
The worst feeling is suddenly realizing that you don't measure up. And that, in the past, when you thought you did, you were a fool.
Sometimes I think if my mother wasn't so good at pretending to be happy she might be better at actually being happy.
Sometimes someone says something really small and it just fits into this empty place in your heart.
People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even. But every so often I'll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where I am is, like, enough.
"Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison, and the crime is how much we all hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while and admit the truth -- that when you really look closely, people are so strange and so complicated that they're actually beautiful. Possibly even me."
"It just seems like, you agree to have a certain personality or something. For no reason. Just to make things easier for everyone. But when you think about it, I mean, how do you know it's even you? And, I mean, this whole thing with yearbook -- it's like, everybody's in this big hurry to make this book, to supposedly remember what happened. Because if you made a book of what really happened, it'd be a really upsetting book."
"What I, like, dread is when people who know you in completely different ways end up in the same area. You have to develop this, like, combination you on the spot."
"There are so many different ways to be connected to people. There are the people you feel this unspoken connection to, even though there's not even a word for it. There's the people who you've known forever who know you in this way that other people can't because they've seen you change. They've let you change."
My parents keep asking how school was. It's like saying, "How was that drive-by shooting?" You don't care how it *was*, you're lucky to get out alive.
This life has been a test. If this had been an actual life, you would have received instructions on where to go and what to do.
The worst feeling is suddenly realizing that you don't measure up. And that, in the past, when you thought you did, you were a fool.
Sometimes I think if my mother wasn't so good at pretending to be happy she might be better at actually being happy.
Sometimes someone says something really small and it just fits into this empty place in your heart.
People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even. But every so often I'll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where I am is, like, enough.
Friday, October 5, 2007
How I met your mother is awesome.
Barney: When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.
Monday, September 24, 2007
People that make me feel good....
So, I just got off the phone with two dear friends. Two men that I absolutely adore. The second is one of my favorite people in the world. I am so happy, I almost forget how little I laugh here. I am so sad, that I rarely laugh. It is nice to talk to a friend, a person who gets me and makes me laugh. We were supposed to be in the same city next weekend, but he can't make it. Which is probably a good idea because typically...us + booze = drunken making out.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
And then there was good news...
Just recieved an invite to review a textbook--and its one I already use. So a little extra money for me (between 100-200) for doing something I have to do anyway--a more careful reading of the book. This is the first time I have got an invite like this so I am enjoying the feeling....
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