A new book out from Ricky Jay (Extraordinary Exhibitions: The Wonderful Remains of an Enormous Head, the Whimsiphusicon & Death to the Savage Unitarians impels me to share the definition given for that title word your eye has no doubt already been drawn to: a Whimsiphusicon is, according to the book, a "theatrical neologism used to entice, or more likely confuse, the public."
And since I was wandering the online dictionaries ANYway, I decided to see what Wikipedia had to say about neologisms, and was deeply amused (tho' not too surprised) to learn that they keep a running list of them which was just too amusing not to share.
(That would be "Famous Figures from History.")
Admiral Lord Nelson- Did you know that Nelson was born a commoner, that he suffered from chronic seasickness his entire life, and that he once ignored an order of cease fire from a commanding officer (who believed the enemy's fire was too effective) by claiming that he could not see his commander's signal flags? (Nelson had deliberately raised his spyglass to his blind eye, proving that even brilliant and honorable men can have a wicked sense of humor.)
Dashiell Hammett- The pioneer of hard-boiled detective fiction came by his knowledge of the seamier side of America honestly-- he was once a Pinkerton detective. He also wrote for a comic book (not that THAT has anything to do with knowing the seamier side of America. ; ) ) He served in *both* World Wars and thus earned the right to be buried at Arlington.
(Warning to the squeamish: links below have pictures.)
Millipedes don't bite, and aren't poisonous (although some species release a stink if you crush them, and the stinky stuff is harmful to the eyes. So, never crush a millipede with your eyeball). They are not insects, but are part of their own separate subphylum, Myriapoda (shared with centipedes and a couple of other terrestrial critters with far too many legs). They're very fond of organic material (such as the mulch around the garden beds up against my house), and love moisture-rich environments, although heavy rains (such as we've had quite frequently this summer) will occasionally drive a few whole freaking lot of them indoors.
House centipedes, on the other hand, will bite if cornered, and do have poison, although not enough to kill a person. However, house centipedes (which, despite the name, "only" have 30 legs) are beneficial creatures, devouring practically all other multi-legged house pests. (Although not cats, alas.) On the third hand (you know there was a reason I could type so fast, didn't you?), they're incredibly scary-looking buggers, and they scuttle like lightning, which is not entirely conducive to placid coexistence in one's home.
I shall leave you to ponder the motivation for this entry, and say only that I've gotten into the habit of shaking out my shoes before putting them on, and looking first before setting my bare feet down on the floor.
Oh, and my arms are 28" long from the point of the shoulder, allowing me to reach 17 1/2" above my head (20 1/2" if it's only with one hand). (Don't ask, but no, it's not related to the other parts of this entry.)
Well, I was going to write a long involved blog post involving curiosities of Roman legal history and astronomy and meteorology, but then my brain got eaten by Netflix, so you've been spared. At least for a little while. You're welcome. Instead, I will treat you to two itty pieces of pirate movie trivia.
Itty piratical movie trivia bit #1: (Because I could not possibly have saved this for Sept. 19th....) The actor Robert Newton (star of such swashy classics as Treasure Island (as Long John Silver, of course) and Blackbeard, the Pirate) is considered the "patron saint" of International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Itty piratical movie trivia bit #2: Walter Matthau (yes, THE Walter Matthau) has also sailed the cinematic high seas as a fearsome swashbuckling pirate. He was Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red in Roman Polanski's (yes, THE Roman Polanski) Pirates in 1986. (I saw it... prolly the year it came out, actually, as a themed double-feature at the drive-in (which, wonder of wonders, is open again!), along with The Pirate Movie (funny at the time (tho' most of the jokes went over my head) but really, don't bother, Pirates of Penzance is a MUCH better movie.)) Pirates was a bit bizarre and yet rollicking good, as I remember... sort of a deliberate B movie. It had an international cast-- Cap'n Red's first mate The Frog really *was* a Frenchman. I *do* wish it would get released on DVD. (Write your congress(wo)man!) Trailer here, if you're curious.
(And really, do you think I could have made any more nested comments, here? Sheesh. I felt like I was writing code.)
(Parenthetical Note #2: I'm writing about pirate movies, and somehow I now have the "Quack, Quack, Waddle, Waddle" song stuck in my head. And I know that someone, as she reads this, is laughing her butt off. Or thinking murderously of me for infecting her with it. :D)
The life of a reference librarian is never dull.
Today I was regaled by one patron about the practice of above-ground burial in New Orleans (which I knew about) and drilling holes in the coffins to keep them from floating (which I didn't).
I learned that auburn actually refers to reddish-*brown* hair, rather than the
And I got told by a grateful patron that I was "*waaaay* better than any search engine!" (Which pretty much made my day. Which, now that I think about it, is rather sad.).
Well, despite a long-standing and avid dislike of the Romance genre (to which my mother is addicted), I keep trying the occasional novel in the hopes of finding that it's gotten better. Generally, I'm disappointed. The only two I'd read before and *liked* were Stitch in Snow and The Lady (which was a tad too, er, adult for my tastes at the time. I haven't reread it recently) by Anne McCaffrey, which is sort of cheating. I mean, she sort of dabbled with being (genre-wise) a romance writer, but quickly turned to sci-fi and *much* greater success. It was through that genre that I came to know her. (Yes, yes, the Pern books have their share of romance, too, but they come with a few things many Romance books do not: a PLOT. A STORY. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Yes, I know, I'm horribly demanding of the books I like to read.)
Anyway, I think I've finally found a Romance writer that I *like* to read: Julia Quinn. Her books are funny and smart, and she takes care of all those pesky above-mentioned qualities I look for in a book before the characters start ripping each other's clothes off. (Yes, her books do have sex in them. But she doesn't go every-other-page overboard with it, at least.) And she seems to write primarily Regencies [2], which I'm partial to anyway. (All the contemporary romances I've read-- or started to read-- bored me to tears, and most other historicals choose a medieval/Renaissance setting, about which I know (unfortunately) FAR more than the writers seem to, given the number of glaring inaccuracies.)
And yes, I mention Regencies for a reason, because that's where today's Two New Things come from. Regency phrases often make me giggle, and so I share two of the more amusing ones I've come across in today's reading: "stuck his spoon in the wall" and "making a cake out of herself" (as in, causing herself embarrassment by her behavior-- if anyone has a better definition, pray share, and cite your source. It's been suggested that this comes from Jane Austen). And then there's one of my favorites, "watering pot" (used to refer to a woman with a regrettable tendency of bursting into tears at the drop of a hat).
Guuuuuh. In the immortal words of Dr. Indiana Jones, "Sallah, I said *no* camels. That's *five* camels. Can't you count?" Oh. Wait. Not that one. Um... oh, yeah. "I'm getting too old for this sh!t."
I *started* to go to bed early last night. Well, earlyish. A little. For me. (Alright already, it was about 12:30. I generally turn in by about 1.) I wasn't immediately tired, however, so I decided to get a start on the new book I'd just brought home, Shannon Hale's Princess Academy. I greatly enjoyed her Goose Girl, and so was delighted to discover a new title of hers on the new acquisitions cart. (She's a YA author, too, so she's a very quick read for me-- easy to slip in between all the OTHER reading I'm not getting to.)
I should know better. I really, really should. It was a quick read, and it was so very easy to keep going-- the chapters were short and didn't really provide a satisfactory stopping point, and the book really flowed. In fact, the first time I reached something that felt like a good stopping point, I was already two-thirds of the way through the book. Now, two-thirds of the way through a YA title is sort of like getting two-thirds of the way through a pint of Ben & Jerry's in one sitting-- you've gone THAT far, it would be silly to just *stop.* (ha.) So I finished it. At about 4:30. AM. God help me.
And this morning... well... thank goodness for yerba mate, but I SO want a nap.... and I'm still thinking about going to a Potter party tonight... ergh.
And although I am currently obsessed with the notion of sleep (for your amusement, the top two spelling suggestions OneLook offers for "sleprivation" (as in "deep sleprivation") are silverpoint and serpivolant, and and a quick google of the spoonerism turned up a pretty neat blog called decaffeinated (apropos, no?)), I am horrible about napping. I have to be falling-down tired to even attempt it, and even so, I generally wind up lying awake listening to the cars go by in the road outside.
(What's that? The book, you say? Yes, actually, the book was quite good. I like Shannon Hale for her strong-yet-human girl characters, and the folktale feel of her stories. (Goose Girl was, in fact, based on one of my favorite Brothers Grimm fairy tales, The Goose Girl (and, why yes, I *did* read the bloody version, growing up. No bowdlerizations for itty bitty me).) I also really like the way she handles the unsympathetic characters. Well, I like that she *has* unsympathetic-but-not-evil characters that the main character still has to work and get along with. But she makes them three-dimensional; not only does the main character's view of them change as she matures, the characters themselves are allowed to mature (quite unlike the "bad guys" in a traditional fairy tale).
Princess Academy is (I think) an original story about a young girl from a dirt-poor mountain town who is forced to go to "princess academy" along with nineteen other girls from her village. A prophesy says that the lowlander Prince's wife would come from their mountain village, and the lowlander kingdom of which their mountain is an outlying territory wants to make sure the girls are up to snuff and fit to become princesses. (And if you hear "mountain" and "lowland" and are reminded of the Highlander/Lowlander rivalries of Scotland, you've got a good idea of the social dynamics of the book.) Great characters, a moving story (I went through several tissues), good pacing, action, adventure, romance, a satisfying ending... what more could one ask? How about cool, very well-written lyric/poem fragments to head off each chapter? Bonus that Hale turns out to be a decent poet, too. ^_^ Two thumbs up.)
Curious... a friend of mine sent me an article entitled Is Your Boss a Psychopath? (now, now, no leaping to conclusions, here). It looks at the place of corporations in society, and considers the idea of applying the eminent Dr. Robert D. Hare's Psychopathy Checklist to leaders in the workplace. (Me, I immediately thought of someone else....)
Go read, it's an intriguing article.
And in other news... I got to find out what a concentrator [2] [3] is supposed to do in a LAN, because ours stopped working while I was on vacation. (I didn't even know we HAD one, much less what it was for.) And before my multiple techie friends leap to my rescue-- problem already dealt with. It was a redundant piece of equipment, part of the old LAN that was still being used 'cause there was no point in NOT using it, until it stopped working. But we'd since added a whole pretty new switch panel, so I can just take all the lines off the concentrator and plug them into the switch, and all will be happy and content in libraryland once more. ^_^ (Until the next time I try to go way far away.)
Because being picked on DOES occasionally work, I bring you... another two new things a day! These are sort of related new things, but hey, it often happens that way.
While doing some work outside yesterday evening, I observed an interesting phenomenon. I don't know if it's at all related to the "courtship flash patterns" Wikipedia talks about, but all the fireflies that were flashing in mid-flight (probably the males, as the article informs me), did a little upward-flight maneuver whenever they turned their butts on. (Ahem. Excuse me. "bioluminesced.") I noticed it first on one that was flying close to me, but when I paid attention to it, I realized they were *all* doing it. Curious.
So of course, today I wound up looking up more on fireflies to see if I could find out whether my theory was correct. I didn't turn up a definitive answer (anyone who knows, feel free to post and cite your source :D ), but I did turn up a couple of other interesting facts on the little critters.
For one, glowworms are the larval form of fireflies. They glow, too. (Hence the name. Duh.) So do their eggs (of some species, at least). (Just as a note, I've never *seen* a glowworm. The only reference I've ever seen to one is in Hamlet (I,v): "The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, / And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire," which I always thought was a poetical reference to the moon, or some sort of supernatural critter like a will o' the wisp. Oh, and while I'm at it, have a link to Hamlet: The Text Adventure. It's quite silly-- requires Javascript, tho.)
I had the chance to correct another misapprehension as well. I'd always thought that "June bug" was another name for firefly, but it's apparently a different insect, something from the scarab beetle family. Not that fireflies don't have a lot of other nicknames anyway (although "lightning bug" is the only other one I'm familiar with... hence the title of this entry, in case you were wondering.)
Well. I appear to have skipped an entire month in blogging, thanks to piles of work at, well, work, running my first Hall campaign, and then going on vacation 'til mid-July. Sorry 'bout that (all... four of you?).
Anyway... have a few links.
Alas, I can't claim credit for the first one, as I got it from Mattchew. But it's really funny, and it's probably going into my sidebar right soon. So, meet David Morgan-Mar, creator of the gamer-geekishly funny Irregular Webcomic!
In addition, I've been researching Irish Gaelic (don't ask. Really), and have come across more than a few amusing pages in the process. I liked the Irish Lesson with Celtic Harpist Dennis Doyle, which treats you to a quick-and-dirty lesson on how to get smacked in an Irish pub, and Fios Feasa's site, which features sound files of spoken Gaelic and some rather amusing subtitles on the lesson names. (I got to the second one through Omniglot, which, if I haven't mentioned it before, deserves a mention as the best site I've ever seen on written language and writing systems.)
Oops, and nearly forgot-- what's an introduction to a new language without a bilingual dictionary? I liked this one because it lets you back-search and provides a handy way of typing in the odder characters, and because it gives you the words in context. I would have liked a little more thorough definition (and maybe a pronunciation guide) BESIDES the context, tho'....