Fun with the English language
- Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips? (Via Schmack.)
- Can you parse this English sentence? Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. The answer. (Via Stephanie Harves.)
- "You shanked my jengaship!" I think it's interesting that "shank", a mispronounciation of the past tense of "sink", gained an extra past-tense marker to become "shanked".
- Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. (Via Schmack.)
- Actual newspaper headlines (collected from several sources)
- Capitol Steps: Al-Jazeera [Alouette?]
- Capitol Steps: Look Away (Rush Limbaugh's statement) [Dixie]
- Capitol Steps: Lirty Dies: Kobe Bryant (spoonerisms)
- Mountain Liquor?! I hardly know 'er!
love.com
AOL Instant Messenger has been showing animated ads for love.com, a personals site for AIM users. According to this news.com article, love.com will launch in a few weeks.
I noticed this strange HTML on prelaunch love.com:
<select name="gender" value="" class="txtfield2" style=width:80px;>
<option value=""> - Gender -
<option value="monday"> Male
<option value="tuesday"> Female
</select>
Why is male represented by "monday" and female by "tuesday"? Kate Monday and Pat Tuesday were both female.
Geekiness
"Is 'Oomph' a unit of impulse or a unit of force?"
"Hard drives are so fucking slow. Their seek times are measured in milliseconds!"
"Pass-by-name is like pass-by-reference on crack."
Lies via Fox
Political anagrams of "axis of evil":
- Lies via Fox
- A xvi of lies
- Fix oil aves
- Fox is a veil
- Fox is alive
- xvi is of ale
- xvi? oil safe!
- Save oil fix
Nonpolitical anagrams:
- Fax is olive
- Foil via sex
- Flies via ox
I found these anagrams by feeding "axis of evil" and various subsets (such as "axis of evil" - "oil", or "axs f evi") to Andy's Anagram Solver.
SCAMfest
I went to SCAMfest without Helen because we broke up on Wednesday. But I invited my parents, who hadn't been before, and they loved it. My parents and I bought BOCA 2002, and I plan to buy the new Shades CD, "Phonogenic", when it comes out in December.
My favorite songs from SCAMfest were Hotel California (UCLA Random Voices), I Heard it Through the Grapevine (USC SoCal VoCals), Fields of Gold (Midnight Echo), Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (Midnight Echo), and Harder to Breathe (Shades). Of these 5 songs, I knew the original versions of the first 3.
RLP
- Those Crazy Dutch
"I haven't even mentioned the government subsidized open air prostitution zone. Open daily and guarded by policemen, you just drive in to pick up one of the waiting prostitutes and drive with her in between one of the provided man-sized plastic walls which constitute the so called 'afwerkplek' (meaning something like 'finish off spot'). There are even signs leading you to the spots and telling you what to do. Some people suggested charging clients to pay for the project, but this was rejected because it was argued that would make the city into a pimp."
- Ian Oeschger: My son is running his own online web journal!
- Blake Ross: Why you don't let smart people start athletic programs
- The impotence of proofreading
- Eric and the Gazebo
- Exam Stories
Usage Nazi
Health Education Outreach flyer on tables at Platt dining hall:
Try this exercise to explore your relationships and how they are effected by alcohol.
At least it didn't go into detail about how alcohol effects babies.
Google search tip: wildcard word (*)
Google treats "*" as a wildcard meaning "any word". You can use it in phrases to:
Ignore unimportant words
- "all but * anything but" (vs, and)
- "shanked * jengaship" (my, your, his jengaship)
Fill in phrases where you don't know a word
- "phyllis * tam" pomona (a middle name)
- "the * family is my boss" (hard-to-understand song lyrics from a song in Office Space)
See how people have filled in expressions and jokes
- "185 * walk into a bar"
- "friends don't let friends * *" (*'s at the end just keep the phrases from being cut off in snippets.)
- "* is to * as * is to *"
Crudely "search by proximity"
- "The shareware version * 10 levels"
- "The shareware version * * 10 levels"
- "The shareware version * * * 10 levels"
(I looked through my old searches by pressing Down in a Google search form in Firebird. The resulting autocomplete dropdown contains ~7000 Google searches I have done.)
