Tidbits

Welcome to June. I'm sweeping up little bits of things I've been saving for a rainy day. (Yesterday was very wet, but it hasn't rained yet today... blog weather delay.)

A bit of wit from Penny Arcade:

One of the many, many frustrating things about Gabriel is that any excess calories he consumes are converted directly into scorn. They do not linger, they do not collect, he is never physically altered by them... His exercise regimen usually consists of yelling at his monitor...

Several stunningly sharp sentences from this Dvorak typing tutorial (I'm up around 30 wpm):

I did not design this gadget that ignites potatoes.

"Hallelujah," wailed the janitor as he jettisoned the typewriter out the window. The projectile majestically landed at the junction of Jefferson and Winslow streets, just jolting, not injuring, a jogging tourist.

I recently discovered that Epizeuxis' spellchecker is set to find at most 500 misspelled words per line. No more. I guess if I made that many, my self-monitoring sanity hackles would be raised. I am pretty sure that there is no font size small enough to fit 500 words on a single line, though -- the screen is not wide enough.

From The Onion, as always a good source of silly material, an article entitled "National Science Foundation: Science Hard" (how surprising!):

This... may one day lead to a new understanding of physics as a way to confuse and bore people.

Scientists have also confirmed what I knew all along: parents treat older siblings much more strictly than younger ones.

I figure the weirder your life is, the more fun you're having... until [you] get devoured by interdimensional hyenas or pressganged into service on a gnome submarine. (Questionable Content)

This post's theme word: disintermediator. It means exactly what it says.

Laundry fun

A five-person band (banjo, ukulele, Fisher-Price xylophone, tambourine and drum) walked into the laundromat while I was watching my clothing rotate. They walked around, looking for a perfect corner, gave some very loose instructions to a girl following them with a hand-held camera, and then played (and sang!) a song as they walked around the laundromat, outside, and down the street.

I wish I had had a camera with me. I usually have at least one (cell phone), normally two (digital camera), and sometimes three (Epizeuxis). But I had only Syllepsis, and no camera. So I bemusedly watched, making eye contact with my fellow launderers to verify that everyone else could see (and hear) the band, too. Surreal.


This post's theme word is soma, which has many meanings. Two good ones are "elixir of immortality," and "the entire body of an organism except germ cells." Its most popular meaning seems to be "an intoxicating drug, often fermented into a beverage."