Category Archives: Word Play

Odd words, phrases and jargon from about the world and web

Heeler, and I Don’t Mean Benny Hinn

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We’ve done some digging and have confirmed that our cute little puppy is not a sharpei.  Nope, she’s a heeler.  Also known as an Australian Cattle Dog.  And that means that she does the following things quite well:

  • Herd Cattle.  Of which I have none
  • Chew on anything and everything that moves and doesn’t move.  We have lots of these
  • Require huge amounts of attention to keep from chewing on anything and everything that moves and doesn’t move.

So its going to be interesting 🙂  Turns out to further make things interesting Jessica may be permanently allergic to the dog.  So we might have to return her to the Colorado Puppy Rescue and let someone else rescue her… again.  We’ll keep you posted.

Interdisciplinary Diction Sprawl

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I find that one of the problems with my life experience is that I have tried to learn a lot about a lot of things.  I genuinely want to be a life-long student.  The problem lies in the fact that some fields of study have specific vocabulary that conveys a similar concept in another field.  And if I’ve learned the concept in one field then I accidentally slip in the wrong word.  A prime example that happens to me all of the time is using the word fidelity.

I use fidelity to describe a slew of things that probably should never have that term applied to them.  Photography uses clarity, focus, sharpness and other words, but usually not fidelity – however just like my ‘hi-fi’ stereo system I like high fidelity images.  I also like to think of coffee grounds as maturing in the water instead of brewing.  Why?  Because I’m goofy like that.

What words do you interwingle [which is a made-up word from the internet to convey a usefulness in mixing data from multiple sources]?

Florida, the Unsouth State

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If you love Disney[insert land mass name here] then you’ve most likely been to Florida and discovered that while Florida is technically connected to the South, but is not the South.  It is much like California, which is west, but they killed all of the Western Californians with some political bill and so now only non-western Californians are allowed to live there.  Florida has the most old people per capita, second only to cemeteries [and some have debated that it may be third if you count the US Congressional branch of government].  By old people I don’t mean over 50, which would be a wrong assesment for sure, but I mean people driving with their head over the steering wheel, peeping through the gap between their dashboard and the bottom of the top of their steering wheel.

Strangely enough, as dangerous as these drivers sound, there are actually few accidents reported in Florida because these old people are not able to sense the accidents they are involved in.  They drive vehicles so smashed up that the new dents don’t look any different from the old dents.  Of course the upside to this is that there are few deaths involving old drivers.  Except when counting the ones where the person was driving 15MPH and no one noticed that they were dead because when they were alive they drove that slowly and hit that many obstacles.

The rest of the south doesn’t have this problem because no one lives to the ripe old age of 85 due to their cooking.  If you’ve ever seen Paula Dean on the Food Network then you know what I’m referring to.  Her low low fat recipes, when compared to the tofu eaters in California, are the highest fat recipes in California.  You know the receipes where they fry the tofu?  This is worse.  The other mortality factor involved is religion.  In the Bible belt they know how old old is, and if Methuselah lived to be 965 years of age then by golly 95 is spry and young.  If the man can aim the car in the right direction, send him off – out into nowhere.  A swamp or a river will take care of any of the dangerous ones!

So I propose that we create a new region in the US geographical terminology: the Unsouth.   This would include all of Florida, parts of Texas where they have imported yankees to work with computers, and the parts of New Orleans where the Yankees on permanent spring break live.

Disney would be so proud!

Jingle Bells…

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If you’re not ready for Christmas… why not?  The stores are already starting to prepare.  Get ready for the slow building of holiday music as you shop, get ready for the discount Christmas cards to be out ready for you to pick up.  Get ready for the school children to swing by our door and ask you to help them raze funds for a school camp, class projects, or to pay for facial tissues because the schoolz no longer provide those.  Get ready for long(er) lines at the stores.  And most of all, get ready to pass around the Fruit Cake.

Although it is rumored that some readers of this blog like fruit cake.  And so now I pass on the challenge to my sister: make a fruitcake that isn’t nasty.

A Product We Won’t Buy on Principle

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Kraft cheese is now selling ‘Crumbles’ which would be crumbled cheese.  And their advertisement offended my sense.  They just took the song ‘Unbelievable’ by EMF from 1990 and turned it into “Crumbelievable.”  Wow, that’s crummy advertising.  It is also really, really amazing to me that EMF would license that song.  Sure, they’re hurting for money, but you have to draw the line somewhere.  Especially with such cheesey covers.

Habanero Orange

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I need to take a picture when the day light shows up tomorrow, but I picked the bright orange habanero that has grown on our plant.  Yes!  I can’t wait to cry as I consume it in tiny, tiny, tiny quantities.  These things are intense – only their camping site is in your gut… and your gut isn’t heat rated for them.

Bad Parenting Choice #3,456,789

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This morning Abby came into my office and said, “Dad, I wish you hadn’t had that last beer. I really love beer.” Which is a little tough to swollow given that she has never had beer. But she has had Root Beer. Which is not the same. She just doesn’t know it. The place where I should have piped in, “Sweetheart, beer and root beer are not the same thing.” was instead replied to by me giving her a hug and telling her that she can’t have beer. Which is close, but didn’t differentiate enough. This is where I should probably start fearing for her that she’ll become and alcoholic by the time she’s 5, but I’m not going to because cute children never do anything wrong.

7 Things in 7 Days: Day 8

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I hate advanced Mathematics.  I come from a line of really sharp mathematicians but the brilliance really skipped me because I took Algebra 1 twice in Junior High and High School.  My job requires me to do some math, but it is not often difficult stuff.  What’s funny is that some mathematics I can do in my head without thinking about it, while other parts just cause my brain to fry.  I blame my failure in mathematics on lots of things, but mostly the part where the story problems were horrible.  I love stories.  I love problem solving.  But I don’t like lame problems in story problems.  If they had put practical things involving jumpes, bikes and blood I would have totally gotten sucked in at that age.

Example:

Randy is riding his bike at 45 miles per hour down a hill in the Sierra Nevada’s.  He crashes and is bleeding on the road side.  His father picks him up in the Suburban moments later and travels 5 minutes to pick up Randy’s brother.  From the point of picking up Eddie to getting home to wash up the distance is 35 miles.  The Suburban gets 12 miles to the gallon.  How many pints of blood will Randy lose before getting home to be bandaged up?

That is a perfect story problem.  There’s drama.  There’s action. And of course there is a little bit of trickery because nobody cares how many dollars Randy’s dad spent on gas driving the suburban, it was when gas was barely over $1.00 a gallon.

Have you noticed that I also don’t do super at things like spelling?

Bowels of Mercies

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I love the King James translation of the Bible for its strong language and there is something oddly poetic about it.  However, this morning I was reading Abby’s Bible she received when she was born in Grapevine and we were taking a look at Colossians 3 where the translators in 1611 wrote ‘put on … bowels of mercies.’  Abby’s 3 year old mind couldn’t comprehend what was being said.  🙂  Unfortunately I find myself reading like when I was a Spanish student: I translate to modern English from the 1611 English so that I can comprehend what is being said.

For those of you less savvy Paul was writing have a heart of mercy in modern vernacular.

Flux Capacitors

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I am cleaning out my system today.  I went through my RSS feeds and removed the ones I dont’ care about that I subscribed to to see if I would grow to care about them.  I tossed a handful and removed my ‘Business’ folder because none of what was being written about in that set of feeds held anything for me any longer.  I’m cleaning out my inbox.  Its time for me to get things done.  It just works better for me to have clean ‘data inputs.’  I’ll keep an archive of stuff, but in the end, lots of junk is getting cleaned out.  It feels like a good colon cleansing – or so I’m told 😉