ACH!  SOLCH EINE WELT!

Sometimes reading the daily news makes you want to cry.  But, of course, there is nothing us common folks can do to change the world, so we continue on with our daily activity as though we will live forever in our peaceful little communities. Meanwhile ...

An Easter Story

My son, Chris is an excellent cartoonist.  He began cartooning at an early age and developed his skill while making very creative drawings.

One night just before Easter my family was making colorful Easter eggs. We had a big basket of hard-boiled eggs awaiting their transformation into works of art.  Chris was 7 years old.

Chris concentrated on one egg, on which he drew a beautiful rendition of a tough-guy tug-boat captain.  He named the egg "Captain Andy."

I was so proud of his creation that I asked him if I could take it to work to show my co-workers what  a wonderful artist my son was.

As everyone crowded around my desk, I proudly took Captain Andy out of my lunch bag and held it up so everyone could see.

I guess I must have held the good Captain too tightly, because he suddenly disintegrated and spewed his innards all over the important documents waiting for my signature!

Yes, Captain Andy was not as "hard-boiled" as we had thought! 

Words, Words, Words

Although I am still visiting two Linguistic courses given by Dr. John McWhorter, I opened another Great Courses lecture series given by Dr. Anne Curzan, Linguistics Professor at Michigan State.

The subject is Words, and so far, for just two lectures I feel that I have learned a lot.

Anne mentioned two English words that I can't remember seeing before:

googlegangers = these are the people who show up on your computer screen when you "google" your name. (It's related to the German doppelgaenger, a copy of yourself.)

That reminds me:  One other "googled" Joe Vaughan comes up with a business man in Virginia.  This has caused a strange mix-up by a pen factory.

At one time, I ordered some pens with "Joe Vaughan Fan Club" shown on them.  At the same time, the other Joe Vaughan ordered pens with his name and business shown on his.

The result:  I received a gross of pens showing "Joe Vaughan" followed by the name of the other Joe's business in big letters, and showing my address.  Guess what his pens showed!  

That was 15 years ago and we both still get free pen samples in the mail made out the same way. The pen company never was able to handle customers with the same name.

Multi-slacking = the act of having multiple windows up on your screen so it looks like you're working when you're actually goofing around on the web.

For homework, Anne asked Seinfeld lovers to decide to put either "yada, yada" or "yada, yada, yada" into a dictionary and how would the result be defined?  

(Wow! Of vital importance.)  Not related to the Hebrew "yadah."

She also asked that we try to figure out the word "Irregardless."  One dictionary says just: regardless, 

but another dictionary says: "The main difference between irregardless and regardless is that 'irregardless' is used only in formal settings, while 'regardless' is used in informal and formal contexts."

HUH?!

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