22 posts tagged “nerd”
Did you know that the word UNCOPYRIGHTABLE* is the longest word in the English language (at 15 letters) that doesn't repeat any letters? Is it even a word? You don't hear it much in conversation. Well, too bad. I say it is, and so I copyright it.
No, I'm just kidding. It's uncopyrightable.
If you like things in which letters are not repeated, you may also be interested in the following 26 letter pangrams:
Mr. Jock, TV quiz Ph.D., bags few lynx.
Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q.
There's also one with the word Vox right in it, but it contains the Welsh word crwth and the clearly made up word Squdgy. Also, jimp, fez, and blank. I'll let you put them in any order you want. It don't make no sense to me.
I guess there are probably a few other ones out there, but I can assure you they're not as good.
But then, I repeat myself.
* Yeah, right, like I'm really going to count DERMATOGLYPHICS
It is a period of chocolate consumption. Miniature hippopotami, camping in a hidden Kinder Egg, have suffered their first defeat against the hungry galactic nibblers.
During the snack, Jenna managed to steal the secret list of the Kinder Eggs's COLLECTIBLE STAR WARS HIPPOPOTAMUS SERIES, a ten-piece collection with enough nerdy potential to destroy an entire planet.
Pursuing the full series on the sinister eBay, Jenna sends them racing home aboard their Fed Ex truck, so I may become custodian of the set that will bring nerdiness and, I don't know, freedom or something to the galaxy...
(pan down to humongous spaceship)
The Force surrounds us, penetrates us with it's shocking midichorical spikiness, and binds the galaxy together. Through our mastery of the Force, we begin to believe that maybe the universe revolves around us. Just like the fact that a German chocolate company made a series of Star Wars themed hippos makes me think that the universe revolves around me.
First of all, let's all take a moment to appreciate the Kinder Egg. It is like a Cadbury Cream Egg, but instead of that frosting inside, they have a toy. And the chocolate is better. And it's a toy! You'd never see that in America. If an American company made a candy with toys inside, parents would tell their children to inhale the candy until the toy was lodged deep enough within their esophogus to really sue. And yet I dreamed of Kinder Eggs as soon as I heard of them. A combination of toy and candy. A dessert you can pair with a happy meal! A little slice of heaven for kids to have and eat it, too.
So you can imagine my glee when I found out that the ambiguously ethnic grocery store by our apartment sold Kinder Eggs, apparently having never heard the term "class-action lawsuit." Located by the front cash registers, between Bosnian cevapcici and the Polish goulash (this place had a perculiar perception of point-of-purchase product placement) were oversized egg cartons with the candies that a 28-year-old had no earthly reason to jump up and down over. And this was before I made the discovery that hippos are frequently featured guests among the Kinder Egg set.
When I got a hippo as a toy, well, it was as if the kind people of Germany had bought me the moon. But, as Jenna proved later, that's no moon. It's a space station. Or whatever.
As an awkward, socially insecure child, I took great comfort in the flights of fancy offered by the characters in Star Wars. Luke's mastery of the world around him, Han's comeuppance over the evil Jabba the Hutt, Chewbacca's ability to rip people's arms off, there was power in these characters that a six year old desperately craves. Later, as an awkward, socially insecure adult, I took great comfort in hippos, because I thought surrounding myself with them made me look thinner. Never in a billion parsecs could I have dreamed that someone would fuse these feelings of inadequacy into hippos cosplaying in ill-fitting Mandalorian armor. How could I have guessed? The odds of that happening are probably 3,720 to 1.
I don't think you could make a hippopotamus that would be better suited for me unless maybe it could turn a Wii into a some kind of cryptic crossword machine. This is as close, and in fact closer, than I can ever expect a hippo to get to me. They're right up on the imaginary pedestal with the tiny nesting doll and the Gorgeous Creature, and ol' Floamy. You can recognize their fowl stench the moment you get on board.
The collection includes Hippo Luke, Hippo Leia, Hippobi-wan, Hip Solppo, Hippoba Fett, Artoo Hippo, C-3HipO, Chewbaccapotamus, Hippoda, and Darth Vader the Hippopotamus. Luke and Darth get their own light sabers. Han is clearly putting the moves on Leia (for some reason, Luke isn't as attracted to his sister as he was in the movies), Artoo is clearly a hippo hiding in a garbage can, and Boba has a jet pack that will do nothing to prevent him from being slowly digested in Sarlacc for a few millennia. They are all clearly waring clothes too small for their bellies. It's adorable.
I'd love to go into more detail about each of them, but I've got to head out to Toschi station and pick up some power converters.
Also: You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. I loves me my Star Wars quotes!
If you could be featured in a magazine which one would you choose?
Easy. Games Magazine: World of Puzzles.
Runner-up: Forbes Magazine's 50 Richest Nerds Issue
A few years ago, we visited a friend who was house-sitting while the owners were in Spain for a two week vacation. We listened to some music, and I think there was a dog, and we probably ate some food, but the thing I really remember was that the refrigerator had magnetic letters that spelled SPAIN and a little smiley face. And, as is my wont, I immediately wanted to rearrange them to spell something else. But what?
I spent a good hour trying to figure out if the letters could be rearranged in a different way for every day they were gone. I decided that I couldn't use apostrophes (Such as PA'S IN). Here's what I came up with:
PAINS
IN SPA
IN ASP
IN SAP
PA SIN
SIP AN
I SPAN
A SNIP
A SPIN
A NIPS
I NAPS
I SNAP
I PANS
A PINS
IS PAN
IS NAP
AS PIN
AS NIP
They could have stayed four more days!
I like anagrams that have at least as many permutations as letters, such as Art, Tar, Rat or Eat, Tea, Ate. There are a few four-letter versions, such as:
Time, Mite, Emit, Item
Arts, Star, Tars, Rats
Alps, Slap, Pals, Laps
Amen, Mean, Name, Mane
Stop, Pots, Opts, Tops, (also Spot and Post)
There are a few five-letter versions:
Mites, Smite, Times, Items, Emits
Cater, Crate, Trace, React, Caret
Stale, Tales, Slate, Steal, Least (Teals)
There's even two or three with six letters:
Pacers, Scrape, Capers, Parsec, Spacer, Escarp
Rasped, Parsed, Spared, Spread, Drapes, Spader
Pastel, Plates, Staple, Pleats. Petals, Palest
As far as I know, there are none with seven letters, but if there were, that would be really, really cool.
I'm in the self-service fruit of the month club. It takes a little extra work than the kind you sign up for through Harry and David's or whatever, but it's cheaper, there's no contractual obligation, and you don't get stuck with a month's worth of something ridiculous, like limes.
Here's how it works: When you go to the grocery store, buy fruit. Try to change it up every month. That's it.
You don't have to be a fanatic about it. I tend not to run out on the first of the month with visions of plums dancing in my head; instead, I'll gradually shift over from one fruit to the next. If it's a particularly good fruit, like cherries, and they stay in season and don't skyrocket in price, unlike cherries, I'll go longer than a month if I can. Flexibility is a real selling point in the self-service fruit of the month club.
Some people measure their year by sports; to them, fall is when all the baseball teams I like stop playing and all the football teams I like start sucking right off the bat. Other people, especially elementary school teachers, measure their year by holidays. Aaron's doing this right now. He knows it's Mommy's birthday, then Halloween, then Thanks-for-giving, then Christmas, and then his birthday. (He's really excited about his birthday.) Unfortunately, in his head, these are all occurring in the next two weeks. I'm expecting a significant amount of righteous toddler indignation right around October 20 or so. These are fine methods, but they lack edibility.
I measure my year thusly:
January - Oranges. For whatever reason, the oranges in the grocery store look pale and lifeless until some point in January, usually January 9th and about 11:24 AM. Then they turn day-glo orange and expand to twice their normal diameters and that's good orange eatin'. Right now, the thought of eating an orange fills me with distaste, ennui, and a little sleepiness, but come January, and I'm ready to sign up for Navel Academy. Sorry.
February - Tangerines. While others are shopping for their valentines and chasing groundhogs and revering presidents and just generally wishing that February would be over already, I find myself thinking of crated fruit. I've gotten my first dried-out, mealy orange and I'm ready for something new. Preferably something I can peel with my fingernails. And not a banana. So I pick up a crate, wondering if we'll eat them all before they go bad. Then I pick up another crate, and then one more. And then they go bad.
March - Pears. It's time to move away from citrus, because starting in March, it's nothing but heartbreak. In fact, March is a dismal time of year for fruit. It's like the good fruits are observing Lent and giving up their own existence. Except Easter doesn't arrive until late May. Pears are pretty much the same any time of year, so I turn to them when my options are limited. So March comes in like "Hey! A pear!" and goes out like, "Huh. A pear."
April - Green Grapes. How could it be April already and still no cherries? How could it be April already and still snowing? How could it be April already and school is still going, there have been no work-free holidays since New Years, TV shows are all in reruns, and all is bleakness and despair? Guess I'll eat a few grapes. That didn't help.
May - Rainier Cherries. I have an annual ritual. Every year I notice that Rainier cherries are cheaper than Bing Cherries. I do a double take. I think, will I be eating mostly Rainier cherries instead of my old favorite, the Bing? I wonder how that might impact my life, my marriage, my career. Then, a week later, Rainier cherries get more expensive, Bing cherries get less expensive, and I forget about the whole thing. Every year.
June - Bing Cherries. Is there anything better than a bing cherry? For your sake, I hope you're shaking your head right now. Shake it! There are so many things to love about June. Or so I'm told, I'm too busy gorging myself on Bings to notice.
July - Peaches. Late July, the cherries disappear from the shelves, but rather than wear black all month and weep and rend my garments and gnash my teeth, I eat a bunch of peaches. Did you know that cherries and peaches belong to the same family as almonds and cyanide? It only makes sense that four delicious tastes would all have to be related. Hey kids! Don't really eat cyanide. It may be really ultra-delectable, but it's also pretty poisonous. Yes scrumptious cyanide is a mouth-watering and deadly food best left uneaten.
August - Nectarines. By late August, I've usually eaten a mealy peach, and that's downright heart-breaking. So I switch to nectarines. Surely this nearly-identical fruit won't suffer the same fate! Surely!
September - Honey Crisp Apples. A good Honey Crisp tastes like someone replaced your apple's juice with sparkling apple cider. It's the champagne of apples, except it's good. Like Bing cherries, Honey Crisps don't last very long in the grocery store, so enjoy them while you can. Here's a recipe I like with Honey Crisps. Take one Honey Crisp, and three Nutter Butter cookies. First, eat the Honey Crisp. Then eat the cookies. If you're still hungry, have another cookie. This is a great recipe for parties.
October - Granny Smith/Harrelson apples. By now, I've given up on the pretense of eating fresh fruit, and my fruit purchases are used for cooking into dessert. An October without apple crisp is like a cryptic crossword with out an anagram -- pointless.
November - Cella's. By now I've given up on the pretense of buying fruit at all, and I'm just eating desserts. Technically, Cella's have a cherry inside, but it's really less the kind of cherry they grow on trees and more the kind of cherry they create in a lab out of sugar and bits of angels. Sure, Christmas items have been on the shelves since late August, but the Cella's tend not to make their appearance until the day after Halloween, when Christmas is practically over.
December - Enormous Red Delicious Apples. If you want big red delicious apples, you can find them pretty much any time of year. If you want mutant apples so big that two or three of them overwhelm your crisper drawer, you have to wait until December. These juicy monstrosities have been a part of stocking-stuffing tradition in my family for years, so I always have to pick a couple up. Plus, the Christmas stocking I made for Aaron is large enough to hold most of a Buick, so these gigantic mega-apples help take up some of the space.
Oh, and in case you're wondering who would win in a fight, it's Cella's.
It's the Principality that never sleeps!
Catan, originally settled by team red and team blue has grown immeasurably, and now is the perfect time to visit. Hike the breathtaking ore mountains! Camp in Wood Forest! Bike through acres and acres of life-giving grain! Take a picture next to the Colossus! The wonderful telephone system!
Scholars have long held Catan in high esteem for its reputed Library, which now allows you to hold one extra book in your hand. It's just a ore's throw away from the newly added Catan university, where Catan's brightest young minds periodically invent the printing press and three-field system, only to forget about them and rediscover them years later! You're welcome to pull up a chair and chat with such Catan U alum as Hagen the Sinister and Walter the Recreant, then watch them beat the crap out of each other in an exciting tournament!
You may have heard that Catan can be a treacherous and frightening place, and in fact, up until recently there was a "grain" of truth to that, but with the newly installed Aqueduct in the Blue principality, fears of the dread plague are a thing of the past. Except in the Red principality. But as soon as Red gets a productive year, they're definitely building a Bath House, so that should clear up plague problems as well as boredom on a Saturday night! We're also working on a solution to the constant Civil Wars!
Of course, after a visit, you probably won't ever want to leave. Fortunately, Catan is hiring! You could be a noble, courageous knight, protecting the city from outside invaders and impressing the locals with your skills in a tournament. Or, if you're a woman, you can work as someone who makes noble, courageous knights worthless in either of the exciting worlds of witchcraft or prostitution! Benefits include one extra resource a year (if you own a garrison), use of the company horse, and all the herbs you can eat. (Brigands need not apply.)
And coming next year: Wizards! Live out your Harry Potter fantasies by using frightening powers to make sheep farms behave in ways no sheep farm ever should. I mean, why not, right? Should make things interesting anyway. Certainly Hafli, Hor, Tali, and the terrifying dragons they rode in on should make Catan a unique travel destination for work or play!
So see your travel agent and book a trip to lovely Catan! Please contact Ingo the Skillful for details.
From Yahoo news, off the Associated Press:
Aric Egmont and Jennie Bass were working on a puzzle titled "Popping the question" in the latest issue of The Boston Globe Sunday magazine. Bass spotted her sister's name and her best friend's name, but initially thought it was just a coincidence.
Then they got to 111 across: "Generic proposal" (Jen + Aric generic). The answer: "Will you marry me?"
"We get to the `Will you marry me?' clue, and I said, `Will you marry me, Jenny?' I got up, got the ring, and got down on one knee and she screamed, and hugged me. It took her a minute to say yes," Egmont told the Globe.
Egmont, 29, of Cambridge, contacted the magazine this summer to ask if the people who create the crossword puzzles would write a special puzzle for him.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, a married puzzle-writing team who have been writing Globe magazine crossword puzzles for years, agreed. Their puzzle included several variations on proposals; for example, "Macrame artist's proposal" was "Let's tie the knot."
That's so nerdy that I am shaking with jealousy right now. I forgot that Cox and Rathvon, the very gods of cryptic crosswords, still allow mere mortals to contact them. Imagine having an awesome, interesting proposal for your wife-to-be, and having professional crossword writers do all the work for you!
If Jenna hadn't seen this article, I might have run out and found the Boston Globe and reproposed.
In other Cryptic Crossword news, I bought the Mensa Book of Cryptic Crosswords (Volume 2) last week, and let me tell you, the expression on the clerk's face was worth the price of purchase. I'm unshaven, holding a squirming toddler, and digging around my wallet for money, and the clerk looked back and forth from me to the book and he gave me a look that said, "You?"
After that, the transaction was conducted with referential silence.
Do you own all the albums of any particular musical artist or group? Who?
Submitted by dutterman.
I own all of the CDs that Moxy Fruvous has ever released. All seven of them:
Bargainville (The best album)
Wood (Slower, but still pretty good)
The B Album (The music is as good as Bargainville, but there's only 28 minutes of it)
Live Noise (Mostly live versions of Bargainville songs)
You Will Go to the Moon (Didn't like it at first, but it grew on me)
The C Album (They should have put it together with the B album. There's not much here)
Thornhill (Disappointing)
Bow before me!
Um. Also, I own all of the albums by another artist who has been mentioned in this blog. Including his retelling of Peter and the Wolf with Wendy Carlos. Ahem.
Books: Show us a great children's book.
Apparently, it is also a Reading Rainbow book, so that's pretty cool, too. I don't know if there are any secret messages if you watch the program upside down, or backwards, or whatever (high as twice go, can I sky the in butterfly), but LeVar Burton seems like the kind of name you'd try to read backwards. Of course, Not Rub Ravel doesn't mean much unless people keep pressing up against your Bolero CDs.
The point is, I dekil siht koob.
