As recently as a month ago, we still had the beauty of colour.
Now we have the beauty of clean lines.
We really can’t have it all. But what we *can* have is fair-to-middling outstanding.
Photo Memory of the Week
Posted: 2024 Nov 16
Vow Wulls
No wonder people find English hard to learn as a second language. We have oddball past tenses. We have weirdly inconsistent plurals, driven mostly by what language gave us the word.
moose/moose
but…
goose/geesemouse/mice
but…
house/houses
We have weird spelling in general.
Not Fall, Not Winter, Not Nice
As we barrel along the highway, the car rocks ever so gently in the not-so-gentle cross-wind. A scatter of sleet reduces visibility as the wipers gradually lose ground against even this unenthusiastic adversary, more smearing than clearing the windshield. Ahead, the sky is a blanket of gray. Behind? Blue gradually giving way to a blanket of gray.
Sigh. In and around our nation’s capital the lovely fall days are now done: We’re into . . . what? The dog days of autumn? I guess so. Biting winds. Precipitation that could turn into snow at any moment. Yup, it’s time to put the sandals away. And the camera.
Interjections, Abbreviations, Cautions
Bing bing bing
Ack! That’s the interjection, not the abbreviation.
ack interjection
used to express mild alarm or dismay
ack abbreviation
acknowledge, acknowledgement
– Merriam-Webster
Side note: The Collins Dictionary–printed (and presumably thought up) in Glasgow, where they speak an occasionally intelligible variant of British English–identifies ack. as an American-English abbreviation. They present it with a period, which I have never seen in the wild, although I see its rationale.
Once or Twice
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago:
‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence.
Three times is enemy action.’
– Oxford Reference
I love this quote. You might have noticed it in these pages (once, twice, thrice and, ahem, frice). I worked it in here today (I mean, it clearly applies here) because this makes the third time that I’ve wished you a happy Martian new year (here we have the once; here the twice). Yes, as of Nov 12 in 2024 (as some Earthlings reckon our own years, sometimes), we will move into Year 38 as Earthlings track Marsling years.
Posted in Laughing Frequently, Thinking Broadly, Through Space, Through the Calendar
Tagged Attitudes, Science
9 Comments
No Expectations
I may have commented negatively on our fall leaves this year. I don’t say that I did, mind you, but I can’t rule out the possibility. Here in the Ottawa area our signature trees–the red maples–have been somewhat muted compared to other years or, indeed, to others and it’s been on my mind a little bit.
And yet. When the sun is shining and the light is nicely angled and the October winds and rains haven’t started, even a muted season offers views that are both pretty and pretty nice.
If the light is right, the leaves don’t even have to be orange/red to gladden this Albertan’s heart.
How often do I miss appreciating what’s in front of me because I’m comparing it to a memory? A photo of someone else’s experience? An expectation?
What I should do is to seize the day, or even the hour: October’s winds and rains are at hand; November’s gray skies await.
Ya Gotta Talk the Talk
I don’t hate it.
That’s what professional curlers say these days to indicate, um, well, that they don’t hate a shot being proposed by another team member or by the coach. It doesn’t set a high bar, does it? Is that really what they’re looking for? Just a shot that they don’t hate?
On the face of it, it seems unnecessarily negative. Couldn’t they just as easily say something more positive?
I love this plan.
I’m excited to be a part of it.
– Ghostbusters
Without going all Bill Murray, isn’t there something mildly positive that could be said? I expect there are many things, but for some reason curlers say this:
I don’t hate it.
Bill
Sometimes a slight pause precedes a meaningfully downbeat delivery of the last word.
The high today will be 14 . . . Bill.
Sometimes a just-more-than-slight pause acts like audible punctuation or a line break.
And that leaves the Yankees leading the ALCS
two games to one.
Bill.
Sometimes there is no discernible pause but the rising intonation catches your attention.
Traffic is moving well
with no accidents this morning, Bill?
But sometimes it all just runs together Bill so that it’s hard to tell when the weather/sports/traffic specialist has stopped talking Bill and is trying to hand the baton back to the morning-show host without any (shudder) dead air Bill because everyone speeds up on their delivery of the repetitive bits of their patter and the host’s name just gets tacked on at the end of it without any pause or intonation change Bill.
Posted in Feeling Clearly, Language and Communication, Laughing Frequently
Tagged Conversations
17 Comments
Disorientation Express: Redux
Do you remember my recent visual disorientation: not being sure whether I was moving? Here’s an example of a similar phenomenon. This time, though, I think it’s deliberate.