I cannot come up with any combination of ingredients that would justify that sad little comma.

P.S. I typically do not like apple sausages (something about combining organ meats and fruit…ick) but I had to buy it for the blog…and I didn’t think they would appreciate if I removed the cardboard label and put it back on the shelf.

P.P.S. Yes, I am grocery shopping for the blog.

Words. Here are some we collected in college. (I knew there was a reason I was saving these.)

epicene: belonging to one sex but having characteristics of the other, or of neither; specifically, effeminate

soi-disant: swa dee zan’; self-styled

chiasmus: kee az’ mes; a reversal of the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases; inversion of the second of two parallel phrases, clauses, for example: “never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you” and “it’s not the men in my life, it’s the life in my men”

tertium quid: tur shyum kwid; a third something related to two specific known things, the third person in the eternal triangle (and the runner-up title of our blog)

Plus a new one, usus loquendi: yooz’ us lo kwen die; current usage in speech

And lastly, here’s one that is not in the dictionaries yet but was in a recent New York Times article, phantonym: a word that looks as if it means one thing but means quite another; for example, noisome does not mean noisy, it means smelly!

Important questions about words.

Here’s one I came up with the other day at the grocery store.

Cow meat is called beef or steak.
Pig meat is called pork or ham.
Even sheep meat is called mutton.
So why is chicken meat called just chicken?

Quotes.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.
-Katherine Hepburn

Ever tried, ever failed, no matter.
Try again, fail again, fail better.
-Samuel Beckett

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
-Albert Einstein

Other useful information.

I am supposed to know these, and I find them interesting, so I thought I’d share them with you.

A – alpha, di-DAH*
B – bravo, DAH-di-di-di
C – charlie, DAH-di-DAH-di
D – delta, Dah-di-di
E – echo, di
F – foxtrot, di-di-DAH-di
G – golf (really? they were kinda cool up until golf) DAH-DAH-di
H – hotel, di-di-di-di
I – india, di-di
J – juliet (this was unexpected) di-DAH-DAH-DAH
K – kilo, DAH-di-DAH
L – lima (I am not sure if this is the bean or the capital of Peru) di-DAH-di-di
M – mike, DAH-DAH
N – november, DAH-di
O – oscar, DAH-DAH-DAH
P – papa, di-DAH-DAH-di
Q – quebec, DAH-DAH-di-DAH
R – romeo, di-DAH-di
S – sierra, di-di-di
T – tango, DAH
U – uniform, di-di-DAH
V – victor, di-di-di-DAH
W – whiskey, di-DAH-DAH
X – xray, DAH-di-di-DAH
Y – yankee, DAH-di-DAH-DAH
Z – zulu, DAH-DAH-di-di

* The DAH is a dash, and the di is the dots

And, last but not least, words we invented!

I know there are more, but the only one I can remember at the moment is…

hermetic: one who has a tendency to be a hermit, who likes to hang out in the house all day by themselves working on projects

The process is making me feel a little protective of my job; not protective as in I want to keep it all for myself and not share it with anyone, but protective like I only want to hand it over to someone who will execute it with more accuracy, precision, and efficiency than I. Someone who will be an improvement so that, although they might miss Emily around the office, they will be in superior hands accounting-wise. Clearly, I have some thanks-but-no-thanks-for-the-great-opportunity guilt. I feel like I have just divorced my job, and now I have been asked to walk it down the aisle and deliver it unto its new relationship. So…in case there are any would-be Controllers reading this blog, here are a few things to not put on your résumé:

As a qualification, in no particular context: “I am simple.”

From the cover letter (so many things wrong here): “I am writing in response to you’re add for the technical writing position…”

Another from the cover letter: “Due to personality conflicts at my last job, I am now unemployed and living with my sister and her three kids in Thousand Oaks…[blah blah bla life story]…”

As an objective: “To translate The Vision into operational targets through the deployment of finance.” (I did not underline and capitalize The Vision, they did.)

My favorite, also from the cover letter, from someone apparently unfamiliar with the ethical accounting scandals of late: “My personality does not lend itself to begging, but I would do anything for this job. Anything.”

Also, when did a backslash – or maybe it is a forwardslash, either way, one of these: / – become an acceptable way to end a sentence? There are at least three cover letters that end in this: “Thank you for considering my application/” Well, don’t thank me yet, cause I’m not considering the application of anyone who can’t manage proper punctuation on a cover letter. (Yes, I realize I have some weird punctuation going on in the first sentence of this paragraph, but this a blog post, not a cover letter, and anyways, everyone knows there is no such thing as punctuation on the internet.)

Finally, this seems fairly obvious, but these people have to assume that there will be multiple applications for this job, so perhaps one should name one’s résumé file something useful, like John_Doe_Resume.doc; not Myresume.doc, and definitely not genericcoverletter.doc. Here’s another obvious one: put your friggin’ name and contact information on the résumé. I know the economy is rough and all, but it’s no wonder some of these people are unemployed, and from the looks of their résumés, they’re gonna stay that way.

Okay, done venting! (Almost.) An alternative title to this post could have been: continually surprised by the general stupidity out there…

Ok, second, QA.  I know, its not exactly a word but it stands for Quality Assurance.  I’m sure you could have guessed that.  Some background – “Two key principles characterise QA: “fit for purpose” (the product should be suitable for the intended purpose) and “right first time” (mistakes should be eliminated).”  Its definitely a foreign concept for me to do something right the first time.  I’m more of a trial and error kind of girl.  But I’m trying to change, really! I think I like it because it sounds like good slang too. Like, here are a couple examples where you could use it:

1) “I’ll be ready in a minute! I have to QA my face!”

2) “This customer service sucks, we need to QA right on outta here.”

I think the punctilious authorities might have a problem with me using it this way but luckily they don’t know where I live.  Speaking of punctilious – another of my new favorite words!  I learned it from reading this fabulous article which I’m sure you will find equally interesting considering your logophile tendencies.

"Sloppy Thinking Gets Worse Over Time"

Our project for today..... (honestly, this is the word I pointed to!)

This beautiful dictionary originally belonged to Max's father, Wally Hedrick.

So, I realized I cannot put an image into a reply. I guess to make this work, we will always have to edit the same post. Which is fine. So here is my first response to “infantile”

So I guess I got hung up on the first six letters of our word...

I did read that entire definition, and I know the word “infantile” is more of an adjective than a noun, but I can’t help it, any word that has “infant” at its root makes me cringe. I’m not proud of it, but there it is – I’m 32 and 99% of my thoughts about babies involve places they don’t belong, such as fancy restaurants, airplanes, and my womb, to name just a few. And trust me, I could come up with like 817 more…

Sweet baby jesus that image positioning is driving me nuts!!! If you didn’t notice, I had to center all of your images above, because my text kept smushing itself up between them. However, I think I have solved part of the problem. I created a “picture” saved in our media gallery called “friggin horizontal line”. I have put one before my post, and I’ll put one after it. You can then add your post after the horizontal line so it doesn’t get all buggy up into my post.

My Sunday Project Fail:

So, in my quest to post something creative involving the word “infantile” I just kept thinking of my daily bike rides where I spend the entire time contemplating the universe and why we are all here and what does it all mean man???  When I first saw the word infantile of course I think of babies. Naturally, the question that arises when thinking of babies is where do they come from?  Not like birds and the bees kind of thing but like only 9 months before they were in the world they didn’t exist or were microscopic.  That just amazes me everytime I think about it. So I think about it alot.  And I think about the universe and how I am more than microscopic to the celestial bodies out there in space.  I mean, there are black holes that are 6 billion times larger than our sun – I can’t even fathom the size of it.  So I spend my time imagining that all this space that we are floating in and all this mysterious dark matter that surrounds us is part of a larger organism that we are too small to fathom, imagine or even adequately envision.  Our DNA holds a vast universe of information that we have only begun to uncover and we have only begun to witness events happening in deep space.  So from where we stand infinity reaches in both directions, in terms of size, infinitely large, infinitely small.  In our ever broadening awareness of our world lies our understanding of ourselves and our appropriate place in the scheme of things.  I’m sure you can see now why I wasn’t able to post something in regards to “infantile” on Sunday if this is what happens!

Nice try, but I would not consider that a fail at all. You could have posted, in alphabetical order, the contents of your freezer, or listed the ingredients in shampoo, and it still would not have been a fail. The only way you could have failed is by not posting. Your response to the word infantile doesn’t have to be logical, it doesn’t have to be relevant, it doesn’t even have to be deep or intellectual, it could have gone something like: infantile…babies….mushy colorless food….gravy….I like biscuits. Heck, mine went: infantile…babies…arg. See how simple it is?
Theme: infantile
Response: I like biscuits
Trust me, I learned that in art school. (And if people don’t take your response seriously enough the first time, try adding “I like biscuits…and I have a substance abuse problem and/or a dysfunctional relationship with my father.”)

Two more things.

First, I had thought a Sunday project would be nice because it will 1) force us to post with at least once-per-week regularity and 2) add some consistency to our post themes. However, we don’t seem to have a problem with posting frequency, and maybe we don’t need to enforce a theme, maybe one will emerge as our blog develops. Anyways, we can nix the Sunday project idea if you like, or maybe give it a 3-more-Sundays trial period and then decide if we want to keep it or not.

Second, while pondering your response (which actually made sense in terms of relativity: zygote is to human adult as human adult is to cosmos!) and comparing it to my response, I noticed that we both reacted to the root meaning of the word. Which is logical, considering language is built from roots. Another response could have been to do a strict interpretation of the dictionary definition of infantile as an adjective, and ignore the root, and then (I considered this at the time) maybe a picture of something infantile, like any number of my ex-boyfriends, would have been a good response. But both of those are easy – how would we have come up with something unique, something “outside of the box?” And then I had a funny thought, which I had to post. If you strip away the root, and then the definition, you are left with a literal interpretation of of the word: InfanTiles! Now available at a Home Depot near you, prefect for you next counter-top remodeling project!

InfanTiles!

p.s. while I was searching for images of crying babies, I came across this lovely, life-size porcelain doll, which can be yours for only $198.00. Warning: Not recommended for children under 8 or anyone who has ever seen any of the Chucky movies.

I want my severed human hand!!!

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