What’s this from?:
The impact on your life that the act you are now contemplating will have, cannot be overstated. The personal challenge is immense. Immense because the only thing preventing you from enjoying this, one of the most primal life-shaping experiences, is your own mind. You must choose. To go through life knowing that you had the opportunity, but you turned it down and walked away from becoming the complete person you could have been.
Answer: Continue reading
So, today we’re considering what to call the box that moves folks between floors. Notably, both words focus the “going up” aspect, which is only half the job but I suppose is the tricky bit.
Word-wise, we’re using four syllables in the US, whereas Oz and the rest of the commonwealth uses only one. One might quibble that it isn’t “lifter” instead of “lift,” but I’m so used to “forklift” and “ski lift” that this seems normal.
Lift is a bubbly little word, while elevator is more serious, even ominous. A reasonable person could be afraid of elevators, while it feels like only the unaccountably prissy could be afraid of a lift.
Jeremy’s winner: Continue reading
The “Would I? Would I?” joke is here. But the fun of the joke, beyond the enjoyment of figuring out how often one can respond to a beloved’s query by saying “Would I? Would I?”, is coming up with variants. Here was one example. And here’s another:
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Why did you read this book? I didn’t. Beckie read it to me, while I drove our rental car across New Zealand. She chose the book because she liked a previous book by the same author, with the wonderful title The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland on a Ship of Her Own Making.
Has Beckie read it? Apparently you weren’t listening. Yes. She read it out loud. To me, while I was driving.
42 word review: Novella reimagines Snow White in old West. Excellent turns of phrase throughout. Good pacing and clever plot choices. Tone uneven: loses sense of whimsy for middle third, becoming very dark, then introduces screwball-comedy elements later. Magic elements creepy but not necessarily coherent.
Overall rating: 3 out of 5 dwarves (Bashful and Grumpy refuse to participate in the rating system, for different reasons)
“Ramen noodles” has always puzzled me. Is it some kind of Asian word, or were they invented by some guy named Ramen? (Could be both, I suppose, if invented by an Asian guy.) “Two-minute noodles” emphasize how quickly they can be prepared, which I would have thought of as their third-most appealing feature, after (1) how cheap they are, and (2) how decent-for-dirt-cheap-food they taste, if your constitution can handle the salt. “Two-minute noodles” gets some nice assonance going with the “oo”-“oo”, and affords the knowing acronym TMN.
Jeremy’s winner: Continue reading
(Pressing the balloons against our faces was probably the best part.)
So, this was a fundraiser for Deaf Australia called 4senses. As from their own description: 4Senses is a multi-sensory live gig, which uses sight and touch to make music accessible to everyone, including people who are deaf and hard of hearing. This is only 3 senses, but there was also a bar.
How’d it go? So they had a band playing, and a very active guy up front signing the lyrics. The lyrics were also projected with all these fun colored videos on three walls. There were also subwoofers to sit on, and (as in the photo) balloons to press against your face.
The band we stayed for was good, but it was also sorta like standing around in a gym. The big problem, honestly, was that the crowd just didn’t seem very into it. Sure, people would wave their hand in the air to express approval when the song was over, but mostly folks were just standing around and chatting, whether by voice or by signing. Maybe it got more lively as the night went on, but I left with the feeling that, for a rock concert, the patrons of Deaf Australia were a pleasant but tough crowd.
Would you do it again? Glad to have gone, but probably a one-and-done experience.
An odd thing here is that the place where the vegetable is less popular is the place that abbreviates the name. Australians put beetroot on pizza and hamburgers. In the US, you only see beets at restaurants that have many, many other vegetables on their menu or in old references to how kids should “eat their beets.” (And borscht, I suppose.)
“Beet” is a quirky little word, whose quirkiness is lost when the “root” is added. But “root” in Australia is another word for “sex” (“have a root), so they manage to make one of the most boring vegetables into something vaguely naughty.
Jeremy’s winner: Continue reading
(Beckie made the T-shirts, the hat bands, and the off-camera green-and-gold shoes. I bought the little flags.)
This was not our first time going to “the cricket,” but one could say this was our first time seeing serious cricket live. The Ashes is the most famous international cricket rivalry, held every other year between Australia and “England”.* A series is five tests, and each tests can last for as many as five days.
How’d it go? Continue reading
Can you actually buy stuff on layaway in the United States anymore? The Target. stores here — that’s not a typo, Target here is called “Target.” — have a big sign for their layby section. Don’t these people have credit cards?
This is a weak match-up, because it’s obscure enough it’s hard to rouse much passion for it, but if I did, there wouldn’t be much suspense because the outcome is straightforward: “layaway” has a nice little internal rhyme and “away” makes more sense than “by” for where the stuff is until you’ve managed to pay for the whole thing. I can’t think of a single reason why a place would call it “layby” instead of “layaway” except to signal a backwards consumer culture.
Jeremy’s winner: Continue reading
We recently gave this a go, but here we aren’t focused on that adventure but rather what “this” should be called. Let’s get down to business:
The “laser” part is a draw. So then: “tag” is a game for children, a “skirmish” is minor episode in a war between men. The activity involves trying to shoot your foes with laser guns. It’s “cops & robbers” with rifles. The name “tag” takes the edge of violence off of it, but anybody who needs to edge of violence taken off it shouldn’t be playing a game with guns anyway. As words go, “tag” is an ugly word and “skirmish” is a fun one, but “tag” goes much better with “laser”–“laser tag” rolls off the tongue and sounds zippy, whereas “laser skirmish” gets hung up in the r sounds. “laser tag” feels like it is taking-ordinary-tag-and-making-it-awesome.
Jeremy’s winner: Continue reading