Prose and Kaa

This will probably only make sense to the small percentage of you who have facial hair. Specifically, facial hair on your upper lip, which some spell 'mustache' and others spell 'moustache.' I like the latter one, myself, but I think it's more a stylistic choice than anything else.

Kind of like facial hair.

I have what most people think of as a goatee, but the goatee is only the chin part; I have a Van Dyke.

No, it doesn't mean I trip over ottomans or have a really atrocious Cockney accent.

Anyhoo . . .

Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's everyone with hair on their upper lip. I sometimes have . . . issues. The kind of issues that people without hair residing directly under their nose probably won't really sympathize with.

I'll quit mincing around it: When I eat certain foods, I smell them for the rest of the day. There. I said it. No amount of rinsing in any temperature of water seems to get rid of these odors, and sometimes it's just not practical to shampoo your face at work. And even soap doesn't seem to solve the problem. Only a shower.

So I go around all day smelling the maddeningly enticing odor of maple syrup or butter. I don't know what it is about those two foods in particular, but they seem to be the only two that never die out, no matter when I eat them. I'll still be smelling them when I go to bed, even if I've washed my face a dozen times during the day.

This is why I don't eat waffles more often. Unless it's before my shower, of course. Waffles are my Van Dykryptonite.

My point in sharing this? I . . . don't have one. I just felt the desire to complain about something that annoys me, and LiveJournal beckoned. And I had corn on the cob with butter for lunch. Do the math.

Or maybe part of me is hoping other people will comment, "Oh, hey, I, too, possess a hirsute upper lip and experience similar problems."

Or maybe it was just to get the phrase "Van Dykryptonite" onto an unsuspecting Internet.

At any rate, I now return you to your regular Internet, already in progress.

What is the difference between "bitching and moaning" and "complaining"? And where does "bellyaching" fall on that scale?

Is it a matter of degree? Of importance?

Or is it purely in the ear of the beharker? (Yes, it's a word. Now.)

I'm altogether sure this is not an original thought by any definition of the word 'original,' but I thought it, and I laughed out loud in the men's room. Luckily, I was alone. And now, I share it with you.I'll be here all week, folks. Try the veal!

ISO 3166 established a two-letter country code for every country that exists, and these are used in top-level domain names for that country. So a website in Canada might end with .ca, while one in China might end with .cn.

At some point, they're going to need to add planets, moons, and other astronomical objects. Granted, it won't be for a while, yet. But I say why wait?

Clearly the ISS will need one first. And .ss is conveniently not taken, yet. Next will likely be the Moon, and wouldn't you know it, .ln is not taken!

Mercury - .hg (I mean, really, what else could it have possibly been?)
Venus - .vs
Mars - .rp (for Red Planet; all the good ones beginning with 'm' are taken.)

And Mars' two little moons:

Phobos - .pb
Deimos - .di

I don't think Jupiter or Saturn or Neptune or Uranus will need their own domains, but their moons might. Here's a few just off the top of my head:

Titan - .ti
Io - .io (I'm sorry, but the British Indian Ocean Territory is just going to have to get over it. They can have .ot.)
Ganymede - .gg
Triton - .tx
Enceladus - .en
Umbriel - .ub
Europa - .eu

Of course, there's Pluto and Charon hovering out there in the outermost reaches.

Pluto - .pu (or .uw (underworld) if the future Plutonians don't like .pu)
Charon - .fe (Yeah, all the good ones were already taken, but since Charon was the Ferryman . . .)

And what about the other dwarf planets?

Ceres - .ce
Haumea - .ha
Makemake - .kk (Nothing starting with an 'm' was left that made sense.)
Eris - .ei

There are 676 possible top-level country codes. We're currently only using 240. That leaves 436. I've presented my suggestions for just 20 of those (with one reassignment and one potential alternate).

Surely I'm not the only person thinking ahead on this.

Am I?

Am I? <sound of wind echoing>

Have you ever been sitting in a public place minding your own business when, from a nearby table/grouping of people, you hear something that, taken any number of ways, would make you make this face: o.O ?

I was at my favorite Mexican restaurant, today, for lunch. (El Azteca Buckhead on Peachtree, if you care.) I was reading whilst finishing up my excellent repast of carnitas when, from a nearby table, I heard . . .

Let me pause for a brief moment to give you a mental picture before I tell what I think I might possibly have perhaps heard. Maybe.

It was a table, not a booth. When the trio were seated, the waitress tried to put them in a booth, but one of the guys requested a table because the booth was too small. (I have this same problem in a lot of places¹, so I say this only to set a mental image, not to denigrate this man in any way.) It was this man and two companions, one male, one female. I didn't get a good look at the companions because they were both seated with their backs to me. But all were well-dressed, probably in their late 20s or early 30s, and clearly on their lunch break from work.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post, already in progress.

From this table, I hear the guy with his back to me say to the big guy I can see, "So, you're planning a rape?"

<insert Scooby Doo sound and sideways head tilt here>

The big guy responded with, "Greeeeeaat." It was hard to hear over the loud Mexican pop music² and the conversations of the other diners—well, and my own brain going, "What? Hold the phone! Did he just say 'rape'?"—but I'm pretty sure that's what he said.

Of course, I played it back several times in my head, trying to make it be other sound-alike words that might make more sense, considering the addressee's response. "Rave" makes the most sense of anything that immediately popped into my head. But I couldn't picture any of them dancing at 200 bpm whilst waving glow-sticks around and popping Ecstasy.³

"Date," perhaps . . . but I couldn't reconcile that with the guy's reaction.

"Race," "raid," "rage," "rake," "rail," "rain," "rate," or "raze" make no sense in context. Nor do "tape," "nape," "jape," "gape," or "cape."

So in the interest of maintaining what little sanity I can claim to have left, I'll go with "rave." Yes, "rave." So, hey, folks, there's a rave! Somewhere . . . in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area! At, you know . . . some point.

Yay!

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1. In addition to building theater and airplane seats for 12-year-old, anorexic Japanese school girls, many restaurants seem to think Americans are getting smaller instead of bigger. I know they can cram in more seating by making the booths smaller, but . . . I like breathing. It's always been one of my favorite things to do.
2. Have you noticed how all Mexican songs seem to contain the word 'corazón,' which means 'heart'? I didn't until Hard 'n' Phirm pointed it out.
3. Yes, as a matter of fact, I am stereotyping.

I can understand The United States of America, The United Kingdom, The People's Republic of China, The Kingdom of Thailand, etc. There's an adjective or two in there. (Don't ask me why, but . . . that seems to be why.)

And The <whatever> Islands, for kind of the same reason, and I can even handle The Netherlands, because they're both kind of plural. Ish. (Again, don't ask me why. It just is.)

But what I don't understand are the following (which we don't technically use anymore, but in the past, they have all been used):

• The Sudan
• The Congo
• The Ukraine

I mean . . . what's the reasoning for them?

Am I the only person who thinks of things like this for more than a couple of minutes?

Hi, all. It's me, Skippy.

I love the mindset of UFO believers. Think about it: beings from another star travel quite literally trillions of miles across the treacherous vastness of space, possibly breaking the laws of physics, to come to Earth, an insignificant little speck of a place orbiting an unremarkable star.

And after they come all that way, what do they do?

1. Crash.
   
   

   So, let me get this straight. They came at the very least 50 or 60 light-years. They either did so in many generations or somehow managed to harness enough energy to propel their ship at relativistic speeds (so they would age a little while dozens or hundreds of years went by in the universe around them) or broke the laws of physics and got here basically instantaneously. And beings who have this high level of technology then enter Earth's atmosphere and can't handle it? Or crash into a windmill and lose control of their craft? And while we're using logic, what makes us think they'll think anything like us, look anything like us, or be able to breathe our air or eat anything that evolved on Earth?



2. Kidnap drunk rednecks for anal probing.
   
   

   I'm not even sure this rates a comment.



3. Cut chunks off cows.
   
   

   I've had some very tasty beef in my day. And it was worth driving a half-hour to get to a really good restaurant, or marinate and grill it myself. I don't know what you'd have to be high on to have the munchies bad enough for a trip that far. Not to mention that if they're seriously coming from another star to cut tongues, eyes, lips, udders, reproductive organs, and rectums off of cows, I have a bridge I'd like to sell them. No, seriously. Send them to me.



4. Draw pretty pictures in fields of grain.
   
   

   Because these technologically advanced, incredibly bored aliens like nothing more than to do the equivalent of drive from Nuwuk Lake, Alaska to Lago Navanno, Argentina (look 'em up!), get out of their car, and vandalize grain fields with alien graffiti. You gotta be druuuuuunk to do something like that.

Well, from this, we can conclude one thing unequivocally: if they have, indeed, visited Earth, as many UFO believers fervently claim, clearly they are interstellar frat boys and Earth is Fort Lauderdale.

Drunk, high, the munchies, and pulling asinine pranks? I'm just sayin'...

And that stuff they're making in the fields of grain? Obviously the equivalent of ΩΔΞ.

Why isn't "fora" the plural for "forum"?

Shouldn't Mjöllnir (Thor's hammer) really be called a hjammer?

Because I often have ideas for...various and sundry things while I'm engaged in other activities, I make sure to have some way of recording these random, precious gems of thoughts as I have them.

In the car, I have a digital voice recorder so I can merely speak my wisdom and preserve it for posterity (or until I transcribe and erase it).

In the shower, I have Aquanotes so I can jot down things even if I'm naked, wet, and covered in soap. (It's happened more often than you'd imagine. I mean the need to write things down while I'm...not that I'm often...you know, I think I'm just going to stop while I'm ahead.)

In my backpack, I have a variety of notebooks and pens and pencils so that if there's time, I can pull out one and write down whatever bit of brilliance has popped into my head.

But as a last resort, I actually bought a wallet from Levenger that holds 3 x 5 index cards (and, you know, money and credit cards and a driver's license) so I could, in a pinch, write down stuff as it happened and in situations where none of the above methods are available to me.

I keep a supply of blank index cards in said wallet. Every once in a while, I go through the used ones—and I use them pretty thoroughly, writing small and filling up a side before flipping it over, usually—and transcribe anything "important" into Info Select, which is a wonderful piece of software everyone should own.¹ It organizes random notes and makes them easily searchable.

So, today was Transcription Day.

And I gotta say, I have some very odd things written down. Not Skullcosm weird, but pretty darned weird. :)

For instance (this is by no means everything; it's just a representative sampling):

Muammar al-Gaddafi to be Jenny MCCarthy's co-host. He was chosen for his ability to talk for 90 solid minutes and say absolutely nothing.

Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies

New word: transmythsion - passing on myths and urban legends

MANA - gas

Chuck ask body jump after Pratt

purple naked harpsichord

restaurant + mythtv

snowflake method

witch trials - real witch/demon

any seventeen
syllables can become a
haiku, if you try.

Society for the Eradication of Stupid Questions

Now, I ask you: are these the scribblings of a sane mind? :)

Actually, one or two of them I can sort of make out, but I don't know why I wrote them down. Such as the 'purple naked harpsichord' one. Those if you on TinyTIM will get it instantly; those of you who aren't never will, so don't try. :) Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies is, I think, an actual book title. "Snowflake method" is a method of writing where you start with a single sentence and expand upon it "fractally" until it's a beautiful snowflake finished novel. The "witch trials" is a story idea to write about the witch trials from the POV of a real witch or demon who has to stay hidden while watching innocent people get slaughtered. The thing about Gaddafi might be something I heard someone else say and thought was funny enough to preserve forever. Or it might be original to me. <shrug>

I rather like the idea of the SESQ (Society for the Eradication of Stupid Questions). As for the others? Well...when I remember, I'll tell you, and then we'll all know. :)

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