Home of the Snarkmaiden

While I certainly endorse the intended sentiment of the by-now iconic "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters, there's a slight cognitive dissonance that sets in for me due to the ambiguous meaning of 'carry on'. Clearly the world needs a "Keep Calm with a Minimum of Carrying On" poster...

The English people must be tougher than they look, outwardly, since what Americans call a slash, to them is the merest stroke.

Riffing off the notion of an idiolect and in imitation of David Levine and Kate Yule's documenting their household's private or idiosyncratic terms and phrases to explain what they mean and where they come from, I give you the idiolexicon - a lexicon of idiosyncratic or personal linguistic usage. I've been meaning to document some of our household's idiolect for a while, as Hal does from time to time, and since I've now managed to remember three entries for long enough to get to a keyboard, I can begin.

breathed on - adj. - A stock item that has been altered after-market to get better performance. Borrowed from the world of auto mechanics and racing; presumably the imagery is mythological, referring to a god breathing life, soul, or spirit into previously inert manner. As in the sentence, "Yeah, that looks like a stock Mustang, but the engine's been bored out and gotten nitrous injection; it's been seriously breathed on."

Since then, we have been to Las Vegas. - Our assessment of the subject has been revised, usually upward, not because the thing changed, but because our contextual knowledge is greater now. Derived from an interview of a Formula 1 racing driver, who was racing in the Long Beach Grand Prix, raced through the city streets of Long Beach for the second year in a row. When asked what he thought of the race course, he said, "This year, the course is much better." "But," sputtered the interviewer, "The course is exactly the same as last year!" "Ah," said the driver, "But since then, we have been to Las Vegas." The Las Vegas course at that time was created by the expediency of setting traffic cones in one of the hotel-casino parking lots.

a fast pig - n. - a project executed for speed rather than beauty, finesse, or accuracy. Comes from a family story of my Dad's school days. The teacher had offered a prize to the student who could draw a pig the fastest. Dad sweated at the chalk board over an anatomically accurate drawing while his competitor drew a telegraphic concatenation of circles, triangles, and a spiral curlicue tail. Dad's pig was the better drawing, but his competitor won the prize, because the charge had been to produce the fastest pig, rather than the best.

Earlier today I spotted this post over on James Nicoll's LJ. All unknowing whose birthday (or more correctly, baptismal date) it was, I answered that if I could resurrect any author at the height of their powers knowing they would be brains-craving zombies, I would choose William Shakespeare. Well, then Abi over at Making Light started a sonnet thread in honor of Shakespeare's birthday, and silliness came bubbling forth. Ergo, in honor of National Poetry Month and my favorite English playwright, I give you:

Sonnet for Zombie Bill, on the Anniversary of His Baptism

Behold, what soul would I a zombie make
What long-dead penman to this life renew?
For whose gilt words would brains forsake…
…well, not my own, if giving yours would do…

The puzzle posed, its answer must contain:
No English language poet can compare
If giving up one’s living mind’s in train,
No lesser author’s work is worth the dare.

So Bill-the-Bard we bow our heads to thee,
And hope to live to see your next Act III.

The helicopters are circling again. Here in Seattle, where you seldom hear helicopters at all, their massed, fluttering rumble feels oppressive. If you look at KOMO or KING 5, you'll see endless live footage of the buildings of UW from the air. It's not that informative.

The good news -- for me anyway -- is that I was not shot this morning.

This seems more relevant to mention than most mornings because two people were in fact shot on the UW campus less than three hours ago, over in Gould Hall. The breaking news now seems to indicate a murder/suicide, and that possibly this was the culmination of a stalker episode, which is all horrible enough, but when we first heard about it here, the rumors were flying that the shooter(s) were still at large.

Possibly the weirdest aspect of a weird and unsettling incident was the amazing speed and reach of rumors in an age of text-messaging. I think that's something the University (and other authorities) are going to have to be more aware of in handling breaking news. The Campus Police did not send out any kind of blanket e-mail to let the campus know that the situation was under control and no lock down was necessary (though that is what they told us verbally when we called them), but since the rumors were flying well ahead of their response, I think a lot of micro-panics could have been forestalled if they simply had a policy of notifying the campus when something like this happens. We're going to find out anyway, the question is what's going to be our source and how reliable.

And so it's been a morning of tiny, incremental improvements in the information we have. Typical, when dealing with breaking news. Annoying, when you're this close to the epicenter of it. If it was a stalker that probably blows my expectation of yet another disgruntled employee on a spree. Still, I will continue to keep my employees gruntled.

Or not.

(Hey, who knew "edit" was a backformation of "editor"? I sure didn't.)