amethyst73: (Default)
2008-04-24 05:07 pm
Entry tags:

Thinkiness ≠ creativity

Last night (after having run out of thinkiness), I was looking for the laser pointer, with which I'd been torturing the cats earlier.  (They like it.  Really, they do.  They wanted more, hence my looking for it.) 

After a minor search, I didn't see it in any of its usual places, at which point I declared that the object in question "was displaying a certain lack of findability."

There's gotta be a use for that in some HR-generated office-speak document somewhere, right?

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In other news: Having woken up with a scratchy/sore throat that has not gone away over the course of the day, I probably have the cold that's been going around.  I'm not sorry to be getting it over with now, as I can be a single absent soprano out of many for the performance of Carmina Burana that Symphonic Chorus is doing this weekend.  However, it would be spectacularly bad if I were to miss either the recital (of all my voice teacher's students, including me) or the big church Evensong thing that we're doing, both of which happen on Saturday May 10.  Definitely better to get it over with now!

Meantime, here are some alterative lyrics to 'O Fortuna', for the many of you who are familiar with the original Latin.  It's more a son et lumiere of  mis-hearing the original lyrics, rather than making up totally new ones.
amethyst73: (Default)
2008-04-23 10:31 pm
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*thud* (for, like, the bazillionth time in the last two weeks)

I invented a new word yesterday evening as I was driving the huz and myself to dinner with friends: thinkiness.

Thinkiness is pretty much identical to what I would roughly term 'brainpower' - the ability to think, reason, keep samples straight and ordered, efficiently multitask, and generally pay attention and make decisions.

Thinkiness is something that comes in a set quantity on a daily basis.  It's what one calls brainpower... when one no longer has the brainpower to remember the proper word for the thing, i.e. when you've run out of it.

I have run out of thinkiness at least twice in the last two days, and am definitely out of it at the moment.  Happy new word, everyone.
amethyst73: (Default)
2008-02-01 10:23 am
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When did these become words?

On the Bart coming back from the city a couple of weeks ago: "off-board" the train, as in, to get off

In an email to the huz last night: "trialling", as in, making trials of

I suppose I need to get with it and acknowledge that English is a changing thing, huh?
amethyst73: (Default)
2007-09-24 10:58 am
Entry tags:

Why can't the English...


I have seen not one, but two different places today where the homonym 'illicit' has been wrongly substituted for 'elicit'.  Both, as it happens, on gaming sites.  (I'm no longer terribly surprised by this sort of thing on IGN, but I've come to expect better from Gamers With Jobs.)  Since people seem to be relying more and more on the ubiquitous spellchecker to point out errors in English (hi [profile] orewashinanai's students!), it's becoming clear that someone desperately needs to invent a really good grammar checker.  One that can parse sentences to the point of knowing not just 'yeah, that's an adjective, it's clearly modifying the noun/gerund following immediately after it,' but one that knows about homonyms and it's/its/(and the totally illegal its').

Home again today.  I've been having nasty stomach gas for about the last 18 hours or so.  It's some better than it was last night, enough to the point of 'if I really had to go out and accomplish stuff, I'd take an Advil and/or tummy medicine and deal with it', but since I have buckets of sick leave and since I know that while I'd prolly be able to get myself to work, I'd really want to just go and lie down afterwards, I am home, at least for now.  Bed and semiconsciousness are good things.