The Meaning of Tattoo Locations

As a humorous follow-up to my January 2011 webcast discussion of tattoos:



(I wish that I knew the source, but alas, the image was just some random thing spread around Facebook.)

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Pronunciation Poem

Pablo Romero sent me this awesome poem about the insanity of English pronunciation, as a follow-up to the poem on grammar:

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye your dress you'll tear,
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, beard and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say break, steak, but bleak and streak.
Previous, precious, fuchsia, via,
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles.
Exiles, similes, reviles.
Wholly, holly, signal, signing.
Thames, examining, combining
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war, and far.
From "desire": desirable--admirable from "admire."
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier.
Chatham, brougham, renown, but known.
Knowledge, done, but gone and tone,
One, anemone. Balmoral.
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel,
Gertrude, German, wind, and mind.
Scene, Melpomene, mankind,
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which is said to rime with "darky."
Viscous, Viscount, load, and broad.
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's O.K.,
When you say correctly: croquet.
Rounded, wounded, grieve, and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive, and live,
Liberty, library, heave, and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven,
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover,
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police, and lice.
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label,
Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal.
Suit, suite, ruin, circuit, conduit,
Rime with "shirk it" and "beyond it."
But it is not hard to tell,
Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, and chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor,
Ivy, privy, famous, clamour
And enamour rime with hammer.
Pussy, hussy, and possess,
Desert, but dessert, address.
Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants.
Hoist, in lieu of flags, left pennants.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rime with anger.
Neither does devour with clangour.
Soul, but foul and gaunt but aunt.
Font, front, won't, want, grand, and grant.
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger.
And then: singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.
Query does not rime with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post; and doth, cloth, loth;
Job, Job; blossom, bosom, oath.
Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual.
Seat, sweat; chaste, caste.; Leigh, eight, height;
Put, nut; granite, and unite.
Reefer does not rime with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, Senate, but sedate.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific,
Tour, but our and succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria,
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay.
Say aver, but ever, fever.
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess--it is not safe:
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralph.
Heron, granary, canary,
Crevice and device, and eyrie,
Face but preface, but efface,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust, and scour, but scourging,
Ear but earn, and wear and bear
Do not rime with here, but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, clerk, and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation--think of psyche--!
Is a paling, stout and spikey,
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing "groats" and saying "grits"?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel,
Strewn with stones, like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict, and indict!
Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally: which rimes with "enough"
Though, through, plough, cough, hough, or tough?
Hiccough has the sound of "cup."
My advice is--give it up!

Also, in case you missed it in the comments of the last poem, C Andrew posted this gem (with a small correction from me):

How to spell fish: gh o ti

the gh from enough, the o from women and the ti from emotion.

I love that!

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Twelve Compelling Reasons To Denounce Me

Since I blogged my serious comments on the recent WTFuffle on Wednesday, I now feel at liberty to post these twelve compelling reasons to unfriend and denounce me:

(1) During the holidays, I happily sing Christmas carols glorifying Jesus.

(2) I think that mixed nuts are an abomination. The taste of each kind of nut contaminates the taste of the others.

(3) I'm a narcissist. Sometimes, I post a picture of myself to Facebook after I get a new haircut. That's inexcusable, I know. Facebook should be about depressing political news only.

(4) I prefer Glock to 1911. Also, 9 mm is wimpy.

(5) I wear turtleneck sweaters. (Apparently, this is controversial! Who knew?!?)

(6) I enjoy skiing and snowboarding about equally. I refuse to pick a side.

(7) I like saying "bijillion" to mean "some huge unspecified number." That must reveal some kind of corrupt epistemology.

(8) I swear. For particularly frustrating circumstances, I prefer "Fuckity Fuck Fuck."

(9) I enjoy off-color jokes, including jokes about penipodes. Yes, genitalia is sometimes funny.

(10) I like Ke$ha. She's crass, I know, but her music is catchy too!

(11) I tend to overuse exclamation points, particularly in e-mail. I edit out as many as I can, I swear! Still, I've just got to express my enthusiasm somehow!

(12) Sometimes, I post about what I ate for breakfast. In my defense, it usually involves bacon.

So that's my list, but I'm sure that other reasons equally if not more weighty can be easily found... and I'd encourage you to post them in the comments.

Just remember to pick a reason and unfriend me before you become contaminated with my evil ways! Don't be a mixed nut!

P.S. WTFuffe = A kerfuffle with a hefty dose of WTFery.

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Monty Python: Argument Clinic

Ah, this seems a tad too familiar:

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When a Smart Husky Likes Ice...

... he acquires it for himself from the fridge:


(Via Wimp.)

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Vermin Supreme for President!

Presidential candidate Vermin Supreme is offering free ponies and zombie-powered turbines. I'm voting for him for president!

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Funny Grammar Poetry

There's nothing quite like poetical grammar humor:

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!
Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England.
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
Grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and
get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down,
In which you fill in a form by filling it out, and
In which an alarm goes off by going on.

And in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop?

Via Robb on Facebook.

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Toilet Paper and Personality

What does your toilet paper say about you? Confess now!


I alternate between the top and bottom on the left, but if it weren't for Paul, I'd probably be bottom right.

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Porcupine Language

This porcupine is not only ridiculously cute in his insistence that the corn cob should not be eaten by anyone but him... but who knew that these creatures made such awesome noises? They must be the inspiration for some alien languages.

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Turkey Attack!

As a kid, we had two turkeys that were quite territorial, often chasing some poor frantic neighbor kid down the driveway at top speed. (Yes, that was funny!) At least those kids were in genuine danger, but this reporter has no such excuse:

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Naked Man Bales Himself

This video of a man putting himself through a hay baler... what can I possibly say?!?

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Awesome Dog Training

I've not done any new training with Mae for the past few months, but this inspires me!

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Ari Armstrong: Occupy Wall Street Versus Occupy McDonalds

Ari Armstrong created a good video contrasting Occupy Wall Street with the friendly capitalist exchanges at the nearby McDonald's.



I love Ari's interview style of just letting people speak for themselves, particularly in this case, where the occupiers reveal so much.

On a funnier note, I loved this segment from The Daily Show:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And the two segments with Stephen Colbert -- Part 1 and Part 2 were funny too:

The Colbert Report
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The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

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Patrick Rothfuss: Guinea Pigs are Fish

A funny story about breaking the rules about pets in dorms:



(Via Star)

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Haunted House Fear

So awesome: a slideshow of people in various forms of fright in haunted house camera. Happy Halloween!

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What If God Disappeared?

What If God Disappeared?:


(Yes, it's a parody!)

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Oh, Those Wacky YouTube Translations

What happens when you put a simple conversation through YouTube's closed-caption translation feature... twice? Pure comedy gold, baby!

Caption Fail 1:



Caption Fail 2:

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Simon's Cat: Double Trouble

This new Simon's Cat video was laugh-out-loud funny, probably his best one since the first. It's so lovely to see Simon's Cat get get bested by... Simon's Kitten!

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My Brain Versus Particulars

This Oatmeal comic segment -- part of the brilliant "if my brain was an imaginary friend" strip -- perfectly captures how my brain works. (Click here or on the image to view it.)

I have the same problem with all particulars, such as dates and places. When taking notes on a history lecture by Eric Daniels, I've had to replay what he said in my head, to get down the notes properly. I can hear it perfectly word-for-word -- almost. Inevitably, it sound something like, "The soldiers were despondent after General BUUZZZZZ moved his troops to BUUZZZZZ in the year BUUZZZZZ."

Apparently, after seven years of graduate school in philosophy, my brain decided that particulars were unimportant. Or maybe the causation runs in the other direction. Either way: DOH!

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Those Tricky Gays

Just check out this dastardly "gay agenda"!

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