Author: Heather Meadows

I loved that movie. From the BBC (via BoingBoing):

Delhi suffers from a serious monkey menace, with scores of animals seen across the city, particularly near top government offices.

The monkeys who have moved into residential areas and official enclaves due to Delhi’s shrinking forests,[*] are said to have become a ‘security threat’.

Last year, the ministry of defence found some of its top secret documents scattered all over the place one morning.

It was blamed on the many rhesus monkeys which flock around the colonial-era building.

The prime minister’s office, which is situated in the same block, is also within reach.

A cabinet minister couldn’t enter his official bungalow for months because the monkeys wouldn’t let any body enter the house.

The presidential palace too has been targeted and staff their have been forced to employ a dark-faced langur monkey to scare away the rhesus monkeys.

Now all they need is Brad Pitt jumping around and giving crazy speeches :)

(You know what other movie this reminds me of? Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls. Ugh.)

* Is it okay, in British English, to place a comma after the subject of a sentence? ;P

Yahoo!’s RSS feed will often send me the same story several different times, as the title is changed or the article is altered. The funny thing is, often there are two versions of the same story on their server at the same time.

For example, there was a study in Norway that found that worms on fishhooks share something in common with lobsters and crabs that are boiled alive: none of them have complex enough nervous systems to register the pain of those experiences. (Eat your hearts out, animal rights activists…) Here are two versions of the story. One of them has a picture, and the other doesn’t.

Worms hooked on fishing feel no pain

Worms on a Hook Don’t Suffer?

I guess these are Reuters articles. I don’t know why Reuters tries to be so “clever” with their titles. That first one is just stupid. The worms are not “hooked on” fishing. They are captured, impaled, and flung into the water, where they are then eaten alive! Invoke that, and then tell me they feel no pain, and you will have made your point. The second title, while rather boring, does a much better job.

My friend Troy emailed me a bunch of hilarious headlines yesterday:

THE YEAR’S BEST [ ACTUAL ] HEADLINES OF 2004

Crack Found on Governor’s Daughter

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says

Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers

Is There a Ring of Debris around Uranus?

Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over

Miners Refuse to Work after Death

Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant

War Dims Hope for Peace

If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile

Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures

Enfield (London) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges

Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge

New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group

Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

Chef Throws His Heart into Helping Feed Needy

Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half

Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors

And the winner is….

Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Now, most of these are funny because they have unintentional double meanings. (“Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant”! Yeah, that’ll show ‘im! :D) Reuters, on the other hand, tries too hard and invokes too many cliches. I’ll take unintended humor over their failed attempts any day.

Okay, this is nuts. From Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough:

A boy drove his mother’s car to a video store in the middle of the night, police said — and he’s all of 4 years old.

Even though he was unable to reach the accelerator, the boy managed to put the car in gear and the idling engine provided enough power to take him slowly to the store, a quarter-mile from his home, about 1:30 a.m. Friday, Police Chief Doug Heugel said. Finding the store closed, the youngster began a slow trip home.

I remember when I was a kid, Dad used to like to have us shift the gears for him in his pickup. I was always terrified by this. I was afraid I would do something wrong and break the car. He let us pretend to steer, too, but as his trucks didn’t have power steering, we really only did that on stretches of straight road. That didn’t bother me as much, because I’d be in his lap, and I knew he could grab the wheel immediately.

It has occurred to me, of course, that my experience is not extrapolatable to humanity as a whole, but the fact that a kid thought nothing of driving his mother’s car down to the store still shocks me.

From Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough:

In a survey of the everyday habits of nearly 14,000 people whose average age was in their mid-40s, Dr. Takashi Wada of Jikei University in Tokyo found that those who managed to stay slim tended to brush their teeth after every meal.

Actually, I’ve theorized about this for some time. After all, who wants to eat after they’ve just brushed their teeth? Not only does eating negate all the work you just did (:>), but food mixed with toothpaste tastes terrible.

However, just because I feel that this is a valid exercise doesn’t mean I’ve ever practiced it. These days, I eat breakfast at work (meaning I have to brush before breakfast, something I used to abhor), I eat lunch right when I get home and do not brush afterwards, and then at night I only brush right before going to bed.

I may want to change these habits…at least the lunch and dinner ones. We’ll see!

All I’m getting is this cryptic message:

We will be back soon……

Obviously Tycho didn’t write that, because he would never use two ellipses in a row. I’m guessing, now that the initial shock has worn off, that the guy who hosts their site put that up, but I must admit that my first reaction was “OMG H4x!!!!11”

…but it’s interesting nonetheless. Take a gander (or, you know, a goose; whichever).

I had a dream last night that I got four letters–there were really just two, but for some reason I received two copies of each–in regards to job applications I’d made for positions in Japan. The first one I opened was apparently for a job at Disney. I remembered that the application had involved a discussion of the character Gadget from Chip-n-Dale Rescue Rangers.

The first paragraph was just a couple of sentences long, and it went something like “No, no, the answer is no!” The following paragraph stated, “Do not hate me for this decision, for it must be made! The true brilliance of Tokyo Disney [it was something like that, can’t remember exactly] can only be seen in person. I invite you to visit!” Enclosed was a photo of the staff room. There, on the wall, was a picture of Gadget (and as I recall, she was in a very weird position, like she was trying to limbo or something).

I read the letter aloud to Sean, then cried, “There’s a picture of Gadget here! I was supposed to mention it on my application! It was a test! Dammit!”

The other letter was another rejection that I don’t really remember.

There was a subplot in my dream about a character who was Brooke, except she was shorter and had brown hair and she was taking care of a small girl. She wasn’t being careful about the things she touched, and someone had ended up giving her some sort of disease. “Did you wash your hands after talking with the taxi driver?” a lawyer asked. “No,” Brooke said, as if it was silly to do so, and insulting to the taxi driver. The lawyer and I looked at each other and nodded grimly; this was obviously the cause.

Later, I wandered around in some sort of store that was filled with Valentine’s Day pillows.

This post really has nothing to do with the malapropism I quoted in the title (you’ll see it again in the quoted text below), but I couldn’t think of a more interesting headline, so there you have it.

Today I wanted to highlight what Zach Braff said yesterday about writing:

So many of you ask me about writing, just skim through the comments and you’ll see thousands of stories to write about. All I did was sit down and write about what I was feeling in my own life. What bothers you, what makes you laugh, what do you obsess about, what makes your stomach turn, what do you lust over? – just sit down and write about those things. That’s what’s universally interesting; those are the kinds of movies I like to go see: regular people in real life situations, dealing with emotions and worries I can relate to. Also, think about starting very simply; don’t overwhelm yourself trying to think about the whole movie; write a scene between two people, then write what happens after that, then what happens after that. Don’t get boggled down worrying about outlines and rules, just tell a bunch of stories that happen to the same group of people. And try (for lack of a better expression) keeping it real. There’s a saying I really like to think about when I’m writing: “Don’t do that, they do that in movies.” Anytime I find myself writing something that feels nowhere close to reality, I try to stop and reign it back to what’s true for me. Blah, blah, blah. I just wanted to offer up a couple of thoughts since so many have you have asked about it.

But take it for what it’s worth. This is coming from a guy who got rejected from USC, UCLA and got C’s in screenwriting at Northwestern.

Even though I was obsessed with getting good grades in college, I have an enormous amount of respect for people who didn’t (like, you know, Einstein). Somehow I feel like they know something I don’t. I mean, I’m talented, and teachers generally liked me, but I was also very lazy. That people who weren’t lazy couldn’t manage to get the grades I did says something to me, like “Grades are absolutely meaningless”.

But I digress yet again…the point was, Zach Braff has some good tips for writers. :>

Wear your seatbelts, assholes.

This article in the Lexington Herald-Leader really brought home to me how far Nicholasville has come in the past several years. Driving up US 27/Nicholasville Road to Lexington every day for classes, I became very familiar with the spotty storefronts and rolling hills along the way. Now when I visit, it’s almost unrecognizable due to all the new development.

Extending the city limits to the county line seems to be a reasonable notion, especially given that Nicholasville will get some money out of it.

I can see some parallels growing between the north side of Nicholasville and where I live here on the Richmond County line (almost in Martinez). From here I can get to all the good stores in about five minutes, and downtown in about half an hour. Half an hour in the other direction, and I’m out in the boonies. It’s very similar; people near the county line in what will be Nicholasville are right near Fayette Mall and Lexington Green, plus that huge Wal-Mart complex…there is so much commerce right on the south side of Lexington on Nicholasville Road. With the possibility of a 14-screen movie theater, Nicholasville is shaping up a lot like Martinez.

I hope the developers keep trees in mind while they’re changing the landscape. Here in Augusta, we’ve still got trees everywhere. They’re tall, too, so they block sound and visual pollution. The trees in Kentucky don’t grow quite the same way, so I hope they are able to find some way to integrate all the new construction into the environment in an appealing way.

Recently, I pointed out a grammatical error, but missed another. Oops. It so happens that the guys at Language Log have been discussing a similar kind of “error” recently, and Mark Liberman has a new post up that is very interesting. In this post, Liberman presents a possible “rule” suggested by a reader, and then picks holes in it.

What can I say of the house now that the house

is over—what can I sing of the bridge

now that my family is on the other side,

where the birds finally tune the shadows

with their songs, and the lights need only

brighten for a moment, for there is no darkness

in their house, only light, the causes of

light, the moment of memory when the

past pronounces the future, “so long,” the leaves

wave, the sea waits for someone and someone

else …

Burkard, Michael, 1947-: The Moment of Memory [from Fictions from the Self (1988), Norton]

Again, changing is to are after family would be at best unidiomatic, while writing “there is no darkness/in its house” would be bizarrely dehumanizing.

[Emphasis added by Liberman.]

That “bizarrely dehumanizing” bit occurred to me as I was reading, too. Somehow, there is more humanity in the pronoun they than there is in it–probably because it can be used for people in the plural (and also, arguably, for a singular, speculative person). So maybe the reason “they” sounds good to us in certain cases that seem superficially ungrammatical is because it connotates a person. (Even when we’re not talking about a person, “they” feels more familiar and comfortable. “It” is very standoffish, as if the speaker has no connection whatsoever to the subject.)

This is fabulous.

The term “booty” technically means a pirate’s treasure, but in slang also refers to a girl’s backside or sex.

I don’t know why, but proper-sounding definitions of slang words always crack me up.

This quote brought to you by Yahoo!, from a story about The Kid Who Said Too Much.

Carpenter, a housekeeper at a convalescent home and an aspiring actress, said some co-workers have told her that when her son reaches school age, classmates will make fun of his name, “but I don’t worry about it. They made fun of me because my nose is small. They make fun of you no matter what you do.”

Yes, Mrs. Carpenter, but there are levels. Kids grow out of making fun of people for their noses (at least, most of them do). I don’t think anyone will grow out of making fun of your child for being named “Jake 2.0”.

Yahoo’s got a story on the trouble the name is already causing the kid (mostly unrelated to childhood taunting, since he’s only a year old at this point).

The UPS guy is starting to know me :> Today he said, “You should move to the first floor.” :>

Anyway, the thing’s an Omron Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor with Large Cuff. I’m not sure the large cuff was actually necessary. It’s pretty damn big.

Of course, I took my blood pressure immediately. It was:

I just wanted to note that, because I do my typical logging in the morning and evening. I also want to mention that my pulse was:

Not bad, really.