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I shook the dictionary and this is what fell out

Ode to the pentevalent shanny,
Thou Sothic umbra of thremmatology!
How xerophilous thou art, and vesperal!
Thou impastest the horst in xanthous unau.
Jugulate me not, O vexillary lath.
Thy xanthous mirza is verdant
And entareth he who gazeth thereupon.


Actually, this is a nonsense poem that I wrote a while back as a school assignment. Believe it or not, all these are real English words. See what fun we homeschoolers have!

The times they have changed

We have just started reading The Count of Monte Cristo for school, and I am liking it so far.聽 However, I was most dismayed upon reading the short “translator’s note” at the beginning of this particular edition:

The prevailing taste for brevity has made the spacious days of the stately three-volume novel seem very remote indeed. A distinct prejudice against length now exists: a feeling that there is a necessary antithesis between quantity and quality. One of the results is that those delightfully interminable romances which beguiled the nights and days of our ancestors in so pleasant a fashion are now given no more than a passing nod of recognition. Unfortunate as this is, one has to admit it with as much philosophy as may be available for the purpose. Life then had broader margins, and both opportunity and inclination are now lacking for such extensive indulgence in the printed page.

This, then, is felt to be sufficient apology for the present abridgement of one of the world’s masterpieces…

Sufficient apology? I think not! Who are they who dare to pick and choose the choicest morsels of Dumas’s novel and give them to us served up on a dinner plate, not even considering that we may have found much delight in what they left out? Read More

You're so chaffy

Today I accused my sister of acting like chaff, and, being the inventive person that I am, I carefully crafted a brand new word for this occasion: chaffy. And that would have been just fine and dandy except that–wonder of wonders!–it was a real word, created long ago by those most eminent sages the lexicographers.

The word carries the meaning of being like chaff, chaff being the leftovers from winnowing grain. It is generally used metaphorically to mean something that is empty or useless. Not that I was calling my sister that. She was just scattering some things like chaff.

What do you know! Learn something new all the time.

Complete Defenestration

Goodbye, Bill Gates.聽 I am proud to say that my Dell laptop is now free of everything Windows and Microsoft–besides the little Windows XP sticker next to my mousepad (which is nearly gone anyway).聽 That’s right–I have now switched to Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution.聽 So why did I get rid of Windows, you ask?聽 Well, I had become fed up with my print spooler which I must disable everytime I boot up my computer, and in general I was ready for something new.

So far, I have had fairly good success with Ubuntu.聽 It took me a while to figure out how to connect to the Internet, but now I’m up and going.聽 There are a few other things to iron out, but I have high hopes.聽 As I continue my adventures with Linux, I will periodically post here to say how it’s going.