We’ll Always Have Techlab

In on the ground floor of CoffeeCoin

Holy Expletive, what a day I had at work, back at my “old” job, henceforth known as my “job”, as of yesterday. The big project they wanted me for hasn’t started yet, so I thought in the interim, things would be peaceful, dull, I’d sit around quietly waiting for someone to assign me something. OMG things are such a mess. I had been like, why the hell do they have to pull me back two months shy of the year I was supposed to be rotating? I guess I see now.

And look what arrived today, as if the cheesecake weren’t enough. CoffeeCoin was the “token” project back at TechLab, and my former manager wanted me to have this memento. Good times, those were.

Fail

Nobody puts their horrible fails on social media! Well I’m here to tell you, for every thing I do with my hands that manages to come out right, there are at least ten things that are utter fails. I had intended to put some beadwork around this hat. I need a lot of practice finishing beadwork. I’m just gonna ditch the whole thing at this point, take the beads apart, I wasn’t that crazy about it anyway.

Book Corner 2021.53

Nine Nasty Words

by John McWhorter

Linguist John McWhorter gives us the derivation and analysis of the usage over the years of nine nasty words. Dirty words, profane words, taboo words.

I love the exploration of how the suffix “-ass” is evolving into a mere adjective identifier. McWhorter shows this in chart form (his charts are funny): In 1830, a “big-ass man” would be a man with a big ass. Starting around 1930, a “big-ass man” would be a man who was surprisingly big. In 2300, it’ll just mean a big man. Apparently the pidgin that is the official language of Papua New Guinea treats “-fella”, which for them morphed into “-pela”, in the same way. A big guy is a “bigpela” guy, etc.

McWhorter is my age and I also like his usage of shows like THE JEFFERSONS to illustrate points.

And for the first time I’ve seen in print, someone comments on that extremely annoying “young female” accent that drives me up a wall, where short -e is pronounced like a short -a. I.e. instead of “My Mom is dead,” it comes out “My Mom is Dad” (I’m taking that example from a filthy old Daniel Tosh clip). Uuuuuuuugh, I hate this so much! As a linguist, though, McWhorter isn’t judgy about these things.

Buck & Beech

So here is something nice that was said yesterday at my farewell lunch – nicer than all the boilerplate ‘we’re gonna miss you blah blah blah.’ My boss told me that I had inspired him on a personal level, “with all your hobbies – your raising goats, your knitting, your weaving”. When I took a week off for weaving school, people seemed fascinated – not with the weaving, but the idea that you could take time off and, like, just do something you want to do, not involving traveling somewhere. Honestly, people must really have no lives whatsoever, if they think I’m something to look up to. But he said he’d always dreamed of doing something like going to a woodworking school in Vermont, and that I’m inspiring him. That’s cool.

One!

Some weeks ago I saw the most beautifully dyed little package of Wensleydale locks at the St. Alban’s farmer’s market. Dyed locks is what I got. Dyed locks is not something I need to buy. But both Xopher & I just couldn’t stop admiring that blue, so I bought the locks. There wasn’t enough to make a skein out of, so mixing was unfortunately necessary. I hope I did it justice. First handspun skein of the new season.

Looking for rusty reds to pair it with
Pretty against pretty
E’ finito

Book Corner 2021.52

Apropos of Nothing

by Woody Allen

Am I a bad person because when I saw Woody Allen had a memoir I immediately wanted to read it? Am I a bad person because I thought it was funny and I enjoyed reading it? Am I a bad person for finding his account of the whole molestation mishigoss is credible? No! I’m a bad person for other reasons, not these.

He’s funniest talking about his early life. Once his career takes off it seemed to get more matter-of-fact; once we are in his late career, the movie titles flying around and actors and actresses who were all wonderful, drop-dead sexy, beautiful, amazing, a joy to work with, etc. etc. and all the other famous people he’s met and known, well, it makes your head swirl a little.

So it wasn’t wall-to-wall comedy, but it was enough to be worthwhile and remind me why I’m a fan.

Incidentally, my favorite of his movies in order are:

  1. Annie Hall
  2. Manhattan
  3. Stardust Memories
  4. Love & Death

Yeah, really going out on a limb there, I realize.

And incidentally if you want to read something supportive of Mr. Allen, this statement by his adopted son Moses may be the best.