Verbing Weirds Language

Dee's sick. She's got an ear infection and an eye infection. Poor baby. And she HATES to take her medicine so we've got to wrestle with her and piss her off so we can help her to feel better. Unfortunately she doesn't know what's going on. All she knows is she doesn't feel good and Mom and Dad keep pumping this yucky stuff into her mouth.

I was reading some old Calvin & Hobbes yesterday where Calvin talks about "verbing" words and it reminded me of how so many people seem to get weirded out by this. Mostly the critics are english teachers and Dave Barry. However, I saw today that even Wil Wheaton chastised himself for using "blog" as a verb.

But let's think about this for a second. Isn't this a normal progression in the evolution of a language? New words come into use, old words drop from usage, some words have their meanings completely shifted and some words take on new meanings. It's been happening for millenia but now some purists want to draw a line and say, "from this point on the language doesn't change." I think they're just trying to make their jobs easier so they don't have to keep up with a changing language. Hell, even Latin (a supposedly dead language) gets new words added to it occasionally.

Consider the word "shoe." Shoe is a noun that refers to an article of clothing one wears on their feet. A shoe is also a metal rim that is put on the hoof of a horse. Shoe is also a verb that refers to the act of putting a shoe on a horse. So was "shoe" a verb first or a noun? Or did they both come about at the same time? Hard to tell. Webster's says that both words were in use before the 12th century. So that boils down to another chicken and egg question.

Telephone was a noun before a verb. So were box, bottle, pen and tape to name just a few.

Our language, English in case you're wondering, is a living language that changes every year. Feel free to contribute to the evolution of the language by verbing a few nouns. If they end up being a useful addition to the language, they'll stick around by the simple fact that people will continue to use them. If not, they'll simply fall by the wayside.

So TiVo those new episodes of your favorite show, blog your thoughts and text your friends 'cause it's all good.

What's in a name?

Got home last night and Dee had a slight fever so Terri will be trying to take her to the doctor today. Which reminds me... we're pissed at Terri's doctor about Saturday night. Not because she got sick, but because before we went to the ER she'd called and left a message with her answering service but never got a call back from the doctor on call. I think it's way past time for us to find a new doc.

Also started setting up a photo album for the TexasCareys.com site. Didn't get much chance to work on it last night, but it's a start.

I was thinking about last names on the way home. You know most people's last names apparently came from jobs their anscestors did (like smith or cooper, etc.) but how does someone get a name like Ratcliff? After a little searching I found that MyFamily.com has a good page on surnames.

Just another Monday... yay

Well, Dee actually went to sleep on time last night. I guess she was just as tired as we were even though she napped off and on all Sunday.

Funny site here: http://maddox.xmission.org/c.cgi?u=irule It's a bit old, but it's funny.

I just noticed that my breakfast bar has a label that says, "tamper resistant: do not use if foil wrapper is torn or missing." Um... OK..

1. If the wrapper is missing, then so is the label and therefore ... I think you get the idea.


2. Since when does a foil wrapper constitute "tamper resistant packaging?" By this logic you could call ANYTHING tamper resistant.

Tamper resistant packaging is something like an irreversible indicator that a seal has been broken like the pop-up caps on juice bottles or the little plastic rings that separate on a bottle of soda. This, however, is like hiding your money in a sock and saying that it's in a anti-theft vault.

Another Uptown Saturday Night

How was your Saturday night? Was it fun? Once you got home and went to bed did you get a lot of rest? Was it nice? Even if you said no, it probably beat the HELL out of my Saturday night.

If you read back to my Apr 21, 2004 post, you'll see that I was puking my guts out that night. I felt terrible but I waited it out. The next day I was all achey and tired, but my wife and baby were both well rested.

Well, Saturday night it was Terri's turn to be sick. It seems like she had very similar symptoms to me. However, there was one slight difference. At 12:30am Saturday night/Sunday morning I'm hauling her and the baby out to the ER so she can get some anti-puking medicine.

Of course they never just give you the medicine you need and send you home. So we were there from 12:30 to 6:00 am. That's right! Five-and-a-half glorious hours of my life that I'll never get back that I had to spend sitting in an uncomfortable chair or trying to console an upset baby while her mother is given medicine that knocks her out and lets her sleep.

So today, Terri feels achey, I haven't had any sleep and the baby is cranky and her sleep cycle is probably completely out of whack.

The moral of this story? There isn't one. I'm just tired and bitching.

Movie Meeting Last Night

I met with Jon and Eric (Jason couldn't make it) last night and talked about our movie projects. Some good news from last night, apparently Bridget Fonda is interested in one of our projects. If she comes on board, we've got a distributor willing to put up a sizeable chunk of cash to make the film!

Downloaded the Freelancer Rebalance Mod v3.40 from Lancers Reactor yesterday and got it installed on Freelancer. It loooks like a pretty cool mod, they've added all sorts of add-ons you can put on your ships, like upgraded engines and such. I haven't had a chance to really explore it yet but maybe I'll get some time to play with it this weekend.

BTW if you're into freelancer and you get this mod, be sure to get the upgrade and the patch that are required.

Reincarnation

My mother-in-law believes in reincarnation. To me, this is odd because she also claims to be a Christian. Last time I checked, reincarnation was not part of the Christian mythology.

However, it seems that her beliefs are not all that out of the ordinary. Many people who call themselves Christians profess beliefs in things that are clearly outside the realm of the standard version of Christianity.

More to the point, even if I were to believe in reincarnation (which I don't) there's no way in hell I could accept that my mother-in-law is Cleopatra reincarnated! Thet's right! She has claimed on several occasions to believe that she was Cleopatra in a previous life. Now if I WERE to believe in reincarnation and had to pick someone alive today as the most likely candidate to be Cleopatra reincarnated, it would certainly NOT be my mother-in-law!

If I were going to pick someone and say, "there! That person is most likely to be Cleopatra reincarnated," it would be either this person or this person!

Arrrgggghhhh!

I was sick as a DOG Monday night. I had the pulled pork from the company cafeteria monday and spend monday night from 8pm til 4am puking my guts out! Apparently I wasn't the only one. I talked with the barista this morning and apparently it made her sick also (but not nearly as sick as it made me).

And here's a little note about the hypocrisy of prayer. It seems to me that most Christians believe that their God has some sort of plan for them and for the world in general. So my question is, "if God has a plan, why do you pray to ask for things to go a certain way?" People pray for all kinds of things; a football team to win, lottery numbers, to pass a test and even to get pregnant. It's this last example that got me thinking. My brother was referring to his kids as "gifts from God" the other day because he and his wife had had a lot of trouble getting pregnant so they started praying asking God to help them get pregnant. Now, it seems to me, that by the Christian mind set of God having a plan, then praying to ask him to give you something that may not be part of his plan might be a bit presumptuous. Do you really think you're going to change the mind of some being who's supposed to be all-know, all-powerful and has everything planned out through the end of eternity? Is God supposed to rewrite his plan to appease your whims and desires?

I don't think these people really think about what they're doing and the whole absurdity of it all. They say they believe one thing but act like they believe something else. See what I mean? They SAY that they believe their God has a plan, but in practice, they act like they can convince God to change the very laws of nature to suit their wishes. I think that they SAY that God has a plan only to try to put some meaning behind the more disturbing aspect of life. Like when a young child dies or someone they love gets an incurable disease. It's more comforting for them to say that it's all part of God's great plan and that to him all the tragedy somehow makes sense and our minds are just too feeble to be able to comprehend it all rather than saying that sometimes life just stinks. But that's the way it is. Sometimes it's great. Other times... not so much.

More geocaching this weekend

Did some Geocaching this weekend. Found two more caches. Terri and I also went oiut later and looked for two more that we didn't find.

I made a ton of baby food for Dee yesterday. She's now stocked up with green beans, sweet potato, brocolli, carrots, peaches and zuchinni.

I also completed the storyline missions on Freelancer. It wasn't as much of a challenge as I'd hoped. The flying controls on this game really suck. You can't fly your ship with a joystick, you HAVE to use a mouse. It really takes some getting used to. If it hadn't been for the ability to do freeflight and exploration, I'd have ditched the game within the first 10 minutes. I like the games like this (GTA3 is the perfect example of this type of game). where you can go around and explore the environment and you're not absolutely required to follow a preset story line. There's an online multiplayer component to freelancer as well. I was hoping that it would connect you to a dedicated central server that would contain an ever-expanding universe that all online players could log on to. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Instead different users can set up servers to host games (much like Quake arena and others). So, you've got to go to a server list, look at pings and stuff and find a server to play on. Supposedly these severs should be able to handle up to 128 players, but according to the forums I've seen, the optimal limit is closer to 16.

Where was 'god'?

Here's an article about a little 5 year old girl who survived for 10 days after he mother crashed their car over a cliff and died. Click here for the article on CNN.

I've seen and heard several people comment about God watching over this little girl, but I have to ask, "This is the kind of behavior you not only accept from your god but actually applaud?"

Surely a god could do better than forcing a child to sit at watch her own mother's body decompose for 10 days! A god could have had someone discover the accident moments after it happened. A god could have kept the car on the road instead of letting it careen off a 100 ft cliff. A god could have done a million other things to avoid putting a 5 year old child through the grueling, torturous experience of sitting next to her dead mother's body while it decomposes and forcing her to survive on Gatorade and dried ramen noodles.

If this is the best that your god can do, you can keep him.

Switched AtheistCult to PHP-Nuke

After talking with some friends about portal software such as PHP-Nuke and OCPortal, I decided to try it out and see how I like it. So far it's a little weird, but I'll give it some time to get the hang of it.