And apparently annoyed more often than not:

 

Created by OnePlusYou    

I am foodie; hear me roar.  

See the beverage fountain?  It does fizzy drinks, too.

And now I've got one.  Yay, me!

So we're settling in to watch "Christmas in Connecticut" on the TiVo, and Older Son pipes up with:


Nothing like a dose of seven year-old wisdom.

Found this over at Lance Mannion's place:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island.  Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.Philadelphia
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
Boston
The South
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? QuizGoToQuiz on GoToQuiz

I say "bizarre" because I've lived most of my life in the South and have spent maybe a few weeks in the Northeast.  I work with a guy from Philly and there's no way anyone with ears would ever confuse our accents.  But apparently my ability to enunciate the difference between "pen" and "pin" disqualifies my scintillatingly attractive drawl.  Guess I'll comfort myself with the notion that Younger Son likes gree-uts.

Oh, and for the record, I take issue with question number 8:

1 All 3 sound different
2 Mary and merry sound the same but marry is different from them
3 All 3 sound the same

To my ears, none of the above.  Mary and marry sound alike, but merry is different.  And who on earth pronounces bag like vague?

It's Conversations With My Logs!

1)  Examples of irony in Spongebob - Taking "irony" at its word (using words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning), I don't know that there are many.  Spongebob is, himself, a terribly earnest character, always saying what he means and meaning what he says.  Ditto for his sidekick Patrick.  Squidward might come the closest, but is crochety enough to generally just blurt out the negatives without much care for the subtleties of polite conversation. 

Spongebob loves his dead-end job as a fry cook and cannot wait to go to work every morning.  In the realm of adult reality, I suppose you could stretch this to situational irony if you were to offer enough commentary regarding post-modern society, work hours versus work ethics, and the impossibility of earning a living wage even as a 24/7 fry cook (let alone being able to afford therapy from your nemesis).

But I don't think Spongebob  is really meant to support all of that.  I think Spongebob is just supposed to be fun.

2)  Bible Baptist views on women having children - Yikes.  Okay, here goes.  Bible Baptists, as a rule, believe that women should find complete and total fulfillment in birthing and raising children, that women working outside of the home are contributing to the moral and social decline they see in the world around us, and that women who do not stay at home to have children are selfish.

Needless to say, I disagree.  But there you go.

I'm not linking to this stuff, by the way, but you can find a BB sermon or two on the matter by googling "bible baptist" and motherhood.

3)  8 week fetus in utero - Are you looking for pictures?  If so, there's one to the right.  If you're looking more for standard development information, here goes:

At 8 weeks gestation, a fetus measures around 6/10 of an inch.  Eyelids begin to develop at this point.  The embryonic tail will disappear soon if it hasn't already, and organs, muscles and nerves begin to function - the fetus can now flex its wrists!

As for you, it varies.  First time moms may still be able to wear their regular clothes, while second and third (or more) time moms may already be breaking into their stash of elastic waistbands.  Morning sickness could be coming, or going, or settling in for a long winter's nap.  It's cliched because it's true - every pregnancy is different.

4)  Full script of Death of a Salesman - Since this is still under copyright (not in the public domain), it should not be available for free anywhere on the web.  You might be able to find it on a site that sells ebooks, but I think your best bet is an actual bookseller like Powells, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon. 

Must be the DoaS time of year, as I'm seeing a spike in people looking for it.  

5)  Wyomingans - Wikipedia says they like to be called Wyomingites.

Time for another installment of Conversations With My Logs!

---

1)  Is chicken fighting a misdemeanor in SC - Section 16.17.650 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, current through the end of the 2005 Regular Session, lists cock fighting as a misdemeanor.    South Carolina Act #68 of 2005, amending the laws relating to uniform traffic tickets does not, as enacted, include language amending cock fighting from a misdemeanor to a felony, so in the absence of other information I assume the misdemeanor classification still stands.

2)  What does adore voce mean - In Portuguese it is adore você, which translates to he/she worships (or adores) you.  Or, it could be a misconjugation of the Italian verb adorare (to adore), which should be adoro voce (I adore [the] voice) or adori voce (you adore [the] voice).  Most likely, it is the Portuguese. 

As a side note, a voce in Italian means "word of mouth," while in Portuguese a você means "to you."

3)  Where to hire skywriters in Massachusetts - Superpages.com has one listing for AeroAds.com, which does serve the entire state but seems to focus on banners rather than actual skywriting.    I was unable to find a listing for an actual skywriter (though a number of articles ever so helpfully suggested I use the Yellow Pages and look under "skywriting"), but if you contact AeroAds and they do not offer the service, they may well know who does.

4)  Feminist dystopia - I would think a feminist dystopia would be a dystopia for most.  While a primary theme of the feminist dystopia is the oppression of women by a patriarchal society, most dystopias, of any category, are patriarchal in nature.  In that sense, every dystopia not run and controlled by women (and there are but few literary examples of those) is a feminist dystopia on some level.  However, for the more explicit and overt examples, you can look to Gilead in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, and Sheri S. Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country.

5)  Definition horsepucky - It's something of a polite colloquialism.  In a word, it means bullshit.

Acephalous has a theory about blog memes - how they spread, why they spread, etc.  He's a grad student looking for guinea pigs, so I am hereby linking for the sake of science.  If you read this, please consider linking if you haven't already done.  Then just ping Technorati.

h/t Shakespeare's Sister

Time for another installment of Conversations With My Logs!

1.  How could Edgar Allan Poe's genius be both a blessing and a curse - My thoughts: It is believed Poe suffered from bipolar disorder.  We know he dealt with bouts of paranoia and binge drinking, possibly alcoholism.  While he penned several works of literary depth, eventually becoming one of the acknowledged greats of American literature, he was quite ahead of his time and died a pauper, having been unable to support himself in anything but poverty with his writing.  His lasting creative genius seemed to have developed at least in part from his mental illness(es), but suffering from those illnesses at that time - without any support - would have to be categorized as "curse."  He was a terribly unstable man, particularly when he drank.  As noted by Thomas Poulter:

Alcohol ruined his life. He had no good jobs. He had no stable world. He had nothing to anchor him to reality, so he induced fantasies and drown fears with a bottle. Therein lies his attraction--would a stable man have been able to write such amazing tales of life, death, the fantastic, and the incredible?

His work is undoubtedly genius, but it is genius born of intense psychological pain and physical misery.  Poe's blessing was his creativity; his curse was his life.

2.  Who died on Desperate Housewives - Haven't lots of people?  Try googling for "Desperate Housewives" + "episode guide," then figuring out the season/original air date you're looking for.

3.  When is congressional districts per state determined - There are two answers, depending on how you mean the question.  First, at the national level, for determining the number of House representatives to which each state is entitled: Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States calls for the establishment of a national census, to be taken every ten years.  It is based upon this enumeration of the population that the 435 available seats are apportioned.  Therefore, changes in a state's number of House representatives may change once every ten years, though shifts in population may remain stable enough in a region that any one state will not see a change.  Further, every state is entitled to a minimum of one representative, regardless of population.

Once the number of seats are allotted, the state's legislature may redraw district lines as they see fit, as often as power changes hands or population shifts require they be moved in order to retain power.  They could conceivably face legal challenge to any such move, but the courts generally uphold the legislature's right to redistrict with impunity.

4.  Playing Abigail in The Crucible - Why yes, yes I did.  However did you know?

5.  The birthing process of chickens - Well, chickens are egg-layers, so I have to assume "birthing process" refers to the process of laying an egg.  Here's an article on the process, complete with illustrations.

6.  Bimble women - Outside of Kentucky, I really don't know.

I just finished a telephone survey which appears to have been funded by your organization, given that the questions not dealing with political affiliation or statistical trailers focused primarily on you, personally, as well as on the history of your company and your current stewardship .  I have some unsolicited feedback:

1.  If you're going to have people ask for favorability ratings on Rudy Giuliani, it would help if they could actually pronounce his last name.  Same goes for the word "statistical."

2. Viewed from the perspective of an investor (or potential investor), some answers conflict with the answers I would give if viewed from the perspective of a consumer.  The overly broad questions on business focus will consequently fail to give you the accurate, meaningful responses you seek, because you have no idea from which perspective, if either, people are answering.

3.  Prior to this call, I was unaware Dell was being (or had recently been) investigated by the SEC.  Thanks for the heads up.

4.  Given the extremely broad nature of certain questions, the narrowness of the answer choices, and the disclosure of negative information of which consumers and/or potential investors may have heretofore been unaware, this was an incredibly poorly designed survey.  I would request a refund.

Sincerely,
Kiosan, the picky respondent

I'm catching up on the last four episodes of Boston Legal, and I keep getting hit with political commercials pushing Sonny Perdue on me.  It was bad enough before the matter was actually decided; I'm not thrilled with the replay.

The great thing about TiVo?  I can hit "pause" while I post about how annoyed I am.

Ain't technology grand?

If a blogger first started posting on November 4, 2004, and took a little more than a year off between 05/06, would the blog be considered 2 years old in November 06, or younger?

Purely hypothetical, of course.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming.

Okay, seriously, I'm not sure what is up with this spate of inquiries regarding what can go wrong when you're thumbing it.  Is there some sort of movie, some song or other pop culture reference to which I'm totally oblivious? 

Look, the other post you all visit wonders whether or not the recent film version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy stayed true to the book, or if it lost something in translation.  Unless you're traveling with a towel and a two-headed narcissist with poor impulse control, it is not what you want.  What you want is here: the dangers of hitchhiking, item #3.

Now.  Don't hitchhike.  Take the bus.  Jeez.

This has been a public service announcement.