Word Game

How many words (3 letters or more) can you derive from the word:

HEXAGONAL

Answer key (words in bold were not suggested by readers):

aeon, age, ago, agonal, agone, ala, alae, ale, alga, algae, aloe, aloha, alone, along, ana, anal, analog, angel, angle, anlage, anoa, anole, axe, axle, axon, axonal, axone, ego, elan, eon, gage, gal, gala, galax, gale, galena, gaol, gean, gel, glean, glen, goal, gone, hag, hale, halo, halogen, hang, heal, hen, hex, hexagon, hexagonal, hoax, hoe, hog, hogan, hole, hone, lag, lagan, lane, lax, lea, lean, leg, leno, loan, log, logan, loge, lone, long, lox, nag, noel, nog, ogle, one, oxen

Is your heart cold?

Here's a story to warm it.

Caption Contest!

I've decided to give Handknits for Young Moderns a break and caption someone else's art work. Only problem is I don't remember where I found this image. If it is yours I apologize for not giving you creds. It's a beautiful image. And eminently captionable.

So, here's to another round of CaPTion MAdneSS! Don't forget, there are Fabulous Prizes! First Place Prize for this contest will walk away with a BRAND NEW CAR!!

Not really, but you will receive an autographed e-copy of the post written the day of your last Birthday! How's that for awesome?

Zoological Fact of the Day

The average adult porcupine has 30,000 quills.

Immigration Filing

Perhaps you didn't know that when it comes to filing paperwork for immigration, depending on the office you work for,the letters "X", "Y", and "Z" are sometimes larger than all the other files.

I'm temping.

: )

Sweeping Generalization Thursday

"Sweeping generalizations are like pottery: everybody thinks they can make some, but when they actually try it looks like crap."

Tara Tags Sarah

And I'm assuming that when Tara says "Sarah" she is referring to me.

List seven songs you currently love. Post these instructions with your seven song choices. Tag seven others to see what they’re listening to.

Here's my list:

Fur Elise
Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto #1
some lullaby
Jingle Bells
anything from this album (which, by the way features model Delores Erickson who was three months pregnant at the time and who now paints pictures. Oh, and here's a loverly spoof cover by Soul Asylum.)
The Chopstick Song
Sunflower Slow Drag by Joplin

Other bloggers yet to be infected with the virus:

Blair
Jim
Hannah
Dewey
Kirk
Jenny and
Curtis

Or whomever feels so inclined.

(Thanks for the homework, Tara.)

Pretty Big Dig

Johard-mi

Go to this page and pick five (or six) words you think best describe me. That's right, I said it: ME. Then make your own johari window (as they're called) and make the rest of us go and talk about you. Oh, and btw, they don't have enough words to adequately describe anyone so this is kind of just for fun. Enjoy.

(Stole this from Gracky.)

TomKat Split?

The Asian Press is playing it safe.

More Math

Is 2,537 a prime number?

Simple Math

2 + 2 + 2 = 6

Hence the date.
2/22/06
or
22/2/06
However you write that.

A Lesson In International Names

Miha is a man's name in Slovenia. Oops.

Lost Dog Not Lost!

Do you all know lostdog? Allow me to introduce you. Lostdog sometimes goes by Martin and lives in the glorious hills and valleys of the Scottish countryside sporting and playing happily with his other puppy pals. (Well, he may or may not, but I like to imagine that he does indeed live in a tiny country cottage at the base of some lovely hill which overlooks a quaint Scottish parish where he can gambol freely with other lostdogs in a puppy paradise. But whatever.) And far from being a lost dog he is now a found dog! Or rather a re-found dog since he was found once before and got lost again. This is the third time I think I have found lostdog and this time it was lostdog himself who came to find me so I feel the circle of lostness is finally closed and lostdog and I can go on being friends for just about forever. You know that saying, if you love something set it free and if it doesn't return it's probably lostdog? Well, that is very true in this case. And here he is! Large as life and not so lost!

Word of the Day

Prestidigitation: sleight of hand.

Used in a sentence:

"Most people would prefer to say 'slight of hand' than to say 'prestidigitation.'"

HA HA HA!

International Symbol For Marriage.
But only in Europe.
Apparently.

MAYDAY

German Coast Guard on Duty.

Blast From The Past

Just reviewing my archives (can you believe I started officially blogging over three years ago?) and rediscovered an old friend and a perennial favorite. Quick! Someone make me a t-shirt that says, "I love Fuddlefog." The graphic will take you were you need to go.

Call For A Vote

I have a large piece of white butcher paper about 3' x 5'. I'd like to make a large piece of origami art.

Should I make:

A) a flower












B) an animal












C) a box or container

Borky-Borky-Bork. Dunk, Dunk!

How Are Ye, Jon?

Everybody's favorite toxophilite is still rounding up leads in his (hare-brained) quest for Olympic Gold. Or... Olympic Something. What inspires me most about his quest is not the movie deal he is sure to land in 2013 when he wins gold for the Tuvalu Island in the upset of the century, but rather the day-to-day dealings of drudgery that he must face in order to achieve his modest goal of competing in the 2012 Olympics and raise 1 million pounds for charity. (Truthfully, he just wants to walk into the stadium as a competitor in his native London. Maybe even carrying the flag of his new nation.) I mean, realistically, waiting around for a host country to pop out of the wood work must get a little boring. How many tiny islands are there? And aren't they all pretty much the same? But the intrepid Jon doesn't let the grinding task of kissing up to foreign dignitaries get him down! He shoulders on, parsing good leads from bad ones (like Tuesday's post. That was a bad lead. Just ask his wife.)

Carry on, dear Jonathon. We know that if you can dream it, you can achieve it! And may the flame of triumph that represents the Olympic spirit be alive in you always!

Word of the Day: Toxophilite - an archer, or one who competes in archery.

Don't Blow It

'Blow Your Cool' is a game that involves... blowing.

I know, I too was shocked into a momentary silent and stupid stare.
Read what Swapatorium says about it.

K-N

How many words do you know (without using a dictionary) that start with the letters "k-n" ?

I'll get us started:

know
knot
knee...


...is knibble a word?

Fess Up

So, who's this from then?

Love Is A Magic Ray

Love is a magic ray
emitted from the burning core
of the soul
and illuminating
the surrounding earth.

It enables us
to perceive life
as a beautiful dream
between one awakening
and another.
~ Khalil Gibran

Corporate Mergers

Or how I picture them.

National K_sra Day!

Happy Me Day!

(And by 'National,' I assume they mean the Nation of Bloggia, since no other country could handle the truth! Thanks, Tara.)

Everything's Coming Up Roses

So, what if you were a big, squishy, earthworm and you just wanted to be as weird as you possibly could. You could be three feet long. You could spit food at predators. You could be ghastly white. You could even smell like a flower.

Or you could do all four and get yourself on the endangered species list for weirdest worm.

(link courtesy of Jeff Gober)

Eat Breakfast for Dinner

Tonight you are cordially invited to join me and millions of other bloggers in eating Breakfast for Dinner! Don't know what I'm talking about? Get with the program! I'll be serving pancakes and scrambled eggs with coffee. Tastee.

Boxed What?

Boxed Wine. It's apparently making a comeback. My family used to drink the stuff. It's funny to serve. It sits on the edge of the table and you open a little spigot. Very funny stuff, boxed wine. I mean, intrinsically funny. Also, the little picture of a juice box wine I found to the side here is also funny. French children carry them to school, I bet.

Words I Don't Know: 'I'

Weilding my trusty 35,000 word pocket-size edition of Webster's dictionary, I pondered the i-words. Here's the ones that left me stumped:

ibedem: (another word for ibid) in the same place
ichthyology: the study of fish
imbroglio: a difficult or intricate situation
impecunious: having no money

Used in a sentence: "If I had chosen ichthyology as my course of study, I am sure I would not now be in this ibidem impecunious imbroglio."

Not So New

Arrange these three synonyms in order from oldest to newest:

modern
newfangled
neoteric


ANSWER:

newfangled (14th century)
modern (early 16th)
neoteric (late 16th)

Sweeping Generalization Thursday

"Nobody recovers from astigmatism of the heart!"

If I Were A Man, This Would Be Me...

The Recurring Boulder Dream

I received an email from a young Slovenian woman in response to something I written on this blog over a year ago. I was relating a daymare that I sometimes had as a child. Here is my original entry:

I have a recurring dream that there is a tiny rock on my chest as I doze on the floor and as my sleep deepens so does the silence and as the silence buzzes around me the rock suddenly expands, instantaneously, like a balloon and I am pinned helplessly beneath it. And then the rock shrinks again and then expands, noiselessly. And when it is a huge boulder I can hear the sharp hiss of silence very loud around me and when it's a pebble I hear nothing.

Here's what this student from Slovenia, named Miha, wrote:

Hello! I came across your dream report when I searched the web for "recurring dream boulder". Why? Because I kept having the very same dream as a child. All of the details you describe, I experienced - the loopy nature of the dream, the confusion about objects being close and far at the same time, the gigantic yet tiny piece of rock stretching from infinity to nothing, the corresponding high pitched hiss, and the feeling of being too scared to move.

The reason why I searched the net for this dream in the first place was that my mom also kept having this dream when she was little - I found that out when I first decided to tell her about it (I was about nine), and to my amazement we could tell each other different bits of the dream and they would match. But for a long time I thought it was just the two of us who had this (and telling anyone else would be stupid, since nobody would believe you anyway). Then, while surfing the web, I found a description of a drug induced experience, I quote: "The sound reminded me of things I had heard during a high fever when I was a child, like an object very light and small like an eyelash and at the same time something very enormous and heavy like a hundred ton boulder." I couldn't believe it... there was actually somebody else who experienced this. So I figured, with all the dream journals online, why not do a search, see if anyone else dreamt anything similar.
I found one report that came close, I quote: "I used to have a recurring dream, usually when I was sick, that I was tied to a bed on top of an enormous boulder. The dream was scary, not because of what happened (nothing did, really), but because of the feeling of absolute helplessness associated with the dream. Then I searched on and found your blog, and I was amazed, since you describe the dream in such detail. I also showed it to my mom, and she agrees - it's the dream we experienced. Now I know all this may be hard to believe, and there is no way I can prove it to you. But if you would be interested in discussing the matter, you can mail me anytime.

I am curious if anyone else has had a similar experience or if you can theorize how this happens to a person's psyche. Personally, I don't recall the daymare as especially traumatizing, just overwhelming at times. I could always open my eyes to make it stop. I will also add that it happened most frequently when I was laying flat on my back on something like a floor surface. It hasn't recurred in many years. Miha thought perhaps it ends with puberty since that is the last time it happened to her.

It's a shore thing

Continuing my deep and abiding love affair with sand sculpture:

What's Tooting?

Hankering for an Arabic read? Been meaning to keep up with the doings in the Arab speaking blog world? Now you can. Toot. It's a fruit.

Picking Up Chicks: 101

Men, tired of being rejected by women you've barely met? Unsure of how to approach that fabulous hottie across the bar? How will you learn the smooth approach when chatting up the ladies? Here's how. Cutting Edge Image Consultant, Stephen Nash (yes, Stephen Nash) gives you step by step instructions on how to keep it casual and easy when meeting chicks. He keeps it real on how to make your next approach "as natural as a sunrise."

For instance, don't wait for her to ask questions about you, instead, surprise her with a sentence loaded with personal goodies that make you seem like a real nice guy:

“Your sweater reminds me of my sister, though we are from the south, it gets cold around November. She used to wear something similar at Thanksgiving.”

See how easy that was? Also, if you can convince this guru of the girly that you've got what it takes and are striking out all over town, he will send you a copy of his ebook "How to Get a Girlfriend" absolutely free!

This one's a no brainer. Gentlemen, start your engines, cuz it's time to put that love-mobile in drive.

(Swiped from Joey's blog.)

Wisdom of the Peanut

The Search for Truth has ended, it seems, for our dear and esteemed friend honestus. He hasn't posted a single thing on his blog Searching for Truth in the last two months. So it would appear that honestus has found his answer. He has reached the pinnacle of enlightened attainment! He has found the ultimate truth! Which appears to be... peanut butter?? What can this mean?
Having thought about this many times since November the twenty and eighth and all I can come up with, is this: they may crush you, salt you, and smear you around, but never forget; it is only when you've come out of your shell that you can truly taste the jelly.

That's just my interpretation.

Test Your Blowhole Knowledge

Of the Sperm Whale and the Blue Whale, which has one blowhole and which has two?

Wrestling Is Real!

Dammit.

Hey, When You're Hooked, You're Hooked!

Hasselhoff as you've never seen him.

Why Didn't I Think Of That?

"He was sacked after four years when his employers realised he had done no work."

Caricature King

Have a little fun with Al Hirschfeld. A giant in the cartoon and caricature industry whose career spanned many decades. (Shown here left to right: Gregory Peck as Horatio Hornblower and Maurice Chevalier as, well, himself.)

Things You Didn't Know

Ten Top Trivia Tips about K_sra!

1. Two grams of k_sra provide enough energy to power a television for over twenty-three hours.
2. K_sra can fly at an average speed of fifteen kilometres an hour.
3. K_sra can use only about ten percent of her brain.
4. The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed k_sra would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used her to decorate their battle shields.
5. The international dialling code for k_sra is 672.
6. There is no lead in a lead pencil - it is simply a stick of graphite mixed with k_sra and water.
7. If your ear itches, this means that someone is talking about k_sra.
8. K_sra is the only bird that can swim but not fly!
9. Without k_sra, we would have to pollinate apple trees by hand!
10. Some hotels in Las Vegas have k_sra floating in their swimming pools.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Found via Graculus