2005-05-26 - 12:43 p.m.
BLAAARG!
Way too busy. We’re getting ready to deliver some smackdown to a couple of problem performers at work. This involves designing improvement plans, meetings, data gathering, more meetings, memo writing, and of course more meetings. The Powers That Be are demanding more surveys, in addition to all the other work we have. Small wonder I took a vacation recently.
Seeing as how it was our fourth wedding anniversary, I took a few days and stayed home. I made arrangements for the Professor to stay with Grandma on Thursday, and J made similar arrangements for Saturday. So we got two dates. Thursday we went to see “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”; quite good, especially when the Heart of Gold transforms into a tea-cozy, and Mos Def as Ford Prefect impressed me. We had dinner at the Macaroni Grill; good stuff, if somewhat pedestrian. Saturday night we went for Chinese at The House of Wong in Clayton. I’d eaten there years ago when it was a hole in the wall with dynamite Cantonese food; they’d redone the interior and increased the hip factor with some funky martinis and kept the dynamite Cantonese food. Well worth a visit. The chef garnished my plate of Phnom Penh-style tilapia with these incredible slices of carrot and daikon radish trimmed and folded into the shape of butterflies. The bit with the cucumber was simple enough, but I gotta know how he did those butterflies!
I get the feeling we’ll be skipping the buffet restaurants for a while…
In other news, bOinG bOinG is taking up a lot of my spare time at work. That website has got to be one of the most wonderful things ever. This is what the Internet was supposed to be. I have found more odd, bizarre, informative, and just downright cool things in there than any human has a right to know. So far, I have learned how to make my own fake fingerprints, how to reduce my AC requirements by 40% by painting my roof white, found incredibly cool mashups, and discovered the glory that is Cookie Mongoloid. (Check out “Me Lost Me Cookie in the Mosh Pit”. Your ears will melt.) Obviously, some of the stuff isn’t work-safe, but I don’t follow those links, now do I? (Though I really didn’t need to know about goatse. My life was complete without it.)
I’ve been rereading David Edding’s Belgariad series. I haven’t read the books since I was a teenager. It’s decent fantasy, and a pretty well-conceived universe all told, though ultimately it doesn’t have the sense of otherness that makes Middle Earth and Earthsea so compelling. And if there’s one thing that bugs me, it’s writers who misuse “thee” and “thou” in an attempt to make the character sound archaic and formal. David Eddings is definitely guilty of this. First off, this is an informal mode of speech, something you use with friends and family. To address a king or liege as “thee” is just plain wrong. (Interestingly enough, it’s also the mode of address used in prayer, which to me speaks volumes about how we relate to God.) Second, if you’re going to use the informal mode, learn the cases.
“Thou” – “You (nominative)”
“Thy” – “Your (possessive)”
“Thee” – “You (accusative)”
“Thine” – “Yours”
Sample sentence: “Thou art an addle-pated beetlehead, and thy breath reeks of malmsey. Draw thy sword and stand, lest I strike thee down for uttering such false words as thine.”
See? It works. (This is proof that I’m a geek, of course, as if we needed additional evidence.)
See, no deep thoughts, no navel gazing, just more talk about food and linguistics. Par for the course.
