Author's posts
Jan 12
Zounds!
If you are a fan of Spaceman Spiff from the old Calvin & Hobbes comics, you know this word. It is one of those comic-book-sounding exclamations, akin to Great Scott! that you never hear anyone use in real life. You probably wouldn’t liken it to taking God’s name in vain, however the word actually dates to …
Jan 09
Review: Trouble is My Business
While I was at my in-laws over Christmas, I picked up Trouble is My Business, a collection of four short Philip Marlowe stories by my favorite detective novelist, Raymond Chandler. If you haven’t read Chandler, he writes very economically, kind of the Anti-Tolkien. Where Tolkien might include the names of a landmark in three languages …
Jan 01
Happy New Year
Happy 2009 to everyone. I hope you all have a great year. I am off from work for the holiday, and have been doing some cleanup and organization on the blog. I hope to get the site design cleaned up a little bit, but don’t hold your breath.
Jan 01
Review: Fireproof
When I made my previous post of Best Movies of the Year, somehow I forgot one: Fireproof. Fireproof is a Christian movie about a couple on the verge of divorce. It was made by the same guys who made Facing the Giants, and unlike a lot of Christian movies, has decent production values. The directors …
Jan 01
Review: Habashi House
My friend Kaleb introduced us to a new place to eat called Habashi House, located in the City Market in Kansas City, Missouri. The place is amazing. We always get the same thing, which is the lunch special consisting of a gyro accompanied by either rice, hummus, or salad. Coffee and hot tea are free. …
Dec 28
Review: My Word is My Bond
For Christmas my pa-in-law got me My Word is My Bond, a memoir by Sir Roger Moore of James Bond fame. It was a lot of fun, and I read it in two days. Moore had some hilarious stories involving scads of people in Hollywood and the theater and film industries. The book was awesome except …
Dec 24
Snownami
n. An American portmanteau of the Old English word snow and the latter half of the Japanese word tsunami. Coined by my friend Chris, it describes a snowfall of epic proportions. While it may be used literally (“Man, Nebraska just got hit with a snownami! They got eight feet of snow!”), it is more frequently …
Dec 24
Merry Xmas
When I was a kid I was taught that this was a disrespectful way to write Christmas, but it is simply a contraction–the X is the Greek letter chi which stands for Christ, the same way it does in the acrostic IXOYE. According to the Wiki, its use dates to at least the mid 1500s.
Dec 22
Sketchbook: Teddy Roosevelt
Little known fact: Theodore Roosevelt simultaneously invented pants and coined the term “teddy bear” by ripping a bear in two and jamming his feet through the bottom half.
Jan 09
No Comment
You may have noticed I have disabled comments on my blog. That is because I don’t care what you think. Just kidding. The real reason is this: having previously been the webmeister and moderator for messageboards, I have seen that civil discussion online is impossible, even among good people and good friends. While I did say ‘online,’ I …
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