MadMania

Faith, Books, and Stuff

Age, maturity, boringness, and flatware

As I age and mature I find myself thinking about, for birthday and Christmas, fewer impractical extravagances (pirate hat, Tesla coil) and more practical needs (debt reduction, flatware). The side effect is that I am becoming boring. Before you no doubt object, remember that I have mentioned ‘flatware’ twice already. I used to be largely […]

Collective platypuses

You are probably familiar with some of the more colorful collective nouns used for groups of particular animals, such as a crash of rhinoceroses or a spoonful of pandas. A group of crows is a murder, while a group of ravens is merely an unkindness. I decided to look up what a group of platypuses […]

ambeer

n. tobacco juice, or perhaps more accurately, tobacco spit. From now on when I highlight a word, I am going to try to, as the OED does, offer a quotation. In this case, a story: So we’re all sitting around playing D&D: Me, Mike, Kevin, and other people unimportant to this story. Kevin and I […]