“When the surgeon began to manipulate the tumor, affecting those sensitive structures, the (conscious) patient burst into a manic flight of puns.”
From a weird article at Wikipedia
Mar 20
The Touch
The Touch is a Stan Busch song that was included on the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack. As far as 80’s rock songs go, it is 3 minutes of pure distilled 80’s awesomeness that will make you yearn for ye olden dayes of yore when Transformers and G. I. Joe were cool the first time.
However, the song might have the highest amount of clichés I have ever seen–perhaps even more than most country songs. I have pasted the entire lyrics and highlited the clichés in red:
The Touch
You got the touch, you got the power
After all is said and done, you’ve never walked
You’ve never run, you’re a winner
You got the moves, you know the streets
Break the rules, take the heat, you’re nobody’s fool
You’re at your best when when the goin’ gets rough
You’ve been put to the test but it’s never enough
You got the touch, you got the power
When all hell’s breakin’ loose
You’ll be riding the eye of the storm
You got the heart, you got the motion
You know that when things get too tough
You got the touch
You never bend, you never break, you seem to know
Just what it takes, you’re a fighter, it’s in the blood
It’s in the will, it’s in the mighty hands of steel
When you’re standin’ your ground
And you never get hit when your back’s to the wall
Gonna fight to the end and you’re takin’ it all
You got the touch, you got the power
When all hell’s breakin’ loose
You’ll be riding the eye of the storm
You got the heart, you got the motion
You know that when things get too tough
You got the touch
You’re fightin’ fire with fire, you know you got the touch
You’re at your best when when the road gets rough
You’ve been put to the test, but it’s never enough
You got the touch, you got the power
You got the touch, you got the power
My favorite has got to be verse 2, which has 5 clichés in a row.
Mar 16
The MadMania Podcast: Episode 2
This week Elsa and I take a look at food–the greasiest, the stankiest, the nutmeggiest. Enjoy!
Mar 13
Quotable: C.S. Lewis on the Church of England
“Such are the reactions of one bleating layman to Modern Theology. It is right that you should hear them. You will not perhaps hear them very often again. Your parishioners will not often speak to you quite frankly. Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the vicar; now he tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more. Missionary to the priests of one’s own church is an embarrassing role; though I have a horrid feeling that if such mission work is not soon undertaken the future history of the Church of England is likely to be short.”
Mar 10
Podcast update
Sorry for the delay on the new podcast episode. I’m still learning how to do it, and don’t yet do it efficiently (plus I went on vacation for a week). Recording the episode is easy, but editing is more of a challenge, and it simply takes longer than I thought it would. It reminds me of this interchange from Futurama episode, When Aliens Attack via IMSDB:
LEELA
Uh, g– uh, getting back to the, uh,
matter, uh-uh, if it please the court
… (whispering) Fry, there’s nothing
else here. You only wrote two pages
of dialogue.
FRY
Well, it took an hour to write. I thought
it would take an hour to read.
Anyway, I hope to have the episode posted some time this week.
Feb 27
chromatical book stacking
Dr Ray Stantz: “Symmetrical book stacking. Just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947.”
Dr. Peter Venkman: “You’re right, no human being would stack books like this.”
–Ghostbusters, 1984
Last Saturday Heather and I went to Excelsior Springs to kick around some antique shops and flea markets. We have found in our travels that you can categorize these shops in one of the following:
- Antique Shops–they have antiques, and sometimes other random things.
- The Savoy–they have antiques, and usually have names that are prefixed with ‘The’–The Blackthorn, The Pristine. These places are very expensive.
- Flea Markets–a little bit of everything, priced anywhere from bargains to way too much
- Junk shops–the prices don’t even matter, the place is full of junk
One of the places we went to was large and full of stuff, but another shopkeeper had given us the heads up that we should expect some “hoarder tendencies.” Turns out he was right–it was a junk shop extraordinaire. There were several rooms entirely sorted by color and material: teacup room, blue glass room, red glass room, white glass room, wood and brass room.
As we neared the end of our tour of this shop, I was, naturally, drawn to the books. At first. Then I decided I didn’t really want to sort through them. Now, there are different ways of sorting books: Dewey Decimal, Library of Congress, alphabetical by title, author, or genre. But this was entirely new to me:
I have often wandered into a bookstore and the owner is like, “What can I help you with?” And I’m like, ya know, I’m kind of looking for something…orange to read.”
Feb 23
Boobam
“The name boobam was coined in Mill Valley, California in 1954 and was described as “bamboo spelled sideways”.”
–from the Wikipedia article on the awesomely named instrument.
Update: I was reviewing my blog posts and figured I ought to clarify the pronunciation of this instrument. It should be pronounced like too separate words, with the stress on the first: Boo Bam.
Feb 15
The MadMania Podcast: Episode 1
In this, our no-doubt awesome inaugural episode my daughter, Elsa, and I discuss words: the good, the bad, and the German. Also our favorite diseases, and why you should definitely go into heavy metal.
