startling

Pushing 7:00 pm, with only a few more hours to go at work. Not too bad. I've got iTunes randomizing songs at me to keep my brain awake.

Note to self: The transition from Who Wants to Live Forever by Queen to Guarded by Disturbed is a bit jarring when you're focusing fucosing * on mind-numbing copy/paste repetitions in someone else's language.


*"fucos" is a Wil Wheatonism that followed me home from here and I decided it could stay.

Thundersleet

My new word for today: Thundersleet.

I read about this phenomenon in Paul Huttner's weather blog, Updraft, as something that happened yesterday in the Twin Cities Metro area. I didn't notice any of it here in my neck of the metro. But it's related to thundersnow, and according to this article in Wikipedia:

One unique aspect of thundersnow is that the snowfall acts as an acoustic suppressor of the thunder. The thunder from a typical thunderstorm can be heard many kilometers away, while the thunder from thundersnow can usually only be heard within a two to three kilometer radius from the lightning.

So if it wasn't just over our heads, I guess we wouldn't know it was happening even a relatively short distance away.

This is not something I learned about when I lived out on the Left Coast. Thundersleet. In April, no less. Welcome to the Midwest.

Memes, language, WoW and cheese

Blogger Lia of The Knitting Defective posted about being tagged to participate in a meme. This is a new use of the term to me, taking it from a viral transmission of some cultural element, to using the word to describe not even the individual meme itself. Maybe I'm just behind the times, but my Mister hadn't seen "meme" used this way before, either.

In the usage I'm familiar with one might say that Rickrolling, lolcats, dramatic prairie dog, or this kind of blogger's game of tag are Internet memes, but you'd still say "Dude! I've been Rickrolled" rather than "I've been the victim of a meme!" But here the game of tag itself is being referred to as a meme in the latter sense.

• So, Ms. Anree memed me a week or so ago. - Lia, The Knitting Defective
• EssJay tagged me with a meme. - Geek Knitter
• Sharon tagged me with a meme, my first in my new blog! - Essjay of Musings of EssJay
• The lovely Patty has tagged me for a meme. - Gimmesanity
  

This intrigued my geeky little brain, as it feels a little like watching the evolution of the language in progress.

I got the same geeky fascination watching the acronym "PST" evolve. I'm not sure if PST goes back farther than Everquest. But I'm using it as my example since that's where I became aware of it.

In Everquest, a private chat message to someone was called a "tell". So if you wanted someone to reply to you in response to a chat post, rather than say "please send me a tell," it was usually shortened to PST for "please send tell." Example, if you wanted to sell 20 bone chips for a platinum piece (a reasonable price back in my day) you might post a chat message to the zone saying: WTS bone chips x20 1p PST.

What has been interesting to me has been watching the abbreviation PST lose all of it's connection to its original source, while retaining it's understood meaning. In World of Warcraft, the private message is referred to as a "whisper". The abbreviation PST has carried over from other gamers with pre-warcraft experience, but WoW is bigger than EQ is or ever was by many magnitudes of huge. Many (most?) of the people using the abbreviation don't know the origin of the acronym. You now see people using it as though it was the sound "psst" for getting someone's attention quietly. This makes sense in the context of "whispering" to someone. So now, instead of ending a chat post simply with PST, you might see "please pst me". This always makes my eyes cross a little, because to me that says "please please send tell me." But in this context I'm vastly outnumbered. It still means "send me a private message," but has become a word rather than an abbreviation.

Anyway, back to the meme thing... The tag game/meme that Lia was referring to has the following rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 or more pages.
2. Open the book to page 123 and find the fifth sentence.
3. Post the next three sentences.
4. Tag 5 people and task them with doing the same.

Curious, even untagged as I was, I decided to give it a go, and here's what I found.

Nearest book with required number of pages: The Cheese Plate by Max McCalman and David Gibbons. Page 123 is a photograph, so I moved on to page 124.

For example, if you're looking for a pairing with Queso de la Garroxta, the rustic Catalonian goat's milk cheese, and you know from experience that it marries well with a Meursault, the superior white Burgundy, try it with another classic Chardonnay-based wine--an elegant, sparkling, dry Blanc de Blanc Champagne. By gradually branching out like this and exploring different pairings, you'll discover some unconventional but beautiful marriages. This is always a thrill.

I'm not going to tag anyone (I am not very good at following that kind of rule). But if you'd like to play along, grab your nearest book with 123 or more pages and post a comment.

A pain in the airplane

A woman dear to me was recently treated for abdominal pain, and after multiple tests was told by her doctor that what she had was messerschmitts. She passed this information along to me. I explained the mistake, but out of curiosity I did a little googling around the tubes of the interweb and turned up more references to women being told by doctors or other helpful sources they had messerschmitts. I felt compelled to post (in between chuckles) the correct name for this malady. Perhaps the next googler who gets told she's got the dreaded messerschimtts will find this.

I'm not insensitive to these women's pain. I share such pain on a pretty much monthly basis. But Messerschmitt was a German airplane manufacturer. What these women are experiencing is called mittelschmerz (sometimes spelled mittleschmertz) a German word that translates to "middle pain". I can say from experience that it's not fun. But it's bound to be better than a case of abdominal aircraft.