Letters from Santa originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2010-12-24 (Friday).

That IS a strong winter storm..

Behold… The World’s Funniest Typo! originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2010-07-7 (Wednesday).

You can’t do what? originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2010-03-16 (Tuesday).

Spot the Polarity Responder originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2010-01-31 (Sunday).

O precious code, volume, tome,
Book, writing, compilation, work,
Attend the while I pen a pome,
A jest, a jape, a quip, a quirk.

To a Thesaurus originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2010-01-20 (Wednesday).

I’d been keeping an eye on him for a little while, off and on, because he was Italian. Some of the staff, for all of their intelligence, don’t know how to handle it when a guy whose parents came over from Italy starts acting normal. “Normal” for an Italian guy is to talk loudly and rapidly, wave his hands about, and get “uncomfortably” close, and on rare occasion I’ll get a call about a guy “getting in my face and yelling and making threatening gestures”. It’s kind of funny, I think.

I had no trouble connecting with him, and he was free with his verbal affection for me. To top it off, he was intoxicated and getting “up there in years”. A little earlier, he’d mentioned that his father died at age 90; not too long after, he mentioned, in a little too offhanded way, that he himself was 89. So I’m thinking that he’s thinking about how he’s probably going to die soon.

Anyway, so he asked me if I knew what they call him, and I said, “No, what do they call you?”

“They call me Wagon Wheel.”

I thought that an odd nickname. “Wagon wheel?”

“Yeah, Wagon Wheel.”

That’s odd,” I said.

“Yeah”, he added. “Wanna know why they call me Wagon Wheel?”

“Sure.”

“It’s cuz I been through a lotta shit!”

How could I not laugh?

I tore myself away and went to take care of other business, but I stopped in and checked on him a couple of times. When it came time to let him go home, he said, “Hey… are you going to remember anything? Have I given you anything?” It really mattered to him.

“Yeah, you bet. I’m gonna remember “Wagon Wheel”.

“You a wagon wheel? You been through a lotta shit?”

“Sure,” I said, “I been through a lotta shit. They could call me Wagon Wheel too.”

“Well, then, remember this,” he said. “There’s four wheels on a wagon. Three other wheels been through the same shit as you.”

If he was worried about leaving a legacy, he can stop after that.

Wagon Wheel originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2009-02-14 (Saturday).

Please allow me to share with you how “The Secret” changed my life and in a very real and substantive way allowed me to overcome a severe crisis in my personal life. It is well known that the premise of “The Secret” is the science of attracting the things in life that you desire and need and in removing from your life those things that you don’t want. Before finding this book, I knew nothing of these principles, the process of positive visualization, and had actually engaged in reckless behaviors to the point of endangering my own life and wellbeing.

Touching. Heart-warming.

[Edit 2010-07-10: the review is gone. Too bad.]

“The Secret” may not be so bad originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2009-01-10 (Saturday).

“For three years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube,” the group explains on the site. “Now the tables are turned. It’s time for us to take matters into our own hands.”

“We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell,” the group’s note continues. “But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we’ve figured a better way to get our own back: We’ve launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.”

My personal favorite:

Go celebrate! And remember to thank them properly by buying The Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset like I just did.

This is a good day originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-11-20 (Thursday).

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
3. Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes
4. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
7. TTYL by Lauren Myracle
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
9. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

It’s Banned Books Week originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-09-29 (Monday).

HR Pufnstuf and Other Sid and Marty Krofft Favorites

Age regression at its finest! All for a single dollar at a thrift store! It’s in beautiful shape, too. I’m listening to it now.

If you’re jealous , you can go get your own copy at amazon.com.

Look what I found! originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-09-23 (Tuesday).

A quick Googling showed they were created by artist Jean-Luc Cornec for the Museum of Telecommunication in Frankfurt, Germany.

Pattern Interrupt! originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-08-15 (Friday).

I’m Jen. I am a mommy. It’s what I love. It’s my job to make owies go away. Whether it’s a kiss or a big hug, the magic happens immediately. This is the power of placebo. I have a baby girl and two sons. One of them always needs my comfort and the knowledge that I will make them feel better. I invented Obecalp when I realized that children might need a little more than a kiss to make it go away. Obecalp fills the gap when medicine is not needed but my children need something more to make them feel better. You’ll know when Obecalp is necessary.

Obecalp – The original placebo

I’m not sure how to feel about this… originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-05-30 (Friday).

When I first realized I was old originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-05-10 (Saturday).

For some time, the idea of learning to read Old English has been on my “someday maybe” list. To be able to enjoy Beowulf or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the original language, the way it was spoken a thousand years ago, would be amazing.

I recently borrowed from the public library a course of lectures titled “History of the English Language” by Michael D.C. Drout, the Prentice Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. (Do you know why we use “apostrophe+s” to indicate possession? I do!) I was so impressed by his ability to make a potentially dry subject a lot of fun that I went to his home page. There I found gold:

• Anglo-Saxon Aloud: A daily reading of the entire Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, which includes all poems written in Old English (Free, a podcast)
• Beowulf Aloud: A Reading of Beowulf in Old English ($20, on CD)
• King Alfred’s Grammar: A tutorial on Old English (Free, HTML)
• Wormtalk and Slugspeak: Professor Drout’s blog

If you’re an English wonk like I am, I’m sure you’ll enjoy these.

[edit 2008-04-26: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was in a particular dialect of Middle English, not in Old English. Sorry about that.]

Lovest thou English? originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-04-21 (Monday).

Thanks to my friend Alan for sending me the link.

World Clock originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-04-15 (Tuesday).