Comment of the week

Regarding my recent blurb about Randomocity, Anna "Flamingo" writes:

I catch your blog while surfing and typically enjoy reading it, however, gotta disagree with you about the title: I LOVE it :)

Randomocity is one of those words that's used occasionally in internet slang, but has never really been given an actual definition. Also, I've never seen it used in any respected media outlets. Really there's nothing unfortunate about it except for some obscurity that a little thought can accommodate for: Random, Anxiety, Velocity, City... any of those words could come into play I'm guessing.

I can say that I am more interested in seeing Randomocity than many of the films I've seen trailers for recently. Soundtrack please :)

And of course she's absolutely right. The word "randomocity" existed, at least on the Web, before the filmmakers came up with the title. We can only hope the movie lives up to Anna's interest (and mine). (About the soundtrack: Many of the film's Internet fans are begging for it, too, but there doesn't seem to be one yet. Maybe with enough online pressure, they'll think about putting one out.)

Mnemonics drill

For a recent nutrition test, I had to memorize the eight B vitamins in order. I came up with a helpful mnemonic: To Remember, Not Botch, Peanut Butter For Breakfast. And though I did not, in fact, have peanut butter with my morning meal on the day of the test, I did manage to remember thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, biotin, pantothenic acid, B6, folate, and B12. I told my friend and coworker Sheri about TRNBPBFB, and she sent me this:

Whenever I hear "mnemonic devices," I remember Bart Simpson's classic:

"Canada's governors general: Clowns Love Haircuts; So Should Lee Marvin's Valet."

To which I replied, reasonably enough: "What does it stand for?" Here's her response:

Thank you, Wikipedia:

When Bart is listing mnemonics, one he uses is "Quiet nerds burp only near school," to remember the original four Canadian provinces. (Quebec, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Nova Scotia.

Another mnemonic Bart uses is for the Canadian Governors General, "Clowns love haircuts, so should Lee Marvin's valet" (Adrienne Clarkson, Roméo LeBlanc, Ray Hnatyshyn, Jeanne Sauvé, Edward Schreyer, Jules Léger, Roland Michener, and Georges Vanier)

Classic.

The mellifluous tones of academe

University of Chicago's "Make Your Own Academic Sentence" randomizer suggests that the school values self-deprecation at least as much as self-importance. Would that more major institutions of higher learning could laugh so heartily about their own ridiculousness. My first sentence, by the way, was this: "The eroticization of pop culture opens a space for the engendering of print culture." So true. (Hat tip to Steven for the link.)

Low-hanging fruit

Corporatespeak: It's the new strychnine -- for your soul.

Lost in Translation Party

Among Web sites destined to waste at least five minutes of your time, it's way up there. One of my recent "parties" proved particularly successful. I wish I had the money to put it on a T-shirt.

The year in buzzwords

The New York Times' annual list never fails to amuse and delight. It has a lot of visual pop this year, too.

My new favorite word

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, the transitive verb scupper means "to defeat or put an end to." Its etymology is unknown, but it's used mainly in British English, and it seems to have been born at the end of the 19th century. James Wood used it recently in The New Yorker, and it caught my eye:

The book’s form is a solid delight of symmetry and repetition. Just as April’s first pregnancy scuppered the original European escape (but didn’t really, because Frank never intended to go), so her third scuppers the later one (but doesn’t really, either, for the same reason).

And while we're on the subject of favorites, here's a charming musical interlude from Elf, featuring my new favorite winter song: