Back of the Cereal Box

Sunday, July 15, 2012

How I Am Doing Today, All This Considered

(See immediately below.)

Note: I may not have fully considered all things.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

How You’re Complimenting Large-Eyed, Long-Necked Beauties

The science wonks of the English-speaking world have no shortage of animal words thanks to the “ines” — feline, canine, bovine as well as weird ones like pavonine for peacocks, dasypine for armadillos and even asinine for donkeys. But the “ines” all tend toward a high-minded, labcoast-and-beakers sort of conversation. Do you have anything in a regular sort of suffix?

Yes. Yes we do, and it’s the word of the week.

struthious (STROO-thee-us) — adjective: of or relating to ostriches or similar birds.

Tweeted out not too long ago by the OED, struthius might seem like the kind of word you non-ostrich ranch-owning readers might have little reason to use. And that night be true, but you never know when you might need to recap an episode of Top Chef.

Allow me to demonstrate:

Yes, Carla Hall — the best thing to come out of any reality show ever — has a struthious way about her. And that’s not an insult, exactly. Hall used to model back in the day, and even then exhibited a struthious beauty:

However, I’m happy to have her as we have her today: cooking and looking animatedly struthious.

Indeed.

Previous words of the week after the jump.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Liz Lemon Meets Dracula

At last, my hours spent writing 30 Rock fan fiction have paid off! Alan Moore noticed!

What you see is a panel from the newest League of Extraordinary Gentleman comic, Century: 2009. And yes, rather than allude to esoteric novels from turn-of-the-century Britain, Moore gives shoutouts to works that exist in more contemporary fictional universes — occasionally like Driveshaft from Lost or Who Dat Ninja? from 30 Rock, but more often BBC shows that I’ve never heard of and might as well be esoteric novels from turn-of-the-century Britain. Still, that is Mina Murray walking in front of a representation of the same fictional universe that gave us Jackie Jormp-Jomp, and I like that.

As for the comic itself, it’s better than I expected but not great. It all gets wrapped up in an extended Harry Potter riff that I wasn’t into. That said, 2009 features enough of Moore’s famously layered references to win me over. Case in point: In this universe, Emma Peel from The Avengers is Emma Night, who by 2009 has risen to the head of MI6. Yes, she’s the new M, in the style of Judi Dench in the latter-era Bond films, and on top of that, her name is Emma. Emma is M. And on top of that, as pointed out in the Annotated League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, artist Kevin O’Neill thoughtfully placed a framed photo of a man who looks a great deal like George Lazenby on Emma Night’s desk, presumably a reference to the fact that the actress who played Emma Peel, Diana Rigg, also played the love interest in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which Lazenby played Bond.

And basically every panel works like that. Sure, you need the online version of Cliffs Notes to understand what you’re looking at, but if it just had references to American sitcoms, you might think this comic book about British literary superheroes seemed slightly silly.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Another Five Words With Surprising Etymologies

Because how else do you follow up “Five Words With Surprising Etymologies” and “Five More Words With Surprising Etymologies”?

diamond: Everyone knows that the two most important qualities of diamonds are that they’re expensive and that they’re hard. It’s that second quality that should ring a bell when you learn that the word goes back to the Latin adamentem, which meant “the hardest metal” — hence Wolverine’s skeleton being fortified with adamantium — but was also used figuratively in the way we use adamant today. The Latin word comes from the Greek adamas, “unbreakable, unflexible,” but literally “unconquerable.”

spruce: It’s a tree, but I feel like I hear it used more often as the verb paired with the adverb up and meaning “to make spiffy.” What’s the connection? In the fifteenth-century, spruce goods were fashionable, and the word has retained this positive meaning ever since. But these old-timey spruce goods weren’t made of wood. Instead, the term spruce is an alteration of Pruce, the French equivalent of Prussia, and the goods came to England via German mechants.

sideburns, etymologically

why it’s not vespuccia

pajamas and pyjamas

partridge: We get the word from the Old French name for the bird, pertis, and that ultimately goes back to the Greek perdesthai, which means “to break wind,” probably because of how much noise the bird makes. So yes, that first syllable’s similarity to fart is not coincidental.

California: In short, we’re not exactly sure where it comes from, but explorers called the westernmost part of the New World this name as a result of Las sergas de Esplandián, a Spanish adventure novel that featured a island populated by amazons. The island was called California and its ruler was Queen Calafia. While some guess that both California and Calafia come from the Arabic word khalifah — which means “Muslim leader” and which gives English the word caliph — we don’t know where the author got the idea for the name. Similarly, the Song of Roland mentions an area called Califerne — “And in Affrike, and those in Califerne” — that could be the genesis of California, but even then the association between the state’s name and Islam remains, given that Califerne is probably supposed to refer to an area ruled by a caliph.

comptroller: Until I looked it up, I actually had no clue what comptroller meant. I assumed it resulted from the forced mashing-together of controller and computer. Nope. A comptroller is just a specialized type of controller, essentially, with the dictionary definition being “the chief accountant of a company, organization or government.” And it’s supposed to be pronounced exactly like controller, through the “p” is seldom silent. Etymonline explains that comptroller is just a variant of controller that was influenced by the unrelated French word compte, “account,” and that lingered in English for the last 500 years. Wikipedia conjectures that comptroller results from a blend between compte and the Middle English countreroller, “someone who checks the copy of a scroll,” that became associated with the checkers of financial records. And Webster just states that it’s an alteration of countreroller. I don’t know which, if any, is the most correct, but I’m sure that I shouldn’t be pronouncing the word phonetically if I want to sound smart.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Another Japanese Triumph

It’s no secret that the Japanese are winning the worldwide race to supply everyone with a means to satisfy peculiar desires we didn’t know we had. But I had no idea that Japan was winning by so much that it has developed such specific emoticons:

This, of course, is “Truman Capote terrorized by an ether-induced hallucination.” Or maybe “boiled egg scared of being eaten.” Could be both, really, and though I hadn’t thought of peppering my online conversations with such an emoticon, I can now think of nothing but.

Japan, we’re in your debt once again.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

How I Prefer to Remember King City

Now, this will mean little to anyone who hasn’t had to pull off the northbound 101 after San Ardo and roll through the supersized truck stop known as King City. But had you done so on a late spring day and had you been hurrying to beat some rain whose clouds were glowing furiously red over the sunset, you might have noticed how, for the first time ever, King City looked better than its typical lonely, windblown and for the first time looked beautiful.

Then imagine my surprise when I saw my memory of King City realized in pixels.

It’s not a dead-on reproduction, of course, and I know that any Dorothea Lange-esque dot on the map could look the same, meteorological circumstances permitting. But if you knew King City, but if anyone else had been in the car that day, you’d get it.

(Image via King of Fighters 96, via here.)

Monday, July 9, 2012

Encyclopedia Drew and the Dubious Diorama

When I visited the Natural History Museum, I escaped the fate that befell poor Sally Draper and did not, thankfully, begin my period immediately after viewing the animal dioramas.

Yes, in true Don Draper fashion, Mad Men fibbed and passed off Los Angeles Natural History Museum as its New York counterpart. This is not news, and this post isn’t about Sally’s diorama-prompted womanhood. No, I’m actually more concerned with the oryxes.

The Arabian oxyx, according to the Natural History Museum’s website, is notable for a horse-like gait and the fact that it, when moving in profile, appears to only have a single horn and therefore may have been responsible for belief in unicorns. But even that’s not enough to warrant this post. No, here’s what did. Not the oryx family but way in the back corner…

Do you see it?

Okay, you have to see it now — a cat whose shitty expression is masked by the cat-colored grass around it. The diorama placards made no mention of Grassy Grumplepuss, leaving me to consider several possible explanations:

The diorama curator placed the cat, but a higher-up exercised an anti-cat agenda and saw to it that the cat was not mentioned at all.
The diorama curator’s cat died while he was making this particular exhibit, and so he taxidermied the cat and slipped it into the background as a way of letting future generations appreciate the severity of his cat’s scowl.
It’s actually a live cat that snuck into the museum, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler-style, and it’s posing as if it were taxidermied so as to avoid detection.
It’s the mouse-deterring version of a scarecrow, and the museum would rather not publicize its rodent problem.
The museum placed the cat in the exhibit, unannounced, and they’re giving out prizes to whoever spots it first. (Me! I did! Give me the gift certificate.)
Ghost cat.
Something something illuminati symbolism.
Oryxes naturally have guardian angels that take the form of cats, but the museum — being a scientific institution — is reluctant to endorse such spiritualist notions, and so the resourceful museum-goer is left to research on his own and come to his own conclusion.
“Oh, shit. We have this extra cat. Will anyone care if I just stick it in the oryx diorama? I need to take lunch, like, now.”

Your input is valued and appreciated.

Previous Encyclopedia Drew mysteries:

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