wotd – aa *smirk* no, it’s a real word, scrabble players!

aa (ah-ah) noun

Lava having a rough surface.

[From Hawaiian, apparently from the sound one emits on touching the hot lava surface.] (Italics mine)

Aa is one of the two kinds of lava typically found in Hawaiian volcanoes.
The other kind is pahoehoe, one with a smooth, ropy surface. You can see their pictures at:
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/aa.html
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/pahoehoe.html

“Aa has a surface that’s broken into blocks with sharp, spiny projections.”
Ian Skilling, Lavas and Life, The World & I (Washington, DC), Jul 1998.

“With so much to memorize, trying to recall that aa is a kind of solidified lava or that an ai is a three-toed sloth, would tax the brain unnecessarily. Mr. Keskaroonkul estimates he knows nearly 110,000 words, or nearly 70% of Webster’s New World Dictionary, published by Merriam-Webster. In comparison, the average college graduate is said to have an active vocabulary of 10,000 to 15,000 words.”Joseph Pereira, Hard Scrabble: Thais Who Play Very Well Learn the Dictionary — But Some Have No Idea at All What the Words Mean; Why Clutter Up the Mind?, The Wall Street Journal (New York), Jul 19, 1999.

Here’s a fascinating story about a failed 1940s collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. oooh… I’d love to see it.

Also, some folks might want to check out TCUP – The Collective Unconsciousness Project… a place I store some of my dreams. a fun place to travel around, too, now that it’s been rewritten. Hooray for spell check and keywords!

Explore Updates:
* Choose which keyword you want to travel with.
* Search for a keyword of your choice.
* See how many unread dreams are associated with each keyword.
* The system now remembers your font size preference.
* 20 new photographs.
* A new scrollbar.

Log Updates:
* You can now title a dream, which will show in your dream log area.
* There is now a spell check.

Overall Updates:
* Conversion of all pages to XHTML,
for increased compatibility with current and future web browsers.
* The interface is cleaned up a little.

all the hep kids are doing it.. not heroin!

wotd – aa *smirk* no, it's a real word, scrabble players!

aa (ah-ah) noun

Lava having a rough surface.

[From Hawaiian, apparently from the sound one emits on touching the hot lava surface.] (Italics mine)

Aa is one of the two kinds of lava typically found in Hawaiian volcanoes.
The other kind is pahoehoe, one with a smooth, ropy surface. You can see their pictures at:
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/aa.html
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/pahoehoe.html

“Aa has a surface that’s broken into blocks with sharp, spiny projections.”
Ian Skilling, Lavas and Life, The World & I (Washington, DC), Jul 1998.

“With so much to memorize, trying to recall that aa is a kind of solidified lava or that an ai is a three-toed sloth, would tax the brain unnecessarily. Mr. Keskaroonkul estimates he knows nearly 110,000 words, or nearly 70% of Webster’s New World Dictionary, published by Merriam-Webster. In comparison, the average college graduate is said to have an active vocabulary of 10,000 to 15,000 words.”Joseph Pereira, Hard Scrabble: Thais Who Play Very Well Learn the Dictionary — But Some Have No Idea at All What the Words Mean; Why Clutter Up the Mind?, The Wall Street Journal (New York), Jul 19, 1999.

Here’s a fascinating story about a failed 1940s collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. oooh… I’d love to see it.

Also, some folks might want to check out TCUP – The Collective Unconsciousness Project… a place I store some of my dreams. a fun place to travel around, too, now that it’s been rewritten. Hooray for spell check and keywords!

Explore Updates:
* Choose which keyword you want to travel with.
* Search for a keyword of your choice.
* See how many unread dreams are associated with each keyword.
* The system now remembers your font size preference.
* 20 new photographs.
* A new scrollbar.

Log Updates:
* You can now title a dream, which will show in your dream log area.
* There is now a spell check.

Overall Updates:
* Conversion of all pages to XHTML,
for increased compatibility with current and future web browsers.
* The interface is cleaned up a little.

all the hep kids are doing it.. not heroin!

This office has all the privacy of a glass-faced cutaway beehive. bah.

ugh, tired of security cameras.

Racist cabbie this morning, put a mild damper on my good mood. I hate talking to idiots. He knew I do “computer stuff”, so he was asking me how to set up an online radio / TV show from his house so he can spread his imbecilic nazi-like views. I told him that he could probably find the information he wanted on the internet. (That’s actually more help than I wanted to give… I didn’t give him any links or anything… just told him to try the ‘net.)

My biggest problem with this guy in particular was that he couldn’t pick up on my cues that I don’t share his beliefs. No, I don’t think the “Massive Jewish Conspiracy” controls the media, and even if they did, people have the power to turn off the TV. Please. When I say things like “I’m trying to read, here” take the hint, and shut your hole. I’m normally a very polite guy, and that was the nicest thing I could think to say… but it didn’t shut him up. I think he suffers from a need to hear his own voice aloud confirming his opinions, on the off chance a conversation hook will lull someone into either debating his unchangeable mind, or some mutual back-patting if he finds some other racist to agree with him. (Chupa prattles on and on at work, just to hear her own voice, too. I look forward to the door between our offices being shut, lowering a cone of silence over her gibbering tongue.) At least the cabbie didn’t have me confined next to the Chupa nose-death combination of BO, stale cigs, and bad breath. What does she eat to emit that stench?

fireplug

Photo taken on walkies…I just liked the color, and how it was sticking way out of the ground. I don’t know if the sand fell away or if some goombah installed it badly. It looks better full-size, and brings to mind the song “no parking on the dance floor” somehow.

alton brown has a new rant… and it shows once again how I can be a fan of his cooking show.

Lately, in my own arena, getting complete stories to stick to the page has been like trying to tattoo my signature on the belly of a crazed weasel; it’s leaving me with wounds and I’m not sure the weasel looks much better for all the effort. The best I can hope for is a few “illuminated scenes”. The first act and the resolution of a story can be the most difficult parts for me to write… I think that my style sometimes is stuck in a sort of journalistic feel… plot progression has always been one of my weaker story points.

I don’t know if it’s just the images I’m tripping over, but the LALJ bash people look maybe a little too rowdy for my tastes… I don’t think I’d be crazy about doing body shots off of people I knew were married. Maybe just more folks are into swinging than I’d realized before. Yuck, in my opinion. There seems to have been a lot of tacky stuff happening, but I imagine that it was nice to meet up with some folks there, too. I wonder what the final tally of ljers was?

I still want to make a wooden elephant toy for my sweetheart. Maybe I’ll hit the hobby store this week, when I go to breakfast with Dan on Thursday.

That’s my baby‘s sound is slightly off, so it appears that I’m watching something dubbed from another language. I like the effect. I half expect the infant alpacas to do some kung fu. There’s one baby that seems to have chia-hair… fungus / mold? Also, the giraffe (Geoffrey) from the new Toys ‘R’ Us commercials sounds like Tom Hanks to me.

Finally, from Salon, this cracked me up –

Halle Berry made history last night, not so much for being the first African-American woman to win an Oscar in the best actress category, but for freaking horribly, uncontrollably out and making the worst, most hysterically rambling, discomfiting and liquefied acceptance speech in Oscar’s 74-year history, and I thought Julia Roberts was going to hold that title for a long time. I know it was a big deal for Halle, who claimed her award for All Black Women Everywhere Ever, but her acceptance tantrum had such an alarming cringe factor, I had to leave the room. When they tried to pry her off the stage, she made that screeching Bilbo Baggins monster addiction-face when he Wants the Ring. It was a heavy, strange, grand-mal meltdown. America squirmed.