Has any one else seen the Lipitor guy (a.k.a. Dr. Robert Jarvik inventor of the Jarvik Artificial Heart) and thought, “inventor of the artificial heart or not, I just don’t trust this guy because he looks like President Bush with a fading mullet.”

Just asking…

A woman I work with recently asked me if I remembered Mike, Pam and Penny from the Dick and Jane readers. I assured her that she must have grown up with some bootleg version of the books because there certainly were no black characters in the series when I was a child.

Lo and behold - she was right. Back in the sixties, a black family actually did move in next door to Dick and Jane.

But by the time I got around to reading Dick and Jane in the late 70s early 80s, the black family was no where to be seen. Which raises the question, did the publishers create a transition title in the 70s called “White Flight with Dick and Jane” to explain why Mike, Pam and Penny were no longer around?

Dick: Look Sally. The moving truck is here. We are moving.
Sally: I am sad. What about our friends? Our friends Pam and Penny?
Jane: Oh no Sally. They are staying here.
Dick: Oh yes. They are staying. We are moving. Moving before the property values fall.

I get a twitter message from Susan Wu saying she doesn’t get “cosplay.” I think, “Hmmm… I don’t either. What’s cosplay?” I open the browser and ask Wikipedia. Well, it’s a portmanteau of the English words “costume” and “role play” Got it, cool. Well, not really, but portmanteau is much more interesting. I can tell what it means from the usage, but what an interesting word! I wonder what the etymology is? I ask Wikipedia again, but before I can get to the etymology I am clicking links trying to figure out the difference between “nonce words” and “neologisms” (as a side note, basically a nonce-word is made up for one-time usage, but if the cat who made it up is popular and it catches on, then the word becomes a neologism… I guess that’s before the neologism gets a spouse and a mortgage and becomes a… word).

Luckily, I wasn’t totally side tracked by the nonce-word / neologism debate and was able to make my way back to the portmanteau article on Wikipedia, because if I didn’t - I wouldn’t have been able to share this little gem with you.

Portemanteau, from Middle French porter (to carry) and manteau (a coat or cover), formerly referred to a large travelling bag or suitcase with two compartments, hence the linguistic idea of fusing two words and their meanings into one.

The modern usage of portmanteau was actually coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice words from Jabberwocky, saying,

“Well, slithy means lithe and slimy … You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

A beautiful image isn’t it? Packing words.

I love when I find out that words exist to express concepts or experiences that I have had.

I recently learned from an article on the OED in the New York Times that a misheard lyric is called a mondegreen. According to the New York Times:

It is named after Lady Mondegreen. There was no Lady Mondegreen. The lines of a ballad, ”They hae slain the Earl of Murray,/And laid him on the green” are misheard as ”They have slain the Earl of Murray and Lady Mondegreen.”

For the record, I have always been curious to know who this “Sweet Saranda” was in the song Bitter Sweet by Big Head Todd and the Monsters?

And today, I learned from Jason Kottke about the Cupertino Effect, or incorrect spellcheck suggestions that make it into finalized documents. The word comes from a spellchecking error in the various European Union Documents where the term cooperation was mistakenly replaced by Cupertino.

I wonder what other wonderful words exist for those experiences that I have had but never been able to explain without using several sentences? I wonder if, in fact, this very concept has a word to express it?

I saw Clerks II recently, and while I thought it was good, this post isn’t about the movie really. In one of the early scenes, Elias (Trevor Fehrman) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) banter about the upcoming release of the live action Transformers movie.

That got me wondering if there were other films that discussed or at least gave a nod to upcoming or contemporary movies. Sure enough, as I watched Big Fish last night, I noticed that Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) and his father (Albert Finney) drive past a theater which is showing Identity. Identity and Big Fish were both released in 2003.

Are you up to the challenge? Can you name any other films that hat tip contemporary movies or projects that are in the works?

The Transformer Trailer isn’t all that exciting, but I bet the intro credits to the film will be totally sweet given how they handle the transforming typography at the end of the trailer.

My community here in Ohio has “Deaf Child” signs all over the place to warn drivers that the community has a deaf child in its midst. When I was a kid I remember wondering, how on earth the sign people knew that! I mean, you can see schools and intersections, and deduce that a warning sign might be helpful and appropriate. But deaf children (we had blind children signs too now that I think about it)? How on earth did the sign people know who was in each house, or more, how their health was doing?

I am older now and know that the sign people are merely public servants and that while the government might be considered all knowing these days, deaf children signs are had by petitioning the local department of transportation for one.

But I still have some questions:

I wonder if the sign is placed in front of the house containing the deaf child or is it positioned slightly before the child’s house so as to give the driver fair warning and the kid a running start.

If it is directly in front of the kid’s house, I wonder if the kid feels stigmatized - the only kid with his own sign - and a sign that brings attention to what he or she may perceive as a shortcoming? I could imagine how I would feel as a kid if there was a sign in front of my crib that preyed on my perceived inadequacies - “Dumb Dumb Child Area - Drivers Beware”

Finally, I wonder how the city monitors such signs. It is easy to make a judgement call when the flow of traffic is changed obviating the need for a one-way or stop sign. But how does the city know when a deaf child moves away or isn’t a child anymore?

Yikes… So This is what I think about when I am on vacation.

I was having a conversation last night with a friend whose building address is 666. As it turns out, she also lives on the 13th floor, although if you are looking for her you better press 14 because “there is no 13th floor.”

That got me wondering just how wide spread the practice of designating the 13th floor as the 14th floor or 12a has become.

According to Dilip Rangnekar, spokesman for Otis Elevators, as many as 85 percent of the high rises in the world don’t have a 13th floor.

How can otherwise rational developers fall prey to such a superstition in such large numbers? Turns out their decision is perfectly rational (read bottom line driven). Developers fear that they will not be able to rent out spaces on a hypothetical 13th floor to clients who succumb to triskaidekaphobia. Why risk empty space when you can rename the floor and avoid the issue altogether.