Cerebrate Good Times

To take Sam trick-or-treating, I decided to forgo the politics, so I removed the note from the knife and decided to stick something on my forehead for good measure. Here's a better view. "Has anybody seen my keys?"

 

In a momentary fit of relative normalcy, I decided to post a few pics of Sam at the zoo on his birthday. He was amused by the "fuzzy horns." Almost ready to play jump rope with his arms He would be happy if elephants were the only animal they had there. Gorillattitude

I have more Halloween makeup than many women have makeup period.

Oh, you saucy little spell checker. It wanted to replace the web extension ".org" with "orgy." I can't help but feel that would dampen the reliability of the resource. It got me thinking, though. One of these days I'm going to accept all the spell checker's proposed changes in a document and see what awesomeness ensues.

My thoughts as I read the survey BYU recently sent me (twice, when I didn't return it quickly enough the first time they sent it): Dear Joel, Congratulations on your 2006 graduation from BYU! Better late than never, I suppose. As President of BYU, I invite you to complete our Alumni Questionnaire, which we send to each BYU graduate three years after graduation. I wouldn't have capitalized "president" in that usage, but whatever. Okay, let's see how you close the letter. I express appreciation in advance for your participation. You "express appreciation," eh? Gee, that's almost the same thing as actually saying "thank you." That's like punching someone in the face and saying, "I express my regret." It's also kind of a heavy-handed assumption that I will actually take the time to answer 15 pages worth of questions. At any rate, let's move on and look at some of the content. Indicate how well each of the following statem...

I'm amused when people ask me language-related questions. First of all, they always preface these questions by saying, "Hey, Mr. Linguist…" Then they proceed on the assumption that I have memorized the entire Oxford English Dictionary (all 23 volumes) and am therefore qualified to detail the etymology of the phrase "liar, liar, pants on fire." I should be flattered, although I am torn between annoyance that they presume so much and shame that I don't really know everything.