I posted this poem (without the extra pipe characters) a long time ago, and no one said anything, so I thought I would explain it.

Slant

Our perception | serves to distract.
This sentence | is influenced by expectation.

The pipe characters signify where the reader is supposed to switch lines while reading. I guess it was pretty subtle. My thinking at the time was that I sort of wanted to call into question the basic assumptions in reading--in our language, anyway--about simple things like what direction words flow, and the fact that sentences don't jump around in lines, and such.

I.. don't do poems, much. Someone said, and I am too lazy to look up who it was, that while prose was "words in the right order," poetry was somehow greater, being "the right words in the right order." I don't know about that. I think that poetry has a place, especially as part of music, but that prose is perhaps more effective for most of the things I value, because of its concentration on communicating the message, rather than making the message more 'artful.' If the rhythm and rhyme, or whatever one decided makes a poem a poem, distracts the reader from the actual meaning of the words themselves, then I'm not sure they are the "right words."

I'm playing Freerice for country-identification, and I have discovered that there are, like, twice as many Guineas as I thought.

- Guinea
- French Guinea
- Papua New Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Equatorial Guinea
- Guyana (not technically guinea but pretty close in spelling so I am arbitrarily counting it, too)

I think I knew about 3 of those--Guyana, French Guinea, and Papua New Guinea. I remember learning countries in elementary school and deliberately looking for plain ol' Guinea and not being able to find it at the time, at which point I assumed it must be something that's not a real country, like a remnant territory of one of those European empires or something. I guess either I didn't look hard enough, or the elementary school maps didn't go into enough detail in West Africa. Or, maybe it wasn't a country at the time. Africa does change what its countries from time to time, after all. No more Zaire now, for example.

Also, I keep getting Nicaragua and Honduras confused. I second-guess myself too much. I look at one, and think it's Nicaragua, then I think, "wait, I know I get these confused so it is probably Honduras" but it turns out it's really Nicaragua. I seem to do ok with the rest of North and South America. I had a bit of trouble with some of the new-ish European countries (i.e. post-Yugoslavia and post-USSR), but now I've got those pretty well. Croatia is a "C"! And it is eating Bosnia and Herzegovina! Which incidentally, in my opinion, should just make a cool composite name like Czechoslovakia used to have, because countries with "and" in them are kind of silly. Bosnegovina! See, there, you've got it sorted! Also: Trinibago.

Africa is definitely the hardest overall, though. I hope whoever delivers the rice does better than me at this.

Edit, 5 minutes later: I just googled "Also, I keep getting Nicaragua and Honduras confused." to see if anyone else may have had this problem and my journal was the second result. What?

I am no longer a cube. But now, apparently, I'm perfect.

Wendy's used to do simple chicken wraps. They had, uh, Spicy Chicken Go-Wrap, Grilled Chicken Go-Wrap, and one other. Homestyle, maybe? "Go-wrap" was kind of a dumb name but as cheap as they were, they were pretty good. My favorite was the Spicy. They started out at like $1.39, then at some point they were $1.49, and then $1.59 each, which was still perfectly reasonable.

They don't do them anymore. Instead they are doing new wraps with slightly more contents but like almost 3 times the price. Seriously, $4.29 for a wrap-without-meal? What is the deal, Wendy's. I am disappoint.

Poll #1464350
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

Which?

I more or less quit my WoW raid about a month ago. I actually only relegated myself to alternate status, but given how little I've logged in since then and the grand total of zero times I've been asked as an alt to sub in for missing mains, it's pretty much tantamount to quitting at this point. I don't miss it that much. I guess I miss the vent banter sometimes, but I certainly don't miss the certain feeling of obligation to spend 3-4 hours 3-4 weekday evenings per week doing fights I've already done to see the occasional gear upgrade that's barely even an upgrade. (Woo, I have 1650 in some random stat instead of 1643!)

They've announced the next expansion, Cataclysm. They say it'll shake up the core world, changing a lot of the levelling zones--and adding in two new races. Maybe I'll pick it up and play one of the new races, or a new race/class combo with an existing race. I doubt I'll go back to full-time raiding again, though.

I like the extra free time I've had, but I don't feel like I'm doing much with it. Mostly, Sara and I are just watching a bunch of old TV shows. We're making our way through Voyager for some reason, among other things. I've thought about doing some volunteering, but I'm not sure what group I'd like to volunteer for. The Texas Advocacy Project is certainly worthy of my time, but unfortunately, their time largely overlaps when I have to go to work.

Heheh, "worthy of my time"--as if my time is such a great thing, which organizations must be worthy of. It's a bit self-centered, but then on the other hand, if I'm gonna be giving away time and stuff, I think I'm allowed a bit of self-centeredness in choosing who to give it to!

Margaret Cho's book, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, has a bit on how anyone who isn't a feminist should just die. I'd quote it more directly, but the form I have it in is audiobook, and I left the CDs at work. I'm taking it for granted that Cho doesn't wish death on all men (it'd be unlikely she'd marry one if she did), so I'd say it's clear she falls on the "yes" side of this question. I agree.

Wizards Community website is down for a platform migration.

Wizards of the Coast is pleased to announce that we're upgrading to a new community platform. We are in the process of migrating our forums to a system that includes a host of new features like friends lists, groups, an invite system and calendar, blogs and wiki.

The forums will be down until at least August 26, and possibly through the end of the month. We apologize for the inconvenience.


"Hi, guys. We know you like to talk about our game when you're not playing it. But we've gotten tired of being able to moderate the discussions to avoid trolling, baiting, and edition wars, so we'd like you to go to third-party forums where you can experience the full brunt of internet inhumanity--maybe targeted at you, probably just targeted at our system. Also you'll be getting a lot of cool information about our competitors' products. See you in a couple weeks; hope you'll be back!"

Merriam Webster Online

...
— beg the question
1: to pass over or ignore a question by assuming it to be established or settled
2: to elicit a question logically as a reaction or response <the quarterback's injury begs the question of who will start in his place>

Interesting.

"Misusing" the phrase, "beg the question" isn't really misusing it anymore, at least according to Merriam-Webster. That lets a lot of media outlets off the hook, I suppose.

I tend to be a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist when it comes to grammar, word usage, and such things, and I approve of the dictionary changing to describe the common usage of the people. Still, some part of me finds it a bit irksome. I'm not sure why this usage in particular bugs me, since I applaud certain other "nongrammatical" things (like "they" as a singular nongendered pronoun, for example.)

Perhaps it's because the 'new' usage of "begs the question" is something that doesn't really fill any holes in the grammar. "Raises the question" is fine.

Or perhaps it's because the (former) misuse of "begs the question" usually came up when someone was trying to sound especially smart, even though they were likely unfamiliar with the origin and intended use of the phrase. (I noticed that in media. Dumb or even average fictional characters wouldn't say "begs the question" at all. Smart ones would say it wrong--wrong at the time, anyway.)

I should disclaim, that I am a Picard fan. I don't know if I like him best out of all captains ever, but in the whole "Kirk vs. Picard" debate I tend to fall on the Picard side. This is partially because I respect real diplomacy more than "cowboy diplomacy," partially because I find Patrick Stewart to simply be a better actor (although I do give much kudos to Shatner for Denny Crane), and, admittedly, partially for the simple reason that The Next Generation was my generation of Star Trek.

That's all a disclaimer for the conclusion that I reached on the way home from work this evening. I'm not sure why I was thinking about Kirk, Picard, or Star Trek in general--4e D&D has been my nerd-thing of choice the last month or so, and I don't often find myself thinking about Trek unless it's been brought up externally, or Sara and I are watching Voyager, which we've been doing lately for some reason. (Prompted a name for a drink! Which, honestly, although not amazing, is somewhat less grotesque than I thought it might be.)

Anyway, I keep beating around the bush. Here is my realization:

Kirk would have beaten the Nausicaans.

I have combined about an ounce of vodka with about an ounce of jager to produce:

Voyager.