"...white peaks lifted themselves yearning to the moonlight.
The rest was as the darkness of interstellar space."

from Kim. by Rudyard Kipling

picture credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2039859/Its-awake-night-Photographer-captures-beauty-Milky-Way-midnight-trek-beat-insomnia.htm

Kniferism and Forkerism

Related to spoonerisms

kniferism; switch middle of the word,
like hypodeemic nurdles (hypodermic needles)
a "noted woman columnist" becomes a "noted woolen communist"

forkerism:  switch letters at the end of the word
like "Wadley Barber" becomes "Wadler Barbie"

These are rarer because they are more difficult to construct.

Spoonerisms

We were highly entertained by "The Muppet Frog Prince" when it first came out on CBC in 1971.
After that the tall guy in our high school with the long hair was nicknamed "Sweetums"
and the nerds among us puzzled over the wordplay in the script like
"weevil itch"   (evil witch)
by mirthday's do-tay" (my birthday's today)
"bake the hall in the candle of her brain"  (break the ball in the handle of her cane)

Now I know that this kind wordplay is Spoonerisms,
which are words with first letters transposed.
They are named for Reverend W. A. Spooner who was prone to these slips.

The best spoonerisms juxtapose two meanings which the mind grasps at the same time.  The Capitol Steps has a segment called "Lirty Dies" which tells stories from politics using spoonerisms like
"crunch of books" (bunch of crooks)

Sometimes spoonerisms are used to tone down the intensity of a vulgarity such as "bass ackwards"

The old TV show Hee-Haw used to tell the story of Rindercella
who had two sad blisters (bad sisters) , and at the end of the story "slopped her dripper" (dropped her slipper)  My Uncle Con told this story at every social event I can remember during my teen years.

It's worth noting that spoonerisms are popular and entertaining in other languages as well

Mondegreen

Also known as misheard lyrics.

When a columnist named Sylvia Wright was a child, 

she mis-heard a Scottish ballad

"They have slain the Earl of Murray

And laid him on the green." 

as

"They have slain the Earl of Murray

And the Lady Mondegreen."

So Ms Wright named accidents of mis-hearing like this Mondegreens.

Several websites are dedicated to this topic.

While rap and hiphop lyrics seem to be

most easily misheard, when I was a child we sang a hymn: 

"You, who unto Jesus for refuge have fled..."

and I still mentally hear "yoo-hoo unto Jesus"

and this one:

"O refresh us, travelling through this wilderness"

I mis-heard as "O refreshments"

Life is Like a Roller Coaster

"Life … is like a roller coaster. All kinds of things are going to happen to you! Sure, I can see the roller coaster you’re on. And sure I …could tell you about every dip and turn, [and] warn you … But that wouldn't help anyway. Because you’d still have to take the roller coaster ride.

I didn't design the roller coaster, I don’t own it, and I don’t say who rides and who doesn't."

Enjoy the ride kids!

Formula for a Haiku

Five syllables here
Seven more syllables there
Are you happy now?

"The committee worked on it 8 years and had barely made it beyond the design on the front cover."

from Slash and Burn by Colin Cotterill

Where Are You From?

Katie once posted a status on Facebook:

"How do you make a military kid cry?   ask them where they're from"
I am left speechless at that question myself.   Usually I just say I'm Mexican

Where Are You From? 

by Gina Valdés

Soy de aquí      (I am from here) 
y soy de allá     (and I am from there)
from here
and from there
born in L.A.
del otro lado    (from the other side)
y de éste         (and from this)
crecí en L.A.    (I grew up in LA)
y en Ensenada   (and in Ensenada)
my mouth
still tastes
of naranjas   (oranges) 
con chile      (and chilies)
soy del sur    (I am from the south)
y del norte    (and from the north)
crecí zurda    (I grew up left-handed/clumsy)
y norteada    (and pointed northward)
cruzando fron     (crossing bor-
teras crossing     (ders)
San Andreas
Tartamuda        (stuttering)
Y mareada        (and dizzy)
where you from?
soy de aquí      (I am from here)
y soy de allá    (and I am from there)
I didn’t build
this border
that halts me
the word fron    (bor-
tera splits          der)
on my tongue

Let Me Get This Straight--We Don't Like Obama Because He Doesn't Want War?

"What many of these critics don’t like about Obama—what they mistakenly, or misleadingly, call “disinterest”—is his disinclination to go to war.....

Embedded in the portrait of Obama as a feckless world leader is an assumption that the United States—or any one nation—can solve a big problem by throwing troops at it."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/02/barack_obama_isn_t_disengaged_the_president_s_foreign_policy_is_just_smarter.html

The Best Dedications Ever

"No names have been changed to protect the innocent since God Almighty protects the innocent as a matter of heavenly routine."

From the Dedication to Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore
(did I already say I liked that book?)

"I want to remind the reader that no actual animals were harmed in the creation of this book.  It's fiction, silly.  I hired imaginary stunt animals who were well paid for their contributions and are still living happily in my mind."

from Just Intuition by Makenzi Fisk

Bricolage vs Bric-a-brac

from the french verb bricoler which means to "putter around"

BRICOLAGE: a construction or creation from a diverse range of available things.

BRIC-A-BRAC: a whole bunch of sentimental little things, including curios and memorabilia.

Does that mean you can build a bricolage from bric-a-brac?

"The bass boats hiccuped
and then growled
and then whined,
pushing for more speed.

Yet somehow
they planed off perfectly,
gliding flat
and barely creasing the crystal texture of the lake."

from Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen

"One of the wondrous things about Florida ...
was the climate of unabashed corruption
.........
there was absolutely no trouble from which money could not extricate you."

from Skin Tight by Carl Hiaasen

Sometimes I feel cynical about american politics and the entire system
but then I realize it's even worse in other places--

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/offshore-assets-of-china-s-elite-revealed-in-leaked-records-1.2504987

"The River Seine was a silver-blue blade bisecting the city"
...............

Lucien watched...the sunrise break the horizon, turning the River Seine
into a bright copper-coloured ribbon across Paris."

From Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore

I guess the river inspires in various colours.

painting by Carl Fredrik Hill, Seine-Landschaft bei Bois-Le-Roi (Seine Landscape in Bois-Le-Roi) (1877)
a Swedish painter, but connected to French painters  (I learned a lot while reading this book)

"Let's hope they solve this mystery and find out who the culprits are.
But when they do, let's hop that it doesn't turn out it's us again."

From The Osgood File 14 November 2013

Thinking and prayer are much the same..when
you stop to think about it--
...
Prayer goes up
and
thought comes down

As far as I can tell that's the only difference.

frm A Red Herring Without Mustard, by Alan Bradley

Modern View of Religion (or Lack of It)

If something, or somebody,
could help you to get through life,
to lead a good life,
that was good and purposeful,
did it matter all that much
if that thing or person did not exist?
She thought it did not--
not in the slightest bit."

From The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall

"In America, you  are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms."

Likely rooted in the  "quiet revolution" of the 1960s (remember that?  it wasn't just political)

religious words (and truncated variations) became swear words too strong to use in public.

So French-speaking Canada swears with words like

tabernacle,

host

baptism

and yes,

sacred blue

Quote from:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120401286.html

see also the wikipedia article about Quebec profanity.

Sacred Blue

That's what Sacre Bleu (the title of the book I wrote about yesterday) means.

The term refers to a certain (very expensive) colour of blue that was only to be used in art for the Virgin Mary's cloak, thus "sacred" blue.

The Virgin of the Annunciation by Fra Angelico, 1432
fresco, Friary of San Marco, Florence, Italy

"Very early in my research, great bits of history had to go by the wayside so I'd have room to make stuff up."

from Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore

This book took a while to read because I kept stopping to look things up.  I learned a lot about the French Impressionist Painters.

So, Is it Chocolate Then, or Not?

Yeah, I know it's a Swedish word, but it's still funny

Spelling Mistakes in Public Places

The number one location to observe spelling mistakes is your local supermarket.
The second location, sadly,  is your local school.
In their defense, they produce massive amounts of written material, and something is bound to slip through, but spell check should have caught this one.

Spelling Mistakes in Public Places

Supermarkets are the biggest winners in the bad spelling competition out there.
And not just homonym mistakes like this one
we also get carrets and marshmellows and glorious cake spelling errors


http://www.buzzfeed.com/hunterschwarz/why-its-hard-being-a-grammar-nazi

Life is a Series of Accidents

"I was a victim of a series of accidents...as are we all."

"look forward to behaving aristocratically without any outward proof of aristocracy.  Look forward to having nothing but the dignity and intelligence that God gave you--look forward to taking those materials and nothing else and making something exquisite with them."

from The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

when I read this in high school my mom freaked out because of the 3 women on the front cover.  When I finished the book I understood they were statues in the story....*7%@ marketers.