Visit the kelpforest....

Are you a Rebel or a Yankee?
35% Dixie. You are definitely a Yankee.

( Obviously, I thought waaay too much about this. )

From Merriam-Webster's Word O' the Day:

The Word of the Day for Sep 10 is:
whinge \ WINJ\ verb

British : to complain fretfully : whine

Example sentence:
She urged her fellow workers to stop whinging about how they were victims of "the system" and to do something to change that system.

Did you know?
"Whinge" isn't just a spelling variant of "whine." They are actually entirely different words with different histories. "Whine" traces to an Old English verb, "hwīnan," which means "to make a humming or whirring sound." When "hwīnan" became "whinen" in Middle English, it meant "to wail distressfully"; "whine" didn't acquire its "complain" sense until the 16th century. "Whinge," on the other hand, comes from a different Old English verb, "hwinsian," which means "to wail or moan discontentedly." "Whinge" retains that original sense today, though nowadays "whinge" puts less emphasis on the sound of the complaining and more on the discontentment behind the complaint.

Well, someone beat me to it, but I had it copied anyway.

A panda goes into a bar, orders a sandwich, fires a gun and heads for the door. "Why did you do that?" the barman calls after him. The panda tosses him a badly punctuated wildlife manual. "I'm a panda," he says. "Look me up." The barman finds the relevant page, which says, "Panda. Large black-and-white, bearlike mammal native of China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Heh.

Well, I just went and joined databases, in hopes that I can get some Access tips.

It's rare to learn a new word from a comic strip. Chickweed Lane seems to be rather erudite, considering the one of the main characters (the mom)has a doctorate in mathematics...

http://www.livejournal.com/users/chickweed_comic/45135.html

pan·jan·drum
Pronunciation: pan-'jan-dr&m
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -drums also pan·jan·dra /-dr&/
Etymology: Grand Panjandrum, burlesque title of an imaginary personage in some nonsense lines by Samuel Foote
: a powerful personage or pretentious official

I think I've found a new euphemism for the Shrub.

I've always thought this was a neat word - I like that it only used to mean a bad hair day.

From Merriam-WebsterL

widdershins \WIH-der-shinz\ (adverb)
: in a left-handed, wrong, or contrary direction
: counterclockwise

Example sentence:
"He turned to his right, knowing that it is unlucky to walk about a church widdershins." (Dorothy Sayers, _The Nine Tailors_)

Did you know?
Legend holds that demons always approached the devil widdershins. Not surprisingly, such a path was considered evil and unlucky. By the mid-1500s, English speakers had adopted "widdershins" (from the Middle High German "wider," meaning "back, against," and "sinnen," meaning "to travel") for anything following a path opposite to the direction the sun travels across the sky (that is, counterclockwise). But in its earliest known uses "widdershins" was far less malignant; it was used simply to describe a case of bad hair in which unruly locks stood on end or fell the wrong way.

Taken from Merriam-Wesbter Word of the Day:

estival • \ESS-tuh-vul\ • (adjective)
: of or relating to the summer

Example sentence:
Curt basked in the simple estival joys, lolling in his hammock in the heat of midday, sipping an icy lemonade, and listening to the gentle hum of nearby bees.

Did you know?
"Estival" and "festival" look so much alike (and the estival months lend themselves so well to festivals) that you might think they're very closely related, but that isn't the case. "Estival" traces back to "aestas," which is the Latin word for "summer" (and which also gave us "estivate," a verb for spending the summer in a torpid state—a sort of hot-weather equivalent of hibernation). "Festival" also comes from Latin, but it has a different and unrelated root. It derives from "festivus," a term that means "festive" or "merry." "Festivus" is also the ancestor of "festive," as well as "festivity," the much rarer "festivous" (which also means "festive"), and the also rare "infestive," meaning "not merry, mirthless."

Well, I knew about estivating, but this was a new one.

Main Entry: ob·strep·er·ous <http://www.m-w.com/images/audio.gif>
Pronunciation: &b-'stre-p(&-)r&s, äb-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin obstreperus, from obstrepere to clamor against, from ob- against + strepere to make a noise
Date: circa 1600
1 : marked by unruly or aggressive noisiness : CLAMOROUS
2 : stubbornly resistant to control : UNRULY
synonym see VOCIFEROUS
- ob·strep·er·ous·ly adverb
- ob·strep·er·ous·ness noun

Used in a news article about the air marshals who detained an "obstreperous" passenger, and pointed guns at other passengers while doing it.

I did post a comment, and realized that instead of writing "I'm having a brain-fart," I had left out a word and written "I'm a brain-fart."

Two entirely different things! ;p