24 May 00 
 
One has heard of getting too big for your britches, but a pair of my 
britches is getting too big for me.  Anybody have some spare suspenders? 
 
Well, I've started realizing there is nothing particularly sacred about any 
printed text (unless it's someone else's), so now I'm underlining words or 
phrases I don't know.  I come across quite a few in NYPress, and some in 
the Harold Bloom book I've been reading. 
 
So here's today's crop: 
 
hagiographic 
Nibelung's treasure hoard 
crapulous (I know what this means, but just checking to see if it's 
"officially" a word) 
tendentiousness 
MOR (this one needs context: "The fundamental job of today's Pet Negro -- 
usually black intellectuals or media mavens, conservative, MOR or so-called 
oppositional -- is either to interpret black culture to niche-market 
whites, or to make the kind of statements about blacks that would label a 
white a racist.") 
hiphop headmoes (from the same article) 
newjack Negroes (ibid) 
tropes (it's a noun) 
 
 
 
I decided to visit askjeeves and ask silly questions: the first of which 
was "How can I kill da wabbit?"  I was actually surprised that the first 
thing that came back was an offer to go to the Looney Tunes site for sound 
files - for some reason, i can pull down the menu to get Monty Hall or 
friends sound files, too.  The second on the list was a referral to an 
insidious joke program that copied itself incessantly. 
 
The second question:  How many roads must a man walk down before you can 
call him a man?  First result: an offer to find driving directions, 
second: an offer to give an Encyclopedia Brittanica article on Men.  It 
gets funnier: an offer to find free phone service, and then a definition of 
the financial term call. 
 
Actually, one of the web page matches is a mini-fact sheet of an author, 
who says he knows how many roads it takes, but he's not divulging the 
information. 
 
So today at the guitar lesson I taught Chris Ullrich (well, not during the 
lesson but afterward) how to inscribe a vesica pisces in a great 
circle.  Soon to show up in guitar design!