For those of you who've played Sonic Adventure 2: Battle

Has anyone else noticed that Rouge the Bat is a little...jiggly? Not in the stereotypical video-game-female-jiggle manner, though--Rouge's bust is as unmoving and chaste as a bronzed nun (which is probably for the best, seeing as it's a frigging BAT). No, it's her ears. They just don't stop moving. Ever. To me, that's way creepier than the visual image I just gave myself of dipping a nun in molten bronze.

Basically I just wanted an excuse to say "Bronzed nun." I think that's my best simile ever.

Fidel Castro

Holy hell, he just won't die. Fidel Castro is clearly a descendant of Rasputin. No, wait. Fidel Castro IS Rasputin.

***THIS IS A BREAK TO INDICATE A TOTALLY DIFFERENT SUBJECT. I AM AN EXCELLENT SEGUE-WRITER.***

Foodwatch 2007: Hour five. I'm fasting for Yom Kippur. I've never done it before so I don't know if I'll last until Saturday evening. I'll probably be hungry and cranky during the physics lab tomorrow afternoon, which will affect my results in interesting ways. I'll probably have things like V² = V₀² + SCRW YOU GUYS THIS SUCKESS. I can't wait!

h-diaeresis

We need a character for h with diaeresis. Well, there already is one (ḧ -- you might not have the right font to read that) but it's not in common use. Actually, it's not in use at all. Wikipedia acknowledges its existence but does not have an article nor mention any use for it. I would suggest it be used like ä ë ï ö and ü are used in English: namely, to indicate the start of a new syllable where it might be missed, like in naïve or coördinate.

There are many places where one could use an h-diaeresis! Take The Great Gatsby. There's a character named Wolfsheim. That's not pronounced WULF-shaim, it's pronounced WULFS-haim. Other words which could benefit from an h-diaeresis include the following: lighthearted, lightheaded, butthead, misheard, fathead, shepherd, lefthanded, and, of course, asshat. I've already started using h-diaeresis in my homework, but it's not that often that I get to use it. Maybe someone will notice eventually.

UshankaUshanka: Did I tell you my plan for Fiji?
bladez740: no
UshankaUshanka: Okay, some background info
UshankaUshanka: Fiji has had four--FOUR--military coups in the last 19 years
UshankaUshanka: Every one is because someone thought the current government was either a) too racist or b) not racist enough
UshankaUshanka: The majority of Fiji's population is Hindu descendants of Indian slaves, but the majority of the government and economy are controlled by native Fijians.
UshankaUshanka: So, in the most recent coup this February
UshankaUshanka: The army/police chief, who is in charge of EVERY FIREARM IN THE COUNTRY, noticed that of the 1000 tracts of land the government gave away that year, 997 of them went to native Fijians.
UshankaUshanka: "That's pretty racist!" he thought. "I have all the guns and all the soldiers in the country, I should do something about this!"
UshankaUshanka: So he drew up a list of his demands
UshankaUshanka: and gave them to the prime minister saying that he had three weeks to comply or else the military/police forces would rebel and take over.
UshankaUshanka: In other words, he gave three weeks' warning before staging a coup.
UshankaUshanka: They knew three weeks in advance that he was going to attack them. They had three weeks to prepare.
UshankaUshanka: And yet he still succeeded in taking over the country.
UshankaUshanka: But he's not much better
UshankaUshanka: like, lynching people and stuff
UshankaUshanka: So the way I see it, I should take over Fiji. It can't be too hard if you can stage a coup with three weeks' warning, right?
UshankaUshanka: I'll kick everyone out, deport them to Antarctica or something.
UshankaUshanka: And I won't let them back in until they can prove that they can play nice.

At long last!

I've been trying to read and translate a Spanish guidebook on Silbo Gomero for a while now. At long last, I've reached the part where it explains the mechanisms behind the identification of letters! Now I understand how to speak Silbo Gomero! The next problem is actually speaking Silbo Gomero.

Silbo is a whistled language, intended to be heard over a range of a couple miles. To generate a whistle loud enough to travel this distance, one has to use the "fingers-in-mouth" method. And boy is it difficult. All I've succeeded in doing so far is to hyperventilate and to cover my fingers in a film of slobber. I'm going to keep trying, so don't shake my hand for a couple of days, alright?

I've decided that I really want to visit the idyllic green lake seen in Hero, or some lake like it.

That's all I've got for tonight. I'm not really feeling the blaggy vibes.

A letter to Jamie Foxx

Dear Jamie Foxx,

I think you are a fine man and I respect your acting skills greatly, but I still cannot overlook something you did in 2005. The incident in question is one of the greatest disasters in cinematic history.

I am talking, of course, about your Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for your role as Max, the islophilic cab driver from Collateral. Now, don't get me wrong, I think you did a great job in that movie, but I do not believe you qualified as a "supporting actor." As I recall, you had more lines and more screen-time than any other cast member. This should classify you as the lead actor, should it not? How did you get into the supporting actor category?

I posit, Mr. Foxx, that you quite selfishly and purposefully demoted yourself to "supporting" actor so that you could have a shot at winning TWO Academy Awards in 2005. See, you had already been nominated for best actor for your role in Ray. If you were nominated for best actor twice, you could only win one award, but if you were nominated for both best actor AND best supporting actor, you had a shot at a second award! Fortunately for easily-angered people like myself, you did not win your second award--had you been voted best supporting actor, I may have had an aneurysm.

I've suffered in silence long enough, Mr. Foxx. Every time I have seen or heard your name, I remember this gross abuse of power, and it pains me greatly. What with The Kingdom coming out soon, I don't think I could have survived much longer without telling you of my great dissatisfaction.

Regards,
Sam "Captain Awesome" Ettinger
Semiprofessional bellyacher

Hon-Wasabiiiiiiiii

So, after hours of laborious research, I've found hon-wasabi for sale from the kiwi-mafia of New Zealand. I get 50 grams of dried, powdered hon-wasabi for $13.55 including shipping, or 150 grams for $25.50. Those are US Dollars, not NZ Dollars. That's really, really, REALLY expensive for a food additive. I'm going to finance all of this if I have to, but if someone out there wants to pay for part of this I promise you'll get a generous ratio.

This is kind of exciting. If the dried, powdered hon-wasabi tastes good, I may have to shell out the $300 to get a fresh, intact rhizome. Mmmmm, my mouth is burning already.

On Gangs

Alright, since I don't have enough ridiculous pursuits with which to waste my time, I'm going to continue fleshing out the idea of The Superfluous U's as a gang. We're a hyperlingual gang dedicated to confusing people, spreading pro-metric propaganda, and teaching bad words to children in foreign languages. Also, we find linguistics at least mildly thought provoking. All Superfluous U's must pick a sufficiently linguistic gangster name. I already claimed the diacritical mess mentioned below, and someone else (Hi ERTW!) is "circumflexxx," so you've got to avoid infringing on those names. The moment you pick a decent linguistic name and tell me about it, you are entered into the Superfluous U's. Then it's your duty as a gangster to go out there and confuse people, spread pro-metric propaganda, or teach bad words to children. Have fun!

Coming soon: A logo!

On iPods and Unicode support

So, one of the bands on my iPod is the ever-awesome Moxy Früvous. Also, some of the songs and artists are in Japanese, like the song "ホスピタル ダブ (名医とよばれたい)," by 鈴木慶一, 田中宏和, 松前公高, and on the album "MOTHER 1+2 オリジナル サウンドトラック." All of these show up properly, so clearly the iPod has some Unicode support for letters beyond the standard letters used in English. But just how much support did it have?

Enter đȉẳƙṝḭʈḯɕ. For those of you who can't read that, it should look like this:


That's "LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH STROKE, LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH DOUBLE GRAVE, LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH BREVE AND HOOK ABOVE, LATIN SMALL LETTER K WITH HOOK, LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH DOT BELOW AND MACRON, LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH TILDE BELOW, LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH RETROFLEX HOOK, LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH DIAERESIS AND ACUTE, LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CURL" for all you people who wanna go look it up in your Unicode handbook. Yeah, I know you're out there.

I made a three-second track of silence and said it was by The Superfluous U's, which, incidentally, would be an awesome name for a hyperlinguistic gang. I call dibs. I also gave the album name the ridiculous squiggly mess above, which, incidentally, would be an awesome name for a hyperlinguistic gangster. I call dibs again.

So, anyway, what did the iPod do? iTunes successfully displayed all the letters, but the iPod displayed it as đṝḭḯ (that's the d, the r, and the last two i's). Man, what a gyp. I should do as Mitch did, and walk into the Apple headquarters, screaming "YOU OWE ME SOME LETTERS!"

Edit: As it stands in this post, my gangster name is literally unpronounceable. To compensate, I changed the d-with-stroke to d-with-middle-tilde and the i-with-diaeresis-and-acute to i-with-stroke. Now it's theoretically pronounceable, but I still can't do it.