Dork Alert

People's message board handles (translation for parents: "handle" = the user name you call yourself instead of your real name) often make me laugh due to their cleverosity. Sometimes, they reveal a geeky sensibility that I proudly share, and their little inside joke makes me feel like part of a greater Internet whole.

Other times, a message board handle overwhelms me with its dorky intelligence, and I'm almost ashamed at the inner glee I feel upon seeing it. That happened today.

The name? "Yclept." Say what? Well, you pronounce it "ee-klept," and in Middle English, it means "named." Comes up a lot in The Canterbury Tales.

***End dork alert***

Halloween costumes -- as promised.

We both went with hoodie-based costumes this year, because they are warm, easy to make into other stuff, and cheap. Good times. I had my sights set on being an octopus this year, just because my inner five-year-old wanted "something with tentacles." That is a direct quote. I am really proud of Chris' costume -- I saw this blue hoodie at Old Navy, and realized it was furry on the entire inside. Inside-out hoodie + ping pong balls = casual-but-fun Cookie Monster! I am slowly molding Chris into the Halloween-loving citizen he should have been long ago. Yay!



I am sorry that I didn't get better pictures of the hundreds of tiny felt suckers I glued to the tentacles. I assure you it was awesome.

Next year: Luke, Leia, and Yoda.

Oh hey, BTW I'm having a baby or something.

I mean, I'm pretty sure it's a baby. I've seen a bunch of pictures of what is allegedly my uterus, which contains a moving thing that is either a baby or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

This post is pretty much for whichever of my two readers didn't already know. As of today, I'm a little over halfway there, and due in mid-to-late March. It should be a pretty cool kid. I'm trying really hard not to be an obsessed mommy type person, because I mock those people and that would be really awkward.

Anyway, I was searching my library's database today for some books on natural childbirth, on account of my need to know too much about every hobby* I get myself into. You can see why I found the results hilarious.
* Uh, yeah, having a baby totally counts as a hobby. It adheres to all the major tenents of Hobbydom:

1. Costs money
2. Requires specialized gear
3. You do it on purpose
4. People spend a lot of time on irritating message boards devoted solely to the subject/activity
5. When talking about the subject/activity, you quickly bore the hell out of people who aren't directly participating in said activity

Bad copy of the day award -- CNN edition

This is not a post about how terrible CNN’s online editors have become. That’s been old news for at least five years. Instead, I’d like to gleefully point out one of the more confusing and egregious word choices to appear in recent memory.

Tyler Perry is attempting to become a more serious filmmaker by putting out a movie called “For Colored Women,” based on a play with a similar (but longer) name. The news story is about Perry’s struggle to get people besides “colored women” to come see it – he’s afraid that everyone else will assume they won’t relate to the movie. The story paraphrases a local man on the street’s view of the potential problem:

“Yet he [the man interviewed] too said he has wondered how Perry will reach nonwomen of color with a movie explicitly about women of color.”

“Nonwomen”? That little gem doesn’t even make it past my spell check program, let alone pass any logic tests. I can understand people having a hard time pluralizing “courts martial” or getting confused by “yes we have no bananas today,” but this brand of lazy and wrong just hurts. CNN, this isn’t your first offense by far, but I’ll still try to help you out a little bit:

“Yet he [the man interviewed] too said he has wondered how Perry will reach _______ with a movie explicitly about women of color.”

• “other demographics”
• "a broader audience"
• "a wider array of viewers"
• “the eponymous group of ladies, as well as, but not limited to, men of color, men of less color, women and men with not much pigment at all, people who blush easily, albinos (but not the freaky kind who walk around with no sunglasses on so you can see their weird red eyes), and kids between the ages of 16 and 24 who aren’t caught up with either Twilight or pretentious art flicks.”