Virge's blog

And one just for Neil Gaiman:

An author of note and dark fiction,
who speaks with his fans and conviction,
keeps raising awareness,
his child, and unfairness
of comic book free speech restriction.

[edit: acknowledged in Neil's Journal]

I was introduced to Zeugma and Syllepsis today while reading Neil Gaiman's Journal. They are a confused couple. If I could find some agreement between different dictionaries on what their meanings are, I'd tell you. For now let me just talk about a grammatical construct that might be called zeugma and/or syllepsis. ("Syllugma" will do for the moment if you need to put a name to the concept.)

What it means is to use a single word in conjunction with two (or more) other words but where the single word has a different meaning in relation to each. One example here would be better than me trying to cobble up more words about words, so: "Mr. Pickwick took his hat and his leave."

So what use is it? It's just another way to play with words, isn't it?

Yes! And it sounds to me like an excellent way to squeeze more meaning (and confusion) into an economy of words. Since it also demands the ambiguous use of a word, it sounds ideal for inserting humour. I decided to set myself the challenge of writing a limerick containing examples of zeugmata and/or syllepses.

The Bitch

She had days and a fortune to spend
at the roulette wheel and a loose end.
She carelessly wrote
off her car and a note
to her shame and her husband's best friend.

The Pugilistic Poet

He was short of a quid and with words
when he lived for each day and with nerds.
He, to make matters worse,
knocked out thugs and light verse
'cause it picked up his mood and the birds.

View More Limericks

Maybe I spoke too soon. I can't seem to see a link for adding a comment in a lot of the journal entries. Maybe there was something that was lost in the upgrade.

It also seems that the search function isn't working - but then I had no search at all in the previous version, so there's no loss.

On the plus side, the journal should now provide an RSS feed for those who like their journals aggregated. I've just recently started using Bloglines.

[edit: ok search is now working. If in doubt, look at the settings. ]

Evil on a Budget
Visible Barbie Project
Furbeowulf Cluster
Wodehouse verse *
I like to watch
Science Scams

Sauron + Law *
Trolls! *
End Of The World - WTF? (3.6Mb)
Once More With Hobbits *
Gollum Rap
Cthulhu Tract

I've just upgraded pivot. Aside from loss of a few recent lists, I think I've managed to avoid losing anything. I still need to do a bit of neatening up, but I might as well go live now that I've done the change-over.

Why is it that small focus groups with passionate leaders grow into huge, blunt instruments wielded by crackpot fanatics?

Teresa's Making Light drew my attention to PETA's New Comic for Kids. As usual, I had to try to find some understanding, some rationalisation to explain how the leaders of PETA could think their campaign was doing anything to further their cause. I tried putting myself in Ingrid Newkirk's non-animal-product shoes:

It's very easy to explain
morality prescribed by pain.
You see it's clear, all must abstain
from hurting flesh that boasts a brain.

To those whose eyes perceive, it's plain --
the kindness of our cruel campaign:
"Who shocks the cradle can constrain
the thoughts this world will entertain."

So stuff your "spare the kids" disdain
and logic-based legerdemain.
Sadly, sincerely, I remain,
Ingrid, ineffectual...
yet again.

After some wide ranging discussions on subjects such as Furbeowulf Cluster Computing and the possibility of keeping a 15 kg binturong as a pet, my esteemed (for freedom of thought) colleague pointed his browser at LavaRnd.org to show me the benefits of using a lava lamp as a natural chaotic source of high quality randomness. It was then that I had my brilliant idea.

IDEA: The Combination CPU Cooler and Chaos Source (now unpatentable since I've just published the idea right here). Picture a miniature lava lamp that attaches to your computer's CPU. A light source (e.g. LED) illuminates one side of the lamp, and an inexpensive solid state array imager is placed on the other side. Heat from the CPU drives the conduction & convection in the lamp which then behaves as a heat pump, cooling the CPU. The pictures of the chaotically changing image are read from the imaging device and blended to create a stream of truly random data. This is a valuable source of irreproducible random data for use by any cryptographic applications or other programs requiring unique random sequences.

On further reflection, this marvelously synergistic idea had still more to offer. My creative colleague added a third application to the idea. The Combination CPU Cooler, Chaos Source and Mood Modifier. For those techno-fashion geeks who have transparent computer cases, the invention provides a mesmerising 60's-futuristic entertainment source and tension reliever. When the spam fills your mailbox like a backed up bog, when your network is lagged like the router is on Mars, when the online discussion gets all-capped by semi-literate AOLers, simply stare into your computer and watch the blobs flow and merge, stretch and split...

It's not often you find a person with a hate for the letter vee. The hatred seems to stem from concentrating too much on end-game strategies in scrabble.

I had to respond in defense of my initial.

I'm appalled by your "V"ilification
rising purely from some vague vexation
with very short words
in a vain game for nerds.
I view it as vile provocation.

[edit: I stand corrected. The hatred of vee arises from its reluctance to form stable, monogamous relationships with other individual letters.]

I updated my limericks page with some from the old caustic limerick thread. They are posted under "about Friends". Here's a nasty one I'd forgotten I wrote:

If we root through your thoughts we should find
mainly empties your brain left behind
when it threw in the towel
and crawled though your bowel
to leak out where the sun never shined.

(Gotta love that English language abuse in the last line ;))