We found out more about Leif's future plans this weekend. When asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, he answered, "Be a professional soccer player." Asked what he wanted to do if he couldn't be a professional soccer player, he answered, "Be a professional golfer." When asked what he wanted to do if that didn't work out, "Be a professional baseball player." Then he was asked what he wanted to do if playing a sport professionally wasn't an option, "Let my wife work."

I find Mr Noodle unbearably creepy. Something about a grown man who apparently does nothing but hang around outside a 4 year-old's bedroom window all day...

Tongue twisters

In search of the world’s hardest language

...

Berik, a language of New Guinea, also requires words to encode information that no English speaker considers. Verbs have endings, often obligatory, that tell what time of day something happened; telbener means “[he] drinks in the evening”. Where verbs take objects, an ending will tell their size: kitobana means “gives three large objects to a man in the sunlight.” Some verb-endings even say where the action of the verb takes place relative to the speaker: gwerantena means “to place a large object in a low place nearby”. Chindali, a Bantu language, has a similar feature. One cannot say simply that something happened; the verb ending shows whether it happened just now, earlier today, yesterday or before yesterday. The future tense works in the same way.

...

With all that in mind, which is the hardest language? On balance The Economist would go for Tuyuca, of the eastern Amazon. It has a sound system with simple consonants and a few nasal vowels, so is not as hard to speak as Ubykh or !Xóõ. Like Turkish, it is heavily agglutinating, so that one word, hóabãsiriga means “I do not know how to write.” Like Kwaio, it has two words for “we”, inclusive and exclusive. The noun classes (genders) in Tuyuca’s language family (including close relatives) have been estimated at between 50 and 140. Some are rare, such as “bark that does not cling closely to a tree”, which can be extended to things such as baggy trousers, or wet plywood that has begun to peel apart.

Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”. English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.

Using donuts to explain cell mitosis: [link]

The groom's cake in Steel Magnolias was a red velvet cake in the shape of an armadillo.

At my cousin's wedding last summer that was the groom's cake: [link]

She's sickish and didn't want to get up, wouldn't be bribed or cozened or bullied into it, just sobbed and raged and went simultaneously corpse-rigid and boa constrictor-squirmy, and finally just howled at me in helpless fury.

That's sort of how I wanted to greet the day. But the cat wasn't having any, so I had coffee instead. Perhaps Matilda would do better with a nice cup of Sumatran?

While we're talking nails, anyone have a product rec or two for nails that peel? I've been keeping mine short and using OPI's Nail Envy as a base coat, but the peeling will not stop. And I can't resist peeling them. Will consider another base coat or pills.

Stop using Nail Envy (long-term use will hose your nails and make them brittle) in favor of just a plain base coat. File the edges of them using a glass/crystal file *or* a four-way buffer.

Stop using Nail Envy (long-term use will hose your nails and make them brittle) in favor of just a plain base coat.

NOW you tell me.

File the edges of them using a glass/crystal file *or* a four-way buffer

I don't file them, period. Gives me the heebie-jeebies. I just clip them.

Groom's cakes are typically done in a fashion to show a hobby or something of the groom. In my family we have had: a NASCAR track with die cast cars on it, a putting green, a big mouth bass, and an open Bible with a favorite verse on it.

Today is going slow. I'm having a really hard time getting back into the swing of things here. I just feel off synch.

Today is going slow. I'm having a really hard time getting back into the swing of things here. I just feel off synch.

Sorry.

I've cut out drinking coffee, but I decided to create a "Monday morning exception." So I feel good (for as long as the caffeine stays in my brain, at least).