I watched Pretty in Pink today for the first time in years.

I’ve seen it many times, back when I was younger… back when I was different.

In the past, I always rooted for Ducky and despised Blain, but this time I saw things differently. This time, Ducky’s class clown ways and exuberant silly behavior were obnoxious, not endearing. His inability to work up the nerve to talk to Andie about his feelings just screamed of weakness and patheticness.

Blain on the other hand, upon this viewing, I found to be strong. I admired him for standing up to his friends. To do what he felt was right despite what others thought or said. Of course he wasn’t perfect, but no one ever is (especially in a John Hughes movie).

I think in the past, I may have wished Ducky got the girl because he is strange, and I was strange too. I felt a connection with the oddly dressed outsider. Now, I just think him sad.

I’m now nearly halfway through Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman and I must confess I am entranced. Gaiman truly is a literary genius and is ever fighting his way up my list of favorite authors.

The book, a collection of short fictions, poetries, and personal recounts if phenomenal. The stories contained within it are brilliant and thoughtful and seem to breathe as if they have a life of their own. Despite the differing genres or unconnected style, they are all clearly and undeniably Gaiman’s voice.

The collection starts with A Study in Emerald. A strangely homogeneous Sherlock Holmes story set in world inhabited (and ruled) by The Old Ones of HP Lovecraft’s tales. To be sucked so far in to world so unfamiliar and yet still feel perfectly at home is strangely remarkable feeling.

This book has reawakened me to reading. I fell out of the habit some months ago. From time to time, I attempted to start up again, but those attempts failed and I have several books sitting about, gathering dust, that were started but never finished.

And it feels good to be reading again. To forsake the computer and the television and the Internet with all its distractions and entrapments… It feels good to say “Fuck it all. I’m going to go outside, sit on my patio, and read.”

And that is just what I am about to do right now.

XIX. The Trials of Robert Winter, Thomas Winter, Guy Fawkes, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, and Sir Everard Digby, at Westminster for High-Treason, being Conspirators in the Gunpowder-Plot. 27 Jan. 1605. 3 Jac. l.

The Effect of the Indictment. THAT whereas our Sovereign Lord the King had, by the Advice and Assent of his Council, for divers weighty and urgent Occasions concerning, his Majesty, the State, and Defence of the Church and Kingdom of England, appointed a Parliament to be holden at his City of Westminster…

Click here for a full transcript of the trial. (and yes, it’s long and hard but a great wonderful read.

is exciting, but not so easy.

The previous blog was labeled as “Random and interesting etymologies”, but that is indeed false.

That blog consisted of carefully selected etymologies.

That is all.

Dibbs

It is suggested that this expression derives from a very old children’s game called dibstones. This game, played with sheep knuckle-bones or pebbles, dates back at least to the 17th century (well, that’s when the name first pops up in the written). The object was to capture one’s opponent’s stones, and when a stone was captured, the victorious player would call “Dibbs!” with the meaning “I claim [the stone]“. It soon came to be used outside the game but with a similar meaning, and there you have it. Interestingly, that usage outside of the game isn’t recorded until 1932 in the US.

Senator

From the Latin “senex,” meaning “old”; thus related to “senile.”

Liberty

The Latin words “Liber,” “Libera,” and “Liberum” — with a Long I — came from the root meaning, “to pour.” From this, we get the word “Liberty” (hence pronounced with a short I), from the freedom we feel when we get drunk.

Heresy

Greek for “Choice.”

Salary; Salt

In the early days of Rome its soldiers were given a handful of salt each day. The salt ration was subsequently replaced by a sum of money allowing each man to buy his own, and relieving the commisariat of the trouble of transporting it. The money received was referred to as their “salt money” (salarium in Latin). Eventually, the term would make its way into medieval France, where a soldier’s payment was known as his solde (which is still in use today as the term for a soldier’s or sailor’s pay), and it was in paid for with a special coin called a sol. By extension, the word also came to refer not only to a soldier’s wage, but also to the soldier himself, evidenced by the medieval French term soldat, which itself came from the Old French soudier. For its part, the English word “soldier” comes from the Middle English souder, which also derived from soudier.

Utopia

Greek for “no where.”

Threshold

“Threshold” originated in the middle ages when houses with stone floors were covered with threshings to keep the floor warm and to prevent it from being slippery. As threshings were added during the winter, they would be scattered and thinned near the door, so people added a wooden board to hold the threshings in — a threshold. The OED defines threshold originally as, “The piece of timber or stone which lies below the bottom of a door, and has to be crossed in entering a house; the sill of a doorway; hence, the entrance to a house or building.

Thanks given to http://www.westegg.com. More etymologies can be found here: http://www.westegg.com/etymology/.

The explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or “shaving off,” those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. In short, when given two equally valid explanations for a phenomenon, one should embrace the less complicated formulation.

I love Devi. She is the ultimate hotness.

And neither can turtles.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Don’t believe them!