Hot Wawa Cashier(tm): good morning.

me, handing over my requisite coffee and gum, plus two donuts, which i only buy because he refuses to charge me for the coffee and i can’t in good conscience take it without handing over a minimum sum money for something: morning. how are you?

HWC: good. better than yesterday. and how are you?

me: okay.

HWC: just okay?

me: i think i’m getting a cold.

HWC: noooo, you can’t do that. fight it!

me: i think it’s too late.

HWC: no! what you have to do is, as soon as you think you might be getting one, you have to load up on vitamin C!

me, nodding toward my purchases and giving my best whatchoo talkin bout, willis face: that’s what the donuts are for.

HWC, looking pained: i think maybe you should take a nutrition class instead of learning about bugs. this is comfort food.

me: what, i don’t deserve a little comfort in my illness?

HWC: you’re not that ill. you can still walk.

me: for the moment…

HWC: fine, whatever… feel better. jerk.

so i volunteer as the music librarian for my orchestra.  i also, in an unrelated capacity, authored the member feedback survey that was sent to the musicians earlier today; one of the questions asks people to rate the effectiveness of various volunteers and staff members, including me.

i just took a look at the responses that have come in so far.  one of the respondents skipped that particular item, noting that “i don’t use the librarian.”

i el-oh-elled at that, and am seriously left wondering what, exactly, this person thinks other people are doing with me.

dyirbal is an australian aboriginal language currently spoken by about five people. it is famous among linguists chiefly for the peculiar way in which it categorises its nouns. get a hot load of this peculiar scheme:

i - animate objects and men
ii - women, dangerous things and exceptional animals
iii - everything edible that is not meat
iv - things not classified in other categories

class i contains words like: rainbows, boomerangs, and storms. in addition to women and fire, class ii contains bandicoots, water, and scorpions. edible objects that aren’t meat in class iii include cigarettes.

i actually fail to see a problem with this, bahaa.  i think english should follow the example put forth here, specifically the separation of men and women into different noun classes; maybe then we could lose “words” like wimmin and herstory. 

plus it’s just funny to group men and rainbows together.  makes all their chest-pounding far less effective at a very basic level.

question: what is the definition of awesome? 

answer: this is.

another round of (very fast, very painful) sledding in the ‘burg. yay winter!

ganked from geekologie, home of much that is rad.