Security Words

Sessibl

I have a fondness for those nonsense words that web pages make you type in as a security feature before you can comment, or click through to some other page. I like how they are word-like, but not words. I can imagine to myself how they would be pronounced, and used in a sentence, even, but they are still non-words. It is this quality of wordness (to make up yet another word) that makes them good for security purposes. Machines cannot guess them, because they are not real words and don't really follow any pattern, but any thinking person with a sense of grammar rules and linguistics (which is most everyone who has grown up with language) can recognize a funny closeness, an easy familiarity in them. I'm thinking about writing a poem using mainly these words, if I can collect enough of them. So far I have the word at the top of this post, "sweambo," and "ourse." Evocative, don't you think?

On a related note, I just completed a "spam check" security question on the utahfm page that required I DO MATH rather than type a made-up word. WTF? Why you gotta go ruin my fun by using math for security checks rather than spiffy word-like non-words? I know what 9 + 9 equals; that's not a problem, but don't start getting fancy and asking something like 2x + 7[y]/84 = z. I'll be screwed.

Vivas las palabras. (That's for Thomas, who is learning spanish.)

UPDATE: Here is the poem I just wrote. I particularly love the first stanza. I have a feeling more of these will be written shortly, after all, I'm in the middle of grading finals!

Shbusne

In sessible sweambo
viativis ourse.
Intae winglike nossun,
semming a zorter harchie.

Movence bycol uryngin
coosse the fabions,
tarous aryor so resotsho
then daursm termove nomou.

Deali bilito.
Deali bilito.
Sessa affiliaj,
sessa cernhog.
Dabings straion
over the prousti ingul

or in sessible sweambo.
Viativis ourse,
Intae winglike nossun.
Viativis ourse nossun.

And Something I Love

Thank-you, "The Office".

Some Things I Hate

Why does this suck so so so so bad?


Demolition String Band covering Madonna's "Like a Prayer."

And how much do I hate when bluegrass bands call themselves string bands?

And another thing I hate: discovering a new string band that sounds good on instrumentals, but sing in that saccharin cutesy voice that has somehow become attached to "old timey" music. I'll take my old-timey singing raw and with some grit, thank-you. If it sounds "cute" and "pretty," you aren't doing it right.

Okay, I'm done.

Why You Shouldn't Trust Plumbers

We had a leaky faucet.

It wasn't a drip problem; it was a split seam on the side of the spout so that water jetted out the side of the spout (and over the side of the tub) every time we used the shower problem.

When I looked at it, I thought: "No problem. We just screw off the busted spout and screw on a new one" That's when the doubts set in. What if it isn't that simple? Why are plumbers paid so much if it's really that easy? Maybe I should have a professional look at it.

We had some professionals look at it. They suggested replacing the whole faucet and piping to the shower head. For $550!!!!! The other professionals we called wanted to charge us $85 just to come and look at it!

Fortunately, Molly's dad suggested we look at England Plumbing, on 33rd East and about 10th South. England is an old-time locally owned plumbing supply shop that carries new and salvaged parts. Today we drove out and showed them a picture of our tub spout. In less than a minute the guy had the part in our hands and we were paying for it. He said: "Just unscrew the old spout and screw this one on."


Like I thought originally! And the best part is that the new spout cost $10. I'm not sure why I doubted myself. I've always had an intuition about how things are made and put together. I probably should have been an engineer.

So, in my experience plumbers WILL take advantage of those who are unsure about how things work. If I hadn't had that nagging doubt in my mind, we may have paid $550 for a whole new, fancy, metal faucet and spigot and shower riser that we didn't even need!


NEW SPOUT!

Two loves: Ida and my fiddle.

I've been playing the fiddle for about 7 years now. The first two years were misery. I thought I sounded awful. Learning any concrete song was like trying to use chopsticks for the first time again. The one thing I eventually developed was an excellent ear for melody, and the ability to follow along in a lilting sort of rhythm.

I was always painfully aware that my fiddling lacked the drive, the rhythm, the flexibility of true old-time fiddling. But, I could play along with many of the songs we played, and eventually I thought it sounded okay (but not great) when I played along with the melody.

Enter Chris.

Chris is a local banjo-player and fiddler with a band called "Bueno Avenue String Band." He plays a rollicking, loosey-goosey, good-time fiddle that I found myself wishing I could replicate. We've played music a few times together now, he's given me some excellent tips on old-time fiddling, showed me how to cross-tune my fiddle, and all of a sudden I'm having a hell of a lot of fun listening to fiddle music, thinking about how the sound is created, and then trying to come up with my own phrasing on my fiddle. So far, the tunes I've learned are: "Cherry River Line," "Black Eyed Daisy," "Over the Waterfall," "Willow Garden," and most recently, "Cluck Old Hen."

All of this makes me very happy.

As for Ida, we had an impromptu photo shoot night when she was tired and lying on the bed. I started taking pictures and it was like she was posing in the most adorable positions on purpose so that I could take pictures with my iphone. I think she was a plus-size model in some previous life. Here are a few other pictures from our shoot:


Of course, I would be remiss to write a blog entry about loves without mentioning Shed and Molly. I'm damn lucky to have them. It's good to remember that right now, with my work future on uncertain ground. If all else fails, I can become an itinerant fiddler, and train Shed and Ida to dance around like monkeys as I saw a tune and Molly backs us up on rhythm guitar.

In Love Like...

I was thinking this morning about why it is that some cds don't hit you until months, years, decades after you first acquire them. This is a topic I've discussed many times with my brother Thomas, (who writes about music on his blogs--casket, shroud, and grave and per diem) because we're always giving each other music, and only months later finding ourselves really loving it.

This has been on my mind recently because I put on an old cd by the Avett Brothers in my car, the other day, and ended up falling in love with at least 3 songs that I had never noticed before. I got the cd about 3 years ago, when I was a DJ at KRCL. In those days, with KRCL's huge library of music, I was always scrounging up albums, copying them, finding one song I liked to play on the show, and then moving on to the next cd. That's one problem with DJing--I have a compulsion to keep finding new artists, new songs, new sounds. That means that I often move through cds quickly, mining songs and not paying attention to the cd as a whole. The Avett Brothers' cd, "A Carolina Jubilee," provided me with a song that I loved, and which I played on the show. I think once I heard this one song, I stopped listening to the record:

This week, with the cd in my car on my commute to work, I've discovered 3 new songs that I cannot believe I didn't fall immediately in love with before.

and

Right now these songs seem so obviously FANTASTIC, that I can't believe I didn't like them when I heard the album for the very first time. But no, except for "Love Like the Movies," I thought I didn't like this album. Why is that? I have no clear explanation except for this one possibility: at the time, I was listening to a lot of music by the Magnetic Fields that Thomas had passed on to me. Not surprisingly, "Love Like the Movies" is the most Magnetic Fields-y song on "A Carolina Jubilee." Perhaps music sounds different depending on what other music you've been listening to at the time. Kind of like with food and wines. Certain flavors can overwhelm others, making them taste weak and simplistic, but if you try that flavor alone, or in combination with similar ingredients, it will suddenly taste amazing.

Attn: Avett Brothers

You taste amazing!

Ambitions

In seventh grade English, today, one of the girls was giving back massages to her friends. (And no, she wasn't supposed to be doing this, but it was during group work and there is always that awkward 5 minutes at the end of group work when the fast groups are done and slow ones are still working--what's a bored seventh grader in a fast group to do in this situation? Give back rubs, of course!) This girl was really getting into the back massage; I mean, she was using her elbows and everything. I was impressed.

I asked her, "Hey, Lindsay, are you going to be a massage therapist when you grow up?"

"No," she said, "but I want to own a salon. And be a brain surgeon."


Did I mention I teach at a private school?

For further enlightenment, listen to the song "I Want a Pony" by Candypants.