Meme: Post the first line of your first blog entry of each month for 2007 (via Greg Van Eekhout) (And not one is about zombies.)

December 1, Steve: From Oni Press: For centuries Jumpers have lived among us — special individuals with the ability to teleport or “jump” nearly anywhere in the world.

November 1, Madeleine: In honor of the first of November I invite you to check out Lupo the Butcher.

October 1, Morgan: NASA launched a probe last Thursday to study Ceres and Vesta, the two largest asteroids in the asteroid belt.

September 1, Caroline: How am I not Madeleine?

August 1, Maureen: I’m making dinner for Bob’s band tomorrow.

July 1, Rory: I don’t know shit about this guy, except what’s on the Wiki, and this article in my favorite music magazine, Paste.

June 2, Caroline: By now, everyone and their dog has heard the story about the American TB patient who ignored his doctor’s advice and traipsed off to Europe to get married.

May 1, Morgan: Update: Corrected carbon dioxide levels to reflect latest research.

April 1, Steve: On this day in 1957 8 million television viewers . . . watched a program on Spaghetti Trees.

March 1, Morgan: Katrina survivors rebuke President Bush, who is going to New Orleans for a series of photo ops.

February 1, Brad: It’s been said that Kansas, where I was raised, is the Buckle of the Bible Belt – which can only mean that I now live in the Zipper.*

January 2, Steve: Yesterday was Sunday, today is Monday.

The heavens tumble, Darling, and I’m… Eliza . . .

Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!
I get words all day through;

“Show Me” from My Fair Lady, Music by Frederick Loewe, Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner.

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Unlike Eliza Doolittle, I have no problem with words.  In fact, I frickin’ adore words.  I’m so enamored of words that The Dude calls me a “Jargon Monkey.” 

I am not at all offended by this.  However, if he started calling me “Monkey Face” like Cary Grant does to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion, I might be less than thrilled.  (On the other hand, if he said it using a Cary Grant accent… but I digress.)

What got me started on the whole, “I love words,” thing, was catching a promo for some movie the other day and one of the characters used the word “shenanigans.”  I was gob-smacked with delight. (Gob-smacked is another word I like.  Okay, maybe it’s more of a phrase, but work with me here, people.)

How often do you hear “shenanigans” used?  Not very.  But it’s a fantastic word.  It rolls off the tongue — rich, full, polysyllabic, completely evocative of what it’s describing.  Damn, that’s some fine word there.  

Later that same day, I was in the pharmacy waiting for a prescription.  At the end of one aisle was an entire end-cap full of “curatives.”  “When did y’all start carrying nostrums?” I asked the pharmacist.  “What are nostrums?” he replied.  I pointed at the end-cap and said, “Palliatives. Potions of questionable efficacy.  Nostrums.”  He nodded.  “Good word.”

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I don’t normally pass along links from e-mails that my colleagues at work send me. It’s not cool enough, ya know.

But this one hurts so much that I just have to share the pain around. The motorcycle theme is especially cruel.

Props to Sandie for totally crushing my spirit with one well-placed blow.

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EDIT: Uh, it’s a vid link, incidentally, not just a cartoon…

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I could take or leave Steve Martin when I (and he) were younger but the older I get (and the older he gets) the more impressed I get.

(It does seem a little unfair that he is that good a comic, actor, writer, and musician.)