Physics Faeries

Webassign makes me feel magical: there--I said it. I know it sounds odd, but it's true. Most of the time, it is a torturous task untaken around midnight and no matter how logical and careful you try to be, you end up with a page full of those infuriating red crosses glaring at you, yet the days when it works, it really works. Today doing the Work & Energy assignment I felt like a wizard. I don't mean wizard as in clever. I mean wizard as in magical powers and things contrary to reason occuring. Despite having carefully worked through each problem and understood it, it still appeared to be magic when the happy little green checks appeared.

Obviously I've chosen to take physics rather than psychology, but I think there should be some sort of research put into what I can only call the conditioning of webassign. There is some serious potential here for mind control. Webassign has caused me to think of things with clear rational explanations as supernatural! Computers in general, even, seem to be agents of regression towards superstition. We are much more credulous and we undertake the same action again and again expecting different results each time---it's clearly insane. Technology, the reflection of the future, is actually leading us backwards. How twisted is that?

Parsnips-a-Plenty

I know that one ought to only have righteous rage regarding the important issues in life: injustice, violence, and poverty should make us angry, but at the moment, I'm quite angry about veg. I hate parsnips, turnips, and celery with a fiery and all-consuming passion. I've always felt this way, but the soup I'm desperately trying to eat at the moment has brought it to the front of my consciousness.

Parsnips and turnips are similar in that they both have miserable flavors and textures--they're like horrible imitations of potatoes that simply haven't got it right. They are the rubbish covers of Beatles songs of the vegetable world. They're somewhat similar in appearance to the real thing, and if you're not paying attention, you might be fooled, but ultimately they're an unpleasant surprise. There is nothing worse at the dinner table than biting into what you thought was a lovely potato and discovering it to be none other than the dreaded parsnip.
There is no situation where someone could hand you a parsnip, and you could not say, "Hey-- lemme do ya one better: here's a potato!" Parsnips, however, have one redeeming trait: they are the subject of one of my favorite idioms:

"Fine words butter no parsnips."

World Wide Words has an interesting discussion of the origins of this expression here.

On the topic of celery, which is a vile form of veg if I ever unintentionally ate one, I can only say this: there are two kinds of people in the world--people who hate celery, and people who cannot taste celery. If you complain about celery, non-celery-detesting-people invariably claim that it has no taste. They are horribly wrong: I can genuinely smell it from the other side of a room, and it is instantaneously recognizable in any sort of a soup, stew, or salad. Apart from it's polluting flavor, it has a shockingly disgusting texture that ought to put any right-thinking person off their food for several days!

How do people consume these horrifying vegetables? I do not know.

Le Français!

I've been speaking french rather obsessively since I got home several hours ago, so to get it out of my system, I'm going to share my favorite french phrases!!
"C'est d'enfer!" -- lit. It's from hell! It actually can mean either "it's awesome" or "it's awful"

"Bédéphile" -- means someone who loves comics, but it sounds almost exactly like pédéphile, so be damned careful to stress that 'b'!

"Vachement" -- lit. cow-ly, but it means 'very', 'bloody', 'really', or 'damned'.

"Je suis chocolat!" -- I've been tricked, fooled.

"Tais-toi!" -- This is the rudest way you can possibly tell someone to be quiet.

"Le pinard, le picrate, le jaja, la bibine" -- all of these mean 'bad wine'. Getting a sense of french values?

One of the coolest things about modern french slang is Verlan. Verlan is a sort of slang where they invert syllables, basically saying everything backwards. In fact, Verlan IS verlan:

l'envers (reverse) ... l'en vers... vers l'en... versl'en... verslen... verlen... verlan

Par exemple:

Verlan: un keuf | zyva! | barjot | chelou | la siquemu | céfran
Français: un flic | vas-y! | jobard | louche | la musique | français
English: a cop | Go! | crazy | sketchy | music | french