Daily Connotations

Daily Connotations

Entropy Happens.
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You don't have to push the boundaries when you set the standards.

Connotation. 1. a. The configuration of suggestive or associative implications consitiuting the general sense of an abstract espression beyond its literal, explicit sense. b. A secondary meaning suggested by a word in addition to its literal meaning. 3. Logic The total of the attributes constituting the meaning of a term.

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Disclaimer: Any opinions contained on this page are those of, well, we don't really know who. Any offense taken to anything present should be directed to Sven, who will file and ignore your comments. Praise or compliments can be directed to either Dr. N, Dr. What, or Dr. Olga. All plagarized material has been tested and deemed satisfactory according to the esteemed code of Lehrer, version 2.3.
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Things We Like

Sven Bjorn Borg: Sven has been with d-con since its humble beginnings, and is responsible for punctuating, finances, guarding the office from rabid dogs and loud noises, and acting as mediator amongst the other members. Dr. Borge is well-known as the world's foremost (and perhaps only) underwater-basket-weaving expert. Sven has recently published no less than 3 books, Klingon Grammar and Vocabulary for humans, Life among the Grapes, and Escher, Bach, Gödel: A gigantic elastic bungalow. In it's copious spare time, the Sven enjoys playing the harpsichord and diagramming sentences. Sven is Chief of Staff and Director of Intelligence in the UPICN,LLC.
Dr. Bob William "The Orange" Lavoisier a.k.a. Dr. Henry Parsons: Dr. N, as we like to call him, is officially the initiator of the Daily Connotations Company, and also holds important Offices in the VVIIPP society of America and The Department of Redundancy Department, which is a place where he holds an important office in the department of redundancy. Henry also spent a good deal of his life studying the behavior of Walruses (Walri?) in the wild, inspired by a long-running correspondence with Mr. J. Lennon, who, in fact, convinced "The Orange" that he was, in fact, a walrus. Dr. Parsons' curriculum vitae is rounded out by his extensive family history (including a brother, Alan), and double Ph.D. honors in Botany and the Study of Scandinavian Languages. Recently, Dr. Henry Parsons was elected president of the UPICN,LLC
The Doctor a.k.a. Dr. What??: Dr. What joins us now as a member of d-Con in very good standing. It is important that the doctor not be confused with his slightly-more-popular brother, Doctor Who, who has carved a niche for himself in the field of time travel. Dr. What never developed the talent for time travel, and has the ability to visit only two distinct temporal locations: The beheading of John the Baptist and that one time when Stanley met Livingstone (or was it Livingstone met Stanley?) Consequently, he spends much of his time knitting (the scarves, natch) on the planet Gallifrey whilst (and at the same time) contemplating Nietzschean philosophies and memorizing much of Immanuel Kant's work, both in the original German.
Dr. Phelealabean: Dr. Phelealabean also uses the alias Dr. Olga Olathe Parsons-Uhlmer. Dr. Parsons-Uhlmer is a sister to Henry and Alan. She has a dual honorary doctorate in Arabian Literature and Language. She also has teaching experience at the University of Rekjavik which was held in a small grass-covered hut. She iswidowed after an incident involving her husband and abandonment which she is not allowed to discuss pending criminal charges. Now that she is alone, she enjoys spending summers with her brother, Henry, in his summer home, The Parsonon.

4.09.2004

Political Sort-of Things (and Dictionaries)
Five years ago, terrorists were out of the sight and the mind of the American public. Many of us actually thought "What a terrible accident" when we heard about the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center. Today people cry "Al Qaeda" when their bus gets a flat tire.

Condoleezza Rice (whose first name appears to have one too many letters) did appear in front of the 9-11 commission, but she didn't actually say anything that she hasn't said before. (I'm reminded of a scene in a book - I believe it's in nineteeneightyfour, I know it's some kind of subversive dystopian literature - where they analyze the contents of a letter and find that everything within contradicts with something else in it and therefore cancels everything out and the end result is a blank page)

I got three books for thirty cents (and the forty-five minutes of my time I spent sifting through Harlequin romance novels) at Second mile:

1. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which will sit on my bookshelf by, of course, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I do actually like the Russian style of literature, although unfortunately it depends a great deal on the translator, as my Russian skills are terribly weak, especially considering I've a tutor in the family. But Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and the like are quite psychological and complex. Not something to carry around for light reading, but perfect if you've the time (which I do!) to sit and read for hours on end.
2. Anguished English, a collection of bloopers, typographical errors, and social gaffes by Richard Lederer. It will sit between The Miracle of Language and Crazy English, both by R.L.
3. is a Portuguese dictionary (my Portuguese skills are totally nonexistent. I just like dictionaries) which brings my total collection of foreign language dictionaries to 11, 12 if you count sign language, 13 if you count a 13 page acrobat file I downloaded off the internet with Elvish words and basic syntax. I believe 8 different languages are represented (German, French, Hebrew, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Russian, Portuguese). It will sit on the esteemed "Language Shelf", if it will fit.

Speaking of dictionaries, allow me to recommend Flip Dictionary by Barbara Ann Kipfer, the wonderful reference book that we've all been waiting for in which you look up the definition to find the word and A Browser's Dictionary by John Ciardi (who also has a translation of Dante's Inferno with false terza rima), which besides being quite prescriptive (filthy English professor!) in its approach offers a humorous look at familiar (and some vague) words and phrases and how they came to mean what they mean.

On the other hand A Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate has very little reading quality, although it does smack of academia and pretense sitting on your shelf.

{p.s. I apologize deeply for the prickly parentheses.}

--Posted by s. on Friday, April 09, 2004.