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  Daily Connotations  

Entropy Happens.
Join the madness.

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.

Observations, opinions, and ideas, all brought to you by Daily Connotations Company. Who Else?

May 2003
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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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The Entire Physical Universe, Including This Blog, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally Small Space. Should Another Universe Subsequently Re-emerge, the Existence of This Blog in That Universe Cannot Be Guaranteed.



Team Members

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.


Accolades

There's a reason this section is at the bottom of the column. Um, I think someone called us 'interesting' once, maybe. That's about it.

copyright 2003-2006.
steal what you want.

5.27.2004


 

Things you certainly don't see every day

Driving (yes, tis a pity, driving) home yesterday I passed a state trooper and another car stopped on the shoulder of the highway. That in itself is not strange - while I often get home without seeing any cops, it isn't like they are particularly rare, and they always seem to multiply at the beginning of summer when all the hoodlums come home.

What was interesting was that the gentleman who had been driving the 'civilian' car was out, and had walked back to the officer's vehicle and was leaning in the window, while the policeman was sitting in the driver's seat of his car. It was more or less a complete role reversal.

I have no idea what prompted this turn of events, but I found it noteworthy for some reason.


--Posted by s. on Thursday, May 27, 2004.


5.25.2004


 

if a tree is knocked over by strong winds in the forest and you don't hear it because you were listening to the weatherman on the radio inside your car, did it make a sound?

We don't pay as much attention to the weather as we used to except for when something really big happens. It's a pity, really, the things we miss. And the filters that we experience things through. We sit safely in our basements flipping channels, watching this reporter lose an umbrella, that reporter get a snowball in the mouth (silly cameramen).

My present location is not such that walking everywhere is practical (the town I live in has a church, a restaurant, and a bar. Nice, but not enough), as you have to travel twenty miles to reach a grocery store. I would love to live in a place where owning a car would be superfluous - a nicely-sized city with adequate public transportation, or a well-rounded town small enough to reach necessities by foot or bike yet large enough to have stores, restaurants, entertainment without it.

I dislike driving for several reasons - it's environmentally unclean, dangerous, expensive, and time consuming. However, since Henry Ford, owning a car (and what's more, a faster, bigger, more expensive car) is part of the American Dream. We prize our individuality, our independence, the fact that we can take care of things all by ourselves exactly when we want to. Heaven forbid we spend ten minutes waiting for the subway (in the rain, god forbid) or take the extra half-hour in our lunch break to walk to the post office.

Add to all this the fact the ever-increasing amounts of road rage, automobile-related fatalities and the fact that obesity is rapidly replacing lung cancer as America's #1 killer, and you have a pretty solid argument for trading in your Taurus for new tennies.

So why don't we? Well, we might meet someone who isn't exactly like us on the bus! We might get caught out in the snow! Our friends might think we are poor! or weird! or (worst of all) tree-hugging hippies! We might lose weight! We might get fresh air! We might MAKE fresh air! Or at least make air fresher! And of course, we might have to wait for the bus or the rain to let up or. . .we have so many places we must be right now! Because we live our lives by the clock! and the Cell Phone! and we've got to get home because The Practice starts at seven! And when we try to give that up, we face the terrifying prospect of being different! And that's scary. Very, very scary.

To tell the truth, almost as scary as taking your own canvas bags to the grocery store.

But our cars provide us with some privacy, a sort of forcefield against the big scary world where we can ignore everyone and everything. It is amazing how complacent we become, especially when we're driving somewhere we have been many times before. We stop noticing things. Like the weather. Or the birds. And we forget where we came from because we're in such a hurry to get to where we're going


--Posted by s. on Tuesday, May 25, 2004.


5.22.2004


 

Living on the Wild Side
or
How to end a sentence with seven prepositions:

A two-story house, at bedtime. The father is going to read to his son some native Australian folk lore.

"Dad? Why did you bring that book to read out of about down under up for?"


I believe credit should go to Bennett Cerf for that one, but I'm actually not sure.



--Posted by s. on Saturday, May 22, 2004.


 

Oh, the torture. . .

Of having a marvelous idea, and no place or time to write it down.

Here are the fragments I remember:


George W. vs. John K.
The lesser of two weevils???

Have you noticed the line of attack the Republican party is using to attack John Kerry?? He's too liberal. But at the same time a large group of democrats (Either ex-Deaniacs or middle-aged, middle-class workers who stumped for John Edwards) claim he is too much like Bush.

There is obviously a sort of inconsistency with this. Kerry can't be both too liberal and too conservative. (Oh. Wait a minute. That is what he's known for - both sides of every issue. All-things-to-all-voters Kerry).

News Flash: Apparently both Kerry and Bush have fallen off a bike within the past month. Do we really want a president who can't ride? Or should we be happy to have a president who at least tries to ride a bike?

The real problem with Kerry is not that he's too liberal or too conservative. It is that he is too extreme. He is an idealist to the fullest extent of the word.

Personally, although being registered independent, I fully intend to vote democrat this november, because anything else is a vote for Bush (even a vote for Nader (who, coincidentally, I was first exposed to on an episode of Sesame Street. No kidding) (man, look at all those exciting nested parentheses!)). But I won't enjoy it, because the thing that first turned me off of the Bush admin was their tendency to extremism, and JK joins him with the policies of unprepared, unplanned, incomplete extremism.

As my great-grandmother used to say, six of one, halfadozen of the other.


--Posted by s. on Saturday, May 22, 2004.


5.20.2004


 

I don't mind change.

I just don't like ceremony.

Sort of like marriage. I could imagine being married, but I don't even want to think about getting married. If I could just wake up one day and poof! be married or graduated or, well, dead, I'd be fine with it. I don't enjoy the "passing" times.

And another thing. Have you ever noticed how people throw each other surprise parties on the "big milestones" - 40, 50, 60. As a matter of fact, you should just EXPECT a party, in which case it wouldn't really be a surprise, now would it? I've told my family to off set it, so that if they feel like throwing a big wing-ding, it falls on my 47th or something weird like that. (I chose 47 because it's prime) Hey! Maybe that would work. I expect a surprise party on every PRIME birthday!!! 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47 . . . et cetera. Except now I'm expecting that, so it wouldn't really be a surprise now, would it? So maybe since I'm expecting every prime, it would surprise me most to be surprised on the "milestones" - 40, 50, 60. . .

For the love of green eggs and ham, I read too much Douglas Hofstadter.

But ahh, I love it!


--Posted by s. on Thursday, May 20, 2004.


5.17.2004


 

Rain fascinates me. Well, water fascinates me, actually. The fact that we don't actually know that much about it - far from enough to explain all of its amazing life-giving properties. The polarity/hydrogen bonds/ionization can only carry you so far.

Besides that, water has been a metaphor for life forever. It shows up in religious literature and old movies, in Shakespeare and Dante and Jewel. In almost every (and I'd place money on every) documented culture. One might even consider removing it from the metaphor list. Water is life. Not in a metaphorical sense. It just IS. We can't live without it. Our bodies and our world are both over three quarters water. We wash with it, cook with it, swim in it, walk on it, breathe it, drink it. The possibilities are endless. And yet, somehow, we totally take it for granted.

And, luckily for us it still comes. Sometimes sadly polluted, but the rain still comes. The delicate balance the world is held in still holds.

I wonder sometimes how much we can do. And maybe the fall is all planned and maybe there's nothing that we can do to hold it in balance. But yet, we try. And we must try. The rain is asking us to.


--Posted by s. on Monday, May 17, 2004.


5.14.2004


 

So exactly who is this Pat Sajak person anyway?

I've got a little experiment for you.

Think of three people - any three people.

They can be friends, family, teachers, coworkers, figureheads, physicists, athletes, musicians.

Do you have them? Good.

Now, imagine them on Wheel of Fortune

Are you scared? I mean, really scared?

There's something about being on a game show and being offered a lot of money that takes away one's inhibitions with effectiveness unmatched by anything outside of certain illegal (ahem) chemical substances. And unlike Jeopardy! WOF does not have the redeeming quality of screening people for intelligence before inviting them on the show. Basically all you need to get on the show is to know the alphabet, neh? So more or less, you get people who probably are more or less normal acting like a bunch of idiots in front of the world (or the people who are sadistic enough to watch the show every night)

Come on, Big Money!!$!$!!


--Posted by s. on Friday, May 14, 2004.


5.13.2004


 

Je suis marxist, tendence Groucho

"I am a Marxist, of the Groucho persuasion."



--Posted by s. on Thursday, May 13, 2004.


5.08.2004


 

Oh, for the love of pete. . .

I've gone and missed D-Con's first birthday!

(May 5, 2003, was the date of the first post made on www.dailycon.blogspot.com.)

H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y ! ! !


--Posted by s. on Saturday, May 08, 2004.


 

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
-A. A. Milne


--Posted by s. on Saturday, May 08, 2004.


5.04.2004


 

An amusing game that is occasionally (ok, always) played in my family is quoting songs (any songs) as though holding a real conversation, or devising other "more sophisticated" lyrics for familiar tunes. The situation usually is one unsuspecting person starts a line that happens to be the first line (or a part of) a song, and person number two finishes for them, usually totally derailing the conversation.

A few examples:

A: I've been working on an interesting problem . . .
B: Oh, really? I've been working on the Railroad.
A: All the livelong day?

Skull and clavicle, patella and phalanges,
patella and phalanges, patella and phalanges.
Skull and clavicle, patella and phalanges,
I know my bone names!


(We were thrilled, to say the least, when our little game, or a variant of it, got screen time in the now old-news movie Shrek)
Do you know . . . the muffin man?
The muffin man?
The muffin man!
Yes, I know the muffin man . . .who lives on Drury Lane.

Many good ones are from far back in the files. . .
a: Yes! (in answer to, one assumes, a reasonably sane question)
b: . . .we have no bananas! we have no bananas today!

a: Would you like. . .
b: . . . to swing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar. . .

a: Well, now that we've spent no less than four hours preparing for this trip, We're off!
b: on the road to Morocco! This taxi is tough on the spine.

a: Have you ever. . .
b: ever ever, in your long legged life, seen a long legged sailor with a long legged life?




--Posted by s. on Tuesday, May 04, 2004.

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