Those Powerful Parentheses

If you were ever in doubt... this blog will prove once and for all that YES, I am a NERD! ...and a future librarian. ...and I'm strangely happy about it. Of course, that doesn't stop me from embellishing on my reading assignments to keep them from putting me to sleep.

This semester, one of my classes is called Advanced Online Searching. Since we do live in the age of computers and online information retrieval... I thought it would be a smart move to make sure I didn't leave any skills in this arena unlearned. In chapter 2, we learned about those powerful parentheses, and how we can use them to drastically affect the outcome of an online search. I'm pulling directly from the text, here. Somebody (named Suzanne S. Bell) went WAY too far to make the science of online searching exciting. This next example assumes you already know something about Boolean Logic. If you don't, I promise not to teach you about it today. Behold:

(insane AND crazy) OR looney
insane AND (crazy OR looney)
(insane OR looney) AND crazy
insane OR (crazy AND looney)
(insane AND looney) OR crazy

Did I miss any vital combinations? Besides my own special blend of the above terms, randomly applied? You see-- each of these options gets highly different results. Go to google.com and check it out. Apparently, "crazy insane" is an actual term. I know I use it fairly frequently, but I thought that was just me. And a few other people I know, whose lives are even MORE crazy insane than MINE is!! Having tried searching "(insane AND crazy) OR looney" for myself, I gave up looking for any separate listings of "looney" after the first 26 pages of links to items containing both the word "crazy," AND the word, "insane." My favorite title so far was this:

bride wigout freakout meltdown hair wedding bridesmaid haircut crazy psycho cut insane rage girls scissors furious bad

Here's the link. I didn't look around too much, so no guarantees that this is a safe/sane/user-friendly site. The title was enough.

Then I looked up "insane OR (crazy AND looney)"... and actually found some titles that also have "looney" in them. I was getting worried, so this came as some relief. I thought maybe I was the last person on earth who used that term. It's happened before. I noticed that whereas "crazy insane" seems to fit a wide variety of interests, most of the links to crazy AND looney information were somehow also referenced by looney toons, or a character therein. I particularly liked look of the article about

The Crazy Oboist's Looney Bin

Similarly, one of my favorite unassigned reading books is Eats Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss. In this grammatically gregarious rant, a story is told of a Panda Bear who goes into a diner, orders the special, eats it, pulls a gun, shoots a hole in the ceiling, and walks out. Everyone is vastly confused by this uncharacteristic behavior, until the waitress (who moonlights as an English Teacher because she loves reading and teaching, but still needs to pay the bills somehow-- okay, I made that part up) notices a pamphlet beside the Panda Bear's empty plate. It's a wildlife manual.

On page 37, which is marked with several blobs of hot sauce from the "special," she reads the following sentence: "In its native habitat, the giant panda eats, shoots, and leaves." Ahhh-- he was trying to do what all pandas do! He was trying to BLEND! The waitress explains to the remaining restaurant patrons (the police are busy with REAL crimes, and haven't bothered to show up to this random shooting where no one famous actually got killed) that if only the wildlife manual had been proofread for grammar, it would have stated that "In its native habitat, the giant panda eats shoots, and leaves." All would have been well, and the poor panda would not now be running around downtown with heartburn and a handgun.

...I love stories like that! The ones with a really important message you can GRASP! (Okay, I'm being slightly sarcastic, here... but I did laugh the first time I read the story, and it did convince me to both buy and READ the book.) And... it's nice to have someone defend my personal belief in the power of the parenthesis... and commas. I love commas. I use them, often. SO that's my story about how the proper combination of grammar and Boolean Search Techniques has impacted my world today. It has changed lives, I tell you! CHANGED THEM FOR EVER!! (see previous blog regarding the use of corny movie quotes in nefarious circumstances)

Imagine receiving the following email from your boss, as you sit in a busy newspaper office, creating the final list of articles to be included in tomorrow's run:

"Run that article by me, again." ...huh? The last article you wrote was 3 years ago!

And with this pithy suggestion, I leave you to pursue your silly little unimportant lives where you actually go around breathing outside air and talking to real people who don't check your spelling before they post what you say, and dumb things like that. (Remind me again, what do normal people do every day??)

The Flaming Pizza Box Story

Okay. So even though it's totally gauche to post TWO BLOGS on the same day... having mentioned the flaming pizza box story in the last post, which you really aughta read first anyway, I just gotta tell you the flaming pizza box story. In sequence. With major disclaimers so no one gets into trouble. And the one about the Eagle Scout and the bear with the dirty underwear can wait for another time. Trust me.

Ahem.
THIS IS A TOTAL FABRICATION. I TELL YOU, IT NEVER HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE.
(And the cameras filming the sitcom of my life were not rolling somewhere in the background, either. Nu-uh. ) I TELL YOU, THERE IS NO PROOF! AND ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE FICTIONAL. THEY HAVE NO BASIS IN ANYONE YOU KNOW OR I KNOW IN REAL LIFE, OR THAT I'VE CASUALLY MENTIONED IN THIS BLOG BEFORE. NONE. NADA. ZIP. NO WAY, HOZAY! NIET. NIEN. NON. NONE.
Right. So. Anyway,

This guy I eventually married lived in a "dorm" while attending "college." AKA: West Point. The Army calls these dorms "Barracks," and they have all the same rules as a dorm, only you aren't allowed to have your lights on after 10pm, and you can't have girls in the boys' room without the door open, and you have to be fully clothed and sitting on different pieces of furniture even if the door IS open (and it had better not be after 10pm!). I kid you not. You can get dishognorably dgischarged for some of it... if you get caught...

So, naturally, no candles are allowed. But, here he was, with a candle on his desk. Lit. (Remember, this is a fictional story.) And he had his window open, because, just like the dorms you remember, this was nearly summer vacation, and there was no A/C. On the far side of the lit candle from the window was an open pizza box. Empty. Inhaled within 20 seconds of being delivered. By no less than 20 armed guards. You think I'm kidding. OH- and they did it in a linear and circumspect fashion, because it is BAD LUCK to break the wheel of a pizza by taking a slice out from somewhere other than the place the first slice was taken from! Seriously. Ask your local neighborhood USMA graduate. I've been banned from pizza parties before because I ALMOST broke the wheel. HORRORS!

Anyway... this random guy who almost-but-not-quite looked exactly like my ex-husband eight years ago... was smart. He made sure to keep the lit candle a good two feet away from the empty pizza box on his desk. But, he's not that smart because he leaves his room for a moment. He actually -gasp!- leaves a lit candle unattended! And this story is the moral to why this rule is so important that your parents and your college refuse to allow you to light candles in your bedroom. They don't even know about this story. And if you don't tell them either, we can keep it that way!

So, two minutes later, he returns to his room. And to flames shooting up from the pizza box-- a good two or three feet high. Cut to scene of tall, broad, and athletic young man RUNNING DOWN THE HALL WITH A FLAMING PIZZA BOX IN HIS HANDS, frantically dodging frozen-with-awe year-mates like a blitzing quarterback, in his quest to reach the mass shower room before the box a) burns his hands, or b) sets off the sprinkler system, or c) is noticed by anyone who can then ruin his future military career... While his roommate (who somehow hadn't noticed the flames until just that moment either) frantically waves a copy of his (my ex's) final term paper under the fire alarm-cum-automatic sprinkler system, to keep the remaining smoke in the room from setting it off and ruining everyone's life.

Yes.

So, How did this priceless moment happen???, you ask. Well, there was a box of kleenex sitting on the window sill. All these future engineers for the Army put their close-shaved heads together-- those who'd witnessed the flaming pizza box run, and therefore ...KNEW... --and the only thing they could come up with was that a breeze from the open window must have loosened an individual kleenex from the box, which then wafted over the lit candle, where it caught fire, and continued-- on fire-- to waft the additional two or three feet until it landed squarely on the open-but-empty grease-saturated pizza box, and resulted in some very tall, very blue, flames.
But, of course, this story isn't actually about real events, you see. So... children... don't try this at home. And, whatever you do, don't leave kleenex on your open windowsill if you plan to light an illicit candle in your bedroom. Trust me on this.

And, if you read the other blog from today (highly recommended) before reading this one... you now understand why I was so surprised that my kleenex wasn't great tinder for lighting my own personal illicit fire. No. It wasn't. That would have been too easy. And the filming crew must be amused. For, after all, the show must go on! (...at least until we're all filthy rich from it's popularity, and then we can just make some extra spending money off the reruns for a few years. ...Anybody wanna start paying me? Any time now. It worked for Arlo, and nobody believed anything HE told us about his personal history, either. But I'm telling you-- NOBODY COULD MAKE SHIGT LIKE THIS UP!)

Mysckeallahnieausse

Okay. It's time. If I don't blog soon, I might forget how. And, as we all know, the only two serious topics in this life are blogs, and folksongs. ...well... and humongous giant clams... Seriously. They were a threat to America at one time. But for the life of me-- I have no idea what to write about. If you make a suggestion before I post this, I might just take you up on it.
think think think
Well... maybe I'll tell you about the driftwood I meant to write about a while back, but ended up talking about how sweet and loving and good I am instead. That sounds promising. There's more to say about it now, anyway. As of 7:45pm, that is. When the fire on my back patio finally went out. Some serious, some ridiculous, some suspicious. About what I usually write. Okay. I'll DO it! (Too late for YOU! You'll just have to make a suggestion some other time, possibly sailing around for hours until you find a harbor. Inconceivable, you say? I do not think him is what you think him is. And I am NO left handed! It's true. Ask Arlo Guthrie.)

Driftwood. I've never partaken of a fire on the beach. Even though I lived on the beach for seven years (well, two blocks back, where the mortgage was cheaper). Even though my high school senior skip day was spent (by everyone but me and a few other loos-- err... individuals) on the beach with driftwood fires and a couple of unexplained kegs. Even though my dad has always kept on hand a ridiculous amount of perfectly-sized firewood. Just in case. Even though I eventually married an Eagle Scout (famous last words: "Don't worry! I'm an Eagle Scout." As if that somehow means you know how to take on an angry 700 lb black bear and her two cubs-- who are standing between us and our only water supply... in the middle of Bear Island... in Alaska... in dirty underwear and a pair of Army Boots... with a rusty pop can full of change in one hand to use as a rattle. But that is a story for another time.) who really REALLY thought having sex on the beach, by firelight, in the middle of winter--or any other time we happened to be on the beach-- with no blanket under us, and the tide coming in... would be "romantic." (It didn't happen. The word that came to my mind was "riiiiight.") Even though I have often walked by the charred remains of driftwood fires along the beach, smelled the last bit of smoke drifting up from it... and known it was a magical scent. I have never actually experienced a driftwood fire. Until today.

You see, way back when I drove over the mountains and through the snow to the beach... I brought about six inches of sand (intentionally, no less) and a whole bunch of baby bits of driftwood home with me. I spent two weeks drying that wood in front of a heating vent in my living room. (My cat thought I was crazy. She thinks that a lot. That's why she's not allowed to leave the house anymore. She might tell someone about what goes on in here.) I carefully put the sand into the metal container I'd found so nothing would overheat, melt, or burn down. I bought baby charcoal to help the driftwood catch fire. And then I spent 45 minutes in 29* weather getting smoked out as I hunched beside my little tiny pile of three pieces of driftwood and some kleenex (I don't get a newspaper)... as they all turned into a sad pile of smoking coals, and never bothered to flame at all, (except for the kleenex, which obviously has more chemicals in it than I'd realized, at least one of which is a fire retardant... though there was that one time with the kleenex and the flaming pizza box...) even though I hyperventilated because I blew on them there sad smoking coals for 15 of those 45 minutes-- straight.

sigh

The original plan was to have a driftwood fire on my back patio during my Open House. THAT would have been somewhat romantic and all together cool. This was the dry run. But, no. So I went to the store. One of those stores that actually does have a little of everything. Want diapers? They have that. Want depends? They have that, too. Want foot powder? Okay, but it's an off-brand. Want ice cream? Yup. 3 flavors. Found the "outdoors" section. (Right there next to the big "Get Your Fishing License Here-- So you don't get arrested for telling me about the one that got away!" sign.) There in the middle of the "outdoors" section, they had magical non-smoking wood chips that are guaranteed --in two different languages-- to start your fire. That's a quote, by the way. I laughed all the way to the cash register. I never did find a list of ingredients on the package, but I honestly don't want to know, anyway. Because then I might feel guilty for using them. The good news is they actually did light my fire. My fire is LIT!

I actually got to watch (very closely, with a bucket of water at my feet, because this was my patio, after all, and no where near the beach, even though it was technically taking place on six inches of honest-to-god beach sand... and... you know... something might happen...) as three other miniature pieces of driftwood from my collection burst into FLAME and became a real HONEST TO GOSH DRIFTWOOD FIRE for a whole 30 minutes!!! It was definitely a highlight in my life.

So... if you ever wanna light MY fire... wear eau-de-driftwood-smoke behind your knees. Ahem-- ears. I meant ears.

Okay, and for those of you who haven't started laughing yet... The title of this blob is pronounced "miscellaneous." I tried to spell giant with a J. I accidentally put a silent B on the end of "clambs." And I refrained from saying, "Dagm you, Salazar!!" at least twice. Yes. It's a quote from the "Charlie's Angels" movie with Lucy Liu in it. Your Welcome.