word puzzles

some of the word puzzle things i gave my classes today. they didnt even try. said they had to think too hard. honestly. all i ask is for a tiny bit of effort.

BEHEADMENT: A word becomes a new one when its first letter is removed.
Example: ONE = factor, TWO = actor.

1. BEHEADMENT (6, 5)
They followed the stream as it FIRST through the wood,
Staying as much in the shade as they could.
A splash, and a swimmer then came into sight.
"He's SECOND!" one Girl Scout cried out in delight.

CURTAILMENT: A word becomes a new one when its last letter is removed.
Example: ONE = aspiring, TWO = aspirin. The asterisk indicates that the six-letter word is capitalized.

2. CURTAILMENT (7, *6)
"Cleopatra," if it's true
That opposites attract,
Could be called the ONE of "TWO"
By known historic fact.

DELETION: A word becomes a new one when an interior letter is removed.
Example: ONE = simile, TWO = smile.

3. DELETION (9, 8)
So the jury finally TWO that czar of crime?
And a jury trial is ONE? High bloody time.

4. DELETION (5, 4)
One year fat, one year lean.
Never anywhere between.
Diet changes every day;
Either ONE or TWO, I say.

TERMINAL DELETION: A word is changed to a new one by removing its first and last letters.
Example: ONE = foregone, TWO = Oregon.

5. TERMINAL DELETION (6, 4)
I knew my son would be a TALL
When he was very small,
For when I put him in his SMALL
He doodled on the wall.

WORD DELETION: A word removed from inside a longer one leaves a third word.
Example: TOTAL = performance; ONE = man, TWO = perforce. The length is given only of the longest (TOTAL) word.

6. WORD DELETION (8)
I ate at seven, felt TOTAL by ten.
I doubt if I'll INSIDE eat OUTSIDE again.

7. WORD DELETION (10)
I TWO the praise of any soul
With knowledge of a ONE like this.
I've just an ALL--so on the whole
I'm glad that ignorance is bliss.

CHARADE: A word is broken into two or more shorter words.
Example: TOTAL = scarcity; ONE = scar, TWO = city. The length is given only of the long word.

8. CHARADE (10)
My migraine was pounding; I needed some rest.
"There's WHOLE," said my FIRST, "in the medicine chest."
The SECOND on all of the labels looked blurred.
I took one at random and promptly got THIRD.

LETTER CHANGE: One letter is changed in a word to make a new one.
Example: ONE = pastry, TWO = pantry (a third-letter change).

9. FIRST-LETTER CHANGE (8)
Our baby had colic, and ONE all the day.
No sound's ever TWO it, I'm happy to say.

10. THIRD-LETTER CHANGE (11)
His mood was indicative, her voice purely passive;
He grew more explicative, her boredom grew massive.
To his ONE, she said, "Somehow I feel it's not you
I'm looking for," ending their date with a TWO.

an ode to the burger

how do you put up
with such a huge ass
i must give you such problems
as i get from my class
only 2 more weeks
cant wait to see ya
and make up another
kick ass quesadilla

3 in 7

third setup in a week. deal with it. i dont think im gonna change this one for a while. i guess ill wait and see how the reaction is. not like a really give a damn what you folks say, but always interested to hear. carlyle- stop calling me in the middle of the fucking night. i wake up at 5am. i blame you for my fucking headache today.

new format

so heres what happened:
my blogger infuriated me bacuase it wouldnt post my profile, which i decided today that i wanted it to post. so after much tinkering and fixing, the old format just really infuriated me. so i switched. now it has taken entirely too long to get the blogger the way i want it, though i must admit that i am none too pleased with this format. however, until i muster up the energy for more change, we are all stuck with this arrangement. express your disgust in the comment link. that is all.

turkey

141-151-164
not bad for a day when i couldnt aim or pick up a spare for shit.
and a turkey! on the last frame of the last game. finally. i feel like boston would feel if they could beat the yankees. the monkeys off my back. solid.

parent teacher conference night tonight. i have all of zero conferences. sounds like a great way to waste a night.

monkeys type hamlet

ok, so they didnt quite get to hamlet, but i have tracked down the article about this experiment. still one of the funnier things ive read in a long time.

Typing Monkeys Don't Quite Write 'Hamlet'
Friday, May 09, 2003

LONDON — Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will produce a mess.

Researchers at Plymouth University (search) in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

A group of faculty and students in the university's media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques (search). Then, they waited.

At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.

"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.

Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in — not quite literature.

fuckin pinko

so i hve now reestablished a link with the russians mad soliloquy. i must at this point vent my frustration with his decision to cut ties with the former blogger. the format is exactly the same. which makes one wonder why he would change. if it was simply to confuse people, then the russian should be commended as his mission is indeed accomplished. if it was to simply make us all forget how awful his original work was, then i must call him a sissy, and remind him that he may be able to run from the truth, but he cannot hide. here is a link to his former blog, so that we may all revel in its mediocrity one last time.

forgotten blog

my car has blown up again. i will soon give up on driving entirely. it is not worth the trouble. instead i will move to a part of the globe not requiring one to own a car to move about. damn this city and its awful urban sprawl and therefore its horrendous public transit. fruitcakes of doom to you city! fruitcakes of doom!

hellbound and down

so heres how i rate on dantes test which you can take by clicking below. i am apparently lustful, fraudulent, malicious, and a panderer. i myself would tend to disagree and would think i would fall more in the violent wrathful categories so i could do away with a world full of stupid motherfuckers. however, when there is a whole list of true false questions that absolutely cannot be answered with a simple true or false, i guess this is what you end up with. whatever.

The sweet light no longer strikes against your eyes. Your shade has been banished to... the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
The Malebolge
Many and varied sinners suffer eternally in the multi-leveled Malebolge, an ampitheatre-shapped pit of despair Wholly of stone and of an iron colour: Those guilty of fraudulence and malice; the seducers and pimps, who are whipped by horned demons; the hypocrites, who struggle to walk in lead-lined cloaks; the barraters, who are ducked in boiling pitch by demons known as the Malebranche. The simonists, wedged into stone holes, and whose feet are licked by flames, kick and writhe desperately. The magicians, diviners, fortune tellers, and panderers are all here, as are the thieves. Some wallow in human excrement. Serpents writhe and wrap around men, sometimes fusing into each other. Bodies are torn apart. When you arrive, you will want to put your hands over your ears because of the lamentations of the sinners here, who are afflicted with scabs like leprosy, and lay sick on the ground, furiously scratching their skin off with their nails. Indeed, justice divine doth smite them with its hammer.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Moderate
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

a p.s. from one of my email updates

this came directly from one of my emails. solid stuff here.

oh yes, p.s.- i saw a goat fart twice today, it was indeed as funny as one might
imagine. and unlike humans goats do not seem to be the least bit
self-conscious about such natural occurances, hence the encore.

its only wednesday?

well, hello there. what a lovely audience. i shall now regale you with my latest news. i cut my hair yesterday. it is short. several students laughed at me. i gave them zeros, as it is bad policy to laugh at the teacher. i went to north carolina this weekend. it was lovely. it was also really quite simple to get there. last time boyd and i went, i seem to remember getting pretty horribly lost on the way and getting a ticket and having a miserable experince overall. this time was solid though. of course, the burger is much more hospitable than joes miniature ass, so maybe that had something to do with it. i stayed in the dorm, which is easily 10,000 times nicer than creswell, and way cleaner, and is not inhabited by frat types and aspiring frat types an overwhelming majority of douchebags and instead seems to be mostly full of people who did not infuriate me, which is nice. i will say however, that the doors are like on hinges that automatically close and the slamming interrupted my sleep too often. but one gripe is not bad on the whole. i ate like a champ the whole time there as the food we had was indeed stellar, as the burger has mentioned on her blog. heck, i even got to watch the georgia game, shitty as it was. the only thing i would say that georgia did better was the karaoke. the place we went to had a pretty puny crowd, and as a result alarmingly bad karaoke singers. this however could have been caused by the fight which occurred like right before we got there. i also finally saw most of farenheight 9/11. solid propaganda there folks. unfortunately having short legs means i am not able to make many of the leaps michael moore is asking his audience make in regards to the bush-bin-laden-oil-terror-and-war-conspiracy or whatever the fuck the ultimate point of the movie was. bush shouldnt be president? fine. must you really show napalm burned bodies and public executions to persuade us of this? i think not.

moving on. i will now print my latest bowling scores.
180-170-160.
very solid over a three game span if i do say so myself. needless to say, we destroyed the competition. next week i will likely bowl 85s or something, so i must revel in this while i can.

i am currently seeking copies of "the well"- the newsletter (if you can call it that) that boyd and i wrote while we were incarcerated in creswell hall. if anyone knows of the whereabouts of any of these mailings, please forward them back to me. my emails do not contain them anymore, even though i thought they did. does yahoo mail delete shit after a point or no? i am curious. however, while looking for the well in my email vaults i came across darci hennek's scathing email response to my sarcastic furious rant on everyone from france the first week i was there when everyone else was getting emails from friends and i was getting nothing. i will publish that email in its entirety now, for you fellow blog readers. in an email entitled "NO- derek you suck!"-

Derek,Why the hell would I email you after I haven't talked to you in 3 years?
you def don't get any sympathy from me since I was in Australia for 6 months and
didn't hear from you. I would love to hear anything productive about our old
friends from high school, but if you are just going to send emails about
drunkiness, foul language, and stupid shit then please take me off your email
list. For the rest of you- hope you're doing well and miss you! Derek- hope your
pessimism about other countries gets better or else you're cheating yourself out
of an amazing experience abroad. Darci

apparently sarcasm doesnt translate well in print. oops. didnt mean to infuriate, though i do still find this email rather humorous. man was she mad.

anyhow, i must now go play xbox or something. i am tired of typing. plus nobody really reads this shit anyhow. done.

scandalous roadtrip aka its about to get thuggish in here

so let me spare you the boring details and skip right to game day, perhaps better known as "the biggest fiasco to ever occur". so we start tailgaiting at about 1030 am, which is like 2.5 hours later than we planned to start, but still like 10 hours before game time. we are parked behind some dump of a frat house and there is literally NO ONE else around. we seem to be the only heavyweights in knoxville. skipping ahead, by like 1230 we have decided that this place is dead anyway, and so we have moved locations, now in front of the frat house where there is like 8 people tailgating. skipping ahead again. billy takes a picture with that mangy piece of shit smokey, jamie is like making the rounds talking to a bunch of men in orange, and eveyone else is proceeding to get obliterated. shotgunning beers is never a good idea (and i am proud to say that i was the only one strong enough to resist the peer pressure, and thus the only one who did not shotgun a beer. call me what you will, i would prefer not to throw up in the stadium). by like 5pm, still 3 hours left to kickoff, everyone is fucking ripped. derosa has spent time macking on some girl in purple (which is like 6 billion steps up from that piss ass orange they wear at that place) . dave can no longer be understood due to the thickness of his ever increasing accent. i am ready to go home. jason keep asking if we really need to go to the game. coffield is getting out of control and tyler keeps disappearing to locations unknown. so by the time we start heading for the game we are all pretty much shitfaced. jamie has now changed into his red georgia shirt which is causing all kinds messes. so off we go. we do not make it even 100 yards before we are in the midst of a controversy. heres how it went down.

so we are walking to the stadium, the ten of us, and jamie in his red shirt making an ass of himself. he turns to me and i punch him in the chest because hes wearing a georgia shirt and we are at tennessee. im totally dicking around with him. he whirls back around at me pretending hes gonna fuck me up, still just fucking around, and i say, "dude it wasnt me, it was that guy", and point to some random dude. this is meant to be funny due to the fact that i punched jamie in the chest and thus he totally saw me do it. but this guy apparently doesnt get the joke and starts in on what we dont know at the time will become his fucking mantra. "ive served overseas," which is meaningless to me and makes absolutely no sense in the context of anything that is happening. but anyhow, trying to appear to be social i take the nugget that hes given us about being a marine, and billy joins in, and we tell old pal that tyler is in the navy. this apparently does not impress him as he calls tyler and his fellow marines pussies and calls us pussies and rambles on along. well billy will not stand for this abrupt end to the conversation and attempts to engage this fellow in a dialogue about the tradition and passion surrounding the annual army-navy rivalry game. this oh so sociable chap thinks all of this is hogwash and tells us so in not so many words, by again calling us all pussies and fags and reiterating that he has "served overseas." this is apparently a great distinction from his common man. we should all hope one day to "serve overseas." anyhow, at this point billy gives up as old duder is getting more and more worked up and convinced that we are his "veit-cong"or whatever well armed advesary he faced, and so derosa steps forth to attempt to calm this guy down. it looks for a moment as though derosa has diffused the situation, however looks can be decieving. apparently, old shitbag was not laughing with derosa in a jovial manner as i had assumed, but instead was laughing at derosa and the rest of us in a manner that seemed to suggest that we could not understand him at all because we had not "served overseas" and were in fact causing him great stress and trauma by making him relive his experience at said location and to make things right we were either to swing at him so he could beat us senseless or go home and fuck each other. the latter suggestion was at this point given much more thought at length as he, while walking just ahead of us, now with a gaggle of men he picked up just at the point where it looked like he might get beat down by the 10 of us, enlightened his fellow travellers with tales of what we did in our spare time; i assume "we" were at this point me, coffield, and derosa, since the others seemed to have fallen back a bit. not one to allow others to have any misconcetions when i could just as well educate them of the truth, when asked rhetorically "i wonder which one of them is the bitch and which one is the butch," insisted that I good sir was the bitch and that i was on the recieving end every evening whenever coffield wanted to be the giver. this seemed not to pacify the gentleman, but rather to incite him further, and as we proceeded to the stadium, he became more vocal in his insistence that he had "served overseas" and that we were in fact extremely homosexual. and then for some reason he turned back and seemed to single out derosa and insist that derosa should swing at him so he would have justification to beat derosas ass. derosa meanwhile says that he isnt really in a fighting mood, what with it being sunday and all, but that if the distinguished marine would like to have the honor of throwing the first in a series of blows, then he (derosa) would certainly return the favor. at this point our new friend became adamant that we were disrespecting him and that if anyone should be respected it is he, after all he had "served overseas." perhaps i forgot to mention that right before his verbal assault on derosa he had called us "fucking democrats," to which i of course responded, "yes, we are all big kerry supporters. i love the guy. i hear hes been overseas." this did not have the desired effect of pacifying the man in the orange hat either, and instead incensed him. so as the guy is screaming at derosa and as it is very rapidly looking like we will all be spending the night in jail after a royal rumble, old pals frind comes up to me and asks what the problem is. i tell him, "well your boy there wont shut the fuck up," to which he responds, "thats not my boy. he may be in my fraternity, but he aint my boy." i insist that he is more his than mine at this point, to which he conceeds. he insists that "his boy" is just really drunk. we have been drinking for roughly 10 hours at this point so i tell this mediator that we too are a bit tipsy and to simply remove his breathren from our quadrant as rapidly as possible to avoid the forseeable dispute. he quickly ushers his party away. tyler however, does not see the negotiation or the amicable end of the affair, so he grabs derosa very firmly by the collar and grabs me in a similar manner and yells at us to "stop" because "i am not going to fight this guy tonight," which to be fair tyler, was the whole point of the entire discussion, us simply trying to assure our fellow football fan that we had no intentions of causing him bodily harm. unfortunately, knoxvilles finest were arriving on the scene just in time to see tyler yell and grab derosa and myself, and singled out tyler and derosa for a little chat. i kept walking knowing that to stop would be foolish unless specifically ordered by the boys in blue to do so. jamie meanwhile has gone a bit ahead and is antagonising the crowd by yelling "go vols" in his red georgia shirt. derosa and tyler are ordered to stand with their backs to the brick wall while our heroic officers converse with them. i have since been informed that there was indeed a "good cop" and a "bad cop". as derosa is being lectured by the 5-0 his lady in purple walks right by. i am unaware of whether she noticed derosa in particular (they seemed to have quite a good vibe while tailgaiting and talking, but who's to know really), but honestly, who doesnt take notice of drunk rascals being lectured by the po-po at a football game. finally derosa and tyler are forced to relinquish their tickets and evacuate the premises. we are now down to eight men. we head for our gate to enter neyland stadium. we are seperated. billy and big papa boyd are nowhere to be found when we enter the stadium. we get to the gate. coffield becomes concerned because he does not have his ticket. we go in anyway and attempt to call billy, who had all of the tickets to begin with, to come give coffield his and let him in. coffield is the drunkest of us all. we cannot contact billy, so several of us decide to go find our seats and hope they boyds are thereand then come and retrieve coffield. we find boyd in the stands. he insists that coffield has his ticket. after several minutes on the phone he says he is going to go find coffield and tell him he has his ticket and bring him back to us. we never see the biller again. down to six people at this point. the game begins. roughly hafway through the first quarter jason and dave get up to go to the bathroom. they say they will be right back. we never see them again. down to four. jamie and i leave with three minutes to go in the half. on the way back to the car i stop to puke. i feel better. we are lost though. somehow we find our way back, rediscovering some of our party on the way. billy, coffield, tyler, and derosa are all still missing though. after a tight squeeze out of the parking lot we finally get back to the hotel. i am going to puke again, i can tell. however, i am a man of discipline and know that i can at least make it to my room on the eighth floor of the hotel. i finally get to the elevator. i am close to collapsing and letting vomit just spray where it will. 8 floors to go. on floor 2 the elevator stops. this is no good. a fmaily gets on from the pool. i attempt to stand upright. its rough. the elevator stops on floor 4 to let the family off. TAKE THE FUCKING STAIRS!!! i am very close to regurgitation. i almost follow them off at floor four and use the trash can right outside the elevator. i figure this is bad policy in front of 3 little kids. floor 8 here i come. finally i reach floor 8. i can just make it to the room probably before spewing. i put my key in the lock; please god let it work the first time. i see the little green light. i push it open. the bar lock is on. why in gods name would they lock the fucking bar lock! it comes up. i turn and vomit in the hallway. a lot. i then fight my way vertical and proceed to bang on the door forever. finally derosa stumbles to the door and opens it after some trouble. apparently he too is suprised that that fucking bar lock is on. i pass out soon afterward. a while later tyler comes into the room and jumps on top of me and attempts to hump me. i fall asleep again. i wake up this morning to sounds of someone puking loudly in the bathroom. it is coffield. he says later, "i dont know what happened last night, but i dont really remember going to the game, and i have this unused ticket in my pocket."

it is learned later that coffield wandered alone for a while totally lost. he knows he was lost in a parking deck somewhere riding up and down on the elevator but never finding the exit. derosa and tyler went to a bar and took shots of yager until derosa had to leave to go search random parking decks for coffield. he hars from coffield a little while later when he (derosa) is in a parking deck. coffield says he is now back at the hotel. derosa is told that he is 4 miles from the hotel and so makes a mad dash through knoxville in an attempt to get back before sunrise. tyler meanwhile has left the bar and headed to the tallest building he sees thinking that this must be the hotel. unfortunately the tall building he aimed for is in the opposite direction from the hotel. he too gets lost and is soon accosted by a bum who aks for some spare change. tyelr says, "dude, ill give you 20 bucks if you can tell me how to get to the holiday inn." the bum obliges, as does tyler. all parties leave happy. billy is not seen again that night, but shows up in one piece in the morning, so no one asks too many questions.

so there you have it. an insiders account of the scandalous happenings of the road trip to knoxville. next years "thuggish roadtrip" will hopefully go smoother, but one never knows.

god hates me

well its official. i have the worst luck of any human to ever step inside an automobile. it never fails. if it isnt a ticket its a flat tire, if it isnt a flat tire its my engine blowing up, if my engine checks out ok then of course its a fucking ticket. so here i am yesterday, on my way to stone mountain park to get my last paycheck, which i know cannot be more than like 30 dollars, but its 30 dollars i can use so im going to get it from those fuckers before they void my check. so im headed through stone mountain village and i think "oh shit, id better buckle up before i go past the police station and get a ticket." so i buckle, right about in the spot where the speed limit drops from 45 to 35. then i look up and of course theres a fucking cop clocking people, and im not really going fast so im not too worried, but then i see him lower his radar gunand since there is nobody else on the fucking road i know i am totally fucked here. so of course he pulls me over and tells me i shouldnt be speeding and takes my shit. and he doesnt tell me how fast i was going until he writes me a ticket and brings it back. take a guess. how fast was i going right when the limit drops from 45 to 35? forty-fucking-eight. 48! three miles over, then 13 miles over. and he gives me a ticket thats gonna cost me 121.50! fucker! good to know that the trip to get my 26 dollar check was so worthwhile. i am choosing to blame this on stone mountain park. if they would have just given me my fucking check when they fired me instead of holding it and fucking me over, i wouldnt have this problem. but no. they keep it, they make me come and get it rather than mailing it and then to add insult to injury i open the check and see under the section marked "other pay", the part counting money other than my 2.13 per hour, i see that i have recieved an additional $.01. so apparently my severance is to the tune of one fucking penny. god do i fucking hate that park. mark my words, when i become czar of america i am blowing that god forsaken rock right off the face of the planet.

on a lighter note, i assigned like 12 detentions today. cocksuckers tried to call my bluff. i gave two detentions to one kid. i am making them show up at 630 in the morning since i leave the building at like 11am. ha! hows that for punishment. one kid tried to give me some sob story about having a 30 minute drive to school every day. i told him i guess hed just have to leave the house at 6 then. that brightened my day. anyhow. im hungry. chelf, out.