I love words. They hold so much power and creativity. My particular favourite is using them for humour, and I enjoy puns (as you may have already noticed). Some words, though, I like just for the sound of them or how they feel as you say them.

Pestilent. "Mr. Bush, I find you pernicious and pestilent". "Wha, thank ya boy! You-ah not so bad yurself!". That's another good one; pernicious. Using it with pestilent gives you that illusive alliteration bonus. Work those two words into a business meeting sentence along with 'purulent' and I'll send you a postcard.

Ungulate. That's a great word. I try to squeeze it into conversation whenever I can. Say that out loud. Ungulate! It is so fun to say out loud that it was worth getting that strange look from the guy in the cubical behind you, wasn't it? Ungulate. Seems a shame to waste such a good word on hoofed mammals. I guess they earn it by lining up to be shrink wrapped and flash-frozen. They also get to use cool words like Perissodactyla and Artiodactyla when they're buying shoes.

Recombinant. Unfortunately, this isn't a word that you're likely going to get to use a lot unless you happen to work at a small engineering firm. It's too bad. I'd like to be able to use it when doing something mundane like purchasing toilet paper.

Corpulent. A fantastic word that is sadly under-utilized. Not through lack of opportunity, however. I'm sure North America would have less of a weight problem if you had to choose between t-shirt sizes "porcine", "corpulent", and "elephantine" instead of L, XL, and XXL.

Standing at the bus stop today I watched a driver training car take a corner too sharply and drive along the sidewalk for about ½ a block. The name of the company? Dynasty Driving. Would you learn to drive from someone that answers the phone, "Die Nasty Driving!"?

Don't these people think even for a few minutes before naming a company?

I had a drink on the way home today. A dry gin martini. A pretty crappy one, at that. It's not hard to make an excellent martini, and I'm always shocked when a bar can't manage it.

Get a spotless martini glass out of the cupboard and fill it with a large handful of ice. You want the glass cold.

Fill a shaker with ice. Very cold ice. You don't want it to melt quickly. Water in a martini is bad-bad.

Get your gin out of the freezer.

1½ ounces of gin and ¾ ounce of dry vermouth goes in the shaker. I like Bombay Sapphire gin and Noilly Prat vermouth.

Stir it rapidly 5 or 10 times. You're trying to get it very, very cold without melting too much ice into the martini.

No. Not shaken. The Bond movies have it backwards (the books usually get it right). That whole thing about bruising the gin is referring to it getting cloudy. It gets cloudy if it gets too much water in it. It gets much more water in it if you shake the ice. Stir it.

Dump the ice from the glass and pour your martini. It should be crystal clear, not cloudy. If it's cloudy, give it to a friend and try to make a better one for yourself.

Add an olive if you like. Not one of those awful ones with the artificial pimento. Get some nice olives from your local Greek or Italian market. Why ruin expensive gin with a crappy olive? A twist of lemon peel (or nothing at all) is a nice alternative.

Also, try to make one drink at a time, and use fresh ice for each martini. Doubling up the recipe to make two martinis doesn't seem to do very well. I think it's because the extra liquid melts more ice or something. I'm not sure.

How hard is that?

Incidentally, the Bond book Casino Royale also has the recipe for what is commonly called a "James Bond Martini". In the book it's called a Vesper martini. After his wife is killed, Bond swears to never drink another Vesper martini.


Lillet is a type of spiced vermouth. It's not common, but most well stocked stores will have it or get it for you. I've tried a Vesper martini, and didn't particularly like it. It wasn't horrible or anything, I guess I just prefer the basics. I prefer Sapphire over Gordon's, too.

If you replace the gin with vodka, that's called a Vodkatini in my book. Sorry, I don't personally like those at all. I think they have no flavour. The herbs and spices from the gin are what makes a martini special. Of course, if you don't like gin I guess vodka is better than nothing.

I'd forgotten I'd had these on pre-order! I love surprises in the mail. My Futurama Volume 3 DVD Collection arrived today. Looks like I'll be spending a late night in front of the TV vegetating and feeding my brain slug.

I wish they were still making episodes of this. Matt Groening and David X. Cohen are animation gods. I much prefer it to The Simpsons as well. My favorite character has always been the cyclops, Turunga Leela (aka "Inspector One-B-D-I"). Katey Sagal voices the character perfectly. For fans of her previous artistic tour de force, Episode 2-09, "A Bicyclops Built for Two" is a very unsubtle Groening homage to "Married... With Children".

Of course, Bender Bending Rodriguez ("Bender" to his friends) is just plain cool, too.

The radio station I listen to is running one of those contests where you have to answer the phone a particular way to win. In this case it's, "I Listen to Jack!". They started by giving out $1000 for everyone that won. Recently they decided to "add it to the jackpot" each time someone didn't win.

Well, the jackpot is up to $65,000.

That seem pretty extreme to me. It's pretty funny, though. I'm really starting to look forward to the calls each morning:


Is that an oddly large prize for a radio station? What's the best thing your local stations are giving away?

I'm sitting here watching the Fear Factor Girls-only Show. One of the girls made a comment that almost beats the Blu-blocker sun glasses comment (more on that later).

Walking into the second challenge, one of the girls said, "I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been in a fatal car crash the night before!" Um. Ok. Waking up after a fatal accident feels like what, exactly? Pretty invigorating would be my guess.

What was that Blu-blocker comment I mentioned? Blu-blockers are sun glasses that are frequently sold via late night infomercials. There is one scene where they stop a rather well-endowed young blonde on a beach and ask her to try on the glasses. She was really impressed with them, and uttered the fabulous remark, "Wow. These are incredible. When I put them on, everything looks like it's in 3-D!"

Yeah. Unless you have a glass eye, sweetheart, everything is in 3-D. Run along now, and don't think too hard about that. I'd hate to be blamed for burning out your brain.