Random Stuff XV
I finally had a chance to play one of my all-time favorite words in a game of Scrabble. The word was clayey, pronounced "clay-ee" and meaning, of course, "containing a high percentage of clay." English needs more words so wonderfully awkward both to spell and to say. I say it with a "glottal stop" between the "clay" and the "ey," so that there's a split second of silence between the syllables while my throat constricts and cuts off the long a. I suppose you can also slide directly from the long a into the long e, but then the second syllable is much less distinct, and your listener wouldn't easily understand you unless they were expecting you to say such a weird word as clayey.
About a month ago I went on a nature walk with my friend Stephanie and other members of the Western Reserve Land Conservatory, to look for early spring flowers and other flora and fauna in the wilds of northeastern Ohio. Even though it hadn't rained in a week, we found ourselves sinking ankle-deep into the ground with every step, no matter where we went. Streamside, hillside, ridge: everywhere we walked we had to forcefully extract ourselves from the mire with a comical "squ-ISH squ-ush squ-ISH squ-ush...." I have since realized why the soil had retained water so tenaciously: it was very clayey!
You may have heard about Chevrolet's "Make Your Own Tahoe Ad" contest. The Web site provides stock footage of that horrible huge Chevy Tahoe SUV careening dramatically around corners and generally dominating scenes of nature, plus a selection of appropriately pretentious, overly dramatic soundtracks, and the entrants compile music and images overlaid with their own text to create TV ads. It should come as no surprise that a swarm of disgruntled environmentalists and other socially responsible people have invaded the contest and have used the ad-making tool to craft all manners of scathing anti-SUV messages. The most vicious (i.e., the best) of the parody ads, and the really vulgar ones, have been stripped from the site, but a surprising number have remained. Rumor has it that Chevy condones this subversive activity, which seems amazingly open-minded for a major American corporation. The most comprehensive list of links to anti-SUV entries is maintained by the Democratic Underground. Most of them focus on global warming, but recurrent themes also include conspicuous consumption and, er, certain anatomical deficiencies.
I've been trying to find an archive of Tahoe parody ads maintained off Chevy's contest site. I was hoping that some philanthropist was collecting the best of them, keeping them safe from censorship and alive for posterity (the contest ends on the 27th, after which all the entries may be removed from public access). It so happens that quite a few people have uploaded their critical ads to YouTube. Follow this link to get a list (if the link doesn't work, go to YouTube and perform a video search for "chevy tahoe"). Here's a fine example, for starters.
About a month ago I went on a nature walk with my friend Stephanie and other members of the Western Reserve Land Conservatory, to look for early spring flowers and other flora and fauna in the wilds of northeastern Ohio. Even though it hadn't rained in a week, we found ourselves sinking ankle-deep into the ground with every step, no matter where we went. Streamside, hillside, ridge: everywhere we walked we had to forcefully extract ourselves from the mire with a comical "squ-ISH squ-ush squ-ISH squ-ush...." I have since realized why the soil had retained water so tenaciously: it was very clayey!
You may have heard about Chevrolet's "Make Your Own Tahoe Ad" contest. The Web site provides stock footage of that horrible huge Chevy Tahoe SUV careening dramatically around corners and generally dominating scenes of nature, plus a selection of appropriately pretentious, overly dramatic soundtracks, and the entrants compile music and images overlaid with their own text to create TV ads. It should come as no surprise that a swarm of disgruntled environmentalists and other socially responsible people have invaded the contest and have used the ad-making tool to craft all manners of scathing anti-SUV messages. The most vicious (i.e., the best) of the parody ads, and the really vulgar ones, have been stripped from the site, but a surprising number have remained. Rumor has it that Chevy condones this subversive activity, which seems amazingly open-minded for a major American corporation. The most comprehensive list of links to anti-SUV entries is maintained by the Democratic Underground. Most of them focus on global warming, but recurrent themes also include conspicuous consumption and, er, certain anatomical deficiencies.
I've been trying to find an archive of Tahoe parody ads maintained off Chevy's contest site. I was hoping that some philanthropist was collecting the best of them, keeping them safe from censorship and alive for posterity (the contest ends on the 27th, after which all the entries may be removed from public access). It so happens that quite a few people have uploaded their critical ads to YouTube. Follow this link to get a list (if the link doesn't work, go to YouTube and perform a video search for "chevy tahoe"). Here's a fine example, for starters.