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Last night, M-High or whatever her secret name is mentioned that she was learning about morphs in her into linguistics course. I learned about them by the name of morphemes, but it's all pretty much the same thing. (Morphs are vocal, morphemes are written, from what I understand. Linguists of the world, throw off your chains and correct me.) She mentioned that the term "morph" always makes her thing of Animorphs, and so we all had a good laugh about it.

Except it got me thinking - what about animorphemes? You know, morphemes that refer to animals?

I started to name off animorphemes from the top of my head (well, just the one - ichthyo), but everyone else made fun of me enough that I stopped. But in my head, I kept going. Here's the list I have so far:

ichthyo-
ornitho-
apio-
malaco-
primato-
ceto-
arachno-
entomo-
herpeto-
myrmeco-
plankto-

Further additions are always accepted, but I think this is a pretty solid list. Heh. Animorphemes.

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You know how married couples here tend to get joint blogs? And how it's like "Facebok for married people"? And how I don't have one?

CITIZENS OF THE INTERNET, WORRY NO LONGER.

Geniune. and I are starting a blog, but you won't have to worry about sappy pictures or baby drooling or any of the other hallmarks of married blogs. (Would you expect anything like that from us, anyway?) Just bizarre conversations we have while we're falling asleep.

Seriously already, check it out. You won't regret it.

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More fun with Wikipedia:

If you can't see it, it's a succession table I created for Wendy's Baconator, listing it as the current Official Wendy's Bacon Sandwich and current Greatest Burger. Sometimes, I wonder if I have too much fun with this website.

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I thought I might be a bad person when I started beatboxing to "I Am a Child of God" during General Conference today, but I knew I was when I started imagining a trip-hop remix of the song by Portishead or Massive Attack.

It was a pretty cool remix, though.

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Esteemed Co-Worker and I were writing a letter in Japanese at work today. We were wondering how accurate our translation was, so just for laughs, we ran it through Google Translate. It does a passable job, usually, but Japanese is so different from English that it turned out pretty rough. Once we got the English version, we ran it through again to see what the Japanese would turn out like. After six or seven different recursions, the final product didn't even remotely resemble the original. Here's the original:

Dear Ms. Yoshida,

We appreciate your years of dedicated service working for SISEL International. We were very sorry to hear about your recent hospitalization. Our thoughts and prayers are with you for a speedy recovery.

If there is anything we can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask.

Your friends at SISEL International.

And here's the final product:

Yoshida Sumiko
A long time, please. , For us, the sizzle to thank you for working hard. To the hospital, but unfortunately you can listen. You have to recover quickly.
You are here, please do not hesitate to ask to hear.
Your friend,
Sizzle

Sometimes, playing with Google is just too much fun.

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WARNING WARNING WARNING THIS POST INVOLVES EMBRACING MY INNER GEEK

And now, presenting a list of theme songs from the Mega Man series that could also conceivably be heard at a rave or dance party:

Fire Man
Metal Man
Quick Man
Flash Man
Heat Man (questionable)
Wood Man (questionable)
Snake Man
Spark Man
Shadow Man
Pharaoh Man
Ring Man

Man, if you weren't playing the Mega Man games as a kid or currently holding a dance party for one to their music now, you really missed out.

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Is Wikipedia possibly the most entertaining website on the planet? Scientists agree that it is.

(Don't bother looking for the change on Wikipedia - the editors took it down within minutes.)

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It's been a couple of seasons since I attended BYU football games regularly, but I'm really glad we decided to go to this one. BYU blew the doors off of UCLA yesterday by the staggering score of 59-0. (Gratuitous shot of scoreboard courtesty of M-High.) Taken by itself, the game was pretty impressive. Quarterback Max Hall picked up seven touchdown passes - a BYU record - while the defense and special teams forced three turnovers that led directly to touchdowns. Not too shabby. But what was most impressive, in my opinion, was the crowd.

Normally, BYU home crowds are pretty sad. We tend not to cheer at the right times, don't really have a sense of how to disrupt an opponent, and love gimmicks. (The Wave is still popular at LaVell Edwards Stadium. Sigh.) The crowd really didn't have their heart in the first game, and it showed, as BYU allowed 17 points to I-AA Northern Iowa. This game, however, was different. Hall led BYU to a touchdown on the opening drive, and right from the onset, the crowd smelled blood. We were loud, excited, and got right in UCLA's face as the defense blocked a field goal on the Bruins' opening drive. What's more, the crowd stayed rambunctious the whole way through. The only time we faltered was when the cheerleaders started The Wave during one of our kickoffs, leading to a solid return from UCLA. We quickly atoned for the bad karma by yelling loud enough to force a UCLA fumble and set up a quick touchdown.

Here's what I was most proud of, though. With the clock winding down in the fourth quarter, UCLA put on a decent drive, getting close to the end zone. The game was already well in hand, with BYU up 59-0, so a UCLA score wouldn't have hurt things, but it was clear everyone there wanted a shutout. And with UCLA threatening to break that, the fans decided to take matters into their own hands. We shouted loud enough to break the Bruins' concentration and stop a pass that could have been a touchdown. We broke up a couple of other plays. And when it came down to the field goal attempt, everyone in that stadium yelled "BLOCK THAT KICK!" over and over until we watched it sail wide right.

I know most of it comes down to how the team itself plays, but had the crowd been as lackluster as it was for the Northern Iowa game, I'm convinced that ball would have gone in. As it was, I felt like I personally had contributed to a monumental victory. And I know that we as BYU fans can do the same game for every other home game. Personally, I don't plan to allow BYU to lose another game this season. I'm prepared to yell and scream loud and long enough to lose my voice for every home game if it means victories as big as this one.

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Last night, Genuine. and I were talking about sports (well, I was talking about it and she was listening politely, rather) and we started wondering what level of injury she would have to sustain in order for me to leave the game with her. The conversation went (roughly) as follows:

ME.: Wait, who's playing?
GENUINE.: Um, Brett Farve.
ME.: The Jets? Okay, what kind of injury do you have?
GENUINE.: Let's say I've been shot.
ME.: Someone shot you at a football game? Who would do that?
GENIUNE.: Winston Churchill?
ME.: A time-traveling Winston Churchill comes to a football game so he can shoot you.
GENUINE.: In the stomach.
ME.: In the stomach.
GENUINE.: Yes.
ME.: Who are the Jets playing?
GENUINE.: Um, the Packers.
ME.: Holy crap, not only can that matchup only happen in the Super Bowl, but that would be the queen mother of all grudge matches. Holy crap.
GENUINE.: I'm making this difficult for you on purpose, you realize.
ME.: It's working. Wow. Holy crap.
GENUINE.: Did I mention the score is tied with five minutes left?
ME.: Geeeeaaaaah! The score is tied?
GENUINE.: And I've been shot in the stomach.
ME.: Oh man. And it's the Super Bowl?

This went on. We started adding new hypotheticals. Would I leave the game if the EMTs said she would be alright and there was nothing more I could do? What if she was injured playing running back for the Jets? The Packers? Ultimately I decided I'd have to leave the game, but it wasn't an easy choice. (I mean, it's the Super Bowl! Come on! How did I even get Super Bowl tickets in the first place?)

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Genuine. and I have been working on getting our phone plan switched recently. In short, it involves me leaving the plan I had with my sister, she leaving the plan with her sister, and my joining a new plan with her number. Sounds simple enough, right? Of course, since cell phone companies are involved, it has been insanely difficult. I thought about writing a long, rambling post about how annoying it is to deal with cell phone companies, but I realized it would sound something like this:

BREAKING NEWS: CELL PHONE COMPANIES DIFFICULT TO DEAL WITH
ALSO IN HEADLINES: WATER WET, POPE CATHOLIC, BEAR POOPS IN WOODS

So I decided to just leave it at that.

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Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I remarked to Genuine. that I missed high school - not the institution itself, or the classes, or the people, but the idea of it. That's strange, since I loathed my last year of high school, since I'd been uprooted and transplanted in Oregon for just one year. It wasn't pleasant. I just had a memory of listening to Sarah Slean, playing Mancala, and watching the rain hit my window and feeling terribly melancholy.

Anyhow, I certainly don't miss it after the dream I just had.

In the dream, I was coming back to high school after being absent for a month or so. All of my classmates knew I had been absent (I was at some other school, or something, for the month), but they couldn't understand that I didn't remember where any of my classes were, or even who taught them. I kept telling them I didn't know where I was going, but I lost them in the halls, and couldn't find my math class. I knew it was taught by a Mr. Armstrong, but I wasn't entirely certain on the name. The building was gigantic - sort of like an airport, but if it were done with the floors in tile and with classrooms everywhere instead of terminals and gates. I wandered around what I thought was the math wing but couldn't find my teacher, which made me angry and frustrated, because I knew if I showed up late, he would make me read from the packet even though I didn't have one. I just kept looking and looking and couldn't find the room and saw some punk kid loft his boom box into a different class and it was so frustrating. I tend to get lost a lot in my dreams.

Anyway, I never found the math class. I don't really miss high school anymore.

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A co-worker introduced me to a social networking site called Geni today. Essentially, you can create a family tree and connect all of your relatives. It's surprisingly fun. I spent a couple of hours today working on my own family tree, and many relatives are pitching in with information I wouldn't have known on my own. It's a real kick. You should take a look at it.

And if that's not your cup of tea, then you should go watch some more of the Olympics. Don't watch the TV coverage, though, unless you're looking to see athletes from the US and only the US. Go online if you want to watch things like water polo, equestrian, and archery. Man, that's where the excitement is. I love watching the Olympics for what it really is - a celebration of athletics and international brotherhood - rather than NBC's idea of an ultrapatriotic America-first bonanza. Visa has taken up a slogan of "Go World," which I've really liked. Let's see some more global friendship.

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In honor of the Olympics, but also for those of you for, whatever reason, haven't seen it yet:

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I always look forward to the Olympics whenever they roll around. I spent time yesterday thinking about my favorite way I'd seen the torch lit (definitely from Barcelona, when they shot a flaming arrow into it) and my favorite Olympic moments (Michael Johnson outrunning the camera in 1996 as he broke the 200m world record). I convinced friends last night to watch the nigh-eternal Parade of Nations for a couple of hours as we waited for the torch to be lit. And wow, was it worth it. The Beijing opening ceremonies were something to be remembered for a long time. Gymnast Li Ning appeared to run along the outer rim of the stadium as a scroll unrolled, showing the torch relay. (Absolutely amazing, if you didn't catch it.)

And this morning, I was up at 7.30 to watch a women's team handball match between Brazil and Germany. I've never seen a team handball match, and I don't have any particular connections to Brazil or Germany, but man, I was hooked. It looks like it's going to be a fantastic few weeks. If you're not watching it, I strongly recommend it.

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Since Facebook took down their Scrabulous application (which was most of the reason I spent time on Facebook), I've been spending a lot of time playing Scramble, which is essentially Boggle. You can play ladder mode, which shows you how you do against your friends' top scores. I really like it, even if my highest scoring friend has 247, and I could never get closer than 218. (I average around 130.) Then today, I was given the ultimate Boggle board, and notched 270 in three minutes (out of a possible 2037). Behold!

Can anyone top it? Scramble gives you a more generous point system, so 4-letter words are worth 2, 5-letter words are worth 4, 6-letter words are worth 6, and so on, which should make higher scores much easier.

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I just got an email informing me that season tickets for BYU football games will be much more intelligently handled this year. You can buy them online and create groups you want to sit with. Your seats won't be rotated - instead, you are guaranteed one spot for the whole year. It's much better than it's been in the past, and we're supposed to have a really good team to boot.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I kind of want to see BYU football games this year, but I also want someone to go with me, since going to games by yourself is ten kinds of lame. Any takers? Earlier customers are given better seats, so the sooner we get in on this, the better. And if there aren't any takers, well then, I'll just stay at home and calculate stats or something.

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Wanna see something awesome?

Radiohead just released a new music video for "House of Cards" that was created without using cameras. Instead, they used something called data visualization to create maps of faces and landscapes using pinpoints of light.

In short, it's awesome, and you should take a look at it here. It just went live today.

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Henceforth all sports-related posts will be displayed on my new sports blog. You don't actually have to read it if you don't want, but I'm excited to be writing it.

And now, I'm going camping for the weekend.

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Seriously, am I doing something wrong? I can't get a job in my dream field, sure, but I can't even get a job in my backup field? What gives?

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Good idea: When hungry, make yourself a nice dinner. You can even take the extra step and make something nice. Tonight, I made pork chops and rice. (Genuine. provided the green beans and juice.) I was pretty hungry, and this really hit the spot. Here's an actual picture of what it looked like:


Bad idea: Making a fabulous pork chop dinner when it's 90 degrees outside - and it's 7.30. Standing over the stove for even just 20 minutes seemed like less and less of a good idea as time went on. I probably lost three pounds just standing there sweating. It's gotten so hot in our apartment that the butter in our butter dish is melting on the countertop. Seriously. Take a look:


In closing, I hate summers in Utah, but man were those pork chops good.