Subtle Coolness

Although I didn’t know it, in the summer of 1999 I began writing for this website. I had set up my very first email address not long before then, and I was a bored high school student between semesters. I thought Dave Barry had the best job in the world: write something funny once a week. So I invented a weekly column called Turtle’s Thoughts and emailed funny little essays I wrote to most of my extended family — the ones with email addresses, anyway.

As part of the joke, I included a mock “legal disclaimer” at the end of each email. I would change and add to the disclaimer each week. For example,

Any person wishing to reproduce this article must have a dang good reason and must say, “Pretty please with a cherry on top!”

After a few weeks, I began to employ inappropriate comments and insults in the name of humor. I didn’t think much before I wrote and I didn’t understand what good humor was. Thankfully, a kind reader stepped in and taught me some things about appropriate humor, writing, life and myself.

My grandfather wrote me, and without criticism showed me where I had gone wrong. He suggested that instead of shunning responsibility with a legal disclaimer, I make my motivations clear with a mission statement.

My grandfather was a man that always lived with a purpose. In everything he did he worked towards a worthy goal. He raised an amazing, loving family; researched lifetimes worth of genealogy; saved countless lives in the service of his country; and had the time to teach an important lesson to me, one of his 43 grandchildren.

In memory of Calvin W. Jackson
8 Jan 1925 ~ 27 Apr 2006

labarum12.mp3 (26:25, 64kbps, 12M)
labarum12-lo.mp3 (26:25, 32kbps, 6.0M)

Talking about people that “go against the grain” or who aren’t archetypal. Stay tuned for other big words in Labarum for the Latter Day: The Zine.

The show opened with music from The Arrogants, and the featured artist was The Brobecks.

labarum11.mp3 (26:17, 64kbps, 12M)
labarum11-lo.mp3 (26:17, 32kbps, 6.0M)

Faith. Cory Mon. “If the Church wasn’t true, that would suck.”

Every time I put a Jelly Belly Bean in my mouth, I pause. How can the flavour of popcorn, or cantaloupe, or jalapeno, or strawberry cheesecake be squeezed into such a little bean? And how can the flavours be so accurate? Every bean is so wonderful. And colorful.

Google’s web applications are like that. They are colorful. But they also cause me to sit back and reflect on how extremely cool, intuitive and powerful they are.

For the last month or so, I have been looking around for a solution to a problem. The problem: find a web-based calendar. That’s easy to use. That can do recurring appointments. That looks cool. A tall order, I know.

I tried a few on my own server, and settled on one, but I wasn’t really satisfied. Then Google comes to the rescue.

I am now a very happy user of Google Calendar. It’s beautiful and powerful and just what I needed, and every time I use it I am reminded of Jelly Belly Beans.

That’s the best kind of web application.

I check my spelling. I look up words. I like dictionaries. Here, have some knowledge:

A tree can be fluorescent, and it can be florescent, and it can be both.

You see, I was spell-checking an email in which I had typed the word “flourescent”. Looking at that word now, one can plainly see how it might have won the Ugliest Word, Ever award.

But I didn’t realize that when I typed it, so it was misspelt. When I checked the spelling, the ever-diligent spell-checker brought this silly excuse for a word to my attention, and offered a few suggestions.

Two of the suggestions were “fluorescent”, what I thought I wanted to type, and “florescent”, a word I had never seen before. Except in the email to which I was replying. So, maintaining my inquisitive schoolboy charm, I looked up “florescent” and learned a new word.

As a bonus, I discovered that both words fit perfectly well into the sentence I was trying to construct. Or repair, at this point. So I used them both.

There’s no sense discriminating when it comes to those lovely, lovely words.