Monthly Archives: October 2007

Short (and Sweet?)

…And now back to our regularly-scheduled blog posts. This week I had a hiatus from the internet courtesy of our DSL provider–much of our area was off line for a couple of days. Very disruptive. Although I had internet withdrawals and started getting a nervous tick that made others hide their frightened children, I think it was healthy to be low-tech for a couple of days.

Apparently I didn’t list your favorite superheroes. Besides the mighty Tick, who did I leave out?

Anyway, I’m so proud of how many of you rose to the Balderdash challenge! And for all of your trouble, here are the top-secret true definitions of the words:

Piebald:

adjective

having sections or patches colored differently and usually brightly; “a jester dressed in motley”; “the painted desert”; “a particolored dress”; “a piebald horse”; “pied daisies” [syn: motley]

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.

Farrago:
a confused mixture; hodgepodge; medley: a farrago of doubts, fears, hopes, and wishes.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

And the race is on…

I’ve heard some strong opinions from some of you about the current poll. You take your superheroes seriously! Glad to hear it. =) One comment offered was that The Tick, the revered hero of all things blue, was woefully excluded from the choices. This was an oversight–The Tick is near and dear to my heart–but perhaps it’s for the best. He would’ve whooped the competition unfairly, methinks.

Let’s shift gears and start the week with a game, shall we? No, not Texas Hold ‘Em, 42, or even the Bathroom Tile Game (that’s for another post). Have you ever played Balderdash? It’s a great board game that uses real words that almost no one has heard of. Players are given the word without knowing the real definition. Each player then makes up a definition. Then all of the “definitions” are read–with the real definition slipped in somewhere–and players vote to guess the real one. It’s almost always worth a chuckle or even a chortle. Other ways to play include guessing the plot to an obscure movie, based on the title only.

For example, if given the word “pettifogger,” I might say that it is “a specialized tool to rid petticoats of bowl weevils.” The real answer is that it is “a petty, unscrupulous lawyer; also, who quibbles over trivia.”

We’ll play the movie version soon, but let’s warm up with the words. Come on, take a chance and play a nerdy thinking game! Ready? Good. I’ll give a couple of words. If you play you can make up definitions for one or both; post them in the comments section. In a couple of days I’ll give the real meaning. Yeeessss, I realize you can look them up, but where’s your sense of fun?

Here we go: Word #1: farrago
Word #2: piebald

Deep thoughts, I imagine

The sprightly young squirrel paused, sitting upright and still by the curb as he flicked his bushy tail. “Hmmm,” he pondered after awhile. “I thought I heard a possum nearby. …Must’ve been my imagination.” He resumed his task of hunting broken pecans. “If there had been a possum,” he wondered, amusing himself as he worked, “what would he be doing in this neighborhood? Visiting possum cousins? Taking a stroll? Hiding out in a garage in order to scare some poor, unsuspecting human?”

He stopped to sample a meaty piece of pecan then scurried on his way.
###

I’m feeling very weird and quirky writing this post, so hang on! Whaddya think of my little squirrel story? I spent hours working on it. (And if you’ll buy that…) But what if it really happened? What if the squirrel used his imagination?

To put it bluntly, I don’t think so. But it was fun imagining the story.

I’ve been thinking this week about the miracle of imagination. Have you ever wondered about that? I believe we’re the only creation that God endowed with imagination. For example, somehow I doubt that javelinas sit around spinning yarns.

And don’t you think that is part of how we’re created in His image? He has the ultimate imagination–He created the universe, for goodness’ sake–and imagination is part of His amazing fingerprint on each of us, I believe.

I like to think that He loves it when we use our wonderings as He intended. We had such great imaginations as kids, didn’t we? Too bad our time now is often too crowded with errands, e-mail, and other day-fillers to see the invisible.

I’ll try to remind myself of that the next time I see a twitchy-tailed squirrel on my curb.