Category: silliness

decoding real estate listings: a helpful glossary

If you’ve ever spent any time house-hunting, you’ve probably noticed that real estate listings have a certain lingo of their own. Often, this involves descriptions of properties that have been somewhat embellished to make even flaws quirky characteristics sound like selling points. Some of these euphemisms have become standardized, such as the “handyman’s special,” a term for a home that is falling apart in every imaginable way in minor need of repairs.

In order to help you read between the lines in an MLS listing, I offer to you this helpful example and glossary.

Example: a typical MLS listing

Charming and cozy 2 bedroom house. Enjoy summer breezes in this lovingly decorated perfect starter home, with sunny, low-maintenance yard. Modern kitchen, 1 and a half baths, partially finished basement. Homey, and ready to move in!
Location features:
• easy access to freeway
• excellent cell phone reception
• close to amenities
• friendly, mature neighborhood

Glossary of Terms:
charming: run-down
cozy: cramped
summer breezes: house is drafty, may have windows missing or holes in roof
lovingly decorated: all the carpets are magenta, and there is loud wallpaper in every room
perfect starter home: you’ll want to move out as soon as you can afford better
sunny: no trees or shade of any kind
low-maintenance yard: lawn is paved over
modern kitchen: kitchen done in the Modern style, circa 1960
1 and a half baths: the second bathroom has partially-installed fixtures, or there may be a toilet in the basement
partially finished basement: basement features water-stained shag carpet
homey: house has funky smells, possible from cat urine
Ready to move in!: home has been abandoned
easy access to freeway: next to an on-ramp
excellent cell phone reception: under a cell phone tower
close to amenities: across from a liquor and/or convenience store
friendly, mature neighborhood: may be near a strip club or adult bookstore

I hope that this information will be helpful to you in your house-hunting endeavors. If you have more terms to add to the glossary, I welcome your contributions!

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This week’s Monday Mission, which I’ve chosen to accept in a roundabout way, was to write a post in the style of a real estate listing. For more listings, stop by Painted Maypole.

Thanks to maja for teaching me “low-maintenance yard” and “easy freeway access,” terms that she may have actually seen in use.

Well, golly!

I’m seriously amused. There is a quiz out there called “The Blog Cuss-O-Meter,” which I saw at casa az last night (and at raincoaster a few days ago when I was too busy to give it a spin). I thought to myself “screw it, I hardly ever swear on my blog,” but I took the quiz anyhow. Here is the result I got:

The Blog-O-Cuss Meter - Do you cuss a lot in your blog or website?

(The site further gives this bit of info: “This is 791% MORE than other websites who took this test.”)

This surprised me more than a little, especially given that others who took this were surprised at how low a score they got. In spite of having decided, and stated, that I reserve the right to swear on my blog, I tend to shy away from using certain words in my writing that more easily leave my lips when I am, for example, driving. Hell, I wrote a whole post last week where I played with “crap” as a theme, but I somehow avoided using the word shit.

For example, I’d just like to point out that the word fuck appears to appear in only 4 posts in the history of this blog, which means just over 1% of the posts. (And one of those uses is on an image of a little candy heart. Doesn’t that make it sugar-coated?)

But I do use a lot of mild taboo words. My guess is that somehow, the ass in kick-ass, as in my tag “kick-ass women” is responsible. (Yes, I’m saying my ass is responsible.) It’s in my sidebar, so may count as being in basically all of my pages somehow. Otherwise, what do they consider?

Seriously, this makes me want to do an experiment. Anyone want to try adding some shit or something to their sidebar to see if they can inflate their score?

(Oh, and by the way, I’m back home. The conference and trip were really great. The presentations went well. I saw lots of people I wanted to see. And now I’m really fucking freakin’ damn quite palpably tired and need to get ready for the next conference, now less than 3 weeks away.)

a supplemental banana

My laptop is restored, thanks to John, and it’s been back to the grindstone. (And while Phoebe does appear to have an intestinal bug, so far, John and I both seem to be resisting it.)

In any case, no time for a ThThTh list. Instead, I hope this supplement to last week’s banana list will tide you over:

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and assistant Beaker demostrate the banana sharpener.

Studies Elucidate Health Risks Associated with Common Blogging Practices

From the AP article:The Johns Hopskins University Center for Human Health and Technology Studies issued a report last Friday indicating that individuals participating in activities relating to the internet format of weblogs were at increased risk for a variety of health problems, including rickets, schistosomiasis, kuru, high blood pressure, Omphaloskepsis, and vitamin D deficiency. Many subjects further exhibited lethargy and reduced reaction times to external stimuli.Blogging practices most strongly correlated with risks to mental and physical health include the publication, reading and exposure to weblog entries on topics including, but not limited to, politics, humor, family, music, news and the personal lives of the weblog authors. The study identified the following practices as being most strongly correlated with mental health risks and cognitive deficits:

  • Spending upwards of 5 hours weekly reading, writing or contemplating writing weblog entries
  • Reading of multiple weblogs daily
  • Compulsive checking of weblog entries for comments or the checking of website visitor statistics
  • Posting images of one’s local domestic fauna and/or offspring
  • Posting lists of any kind

When asked for details on the concurrent study for risks associated with so-called “lolcats,” images of animals which have been augmented with captions using poor grammar, Dr. Percival Jones-Quinderpants replied: “The final results of that study are not yet available, but preliminary results show that subjects may be at higher risk for certain types adult-onset language disorder, such as Lolcat’s Aphasia and hyperacronymia.”Related studies also found that subjects who spent late-night hours engaging in various online activities (such as social networking sites) were more 5 times more likely than the control group to have decreased attention spans and reduced ability to focus, leading to an inability to complete a coherent

going bananas

With work keeping me crazy busy, and life in general pulling me in all sorts of directions, it’s no wonder I feel I’m going a bit bananas. And what with yesterday’s big banana-related news, it’s no wonder I’ve got bananas on the brain. Seeing as I don’t have a whole lot of time tonight, this ThThTh list may be on the short side. So please feel encouraged throw in your own bananas.banana_bunch_1.png

A small bunch of bananas

  • banana split. An ice cream sundae characterized by a banana that has been split in half lengthways.
  • The Tattooed Banana: a blog devoted to “the emerging appreciation of banana art.”
  • Banana Yoshimoto. A Japanese author. Not actually a banana. Her first novel was Kitchen.
  • Bananarama. An 80s musical group. They weren’t bananas either. Actually, the members were all female.
  • “Yes, we have no bananas.” A song that was a hit in the 20s. (…we have no bananas today…)
  • “The Banana Boat Song.” A song made famous by Harry Belafonte. Here’s a clip from the movie Beetlejuice with the song:
  • top banana. An expression meaning “head honcho” or “big cheese.” Has origins in burlesque performances.
  • slipping on a banana peel. A common slapstick-type sight gag. (cf. this batch of cartoons.) For further insights into the phenomenon, check out this insightful post, which also led me to this fabulous banana-peel-slipping-related dialog from the 1966 Batman movie:

    Batman: [reading a riddle] What has yellow skin and writes?
    Robin: A ball-point banana!
    Batman: [reads the second riddle] What people are always in a hurry?
    Robin: Rushing people… Russians!
    Batman: So this means…
    Robin: Someone Russian is going to slip on a banana and break their neck!
    Batman: Precisely, Robin!

  • Banana in the tailpipe: a prank involving shoving a banana up the tailpipe of a car, causing the engine to stop. Made famous by a scene with Eddie Murphy in the movie Beverly Hills Cop (1984).
  • This may come as a shock to you, but I find the word banana itself to be funny. (Yes, much like the word pants.) I might even go as far as saying that I find banana to be an inherently funny word. This may be part of why bananas are featured in a lot of jokes. Some of them remarkably silly. I found a page of banana jokes that someone posted on a joke blog, and lookie what I found there:

    Knock knock
    Who’s There?
    Banana
    Banana who?
    Banana Pants.

    • banana_peeled1.png

    all my eggs in one basket

    whole_egg_simple.pngWith Easter around the corner, and with nesting on my brain, it seems like a good time to break out the eggs. While there are loads full of eggs out there, to help moderate our cholesterol intake, I’ll restrict this ThThTh list to a dozen egg things.

    A Dozen Eggs

    1. Easter eggs. Eggs that have been dyed and/or decorated as part of Easter traditions. Linked by some to the concept of rebirth. Linked by others to an anthropomorphic bunny.
    2. Easter egg: a hidden message or bonus in video game, DVD, or other (ususally digital) media. (Can you find my Easter egg?) They can also be found in print or other media, scuh as maps, as a means to protect from copyright infringement.
    3. Fabergé eggs. Elaborate jewelled eggs made by Russian jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé, many of which were commissioned by the Russian imperial family. They often had surprises hidden inside.
    4. Chocolate eggs. Not actually eggs flavored with chocolate, which probably comes as a relief to many, but egg-shaped chocolates. I’m partial to Kinder eggs. A type of chocolate egg containing a plastic yolk with a surprise inside. When I was little, the toys were much cooler than the prizes you could find in, for example, Cracker Jacks. Cadbury Creme Eggs are pretty tasty, too, but the yolk contained within is messier to play with.

      5. egg_blue2.jpgegg_yellow.jpgegg_purple.jpgegg_green.jpgegg_pink.jpgegg_orange.jpg

    5. “the egg scene” from Angel Heart (1987) (clip on YouTube) “You know, some religions think that the egg is the symbol of the soul,” says Robert Deniro during the scene where he malevolently peels and eats a hard-boiled egg.
    6. Humpty Dumpty. A nursery rhyme about an egg.

      Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
      Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
      All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
      Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

      It has quite a bit of lore associated with it. (Did you know it was a riddle in earlier forms, with the eggness of Humpty being the answer?)

    7. Palestinian egg story: A Palistinian folktale about an egg trying to discover its identity. I was exposed to it during a field methods class, where we worked with a speaker of Palestinian Arabic. I particularly remember the line [ʔɪnti mɪʃ Хudra], or “You are not a vegetable.”
    8. Eggbert, the Slightly Cracked Egg, a picturebook by Tom Ross, illustrated by Rex Barron. A story of an egg who is an individual. And a slightly cracked one.

      9. egg_pink.jpgegg_blue2.jpgegg_orange.jpgegg_purple.jpgegg_green.jpgegg_yellow.jpg

    9. Horton Hatches the Egg, by Dr. Seuss. A story of an elephant who is talked into sitting on a nest.
    10. Look – (Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellers (1968). An Avengers episode with an archive of clown faces painted on eggshells. (This was actually a Tara King episode, but one of the better ones.)
    11. “She was a bad egg.” An expression meaning “she was a bad person,” and a quote from the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) by Gene Wilder when Veruca Salt was dumped down the chute after being identified as faulty by the egg-dicator.
    12. “Egg Baby” Parenting an exercise or assignment sometimes used to teach teenagers about parenting and responsibility. Kids are given an egg to “care for” for a set amount of time. Featured in “First the Egg” (1985), an After School Special starring Justine Bateman. Also in the Buffy episode “Bad Eggs.” Of course, in this case, the eggs turn out to be evil demon spawn.

    eggs_carton.jpg

    images (edited 2/7/2010, since people were wondering): The white egg is a public domain image from wpclipart.com, and the single colored egg images are ones that I made based using that image. The photo at bottom is mine.

    the well of idioms may be about to run dry

    I’m afraid I may have upset the apple cart with yesterday’s scandalously wasteful overuse of idioms. (I mean, I packed in the idioms like sardines, all higgledy-piggledy as if they grew on trees.) Because as some of you know, this country is suffering from the ravages of an idiom crisis:

    Idiom Shortage Leaves Nation All Sewed Up In Horse Pies

    WASHINGTON—A crippling idiom shortage that has left millions of Americans struggling to express themselves spread like tugboat hens throughout the U.S. mainland Tuesday in an unparalleled lingual crisis that now has the entire country six winks short of an icicle.

    To do my part to conserve, I’ll resolve to work on recycling old careworn and threadbare clichés, and coining my own beet-juggling idioms. For more details, please tumble your aardvark over to the full story at The Onion.

    nutty as a fruitcake, happy as a clam

    I’ve been keeping something under my hat. I’ve been going on lately about how I have a lot on my plate, crabbing that I have may have bitten off more than I can chew. Sometimes I run around like a chicken with its head cut off. And then I’ve also been feeling pretty under the weather, with my head in a fog half the time. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles. And as things stand, come hell or high water, I’m about to open up a whole new can of worms.

    I can certainly be one to beat around the bush, and you may well wish I’d just let the cat out of the bag and talk turkey. I mean, here I am, dragging things out at a snail’s pace, as slow as molasses in January. I could just sit around and chew the fat till the cows come home. But I suppose I should just come clean, take the bull by the horns, and spill the beans. So here’s the dirt, in a nutshell: I’ve got a bun in the oven.

    Life of Pie

    The Pi Pie Extraordinaire, aged 3 days, finally left this world after a brave struggle against consumption. The brave Blackberry-Apple Pie made it into Pie-hood against the odds. Conceived in late-evening silliness, assembled in the mayhem of a chaotic kitchen with the disadvantages of a severely cracked top crust and a shortage of frozen blackberries, the Pie still reached that coveted state of golden brownness, and emerged from the 400 degree oven only slightly marred. Born in the later hours of Pi Day, the Pi Pie proudly bore the mark of Pi. Those closest to the deceased knew the Pie as being a warm and tender individual beneath the crusty exterior, with a sweetness that was only accentuated by the tartness of the Berry heritage.

    The Pie is survived by the Tokens household, several dirty plates and forks, and a disposable aluminum pie pan. “It is better to have loved Pie and lost Pie than to have never eaten Pie at all,” said Alejna, sadly brushing a tear from her eye and a crumb from the corner of her mouth.

    ——————–

    This slice of silliness is being served to you as part of the current Monday Mission, which ordered up posts in the form of an obituary.

    In other news, I’m pleased as pie to share that my caption won the most recent Teeny Manolo caption contest.

    Winners receive the coveted TeenyManolo iAward Air, a virtual prize of stunning hypothetical magnificence and staggering imaginary prestige.

    Go have a look and see my award-winning caption.