I came across¹, a site that I think is pretty fun. It’s got a bit of a running vocabulary quiz. At the same time, the site is set up such that for each word you get right, 10 grains of rice get donated through the United Nations. (The rice is paid for by advertisers.)

It’s kinda cool to see the running totals they have posted, too. The site only started on October 7th of this year. Yesterday, 198,342,51 grains of rice were donated, whereas 6,645,520 were donated 1 month ago.

Anyhow, that’s getting to be a decent amount of rice. And it’s inspired me to throw together a bit of a list of rice things. Even though it’s not Thursday. It’s a short list, anyhow.

A Few Grains of Rice

1. One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale A picture book by Demi.
   

   It’s the story of Rani, a clever girl who outsmarts a very selfish raja and saves her village. When offered a reward for a good deed, she asks only for one grain of rice, doubled each day for 30 days. Remember your math? That’s lots of rice: enough to feed a village for a good long time–and to teach a greedy raja a lesson.

2. On a Bed of Rice: An Asian American Erotic Feast, edited by Geraldine Kudaka. An erotic anthology. I like the name, what with the mixed meanings of food and sex. And if there are two things I like (aside from pants), they’re food and sex. (I also just found myself thinking that a somewhat similar phrase would make for an interesting book title, too. “On a Bed of Noodles.” Perhaps it could be an erotic humor anthology.)
3. “Rice, rice baby,” by Weird Al. I think you can guess which song it parodies.
4. 米国 beikoku, a Japanese term for the US, which means “rice country”

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Aside from the bit about donating rice, I find it fun to test my word knowledge and learn new words. So far, my favorite new word that I’ve learned is, without doubt, omphaloskepsis. It means navel-gazing. And then I thought to myself, “now that would be a fine blog name.” Indeed, it is.

Other words I have encountered which make me happy include the following:

eructate=belch
anserine=gooselike
bumbershoot = umbrella
edentulous=toothless
demulcent = soothing

Anyone want to go play for a bit and bring me back some tasty word morsels?

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¹ I came across links to this site at least 3 times, though I can only track down one, which wasn’t even the first place I saw it. Anyone else reading this post about it?