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• Having left my PhD program last spring, I could now be called a “former future semanticist”—take my word that that’s a good semantics joke.  It took me these several months to come up with it, which is a bummer, because if I came up with it in before I left school, I would have been a “future former future semanticist” and had a much better audience for my cleverness.
• I live in San Francisco these days.  In graduate school, I had a friend that said that the city we lived in “only sucks if you suck”. This wisdom that forced me to conclude that I might suck a little.  Even if you suck, San Francisco is still a pretty great place to live.
• I have a new job now, and It’s a damn cool job.  I crunch numbers for a “digital toy” company.  They make kids’ apps for ipads and iphones — amazing apps that get smothered in heaps of praise.  My favorite of our apps is Toca Tailor, which we’re giving away for free right now.  Here is a hastily made MJ.

Persistent Prettiness

I’ve had 10 letter words on the mind recently.  After some digging, I can now report that there are only three combinations of ten letters that can be arranged into more than three different (Scrabble-kosher) words:

1. discounter, introduces, rediscount, reductions
2. persistent, pinsetters, presentist, prettiness
3. argentites, estreating, integrates, interstage

I have so far been unable to put this information to good use but have not given up on doing so.

I’ve been really digging the new The-Dream song: “Slow It Down”.  I’d go so far as to say it’s the best The-Dream song with a title of the form Verb It Down, surpassing both “Put It Down” and the Drake collaboration “Shut It Down”.  Although, it probably isn’t the best Dream song of the form Verb It Preposition: that’s probably still “Sweat It Out”.

So of course I had to make a playlist of some of my favorite Verb It Preposition songs, which you can listen to above.  I think it’s a pretty solid mix, although you might say it’s full of ups and downs.  So check it out, pump it up, and maybe break it down.

(Source: Spotify)

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I think my latest puzzle is probably the my best so far, at least from a construction standpoint.  And it’s not ugly.  Click on through for instructions.

Possible Word Semantics →

You might have noticed a link to a poorly thought-out word game blog on here a few weeks ago.  Well that dream is dead.  Replacing it is a slightly better thought-out word game site, which you can find at the above link.  As far as word games go, I have a lot of training (tens of thousands of games of boggle on top of two years in grad school for linguistics), and I have confidence I can come up with some unique puzzles.  But if you hate crossword puzzles, you might be better off reading a book or something.

Basically, I’ve got ungodly amounts of free time and can only play so much NBA Jam.  So far, lying awake at night trying to think of words to remove L’s from has been a nice change of pace from the existential terrors that had previously been filling my head.  As long as that’s the case, expect regular updates.

You should create a username so that I have some stats worth tracking.  If things get going, I might offer up some sort of prize.  I don’t really know what I’m doing, so some puzzles might be impossibly difficult.

There are five puzzles and two blog posts right now.  Get in on the ground floor.

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leveling up in Austin

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Got a phone

Yesterday was a good one.  Among the things that happened: a friend saw (via facebook) that I was listening to Killer Mike on spotify.  She told me she might cross paths with The Killer and wanted to know more.

Getting asked to talk about Killer Mike (or really anything in the extended Dungeon Family) is an awesome thing that doesn’t happen to me very often.  KIlla Kill from Adamsville, as he is known, is one of my very favorite rappers of the last fifteen years.  If you like Outkast, you will definitely like Mike.  Righteous anger is what Killer Mike does best maybe, but he does some other stuff expertly as well.  The new album is totally great, although not as good as Pledge 2 or The Killer Mixtape, which are my favorite.

But I think the above ten songs are all great, so listen to one or two, and see what you think.  Special cameos by Jay-Z, Outkast, and T.I. among others, if you aren’t already sold.

The friend was Caitlin, who has a very funny blog that you might want to read if your my mom trying to keep track of my friends, or just like funny blogs.

Grind Time Rap Gang Bang Bang Bang.

(Source: Spotify)

"Well I’m the King of Boggle.
There is none higher.
I gets 11-points off the word Quagmire."

Last night, after learning of MCA’s death, I solemnly caught fire with the lost Beastie Boy in my game of NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, and this morning revisited Hello Nasty for the first time in possibly a decade.

I’ll admit that I’m not particularly good at distinguishing the voices of the Beastie Boys from each other (same is true of Clipse, and the members of The Pharcyde that aren’t Fat Lip), and a few minutes of google queries turned up nothing definitive, but I believe the Boggle community lost a member of its royal family.  I am deeply saddened, and not just because it’s taken me this long to discover my favorite rap line ever.

[Update: real-life pal Andy has informed me that the above lyric is not from MCA but most likely Adrock.  Which means: Long Live The King of Boggle!]

“Putting Shame in Your Game” (spotify link)

"Deschanel filed for divorce from husband Death Cab, throwing him over for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard, in January. Deschanel and Cab were married for a little more than three years, and Deschanel said that, along with babies, dating was not a priority either."

Zooey Deschanel Says No Kids | ABC News - Yahoo! News

I am very amused by the errors in this ABC News story.

(via perpetua)

(via perpetua)