the plant speaks

i was just talking with one of my tomato plants, and i thought i'd transcribe the conversation for you here. the plant, of course, is called tom.tom: please let me go outside.
me: no.
tom: but look out there! things are green! and i'm big and need to live out there!
me: not until this shitty weather ends.
tom: but i love shit! i thrive in shit, literally!
me: that was a poor choice of words, sorry. you can't go outside until the unseasonably cold weather ends. i don't want you to get snowed on.
tom: *grunts sadly*

seriously. we had snow last friday. tonight it's going down to freezing. tuesday, wednesday and thursday nights it will get below freezing. what the hell is this?
this past weekend was may long, here on the canadian prairie. it's typically the weekend when every gardener is out there planting and watering and trimming and generally getting gleeful over the coming summer. but not this weekend. i didn't see anyone working in their yards when i was out on sunday. it's unnatural. it sucks. i don't like it.but tom doesn't like it even more than me.

a dork in love

i'm not into science. believe me, it's at the bottom of my list of interests, generally. i'm not particularly fascinated by genetics. or old japanese men. or german monks, especially ones that have been dead for 125 years. and normally gardeners don't give me the hots, although i'm sure there are exceptions.

so why do i have crushes on these men?

this is david suzuki. every canadian knows of him, most revere him. he's an environmental activist. also a geneticist. and he likes gardens a great deal.
and this is gregor mendel. 'the father of genetics'. he's known for fiddling around in the gardens in the abbey where he was a monk, figuring out the natural laws that govern trait inheritance. so what's with this? is it the glasses? the thin lips? the appearance of intelligence, kindness and serious hotness?

don't tell anyone, ok? i don't want to be known as that chick with the thing for geneticists who garden. although i might be. but shush.

musings of an english nerd

i was running all over town today, waiting in lines and waiting areas and at bus stops, and i had a lot of time to think.

sometimes that's a bad thing.

so..... the word 'duped'. it means 'fooled', right? between the way it looks and the meaning, i assume that it's derived from 'duplicity', meaning trickiness and dishonesty. but 'duped' seems like it was once short for something. what would the word for someone who has been the victim of a duplicitous person be? duplicitousified? duplicitiated?

as ever, i went to the internet for a resolution to my query.

this is what wikipedia has to say about the word duped.

more helpfully, the online etymology dictionary sez:

dupe (n.)

1681, from Fr. dupe "deceived person," from M.Fr. duppe (1426), thieves' jargon, probably from phrase de huppe "of the hoopoe," an extravagantly crested and reputedly stupid bird. Bird name is from L. upupa, imitative of its cry. The verb is from 1704.

dang, i gues i'm not always right. who knew?

and now, because this post isn't dorky enough, an assortment of english related xkcd comics.