OneLook’s reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. Just type it into the box above and you’ll get back a list of related terms with the best matches shown first.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times the reverse dictionary has helped me find the word that’s been hiding on the tip of my tongue.

For example, plug in “back of your throat” and the first result is, appropriately, uvula.

TORONTO—It could be the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada.

A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13 million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal’s cancellation.

The full scoop, including the passage of text with the extra comma, is available at the Fort Frances Times Online.

I am a shell,
  hollow,
    walking and talking as if I were a real boy.

Wounds I thought healed are opened anew,
  a feast for the vultures,
    by my spirals of lamentation.

Grief and bitterness and loneliness have taken root
  in the home and hearth of the heart
    where love and joy once dwelt.

I flail about, discordant,
  a pilgrim in search of an acceptance
    I won’t even grant myself.

And of she who once loved me
  (or loved me not, I haven’t the petals to tell)
    I wonder what has become.

With breaths alternating twixt sighs and sobs,
  laughter and curses, empathy and bile,
    I madly dance upon the razor edge of the three-fold law.

My psychosis, my mental Brigadoon,
  is that this is all just fodder for the middle act,
    the turning point that’ll drive it all to resolution.

But there’s no snappy closing, no convenient wrap-up,
  no music to take us out to commercial:
    just “stay tuned for the ongoing story.”

I was one of the proofreaders on Sean K Reynolds’ new monster book “Hungry Little Monsters,” a charity fundraiser D&D/D20 monster book for FoodForAll.org.

This is a real product with some big-name contributors, including Dave Mattingly, Matt Forbeck, Scott Bennie, and Ed Greenwood. Sean himself even created several beasties for the book.

The only downside? A glitch kept my name off the title page, but even that’s going to be remedied shortly. Expect lots of Look! That’s me!‘s after I print it out.

Now, to work on those author/designer credits…

In other news, I’ve convinced work to let me do an ongoing geek/pop culture blog for them, beginning with my trip to the Comic-Con!

I’m very excited about getting my words and POV out in front of a large audience. Nothing’s going to be changing here at the Home of the Soul Cookie, with the possible exception that my long-delayed plans to start a podcast might just get folded into what I’m doing for work. It’s too early to tell.

Some of our departments staff writers have tackled writing blogs with varying amounts of success. I’m hoping to be able to lead by example and to better acquaint them with some of the vernacular of blogging (and how it differs from writing a column or article for print).

That got me thinking, and I came up with a Top Ten list that I sent to her. It was a quick little thing, and I like how it came out, so I share it now with you.

Here now, the Top Ten Alternate Lyrical Interpretations of Songs from “The Sound of Music.”

10. “She is sixteen / Going on seventeen / In a thirty-five mile zone…” (Clarence “Enos” Gustafsson, Hendrick Theatre-in-the-Square, Beaumont ND)

9. “Folks in a town that was quite remote heard
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo
‘Oh, that’s just Jewel a-yodeling her song words,’
Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo” (Glenda Kirklinger, Plays ‘n Rays, Monroe FL)

8. “Edelweiss, edelweiss… How I long to spell your name…” (Duncan Devore, Seward Middle School, Seaucold AK)

7. “The hills are alive with the sound of… wait… oh my GOD! I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING! I’VE GONE DEAF!” (“Smitty” Jones, street corner just outside the building, just now)

6. “She’s fond of wicked men who taint / And served me orders of restraint / How can love survive?” (Nelson P. Felton, Felton Playhouse, Poughkeepsie NY)

5. “Somewhere in my youth or childhood / Began my love of wood.” (Annabelle Tillinghast, Carpentry Theater, Flyspeck AR)

4. “So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye… This par-ty bites; you all can choke and die…” (Simon Nichols, Snobby Fine Arts Festival, Snobby IN)

3. “Climb ev’ry mountain / And rout those insurgents!” (G.W. Bush, White House Briefing Room, Washington DC)

2. “Open the door and then close it again,
Wash my hands so much the world starts to spin,
Step over cracks and avoid silver rings:
These are a few of my OCD things.” (Emilie Santos, Esminot Playhouse, Tolerance GA)

And the number one alternate lyrical interpretation of a song from “The Sound of Music”:

1. “D’OH! A deer!” (Homer Simpson, Groening Arts Council, Hollywood CA)

I applaud your bold, living-on-the-edge decision to drive without any sort of automotive illumination with the conditions as thorougly foggy as they are.

And how clever of you to hang out in my blind spot like that! Your mother must be very proud.

I appreciate the sense of humor and good cheer you exhibited by not honking until after I’d realized you were in the way of my lane change and had moved back. Speeding up and giving me the one-fingered “Howdy!” were the perfect punctutations of your “goodwill ambassador” worldview.

I salute you, fellow motorist, and sincerely wish for you to get everything you have coming.

Yours very truly,
the driver of that white Altima

Now, understand that I first read the H2G2 series when I was in seventh grade. I’ve read the first four books in the “trilogy” time and again. (I have – but have not read – the fifth and sixth books.) I’ve enjoyed the TV movie. And I’ve passed many a long hour on car trips listening to the original radio programs on tape. There’s a certain feel, a particular rhythm and energy common to the various incarnations of the H2G2 series.

That selfsame style of rhythm and energy are so sorely missing from this cinematic adaptation.

One of the things I’ve grown to love in the series are its very quotable bits, the little H2G2 mantras, the enjoyment of which I likely share with other aficionados of the series:

• “Ford, you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.”
• “I wonder if it will be friends with me?”
• The entire “disused lavatory”/”Beware of leopard” bit

Most of them are gone, excised completely or gutted so intensely as to make them all but neutered.

• Upon arriving on the starship Heart of Gold, Ford and Arthur find themselves briefly in the form of couches. Couches!
• The H2G2 script tags an entirely unnecessary “Hello, ground!” onto the end of the falling sperm whale’s soliloquy.
• Arthur had to “go down to the cellar.”
     (beat)
  No, really, that’s all there was to it.

There were other tweaks, too, that stripped away some of the cleverness of the originals. Remember Ford (or Arthur, depending on which version you first encountered) convincing Prosser to take Arthur’s place in front of the bulldozer at the beginning? That’s gone, replaced with Ford passing around brewskis to the construction crew. How about Arthur trying to wrangle up a decent cuppa tea? Gone, replaced with a vendomaticked cup o’ something green and smoking.

And that brings me to another issue I have with the movie: The changes to Arthur Dent.

As in the H2G2s that have come before, Arthur is our “everyman” character, our gateway into the vast reaches beyond this unfashionable Western Spiral Arm of the Milky Way. But always before, Arthur has been capable of action – whether ranting and raving and threatening to stomp into tiny little bits the workmen demolishing his home, or actively engaging Eddie in making a decent cuppa. But the movie has him bouncing around from situation to situation, incapable of taking any actions (even the wrong ones Arthur was so apt to take).

It’s like they removed all the periods and exclamation points in Arthur’s emotional makeup and replaced ‘em with a perpetual question mark.

Any additional time the filmmakers could’ve spent in staying truer to the source material was wasted on pointless additions. The entire Humma Kavula and Vogsphere sequences? Added nothing, IMHO, to the story, particularly not at the cost of the “good bits.”

And that’s not easy for me to say; I wholeheartedly believe that a movie version of something has the right and the responsibility to chart its own course – movies are not books are not comics are not radio shows. This movie definitely goes its own way. Pity that it’s so distinctly the wrong way.

Moreover, it’s dispiriting to realize just how much the filmmakers truly seem to love the source material. Don’t believe me? Just look at how many really great homages and in-jokes did show up: Simon Jones, the original Dentarthurdent, as the voice and image of the lethal Magrathean answering machine; the TV version’s Marvin, as one of the queue-dwellers on Vogsphere; the I-still-love-it-to-this-day H2G2 theme song, played over the first appearance of the Guide proper in the movie. There’s even a flash of Douglas Adams’ face as the movie fades to a “For Douglas” dedication at the end.

All nice touches, but in the end the movie simply doesn’t live up to the tradition set by the H2G2s that have come before. And I, for one, am saddened by that.

Now hand me my Joo Jantas and that Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster; I think I’m gonna need ‘em.

What type of blood does your celebrity have?

1. I don’t know.
2. I’ll guess O+ (it’s the most common).
3. After his emergency appendectomy in ’97, me and a much of the posters to alt.celebrity.be-mine.now.now.now figured out it was AB-.
4. Delicious.

What type of vehicle does your celebrity drive?

1. Something pretty cool, I’ll bet.
2. He talked about his Hummer in the latest issue of People.
3. I bought his old car on eBay! Glee!
4. A 2004 Suburban with the Off-Road Suspension & Appearance package. 6,419 miles on it as of this morning. Leather interiors that bear his scent.

What’s the biggest mistake your celebrity has ever made?

1. Leaving his hit drama to pursue a nonexistent film career.
2. Aliens vs. Predator vs. Howard the Duck. I shall speak of it no more.
3. Marrying… That Woman.
4. Not understanding that I will not be ignored!

“So don’t say, ‘We appreciate your advice’ in that patronizing way.

“Say, ‘Thank you.’ Or, ‘We couldn’t have done it without you.’

“But, then, you don’t really believe that, do you?”

Spent most of Friday hanging out with people from work at the house of one of the managers, first as an out-of-office work retreat, then as an after-hours party. It’s the last month for a lot of people in the department; with one of our major grant-funded projects ending, there isn’t the money for the huge staff we’ve amassed.

(And I’m leaving! Hee!)

The party was okay. The two activity options of “sit around and talk” or “play video games” got expanded to include a third surprise choice (“swim in the pool”) later in the evening. I, having borrowed Steve’s Xbox, played games all night.

(“All night” is a bit of a misnomer. The meeting broke up at 5pm, and people really didn’t show back up for the party part until well after six. That, and I was one of the last to leave at 9:30ish. Yee. Haw.)

I came out on top in head-to-head Simpsons Road Rage action; I performed decently in a Halo deathmatch until pitteed against someone who’s played on the PC; I fumbled my way to two consecutive victories in NFL Fever 2003. And then came You Don’t Know Jack.

Ah… YDKJ… how I love thee. It’s just such a fun game. Unfortunately, it’s proven all but impossible to get anyone to play with me because, at the risk of sounding a bit hubristic, I’ve not found anyone who can beat me. Well, not consistently, at least: Back when Jay and Kris and Troll would still play me, I lost perhaps two games out of the hundred or so we played. So when I proposed in passing that we break out YDKJ at the party and found the suggestion met with excitement, I thought that meant I’d have a challenge.

Alas, ’twas not so.

I crushed the other players. Badly. Horribly enough that I started reining myself in (which I hate doing - I figure if I’m playing a game to win, I’m going to give it my all and play to win) to give the others a chance to parse the questions.

I wanted an exciting bout of Jack.
      Instead, I ended up with what amounted to cerebral masturbation.
I wanted to share a fun game with my coworkers in these waning days of the project.
      Instead, I felt like the nerdy asshole, outshining the other kids.

That pretty much killed my desire to stay and hang out. Plus, I had to get home and help Jay set up for the garage sale we had Saturday morning.

Oh, yes. The garage sale. That marvelous event where complete strangers who don’t even know that they should be asleep at 6am evaluate large chunks of your life’s possessions and dismiss them as being unworthy of even a single dollar.

So I was up late getting stuff set out and then up and outside again at six with Jay for the garage sale. It’s a fact of life here that garage sales start too early due, in equal parts, to the area’s cultural influences and to the fact that it gets too bloody hot way too quickly. But so that we got some modicum of sleep, I wrote, “No earlybirds, please” in the ad for the sale - if I didn’t, we’d have gotten people knocking on our front door at 4am – I kid you not. It’s happened.

It was a slow start, which was kind of unusual. Normally, there’s a small contingent of buyers waiting for you to emerge and haggle with them. Instead, we had one person at six, and another two about 10 minutes later.

It was a lady in the second or third group, I can’t remember which, that questioned my inclusion of the no-earlybirds clause in the ad when I didn’t even list what time the sale started. Nonsense, I thought, I’d faxed over the exact copy I’d wanted run in our classified ad, and it most certainly had had the date and the time – they were the first things listed, in fact! So Jay and I, overly optimistic despite the early hour, dismissed the exchange as being likely caused by her inaccurately reading the ad.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

That’s right: The ad did not, in fact, contain either the date or the time, ’cause, y’know, those are totally superfluous details!

I’ve spoken with the paper this morning (after leaving a message in my Upset Consumer Voice on their voicemail on Saturday morning), and they’re refunding my money. (Damn straight you are, eeeediots!)

{Sigh…}

The busy weekend didn’t end there! Oh no, it didn’t! ‘Cause, you see, we had another one of our quarterly Magic tournaments in support of the new set‘s release. And as with every Magic tournament we’ve had since day one, a contingent of Jay and Kris’ old gaming buddies from Tucson made the trip out to participate. It’s always good to see them, though it does mean the house gets crowded.

So the tournament lasted all day, then the group reconvened at the house after closing for dollar poker (Texas Hold ’Em again) from 10pm until 1am. Out of ten starting players, I was the fourth one remaining when I ran out of chips at 12-something and went to bed. (I still don’t even know who won.)

Sunday was given over to character creation endeavors: The morning I spent furiously finishing the packet of notes and details for the short-run Dark Tower-esque D20 Gunslingers game I’m helping Steve run. It was a lot of work that was met during character creation later that afternoon with reactions ranging from, “Wow! Thanks for all the energy you put into this!” to, “Why are we playing this [stupid] system again?” (I literally had to walk away to keep from again becoming the guy who broke down my sister’s door.)

Then I spent the evening hanging out with Steve and Heather at their place, watching Arrested Development and discussing life, the universe, and everything (in the generic sense, not in the Douglas Adams book sense).

So all of that together has meant that I’ve been behind in responding to email and in doing things like the Friday Five - both of which I shall attend to shortly.

Light floods in as the lid is removed. A face, peering. Recognition registers.

So I was going through some of the “I’ve moved this how many times?” boxes a few nights ago in preparation for my move to SF this summer when I stumbled upon a box that had the love notes my ex had written to me. All along and even after the divorce I’d saved them. All of them. And there in the bottom of that cardboard cube had they slumbered, unread and unremembered, for the five years since the Long Winter.

Sitting cross-legged. Handwritten notes whisper from orbit in a voice long unheard.

Though I’d looked through many of the physical artifacts from our relationship from time to time over those many months – indeed, I’ve gotten rid of most of them – this was the first time that I had read through all those words, all those declarations of love and hope and fear from a girl that would later deny them to a boy that no longer exists.

Pages float down to a bed of ash. The match springs to life.

These were the last remnants of our time together, unnecessary burdens that I had no need of. So I took them out back, opened the barbecue grill, dropped them in, and burned them. Not out of anger, nor sadness, nor lamentation, nor pain. Just… release.

Memories and dreams, bound to a past unjoined to a present continuity, are liberated by the cleansing flame.

I stood there and watched the paper curl and burn as a slight breeze tempted bits of ash into the night sky and I allowed myself one final reflective smile about the past.

Then I turned, came inside, and shut off the porchlight.

And, yes, I know that TV breaks down into more than three acts when you factor in the commercial breaks.

I may not hit 50k words in the month, and I know it won’t be High Literature, but I’ll finish it.

wanting my life to start
not living in the meantime

So what’s the deal? From their site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to share the work-in-progress, particularly given that it’s going to be rushed crap.

Would anyone even be interested in reading it? Comment and let me know.

1. If your life were a movie, what would the title be?
The Truth in Shadows

2. What songs would be on the soundtrack?

“Bring Me to Life” performed by Evanescence
“Cross My Heart” performed by Eighth Wonder
“The Distance” performed by Cake
“Hazy Shade of Winter” performed by the Bangles
“I Touch Myself” performed by Divinyls
“In the Car” performed by Barenaked Ladies
“Kiss Me” performed by Sixpence None the Richer
“Magic” performed by Olivia Newton-John
“One Caress” performed by Depeche Mode
“One Night in Bangkok” performed by Murray Head
“Particle Man” performed by They Might Be Giants
“Skin” performed by Oingo Boingo
“Thankyou” performed by Dido
“Walk on the Ocean” performed by Toad the Wet Sprocket
“When You’re Strange” performed by Echo and the Bunnymen

And a special bonus track:
“Particle Man [Disneyland tram version]” by Kevin and Scott

3. Would it be a live-action film or animated? Why?
Since it’d be a dialogue-heavy, special effects-light flick, it would be better constructed as a live-action picture.

4. Casting: who would play you, members of your family, friends, etc?
Difficult. Difficult at best.

Me: Zach Braff or Jerry O’Connell
Mom: Angelica Huston
Dad: Rob Reiner
Sister: Anna Paquin
The Ex: never seen, just referred to (à la Maris on “Frasier”)
Jason: John Cusack
Kris: Robin Wright Penn
Amber: herself!
Troll: Horatio Sanz
Noelle: Julia Stiles
Scott: Tobey Maguire
Amy: Gillian Anderson

5. Describe the movie preview/trailer.
It’ll probably have two trailers, one serious, one silly. Here’s what might pass for the silly one (if you’re drunk enough):

     ANNOUNCER (v.o)
IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED
HEAVEN AND EARTH...

     SFX
BIG FLASH OF LIGHT!
Reveal the Earth,
                  lush,
floating in space.

     ANNOUNCER (v.o)
...AND SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD.

The camera ZOOMS IN to the Earth,
stopping at the GARDEN OF EDEN.

     ANNOUNCER (v.o)
ON THE SIXTH DAY, GOD CREATED
MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE...

     SFX
POOF! ADAM pops into being.

     ANNOUNCER (v.o)
...AND WAS PLEASED.

     ANNOUNCER (v.o, cont.)
SOME TIME LATER...

Cut to KEVIN,
  headphones on,
    eyes closed,
      head bopping,
        dancing/flailing to music
        that we can't hear.

     KEVIN (singing)
CROSS MY HEART, HOPE TO DIE,
MAY LIGHTNING STRIKE ME IF
I'M TELLIN' A LIE...

     ANNOUNCER (v.o)
...HE WAS ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL.

Rapid cuts between scenes from the movie
as the voiceover continues.

     ANNOUNCER (v.o)
FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT
YOU FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY,
TROLL 2, AND MANOS, THE
HANDS OF FATE COMES
A COMING OF AGE STORY...
     (beat)
...WITH A FEW SCREWS LOOSE.

And now, the money shot: show the title:
"THE TRUTH IN SHADOWS"

The winter air, sweet and crisp,
changes my breaths into
beautiful clouds of crystal and ice.

It is a night when I should
want to be inside,
secure under a mountain of down and fabric.
But this is the night when I could
be nowhere else.

And then the shadow parts
and You are there.

Selene’s light dances upon Your skin,
pale and smooth,
soft porcelain.

You glide,
wordlessly,
across the courtyard,
Your ebon gown dancing
on a spectral breeze.

It takes but a slight nod of Your head
for me to shed my nightdress
and be cloaked in
naught but moonlight
and Your gaze.

You circle me,
tracing the contours of my flesh,
Your cool touch electric.
Your eyes,
piercing emeralds ringed in kohl,
mirror the hunger that
burns within me.

I want You.
And You know it.

I endure an eternity of lustful anticipation
until You come to rest
behind me.
You gently sweep aside my curls,
baring my nape and shoulder.

And then You lick,
playfully,
tormenting me by denying me
Your embrace
for that much longer.

I struggle not to tremble
in abject lasciviousness, but
Your hand strays down my body,
a dark-tipped talon
darting into me,
the wet inferno You find there
betraying me further.

One caress.

That’s all I can think of.

You turn me to face You
and I lose myself
as I have so many times in
Your eyes,
Your lips,
Your scent.

You bring your finger to my lips
and I suck,
wantonly,
cleaning your hand of my juices.

Then, cradling my hair,
You tilt my head slightly.
As You lean in close
Your hair tumbles onto my neck,
unexpectedly tickling.
My eyes close of their own volition.

My breathing, ragged and hot now.
I want it.
I want You.
Please.
Please.
Please!

And then You do.

It is fierce and brutal
as You lose Yourself
in my sanguinary delights.
But the pain is a trivial concern next to
the rapturous sensual ecstacy
that Your caress brings.

A gentle warmth
flows down my shoulder,
my chest,
and the chill of the evening air
doesn’t bother me any more.

And as my heart stills
and I surrender to the shadow
I know that I am Yours completely
now and for all time.

And I smile.