More than two hundred days after my last thousand songs were heard, I have just listened to my 117,000th unique iTunes track, a somewhat mediocre though I suppose historically interesting rendition of the Wilson Pickett classic “In The Midnight Hour” by a group of rock legends jamming at a Taj Mahal concert in Hollywood in …
Continue reading “One Hundred and Seventeen Songs (117,000)”
1. targe — [archaic] buckler, small shield Any doubts I had about the value of Kenwyth’s targe were erased when I saw the bowman knock two skirmishers to the ground with the small shield, with hardly a pause in his shooting. 2. heriot — feudal tribute of equipment or chattel The young knight, to …
I’ve been posting this on Facebook for the past couple of years, so I may as well put it here, too. (Yeah, I know. I forgot the comma in the ‘Tracks Heard’ figure. Oops.) For comparison, here are the past years’ figures:
1. perfuse — to besprinkle, to overspread (as with moisture or color); to pour through or over, to diffuse through; [medicine] to circulate through blood vessels or lymphatic system Cunegonde’s cheeks were perfused with a rosy glow, though whether from joy or from our strenuous exertions I could not tell. 2. volplane — to …
1. po-faced — [British] humorless, over-serious, disapproving Alain’s attempts at defusing the tense standoff between the two culinary students only elicited a po-faced shake of the head from Chef Arnie. 2. auscultation — diagnosis through listening to bodily sounds, usually with a stethoscope Though the pulse diagnosis of Chinese medicine has been compared with …
1. otic — of the ear Despite the advocates’ claims, ear candles are ineffective and dangerous, and could result in hot wax falling into the otic canal. 2. refrangible — capable of being refracted Though red light was known even in the time of Newton to be the least refrangible of the visible spectrum, …
Just this morning (early in the AM) I finished reading the 600th book since beginning to track such things way back in the middle of 2015. Now you can see, perhaps, just why I was so anxious to get the analysis of the previous hundred books out the door; I knew that the next hundred …
1. irenic — non-polemic, pacifying, tending to promote reconciliation Strangely enough for one of his vociferous views, at the dinner table his presence seemed to have an irenic effect upon the recriminations and attacks of our usual Thanksgiving meals. 2. gyp — servant for students at Cambridge and Durham colleges So here was the …
Well, I’ve owed y’all some analysis of the last hundred books read for some time now—just over a hundred days, by my count. I can only plead that I’ve been busy with work and stuff, the stuff being a silly NaNoWriMo project, but I have also been reading at a freakishly breakneck pace since I …
1. refection — the partaking of refreshment I did not want to interrupt their family refection, so I merely took the warm apple pie from the windowsill and hurried off to the nearby woods to enjoy my own repast. 2. brast — [archaic] past participle of “burst” Though he strove mightily against his foes …
