November 13th, 2007
Nonidiom
Just so you know, I know that ‘elephant in the room’ isn’t an idiom for bad luck… However, I can’t think of a time that sharing a room with an elephant could be considered good luck either.
I’m particularly enjoying the word ‘idiom’ at the moment.
I apologise to everyone that suffered its overuse because of of me today.
Tomorrow, being Wednesday, is the day I like to overuse the classics… a couple of basicallys here, a few actuallys there…I like to mix it up a bit.
Ooh, or maybe I go for a phrase? A talk-show triumph such as ‘at the end of the day’…
Wednesdays are great.
Philip J Schadenfreude on 
But the pig in the parlour, he took it one step farther.
‘indeed’ is my favorite word, ‘indubitably’ is good too.
Those are two of my friend’s favorite words, as well. How odd. =)
“‘indubitably” is particularly fun.
Today is wednesday, if I am not mistaken…..
Anyway,
Indeed, idiom is a great word, however, on the contrary, it is not so great, some where between mediocre and average.
what?? today is wednesday!
the world is a crazy place.
quit messing with my head.
i wish it was tuesday, then there would be longer until my exams that i am going to fail.
why isn’t it tuesday anymore?
there is no such thing as overuse of the word ‘idiom’.
Time zones, eh?
What exams are you hoping to fail? Not that I believe you will, you’re smart enough.
my two maths and my chem and physics. english lit and political & legal should be ok.
Political & Legal sounds fun, good luck with all of them…
Chemistry as it happens is my exam ‘unicorn’; it’s a subject that I’m quite good at, but I always messed up in my exams… nose bleeds, turning up at the wrong time (really, not my fault, the timetable I was sent had two different times for the exam, neither of which were correct).
Adam, it sounds like you have the same education system there as I do here, or maybe they just swap notes.
I don’t get why ppl stress over exams, they are easy, you spend months sitting a room talking about it, then an hour answering questions about it. lol, why even study?
I can’t study, not like most ppl, I have to spend the night before a major exam just relaxing.
Never understood the whole cramming thing, stress can’t be good for memory and cognitive thinking.
Good luck to Justine and any other student readers who might be about to partake in end-of-year exam festivities.
And, I think having a large mammal like an elephant in your house is likely to be bad luck, esp if your house built to the low standards like around here.
I know having a forklift in the house is bad for the floor boards and the cellar……(oooops, my bad).
You’re right, the advice is to take a day off before the exam if you can, something to do with short- and long-term memory…
What exactly were you doing with a forklift in a house? How did you fit it through the front door?
My thoughts exactly: how did you get it inside in the first place?
I’m like you Ben, never have been able to ‘cram,’ though I do study some. Mostly just reading over stuff a couple days before, while drinking coffee. Caffeine has been shown to improve the transition of facts from short-term to long-term memory. So drink your coffee Justine, drink lots of it.
Ben, you’re assuming that people actually spend the hours in the room working on the subject. And that the instructor can teach/knows what they’re talking about. Which isn’t always the case. Especially with my teachers. Half of them have no idea what they’re doing.
you’re a freak of nature! *shakes fist*
i’m worried about physics mostly.
Despite not taking any exams, I too am quite worried about physics mostly.
As am I… I spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon talking with a Physics student here at the university about nanotech, quantum physics, and bio-engineering. When these things really take off, the world will be a very different place.
i always enjoy reading your strips that play on words, haha.
nice new site by the way
Thanks… I’m glad you like the comic and the site.
You can’t go wrong with good words.
I don’t know much about wolves.
Don’t they travel in packs? There
is a mystique to the lone wolf,
but I doubt it would be threatening
to an elephant. Elephants rule.
“Don’t they travel in packs?” – Only if you buy them in bulk
i don’t think the elephant cares about the human’s welfare.
pack animals are really fascinating
Hmm. you’ve changed the comments section. it’s confusing. but I’m glad you haven’t changed the rest of the site. change scares me. a little.
somebody remind me what an idiom is…i am tired, and cannot reach the dictionary.
We can always change the comments back… I thought I’d give it a go and see how it went.
As for idiom… I suppose the easiest way to explain it is – It’s saying something by saying something completely different. For example, ‘Letting the cat out of the bag’ is an idiom that means to let slip a secret.
It’s quite a northern thing, to overuse idiom… Alan Bennet uses it a lot in his plays, like ‘Talking Heads’.
One of my favourite idioms is the Latin expression for “he left.” It translates roughly to “he took his foot.” Love the idioms, it’s true.
I’m digging the threaded comments Adam.
Don’t let change scare you too much Maddie. We’re in a time of change. Ten years, the world as we know it won’t really be recognizable.
Wouldn’t “he took his foot” be synecdoche? Or can something be synecdoche and still be an idiom? Or I am completely off base here?
Ah right, i remember now. i explained them to my German exchange student. not that i speak german. i just explained idioms to her. yay. i’ve achieved so much.
yeah, the new comments are nice.
*reads Roo’s comment* won’t be recognizable?
*hides under a table and cries* i really don’t like change…
So an idiom is an analogy?
I had the forklift inside to move a very large commercial fridge, which the fridge guys didn’t want to move and it was blocking my work site.
Fortuently the owner paid me to repair the floor, even tho I broke it…..
How did I get it in? The normal way, by driving it.
I watched WaterWorld for the first (and last) time last night. Damn, kinda scary, even sans the bad acting. But hopefully, this is not the change of which you speak.
I read a book “OtherLand” by Tad Williams, years ago, and told my mates that it was the future. They didn’t believe me, but a few of the ideas from it are being made in reality now, which is cool.
I won’t go into a anti/pro tech rant here, but I like it (change).
change makes everything different though. heck, i’m 15 and i’m already scared of years getting shorter and me getting older..everyone else is looking forward to growing up, and i wish i was still too young to know what growing up was.
change sucks most of the time. small change, fine i can deal with. the new threaded comments thing is nice. things like iPods are nice. but thats technical changes. i’m more scared of life changes…am i making any sense here?
hmm, i think i know what you mean. it helps to have something to look forward to though.
now I’m just scared about the climate
“I, Chuang Tzu, dreamed I was a butterfly, happily and completely absorbed in doing butterfly stuff. When I woke up, I found out that I was Chuang Tzu! But I didn’t know if I was a Chuang Tzu dreaming I’d been a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that I was Chuang Tzu. There’s got to be some difference between them! Oh, I know, it’s called Change.”
Wow. I actually have that in front of me as I’m reading these comments. How strange. My translation is a bit different from that one, though.
While we’re on the subject of change and literary and philosophical quotations, this one might be appropriate: “There is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand for ever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep for ever, does the flood-time of rivers endure?”
If it makes any sense, I both love and fear change. I get tired of doing the same things over and over again, and I love new and different things. But at the same time, I’m afraid of change that’s too drastic. I get what you’re saying, though Maddie.