Tank Hughes Dot Com —

Things I Discovered in 2009: Websites

1. Twitter
I don’t advocate anyone’s use of Twitter but my own. For me, it’s the perfect combination of ‘things I need to say outloud for the record’ and ‘things I don’t want to bother a specific person about’ without the vulnerability of Facebook where everyone from my entire life can see my most recent anxiety attack or third-panda-plural admonishment of myself.

2. Kingdom of Loathing
Resham told me about this pun-filled online game. It’s pretty stupid, but it’s funny enough that you don’t mind having to spend all of your adventures trying to level up, because you can drink alcohol and gain a lot of them back. It was a good way to pass the time. I think I had the most fun naming my familiars: (Polaris Bear the Star Starfish being the best.)

So now i’m a level 16 Accordian Thief and there’s some greater thing that I could do, but I think I’m done with it.

3. F My Life
My brother sent me this link the day after a breakup, and it felt so good to be surrounded by misery. Nowadays when I go to the site, it is more of a cringing awkward painful experience, everybody going through so much unholy disgusting trauma, but it’s still a better site than GivesMeHope which drowns me in its sappiness.

4. Nerd Boyfriend
Famous smart nerdy guys and the clothes they wore. Some of them are particularly inspired. Makes you think of famous people as normal people, but also eccentric in their fashion choices, or just clearly from another era.

5. Wordnik
I need to loiter around this site a little more, but I have high hopes for it as a progressive innovative online dictionary, because Erin McKean is involved in it, and she wore a dress at TED that I wish I owned, and I wrote to her and she emailed me back. TWICE.

6. The Sartorialist
I wish I was consistently fashionable and lived in a city where this photographer would go. I am so jealous of nearly everyone on this site, they look so awesome like they are going somewhere important, but they did not know at the beginning of the day that this photoshoot might happen.

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January 1, 2010

in 2009 Summary,Autobiographical,nerdboyfriend,polar bears,Twitter,wordnik

Things I Discovered in 2009: TV Shows

(At first I wrote TV Shoes.)

Most of these are here because of Hulu, so thank you, Hulu.

1. Glee
I thought it would be too hokey, but in the first episode, when Finn is sad, they use an a capella requiem quietly as transition between several scenes while Mr. Shoe (Schu?) considers quitting to become an accountant. And then Bust Your Windows happened, and they keep catching me off-guard with song choices in a really spectacular way. Also there is some terrible melodrama blah blah sing another song please. [and then suddenly…]

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December 31, 2009

in 2009 Summary,Autobiographical,TV,TV Shoes

Things I Discovered in 2009: Movies

They were not made in 2009, but they made my year.

3. I Could Never Be Your Woman ( 2007)

I swear to God, I only watched this movie because David Mitchell has a cameo. It’s a fine cameo, but it’s a more than decent movie surrounding his bit part. In the best scene ever, Paul Rudd DANCES. He does not stop, he does not limit your enjoyment to one silly move. He COMMITS and he DANCES DAMMIT. The supporting cast is fun, doing a farce of a high school mini drama, the daughter says naughty grown-up things, and the least fun person in the movie in Michelle Pfeiffer. It is one of the few romcoms I think I’ll ever approve of. Well done, you fun stupid movie. [and then suddenly…]

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December 31, 2009

in 2009 Summary,Autobiographical,Brothers Bloom,Charlie Bartlett,movie lists,Movies

Things I Discovered in 2009: Countries

CHINA!

I went to China for 2 weeks, which is weird. We hopped around cities in a loop in and out of the country: Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, Longsheng, Shanghai

You can find a brief photoset on Flickr

Also. I hugged a panda and scratched his ear and was not arrested and now we are pen pals. Here for my embarrassment and your viewing pleasure:

It was pretty great, and I have a necklace and bracelet and earrings and communist poster and book and mushroom cloud pin and greater understanding of that giant country.

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December 31, 2009

in 2009 Summary,Autobiographical,China,Panda

The Man Who Made Lists: Not a Book Review

I recently finished The Man Who Made Lists by Joshua Kendall about the life of Peter Mark Roget and I don’t know what to say exactly.

I was hoping this book would be a kickstart to me to attack the pile of language books I have languidly lying around my bookshelves, but not so.

From the first pages, I was writing “awwwww” in the margins because the front and back sheets are his handwritten list of animal names in Latin and English.

The book goes through his biography, and I don’t like how it’s written, like the author had a Pastwatch-esque ability to know where Roget is looking and what he is thinking as he walks down the road or in the middle of a meeting. I know there are records and he could have explained it after the fact, but I just don’t buy it and it distracts me to throw in details about the buildings he passes and their little histories. [and then suddenly…]

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November 18, 2009

in Books,book_review,Cool_Guys_List,RESOLUTION,Roget,Words & Origins

I Joined Wordnik

Last night I joined wordnik.com as TankHughes. I favorited 50 words, realizing how many words on my happy word list are not in English.

I hope to start tagging words I like, and creating categories for interesting words like ‘strengths’ the longest word with only one vowel. longest_word_with_one_vowel, one_vowel, word_records ?

More to come. Could not see a direct way to volunteer to be helpful to the site, so I’ll just try some things on my own before reaching out officially.

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November 2, 2009

in good_job_panda,signed_up,wordnik

Cool Guys List

Sun Tzu (544-496BC)

Zeno of Elea (490-430BC)

Tiresias (405BC-?)

Dismas and Gestas (?-29)

Charlesmagne (747-814)

Genghis Khan (1162-1227)

Nicholaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596)

El Greco (1541-1614)

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Diego Velazquez (1599-1660)

Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr (1841-1935)

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

Clara Barton (1821-1912)

Dmitri Mendeleev (1831-1907)

Carry Nation (1846-1911)

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1931)

Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)

George Patton (1885-1945)

Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

Sterling Holloway (1905-1992)

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (1912-1967)

Eugene Kelly (1912-1996)

Henry Mancini (1924-1994)

Harvey Milk (1930-1978)

John Williams (1932-?)

Sergio Aragones (1937-?)

Billy Collins (1941-?)

Frank Oz (1944-?)

Robert Munsch (1945-?)

David Mamet (1947-?)

Frank Hughes (1949-2009)

Orson Scott Card (1951-?)

Will Shortz (1952-?)

Danny Elfman (1953-?)

Stephen Fry (1957-?)

David Mitchell (1974-?)

Jason Schwartzman (1980-?)

Andy Smith (1984-?)

Paul Shamble (1986-?)

Guillermo J Writerdog (immortal)

Raúl (immortal)

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May 28, 2009

in Uncategorized

Problems in my Life Right Now

1. My dad is dying of lung cancer in California and he is a good person and I am in Portland and I should be helping them everyday.

2. My house is unsanitary to the point that I avoid the kitchen and bathroom except when 100% unavoidable.

3. My boyfriend’s iPhone software was pirated, meaning he lost revenue, got his hopes up only to be crushed, and now our budget is limited.

4. Both of my parents weigh less than I do. My dad because of his constant nausea and my mother because of her vigilance in going to the gym during times of crisis.

5. My acne is getting more persistent and worse. I can’t stop touching my face and I don’t think I can. I was going to bring ProActive up from California but I only had carry-on bags and those are liquids.

Resolutions to problems:

1. Cry, visit often, talk to my mom more often, edit dad’s book.

2. Move to new house in January when I come back from Christmas with family.

3. Get a raise at work, create an actual budget for us for food, brainstorm ideas for a new program he could write/ new project.

4. Use boyfriend’s apartment’s gym for eliptical trainer, do crunches whenever possible, stretch everyday at least once. Work out with boyfriend for support.

5. Use ProActive in California and bring it up when I come back in big checked suitcase.

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December 7, 2008

in acne,Autobiographical,problems,software piracy,weight

Where is the Unialphabet?

Recently I poked and prodded around the internet, Portland libraries, and even had my mother in California send me a book in the mail to get an example of Delfín Carbonell Bassett’s “Unialphabet.”

Here is why: I think it’s potentially brilliant. It’s a simple gesture that could really change the mindset of students learning language.

Here is what it is, in theory: Instead of having and English/Spanish and Spanish/English division in bilingual dictionaries, put them all together in one alphabet, with some sort of key to distinguish which comes from which language. It breaks down the artificial wall, and lets the languages live in the same universe. It may lead to more ‘Spanglish’ writings, but it also stops kids from learning unconsciously that their language of reference can only be thought of one word at a time in the other language, one arrow going to Spanish, one arrow back to English. With the Unialphabet system, all the words are living in bunk beds next to each other, forced to recognize the others’ presence AS WELL AS exponentially increasing the element of serendipity, finding words you weren’t looking for, because now all the words are available all the time as the main words. It also can visually show someone “hey, English has a lot more words in the W section than Spanish, why is that?” pushing a student to think about the fundamentals of language earlier than the day some crazy word enthusiast, such as myself, pushes word facts down their throats without warning.

Here is the problem: The book my mother sent me was a Dictionary of Proverbs, which was on the list of books which used the system on Wikipedia. I know Wikipedia is not the king of information, but by god I thought I could trust it just a little further than I could throw it. Anyway, the red and yellow cover, as you can see, clearly divides it into two sections. One thing it does do is explain English idioms in Spanish, and Spanish idioms in English. Ok, that’s good, but WHY ARE THERE TWO ALPHABETS. UNI! ONE! WTF! I want to love this, I want to write to Erin McKean and tell her for the Dictionary Society of America I want to write a proposal that encourages bilingual dictionaries to be printed unialphabetically for American textbooks, and pocket dictionaries! BUT I DON’T HAVE A REAL EXAMPLE!

In fact, the most true example of a unialphabet that I have access to is my very own “Mellifluous Verbosity,” the list of all the words that make me happy.

So what now? Keep searching for my linguistic path, amuse myself with words, maybe email Mr. Señor Carbonell Bassett again, search for actual images of the Unialphabet in practice. Sigh.

Aspiring paleoverbologist out.

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October 18, 2008

in spanish,unialphabet,Words & Origins

I miss you too much, Wile E.

Wile E., the love of my life, has been put down after 12 dedicated years to the Hugheses. He had a very aggressive sarcoma that had invaded his brain and sinuses, making it very hard to breathe. His birthday was July 1st, 1996. I picked him out 9 weeks later, I taught him ‘on your mark, get set, go,’ how to earn dinner by waiting patiently, or, alternatively pouncing on his bowl, and to jump PVC hurdles. He would dig with enthusiasm but not with focus, when his toys were covered he would pounce on them like an arctic fox, and he was a very good soccer goalie. He always had kisses to give, and he was a vigilant shepard to his sheep. I will miss his crossed front paws, and his infinite patience with me when I would keep him in my room and he wanted to leave to check on the other sheep. He even let me paint his toenails once. I will miss him an incredible amount. The days I was home that he was at the emergency clinic, the house already felt empty without his chain jingling, sitting in main thoroughfares, and kicking his back leg out when he sat down. I miss you I miss you I miss you. Love you forever, Wile E.