Additional notes on the Glossary

My bitter feelings have faded somewhat.  I currently bear Tim no ill will; mostly I was just jealous that Tim managed to get out of Game Control, while I was dragged kicking and screaming down with the rest of Team Blues.  In the OHDaMN, the rest of the listing for Tim was as follows:  "Tim is still included here, for the sake of keeping the manual complete, and because he is still occasionally referenced elsewhere in the manual.  HOWEVER, Tim is NO LONGER a member of Game Control because he is a lazy bastard who continually maintains he 'has better stuff to do'".  Tim, when he read my entry, clarified that he never said he had "better" things to do, he just had "other" things to do.

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A quote from the Adam Sandler movie The Waterboy.

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One definition of rubric is "A short commentary or explanation covering a broad subject."  Rubricate was included as my own little private joke, being fairly descriptive of what I was doing at the time, writing glossary entries.

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A sommelier, or master wine steward, wears a small silver cup on a chain around his neck so he always has something to taste wine with.  Oh, I suppose he could just swill it out of the bottle, but most of the fancy restaurants that have a sommelier would probably frown on that.  This cup-on-a-chain is called a porringer.  Both terms are French.

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A reference to the movie Dune (and the novel of the same name, oddly enough).  It's an inside joke.

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I've been saying this for years.  Actually, I've been saying it since my freshman year, when I was taking Parti-Dy. and Calc II simultaneously.  Though I would like to make good on this threat someday, it is more difficult then I at first assumed because Sir Isaac is buried in a crypt inside a church.   Newton is still a bastard.

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This is the exact definition as given in Webster's. Apparently there has been a change in terminology since I last took o-chem. Mucopolysaccharide and Glycosaminoglycan are terms used for "any of a group of polysaccharides that contain amino sugars and often form complexes with proteins."  It's the chemical term used for mucaceous organic polymer sugars (i.e. snot).

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A mho got its name because it is the inverse of an ohm, the unit for electrical resistance.  But of course you already guessed that.  "Mho" is not the official SI name, it is just a handy convenience.  Some physicist probably thought it made a great joke, too.

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The complete joke:  Light beer is like having sex in a canoe because...  It's fucking close to water.  This one is from Monty Python's "Australian Philosophers" sketch, as performed in their "Live from the Hollywood Bowl" concert, which is available on video.  Being a non-TV appearance, they could of course get away with that punch line.  This sketch is also why we call Bruce, well, Bruce.

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You want proof that more than jokes went into the glossary?  Here is an example of my research:  The sequence listed for letter frequency is one estimate of the rate of usage for individual letters in English.  After searching the web for awhile, I found a very nice article that listed six such sequences, using various sources (King James bible, Shakespeare, modern newspapers, etc.).  Not knowing the original sources, I can't verify the validity of any of those, or of the one I actually included (which was offered as a synthesis of several of the others).  However, the sequence in the OHDaMN looks right.  You can check it against the point values on Scrabble tiles if you have any doubts.

letter frequency:
E  T  A  O  I  N  S  R  H  L  D  C  U  M  F  P  G  W  Y  B  V  K  X  J  Q  Z
Scrabble Tiles:
E-1 T-1 A-1 O-1 I-1 N-1 S-1 R-1 H-4 L-1 D-2 C-3 U-1
M-3 F-4 P-3 G-2 W-4 Y-4 B-3 V-4 K-5 X-8 J-8 Q-10 Z-10

H occurs more frequently than its point value would indicate because of the word "the", obviously.  U is discounted in point value because of the Q-U pairing.  Besides, all vowels have a point value of 1.  D and G are discounted because of the ease in adding "ed" or "ing" to other words.  (Can't make it too easy to win scrabble, you know.  There are only 4 S tiles in the game for the same reason.)  Other discrepancies I'll attribute to the fact that Scrabble was invented by an architect, not an english major.

Scrabble is a registered trademark of Hasbro, and my use of the name in no way is meant to infringe on their copyright.  Sorry, I had to say that.

Incidentally, the article I used is no longer available, since it was a message posted to a discussion board, but a search of the phrase "letter frequency" will likely direct you to many similar messages.

Oh yeah, and the information was superfluous.  All codes and ciphers used in the game had other solutions -- see the History of Cryptography elsewhere in the manual.

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Of course, a web page gives us a lot more space then I had in the original OHDaMN.  A listing of several styles of Lambic:

A 'default' lambic is slightly sour, but still recognizable as beer.
Other Styles of Lambic:

• Geuze:  Very Sour.  A geuze is an aged lambic.  Often, a brewer will mix small amounts of beer brewed last year or several years ago into his latest geuze before bottling.  Most brewers and drinkers think this makes the beer taste better.
• Faro:  A lambic made with distilled grape syrups.
• Framboise:  raspberry flavored
• Cassis:  black currant flavored
• Kreik:  cherry flavored
• Peche:  peach flavored

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This is a Sam and Max reference, obviously.  Sam and Max are the stars of "Sam and Max:  Freelance Police", an underground comic by Steve Purcell.  (If you can find it in stores, BUY IT NOW!  Sam and Max are usually out of print, though every few years or so it gets resurrected.)  I included a Sam and Max reference because I am a big fan, and they are hillarous.

These two cartoon panels are from the manual to the LucasArts game "Sam and Max Hit the Road".  The road trip humor coincides with Get-a-Clue, obviously.  Besides, it is a great computer game that you should be familiar with.  The sound bites are not from the game, but rather from the short-lived Sam and Max saturday-morning cartoon show, and while they do not directly correspond to the panels here, they are indeed complimentary.  Click on a panel to hear the sound bite.

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To be specific, Hosehead belongs to Bob and Doug MacKenzie, of Strange Brew fame.

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A literary reference from Stranger in a Strange Land, by grand master Robert A. Heinlein.  The word is from the fictional martian language used in the book.  (In fact I believe it is the only chunk of martian actually printed; the rest was given in translation)

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The reason a speeding ticket is sometimes refereed to as a "citation" is precisely because that's what it legally is.  It cites the law broken and gives the particulars of the case (where, when, who, etc.).  It also doubles as a summons to court.

Back to "Georgia State Law Section 40-6-181"

This also doubles as a PCU reference:  George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars were performing on stage at the Pit Party.  P-Funk, for those of you who have neglected musical history, is the abbreviation for Parliament-Funkadelic, those being the two bands that George Clinton created, wrote for, and produced throughout the 70's and early 80's.

Back to "Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo System"

A fnord is an obscure literary reference to the Principia Discordia, The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, or to Schrodinger's Cat by Robert Shea.  Or possibly all three, because I forget right now where and when I saw it explained first.  It is a self-defined word, being a marker rather than an actual part of speech.  Apparently, we were all conditioned early on in school to accept as truth any sentence or article that contains the word "fnord".   Part of this conditioning includes the handy side effect that the actual word "fnord" is itself ignored and becomes, for all intents and purposes, invisible.  The classic example of the fnord in actual use is in the statement, "This Note Is Legal Tender fnord For All Debts Public And Private."  Did I mention that Illuminatus (even though it is a work of fiction) is the single most comprehensive collection of conspiracy theories to date?

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A drupe is the generic term for any fleshy fruit with a hard stone inside that encloses the actual seed, peaches being the most familiar example of drupacious fruit.

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Burton-on-Trent is also where the main Bass Ale brewery is located.  I included it because I was trying to fill out the 'b' section a bit, and Bass happened to be the beer I had in my hand at the time I was writing the glossary.

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This is a reference to the Sam Raimi movie Army of Darkness, the section quoted being the longest monologue in the movie delivered by Ash (a.k.a. Bruce Campbell), the ultimate one-handed time-travelling chainsaw-wielding one-liner-spouting hero

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A Note on the notes:  these notes are listed on this page in reverse alphabetical order, such that by reading one you should only see the note you clicked on, and others you have already seen.  This is so you don't go reading ahead, spoiling any future punchline to jokes you haven't seen the set-up for.

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