A Random Observation

I think one of my favorite phrases in the blogosphere is "typo and it stays." It indicates a situation similar to a Freudian slip, except with the added bonus of the person making the mistake having obviously looked at the mistake, considered changing it back, and yet decided, "Yes, this IS the impression I want to be giving."

Fun Fact of the Day

The name "Greenland" was a medieval marketing ploy, intended to help persuade people to move away from Iceland (which had an overcrowding problem) to someplace substantially icier but also substantially larger.

Fun Fact of the Day

"Kangaroo" is an aboriginal Australian word meaning "I don't know what you're saying."

Quote of the Day

"Tapioca is a kind of food. Tapioca with cyanide in it is not very good for you."

Please Direct Me To The Mahalo

This is a post about trash cans. Specifically, the kinds of trash cans you see at fast-food places, which always seem to have "THANK YOU" printed on them.

Right now, I'm in Hawai'i for a family vacation--my first time coming here for any span of time less than a year. When I was younger, on three different occasions, my family lived here more or less permanently. I freely admit to having loved everything about it except for fourth grade (long story involving an abusive teacher and two sets of bullying classmates).

One of the things I've always especially loved about Hawai'i is the language. You have to learn at least a little bit just to get around every day, at least enough to be able to pronounce the names of the streets and figure out whether you belong in the "kane" or "wahine" bathroom. Just basic survival matters like that. And it's a beautiful, deceptively simple language (at least until you're confronted by the fact that the state fish is known as the humuhumunukunukuapua'a, meaning "a fish with a nose like a pig").

Of course, in the Hawaiian language, the word for "thank you" is "mahalo." Which brings me back to the title of this post: has it occurred to no one else that someone from another country who speaks another language might come to America and assume based on the tradition of the polite fast-food trash cans that "thank you" means "trash can"? I would never have thought of it were it not for the fact that my dad has made a habit, every time we come to Hawai'i, of joking that "mahalo" must mean "trash can." After all, it's carved into the lid right there.

We attended our old church yesterday, and interestingly the pastor gave us a survey about military families that he wants to use to plan his next sermon series. Oddly, he had a number of possible relationships to the military with checkboxes at the bottom, to indicate one's perspective--but "child of a servicemember" wasn't an option. Perhaps I ought to make a blog post in answer to his survey.

As I finish this post, we are headed to Punchbowl Cemetery. I promised my aunt BabyBlue (of BabyBlueOnline) that I would lay flowers on her mother's grave, and while we're there we are also going to visit Auntie BJ and Uncle Earl's graves (no relation, that's just how Hawaiians talk about close friends of older generations).

A Sentence I Never Thought I Would Say

"It was a love strangle, I swear!"

Hello! Random Hurricane Dropping In Unannounced!

so, you mighta noticed, i haven't posted for the past few days. this is because, while i was writing a blog post friday night, this random thunderstorm with hurricane-force winds came up out of nowhere,knocking down trees and taking a massive chunk of the area where i live off the power grid. now i'm resorting to posting from my phone, because i know some of my friends will be worried about me and hopefully they'll check this blog, you know who you are. i'm fine, but i don't know how long it'll be until we get back online, and as you may have noticed from the bizarre formatting, my phone's interface and this blog's functions do not agree with each other very well and so i might not post much until i can use my laptop for the purpose again. in the meantime, my very prepared father has set up a generator we bought many moves ago in case something like this happened, and it's working well so at least we have a refrigerator and i can entertain myself with pokemon.