Cuparius.com

I have no idea how accurate the Cuparium's counter is. It seems to be a wee bit eccentric. Or stubborn. Did the traffic truly drop from thirty hits per week to four? Are twenty-six fewer people visiting, or are four people visiting less often? 'Tis a mystery. I suppose I could consult the data collected by my domain host if I were not too busy to bother, or I could face the fact that I'm not doing enough with the Cuparium to keep my visitors interested. It's because of the dictionaries, isn't it? I've been discussing them too much. Dictionaries alienate people. Dictionaries represent rebelliousness and rage. They disrupt the status quo, upset the apple cart, disturb the peace, and sing protest songs. Dictionaries disrespect totalitarian thought police and demand the freedom to rove and rant. They dispel the illusion of meaninglessness and render us inventive and propel us on metaphorical motorbikes of literacy. Dictionaries are beat, man! Take one on the road and be a lexicography bum and pay no attention to punctuation man just keep on going until satori knocks you on your seat of enlightenment and don't worry about too many conjunctions man you can't stop now just surrender to the flow of thought and ride that crazy raft on the Stream of Consciousness and then realize you can't remember where you left your motorbike and you can't go back because the raft only travels downstream and wonder what you are doing on a raft anyway and who travels by raft in this day and age especially when you have a motorbike and I don't know I'm just filling up space and pretending to be a Beat writer is there a problem here no not at all officer of course not we were just having a conversation oh you were were you well break it up show's over nothing to see here move along.

Work on "Labor Day."

Merriam-WebsterCollegiate.com is an online dictionary and thesaurus that costs $14.95 for a one year subscription (compared to the $550 annual fee for OED Online I mentioned recently). Owners of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary Eleventh Edition get their first year free. Is it worth it? This is the first day I've used it, so it may be too early to tell. I was hoping the site would contain more information of an etymological nature than its counterpart in print, which, although far more extensive than any other American dictionary, still falls short of earlier editions (the Seventh comes to mind). The pruning of detail in later editions is a cause for concern, especially as the number of entries increases. The Oxford English Dictionary has the admirable tradition of retaining all of the text of previous editions and appending the new -- a tradition I sincerely wish the Encyclopaedia Britannica would adopt. Yes, this would result in reference works of much greater length, but I would be the merrier for it, and really, my merriment is all that matters. "Maximize Mr. Cooper's merriment" would be a good motto for the world to adopt. But I digress. The Web site is primarily a duplication of the printed works, but it does offer the advantage of audio pronunciation, which opens the door to a yawning chasm of controversy, namely the question of propriety. Regional accents can contort the pronunciation of a word considerably, and who is to say which one is correct? This could divert me far from the subject, so I'll just say that the audio pronunciation is a good idea, but an incomplete one. The Web site also has some word games that seem interesting, but you must have Flash installed to play them. I consider that a drawback. There are other features, but it will take some time to explore them. I'll report on this again in a year and tell you whether it's worth the subscription fee.

All my fellow workers know that my American dictionary of choice is the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary Eleventh Edition. If you cannot afford the mighty OED, this is the dictionary you need. Eschew Encarta. Bypass Random House. Avoid American Heritage. Merriam-Webster's is the dictionary that offers etymology, alternate forms of spelling and pronunciation, and precise definitions. No, it isn't perfect, but it's only one volume -- not twenty. I lack the time to write a review, so consider it a recommendation.

In the past two weeks I have seen Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over at the cinema and Spy Kids and Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams on video. I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes a kids' movie is the best kind of escapism in a stressful world. Crazy casting helps.

Finding Nemo was a similar case. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Ellen DeGeneres was highly entertaining as a fish named Dory. (The swordfish ought to have had bigger parts, though.)

Rien.

"I'm H2O intolerant."
--a young seahorse in Finding Nemo