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Oh… so many blogworthy things to talk about… so few things that I wouldn’t get fired for repeating. :)

Not that that’s the real reason I haven’t been blogging. Truth be told, I’m a lazy little bugger. Were I to ~make~ time for writing, you-all’d be being entertained.* Last night, for example, laundry took precedence. Of course, laundry involved a bit of movie watching and a bit of ice cream eating and a bit of wine drinking, but that is my burden to bear and we all do what we must.

However, I do feel that it is my obligation as the owner of a blog to make myself easier to stalk, so to continue my list-making trend, I’ll give you ten eleven things you probably didn’t want to know about me, but will now know regardless, ha and neener:

1. I often joke about having OCD, but I’m probably not joking. Ask about the jello story sometime.
2. I often joke about having a horrible memory. Not only is that one not a joke, it really isn’t all that funny.
3. I often joke about things that aren’t funny. This either makes me a blast to hang out with or damn near intolerable. It seems to vary from person to person, but it’s probably one of the extremes in any case.
4. I walk nekkid or mostly-nekkid in front of a window at least once a day.
5. I have curtains for said window, but so far I’ve been too lazy to put them up.
6. I sing at the top of my lungs in the shower, and in the car (with other people in the car), and in my apartment (to my cat). Still won’t sing in public.
7. I like to wear my fun t-shirts under my work clothes because it makes me feel tricksy. Today I’m wearing my “Bad Poetry/Oh Noetry” tee under a long-sleeved dress shirt from Gap.
8. Even though I almost never pick out my clothes until I’m putting them on each morning, I almost always have a pretty good idea as to what pair of underwear I’m going to put on. Sometimes I know days in advance.
9. I’m mildly allergic to a lot of fruits and some vegetables. I eat them anyway. Sometimes I even seek them out.
10. I’m convinced that my fingernails and toenails grow abnormally fast. In reality, I probably just forget to cut them (and then forget that I forgot), but the result is my fingernails are often longer than many girls’.
11. I don’t mind my long fingernails because they’re pretty damn useful a lot of the time.

And you-all thought I was done with the anagram silliness. Think again! And then once more!

So here’s the thing: anagrams are kinda fun, and the wonderful world of technology makes it really, really easy to create them. Type a phrase into a text box, hit enter, and presto! Anagram City. The challenge, then, is weeding through the (often literally) tens of thousands of possible anagrams to discover those which carry some sort of meaning. It’s an exercise in analyzing the random and seemingly meaningless for meaningful patterns, seeking the information carrier amidst the static. It’s kind of like searching the sky for extraterrestrial life, except that it is far easier, a little more boring, cheaper, less rewarding, and nothing like searching the sky for extraterrestrial life.

What’s the topic for today? Well, The Da Vinci Code spawned my anagram obsession, so why not return to our roots? My favorite anagram in the movie is the phrase “So Dark the Con of Man,” which, unscrambled, leads them to the painting of “Madonna of the Rocks.” However, it simultaneously alludes to the teachings of the Priory, meaning it serves as a clever code on multiple levels.

So, I decided to take the phrase “Madonna of the Rocks” and see what other messages Dan Brown could have chosen to send his readers. It turns out the phrase is a goldmine of anagrams, as it contains a ton of common letters and happy vowels. As last time, I’ve broken them down into rather meaningless categories for my own personal amusement.

Anagrams what Completely Confuse
Fathead conks moron
Kodachrome fan snot
Naked smooth Franco
Smoked nonfat roach
Frenchman took soda
Rock on, O shafted man

…what Deal with Deities
Confront Hades amok (sounds dangerous)
Fondest Charon amok
Task of demon Charon

…what Deal with the Bible
Frank/Demon Cahoots
Thomas forked canon (that meddling Thomas!)
Noah sank comforted

…what Lead Down the Wrong Path
Koran fathomed cons
Crooks heft Madonna (ahh, hell. We’re too late)
Monk’s hood at France
Monarchs faked unto (unto what? Whole other book there)
Act on Denmark’s hoof
Scan noted hoofmark
Dark footman chosen
Onto far demon shack

…what Give the Story Away
Tom Hanks, Dracon foe
Matron DNA: shock foe
Code of Hanks’ matron
Docent’s a frank homo (with apologies, Sir McKellen)
Harken to docs of man

Discuss.

Man, I only got three updates in for the month of May. Not so hot. I can claim I was busy for the first half or so, but I don’t know what my excuse for the second half was. I’ll shoot for a little better this month.

Although this is an entirely novel concept, in order to convince myself to write more often, I thought I would write about things for a change, instead of my usual writings on nothing. Now, these somethings are not likely to be political or religious or even vaguely interesting, but… wait, why was I writing them again?

Sans adieu,

Things I like about my commute to work:

• My new car is pretty and comfortable.
• I get to listen to CDs really loud and sing along for almost two hours every day.
• I feel a great sense of camaraderie whilst driving in traffic.
• It gives me a chance to drink 16 additional ounces of coffee before facing the real world.
• It gives me an excuse to wear sunglasses.
• Working on my tan on the left side of my body.
• Four words: Cute girls at stoplights.
• Sentence fragment.
• It means I get to easily keep all of my ISU friends.

Things I dislike about the commute:

• Because of the commute, work takes up 11 hours of my day.
• I’ve already put over 2,000 miles on my pretty new car.
• Four words: Rush hour through construction.
• I spend half the drive stuck in the fast lane behind someone going under the speed limit.
• My sleep schedule would be more sane if I didn’t have to get up so early to leave the house.
• It makes it more difficult to make Des Moines friends.