Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Perfectwordasauras


OK, you've got your dictionary and you've got your thesaurus, both valuable tools, but there's a need for something new. For instance, I know there is a word that means something that is simultaneously horrifying and beautiful, like a mushroom cloud or a whirlpool, but what is that word? I need a web site where I can enter two words and get a third one back. You know, enter "artistic + grisly" and the database would return "macabre," or "sad + peaceful" and you'd get "melancholy"—that sort of thing.

On a completely unrelated note: I suspect there is a cruel law of hummus that dictates if you buy a small container you can expect to consume it in one evening leaving you wishing you had bought a larger container, particularly considering all un-hummused leftover pita bread about to grow stale in the fridge. But if you had gone ahead and bought a larger container of hummus, well there is something vulgar about hummus in quantity—completely unappetizing, and it will wind up in the trash unopened one day a couple months from now, bubbling and fizzing from fermentation.

There is no right amount of hummus for purchase. There is no word for this.