hoopla

They're having a showing of Napoleon Dynamite at the BSU tonight. I'd like to have stayed to see it, but I have a lot to do as far as homework goes: read on The Republic for philosophy, read whatever it is that we won't talk about in women's lit, and all kinds of Spanish hoopla. (I know hoopla isn't the right word there, but it sure is fun...) And I over-achieved and went ahead and did my advanced comp stuff. BarbCobb's a crazy woman having us email her two assignments with two different deadlines between two classes. But whatever. I wasn't about to wait until the last minute (being 7:59 tomorrow morning) to email her the second assignment. I'm going to try to go to bed at a decent hour tonight and sleep until at least 8:00. That'll be glorious. (Note that this is the only reason I didn't go and get a Caramel Macchiato after TNT.)

Now for more Spanish hoopla. I was extremely bored in the library today--though I'm not sure why because it seemed everybody was having a computer problem--and I was looking up the suggestions that dictionary.com returns when you search my name. No. I don't know why. Anyway, it turns out that my name is very similar to the scientific name for plants, usually flowering ones. Way to go, botany. But I also noticed casita, which I thought was pretty and looked rather Spanish in nature. And I was right. It means little house. So I looked up the word for prairie, and discovered that yes, Little House on the Prairie is La Casita de la Pradera on Spanish-speaking television. I felt much better after I settled that. Then I thought on the fact that adding -ita or -ito as the ending to lots of nouns makes them little. So at my favorite translating site, I began making my own Spanish words to see if they meant small this or small that. I had both successes and failures.

So ladies and gentlemen, for your multilingual pleasure, here is my presentation of

Words That Do and Do Not Mean

What I Thought They Did in Spanish

Cuadernito does mean little notebook.
Pezito, pesito, pescito, and pescadito do not mean little fish.
Librito does mean booklet.
Hombrito does not mean little man.
Gatito and gatita do mean kitten.
Vacita does not mean little cow.
Mesita does mean small table.
Carrito does not mean little car, but it does mean cart.
Perrito does mean little dog.
Estafadorito does not mean little racketeer.

Yes, so that was very fun and enlightening, no? No? No. It wasn't very much fun at all. So now that we're done not having fun, let's begin the real fun with Plato and Socrates and social justice.