Tip Of My Tongue

We’ve all had moments where there was a word, we knew what it meant, maybe approximately how long it was or what it started with, but we couldn’t for the life of us remember what the word was. Where it’s right there, right on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t remember what exactly it is. It’s infuriating to say the least, and if you’re obsessive like I am, you then spend the rest of the day on and off contemplating what that word might have been.

Not anymore! As random information that I stumbled across while browsing the Internet has so enlightened me, there is a website called, shocker, Tip of My Tongue, made for this exact purpose. Forgot a word? Just go to Tip Of My Tongue! It can take a few tries to match up the definitions, and it isn’t perfect, but it’s quite helpful nonetheless.

Here’s how it works: There are four rows, Partial Word, Letters, Word Meaning, and Refine Search. Partial Word allows you to type in what it may start and end with, or contain somewhere in the middle. Letters also has three functional settings, Unscramble, Must have, and Can’t have. Word Meaning hypothetically allows for multiple meanings to the word, but I’ve found it easier to just use one and adjust how I word it until it matches up. Refine Search is for the minimum length, maximum length, and whatever the word may sound like.

As an author, and just a compulsive human in general, this has saved me multiple headaches of trying to find the word I want to use, whether it’s in a story, an essay, or a speech.

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Hermes

So in our English class we’re covering Greek mythology right now, and we were each supposed to choose one of the major gods and goddesses (sorry Asclepius and Triptolemus, my two first possible thoughts, and also Hestia, my third, who, despite having been one of the Olympians before giving up her seat to Dionysus, apparently doesn’t count as a major goddess either). Lacking my first few preferences, I turned to the Olympians that hadn’t been chosen by other groups yet and scanned through them. Being a Percy Jackson fan, I knew a decent amount about each of them already, but ended up choosing Hermes since he was the one about which I easily knew the least.

So I looked and said, “Huh, Hermes, he’s cool, god of thieves, messengers, those winged sandals, that caduceus people always associate with medical stuff even though that should be Asclepius’s single snake staff, not Hermes’ double… oh yeah and he’s probably the god of a couple of other small things too. Sounds like a fun project.”

Well, it turns out the Hermes is the god of a ton of things. Besides being the god of thieves and messengers (as the Messenger of the Gods), he’s also the god of commerce and trade, eloquence, travelers, roadways, merchants, sports and athletes, gymnastics, border crossings, boundaries and transitions, herdsmen/shepherds, land travel, orators and wit, literature and poets, art, invention, luck, and sometimes also fertility. Beyond that, he’s the intercessor between mortals and the divine, and the Divine Herald – basically he guides the souls of the dead to their final place, the one role in which he is not jovial and sly, but solemn, because, come on, dead people are depressing. His symbols, beyond the ones I already listed, include the lyre, which he invented to appease Apollo after he stole his sacred cows, the rooster, no idea why, and the tortoise, which seems counterintuitive since Hermes is supposed to be “as fleet as thought,” but hey, since when do the gods make sense? Oh, yeah, he’s also the only person besides Hades and Persephone who is allowed to leave the Underworld without consequences.

Rumor has it Hermes also appears in more of the myths than any of the other gods. Basically, the point is that this guy is crazy busy and way cooler than I thought he’d be to research.

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Mom’s Guide to the Galaxy

This week is more of an advertisement for my mom’s blog than a standard post on my own, but hey, it’s cool and it’s geeky, so I’m counting it.

Almost two years ago, my mother decided to join me in the land of weekly blog posts (something that she is much better at keeping up with than I am), and not just as my editor. She got her own website, entitled Mom’s Guide to the Galaxy, where she talks about, well, everything.

Unlike Random Geek Child, Mom’s Guide to the Galaxy is largely direct personal information. She talks about our garden, our cats, karate, books… like I said, kind of just everything. In general, her writing is more cohesive and better at explaining things than mine, probably because my mind jumps from A to G with nothing in between, and then I have to try and fill in the blank. But whatever the reason, I find her writing to be surprisingly enjoyable. I mean, I always knew she could write fiction (see the Papa’s Gift series, part 1 here) but she also somehow manages to make the real world seem interesting, a difficult feat indeed. I won’t gives you specific examples for that one, since they make up most of the website. Go find them yourself.

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Godly Brothers (Light MCU Spoilers)

Sticking with the poetry theme, a free verse poem I wrote about the relationship between Thor and Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Some of it is made up on my part, some of it is canon, and as such there are some small spoilers involved.

My name is Thor
God of Thunder
My brother is Loki
God of Mischief
Worthy of his title
He’s always stabbing me

“Ooh, a snake!”
I love snakes
I pick it up
Whoops, it’s Loki
“Mmblargh!”
He stabs me

Scavenger Hunt in Asgard
Gotta find the item and bring it back
“There it is!”
And… it’s Loki
“Mmblargh!”
He stabs me

“I’m off to the dining hall.”
Walking down the corridor
Round the corner
Look, there’s Loki
“Mmblargh!”
He stabs me

“We won!”
Battle’s over
Celebrating
Hug Loki
He grins
And stabs me

Older now
About to be king
Responsibility and all that jazz
No time to be stabbed
Loki’s smiling from the sidelines
Bet he wishes he could stab me

Loki’s dead
Wait, no he isn’t, just mad
Fighting on a building
“We can. Together.”
My brother is still in there somewhere
He stabs me

Gotta save Jane from an elf
We need a plan
Loki will pretend to be one of them
We can trick them, together
This time I know it’s coming
He stabs me

Stuck on Sakaar
Have to escape
Loki’s helping
Or not
Planning a betrayal
I zap him so he won’t stab me

Apparently we have a sister
Oh joy, she’s evil
Fighting side by side
Against her undead minions
Loki’s dueling some
He stabs them

On our way back to Earth
Ship gets boarded
Half our people slaughtered
Killer’s an old friend of Loki’s
It should be no surprise
He tries to stab him

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