Magic Spot Flowing

Language Log likes to talk about snowclones. In fact, they popularized the term “snowclone” (though they did not coin it, as you can see by the entry).

Here’s one I don’t think they’ve looked at, even though they have used it, which has an intriguing distribution:

You are in a maze of twisty little X, all alike.

In the original phrase, the X slot was filled by ‘passages’. It’s from the text adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure, and while it’s clear that this phrase is a full-blown snowclone (anything can fill the X slot, though the rest of the phrase is mostly still fixed), it’s one with limited distribution: the main usages are clearly computer-related or otherwise nerdy (or geeky if you prefer).

(I know the phrase, but I’m actually not familiar with Colossal Cave or similar games as such. I actually thought the passageways line was from Zork, but the Google Meme Observatory corrected me. Shows what I know! The computer games that I played when I was younger all had graphics, albeit simple ones like flat green buffaloes and pink H’s surrounded by green blocks.)

Here are 22 interestingly representative examples of the snowclone:
You are in a maze of twisty little paragraphs, all alike.
You are in a maze of twisty little injokes, all alike…
You are in a maze of twisty little corporations, all alike…
“You are in a maze of twisty little emoticons, all alike.”
In the limiting case, just because I install a Python parser, it shouldn’t force other modules into a maze of twisty little whitespace, all alike.
code that seems to be a maze of twisty little bitShifts, all alike, follows.
You are in a maze of twisty little tabs, all alike.
A maze of twisty little standards, all alike
You are in a maze of twisty little weblogs all alike.
You are in a maze of twisty little classes, all alike.
You are in a maze of twisty little menus, all alike.
You are in a maze of twisty little boxes, all alike
You are in a little twisty maze of think-tanks, all different.
You are lost in a maze of twisty little filesystems, all alike….
You are in a maze of twisty subroutines, all alike. You may be eaten by a deadline.
You are in a maze of twisty little APIs, all alike…
Anyone who’s worked in a maze of twisty little cubicles (all alike) will be able to relate to the situations presented here.
When considering the rules mentioned above, plus some other rules about tax-treatment on pre-IPO stock options, the whole mess might be paraphrased as: “You are in a maze of twisty little rules, all alike.”
you are in a maze of twisty little header files, all alike…
You are in a maze of twisty little accounts, all alike (2007/3/30)
You are in a maze of twisty little config files, all alike
A maze of twisty little railroads, all alike
You are in a maze of twisty little offsets, all alike

And for the final touch, a link to Language Hat!
I live in a part of Berkeley build up in the 1920s, which for drivers is a maze of twisty little streets, all alike.

(Sadly, Mr. Language Hat did not use it, just one of the commenters.)

The variations show that the phrase is either a tad flexible, or difficult to remember with perfect accuracy. And indeed the wiki page explains that there were both a maze of passageways all alike, and one of passageways all different, which was described in several variant ways.

I’m rather fond of this snowclone. I think my favorite is the “maze of twisty little whitespace all alike”, but that’s just because I hate Python.

This is my personal blog, not a topical blog, but I find myself unable to say anything terribly original or interesting about the election per se. Like many Californians, I am thrilled by Obama’s election, and terribly disappointed that it looks like Prop 8 may pass. However! They have not counted my ballot yet (vote-by-mail ballots submitted on Election Day have not been counted; more than 3 million ballots remain to be counted) so I will hold out a small hope yet. Other smaller happinesses (Prop 1A, Prop 2) abound. So, I resort to interesting linguistics:

“It felt very, like, moving.”

I heard this on the Caltrain shuttle tonight, and it constitutes one amusing linguistic tidbit regarding the election. No doubt I’ve said things that sounded equally empty-headed because I put ‘like’ in at an inopportune moment, but this one struck me as funny.

The other interesting linguistic bit was McCain’s use of “an historic” in his speech, and what happened to it afterwards. We were watching Fox News at the time (why? I don’t know) and they were putting pull quotes in the little “Alert” box. When they did this, they changed it to “a historic moment”. MSNBC, though, has the correct version in their story.

“An historic” is an interesting pattern. I don’t use it; it’s almost exclusively used by older people, who I think learned, or were explicitly taught, to use “an” before words starting with H (that are not stressed on the first syllable, a restriction I was not aware of explicitly until looking it up for this entry). It’s described well on this page. The origin is from British h-dropping, which later receded, leaving this little island of confusion. I was surprised to see Fox News ‘correcting’ McCain’s correct, if less common, usage. Did they do it for familiarity? Or because they really thought he misspoke?

It was raining like crazy all day yesterday. I had agreed to go to a party in the evening, so I decided, in the spirit of adventure, to find out whether my bike raingear was up to the task of keeping me relatively dry and comfortable on a 9.6 mile ride in moderate to heavy rain.

Answer: relatively comfortable, yes, relatively dry, no. I was warm enough (mostly; I wish I had worn my long-fingered gloves), but my jacket soaked through eventually, and the rain came in between my tights and shoes my ankles to wet my feet, so that even wearing waterproof shoes was only somewhat helpful. The jacket was marginally breathable enough, and the weather barely cool enough, that I didn’t sweat too much, but I got wet from the rain instead. This is the eternal problem of cycling raingear. Some people swear by Gore-Tex, others say that it leaks or doesn’t breathe. I’m thinking of getting a cycling cape — apparently a place in Oregon makes them.

The waterproof shoes did show their value when I ran into a huge puddle in Mountain View. The entire right lane was covered in water to a depth of about six or eight inches, and I was nervous about riding through it, so I got off, walked up the cross street until I could get on the sidewalk, and walked through a shallower part of the puddle that was on the sidewalk (still 3-4 inches deep). And my feet stayed dry through that.

As I’ve found before, rain pants are not worth it; I just wear my bike tights, which dry quickly and are warm and comfortable even when wet (the microfleece layer stays soft against my skin and doesn’t feel wet). I also don’t bother with a hood or helmet cover; instead I comb out my wet hair when I get someplace. I wear my cycling glasses because I hate getting rain in my eyes, but I do take them off every so often to wipe them off, and occasionally when I get tired of trying to see through them.

My conclusion is that I need to find a better upper (or maybe alternate several, using the current one for light rain, a cape for warm and wet, and a truly waterproof jacket for cold and wet), and get some of those booties/gaiters for my ankles to limit the drippage. I hate wet feet more than I hate almost anything else.

Overall, I did enjoy most of the ride. There wasn’t much traffic on a rainy Saturday between 5 and 6 pm, so the ride wasn’t stressful. The trees are turning colors, making the scenery interesting, and the cool, dull color of the light was soothing. It was nice to try the central route in relative daylight, and see the interesting things I passed by — parks, schools, cool houses. Everyone still had Halloween decorations up, which was also fun. I wasn’t in a huge hurry (though it took longer than I expected — oops) and was riding my old commuter bike, the first long ride she’s been on in a while, so I just toodled along, feeling relaxed. However, I was very glad to get home and change into dry clothes and warm up in my cozy blankets.