Pegacorn vs. Pegicorn

I know the title of this post sounds like one of those cheesy sci-fi movies with titles like Mega Shark vs. Tuna Zombies or Siberian Death Plants vs. Octogatorpus but unfortunately it’s not. That post can be found here.

Nope, this post is about the correct spelling for the name of the magical beast that so majestically represents our blog. I’m talking about that flying unicorn horse thingy that is in our header.

I always spell it Pegicorn while Pat spells it Pegacorn. But which is the right way? Unfortunately for me I’m now just noticing that the spell checker is only flagging my spelling of the word but that doesn’t mean Pat is right.

OK Pat, let’s hear your case for spelling it with an ‘a’.

Pat: I’m just trying to give equal representation for each animal. We agree that, however you spell it, it is an eight-letter beast, yes? Well, given that it is half PEGAsus and half uniCORN...I rest my case!

And just to give a shout-out to historical accuracy...let’s not forget that we started talking about said creature after I referenced my son’s fascination with it. And at the time, likely due to his speech impediment...or his general inability to read...he referred to it as a “pagacorn”. Clearly, the ‘A’ is the dominant vowel!

Christian: Not only am I going to argue that pegicorn is the correct spelling, but I’m also going to argue that pegacorn is also the correct spelling, but for a different mystical creature.

You see, the reason why the ‘i’ is so important is because it distinguishes between two subsets of beasts. If you call a creature a pegicorn it means it’s a cross between a pegasus and a unicorn or bicorn or tricorn (for PCPPP it’s a unicorn). However, a pegacorn is a cross between a PEGasus and a quadrACORN.

That’s right, a quadracorn, which everyone knows is a unicorn type creature but with four horns instead of just one. I did a google image search for a quadracorn but oddly enough no results were found..

So I took a couple of days off of work to try and artistically capture the essence and grace of this beautifully stunning and magnificent creature. I think I succeeded:

Breathtaking.

So Pat, that is why the PCPPP mascot is spelled with an ‘i’. It obviously has no quadracorn DNA in it.

Pat:  Did you, by chance, engage in any role playing games in your basement as a youth?

Christian: HA! Jokes on you. We didn’t even have a basement when I was growing up.

So does this mean you are agreeing that quadracorn is the way to spell it? Or are you going to continue to be as wrong as a level 9 Druid with only +3 shadow spell?

Pat: No, I’m not conceding. I was just trying an old school-bully tactic of discrediting your argument by proving you an übergeek. But you just kinda’ did that yourself, so...thanks.

I still think you’re wrong.

Christian: Then what term do you use when you are talking about a pegasus quadracorn cross-breed?.

Pat:  I generally don’t find myself talking about them. Please refer to my previous comment.  

Seriously, dude, you’re digging a really big geek-hole here. As a friend I must warn you to stop.

Christian: I’m sorry but I’m having a hard time believing the topic of pegasus quadracorn cross-breeds don’t come up often for you. You’re a teacher for god’s sake. I probably find myself talking about pegasus quadracorn cross-breeds at least three times a day.

But for argument’s sake, let’s say you did find yourself talking about a pegasus quadracorn cross-breed. What term would you use to refer to them?

Pat:  “Mythical creature”. Well, maybe “KICK ASS mythical creature”.

Christian: But then how do they know which KICK ASS mythical creature you are talking about? By just saying KICK ASS mythical creature you could be talking about a dragon, a cyclops, a cyclagon (half cyclops, half dragon), an orc, a centaur, a mogwai, a Bilbo, sasquatch, a griffin, a keebler elf, a mermaid, a hippogriff, a Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper, a kraken, a werewolf, or a pegasus quadracorn cross-breed.

Pat:  I’m kind of reconsidering this blog-partnership thing, Christian. I mean...do you really have time in your life to spare enough for you to be able to consider the taxometric groupings of mythical creatures?

Are you remembering to feed your children?

Christian: If by children you mean my pegasus quadracorn cross-breed snow globes and action figures, then yes I’m feeding them.

OK, I’ll concede that for some reason you rarely talk about pegasus quadracorn cross-breeds. Fine.

But I still feel like the correct spelling for a pegasus unicorn cross-breed is pegicorn. Have you even considered the option of going with pegicorn? By not at least considering it, don’t you think you’re being a little bit selfish and not much of a team player? Remember, there’s no ‘I’ in pegacorn.

Pat:  There seems to be in the version you want me to go with!

Have YOU even considered, dear blog partner, that you may not be wrong on this one, but that doesn’t mean you are right? Hmm?

Such an adamant adherence to a dichotomous approach to the problem reeks of a limited Western logic. It is either “Pegicorn” or “Not-Pegicorn”. So sadly limiting!

Consider, instead, a more Eastern approach: four-way logic, promoted by, among others, Buddhist sage Nagarjuna (ce 150-250), where the possible solutions to your dilemma include “Pegicorn”, “Not-Pegicorn”, “Neither Pegicorn Nor Not-Pegicorn” or “Both Pegicorn and Not-Pegicorn”.

Pretty cool, yeah?

Christian: I don’t know. I kind of had a hard time understanding what you were saying so I stopped reading and decided to draw a picture of a kickass cyclagon instead.

Fierce!

I Want My Two Cups!

Though I haven’t told him so outright, I generally consider Christian a hair smarter than me--a two foot in diameter hair. So when I get perplexed by the comings and goings of each day, I tend to turn to him for answers.

Pat:  Hey buddy--I know you don’t drink coffee, but I was hoping you could help me solve a conundrum.

Each morning, after I wake up, I go downstairs and make a nice pot of coffee. Not a full pot, mind you, as my spouse and I don’t need that much anxiety in our lives. Instead, I opt for ten of the twelve possible cups allowed by our pot.

Here’s the thing...

I put ten cups of water IN the machine, but by the time it comes out deliciously dark and murky, there are only eight cups available.

What the hell is happening to those two cups?

Christian: Don’t you coffee freaks make your coffee really hot. Is there steam involved? If so then you are probably steaming away those extra two cups. Either that or coffee elves are taking the cups while you aren’t looking. Science.

Pat:  There is steam, but two cups worth? That seems like an awful lot of steam! Should I try to capture it and measure it?

And I appreciate the second theory, but the kids are pretty steadfast in their assertion that our house is inhabited only by us, cats and fairies. No elves. I think the kids would know.

Christian: Do you have a steam collector?

Steam collector. Every kitchen should have one.

(source)

If so then, yes, capture the steam the next time you boil coffee or however it you make it, and then take a ruler and measure the steam. I don’t know what the conversion from inches to cups is, but I’m sure your iPad can do that for you.

I’m really curious now to see what you find. Don’t worry...we’ll figure this out. Unless of course you don’t have a steam collector, in which case you’re screwed.

Pat:  No. I don’t. At least, I don’t think so. Does my mouth count as a steam collector? ‘Cause one time I opened it up real wide and tried to catch as much steam in it as I could. But then I coughed and mildly choked, and I think I lost whatever steam I had captured in my mouth. Do they make more effective steam catching devices?

Christian: I don’t know. You’re the coffee drinker here not me.

OK, let’s pass on trying to measure the amount of steam. How about this: just don’t heat up the coffee and see how many cups you can drink. If you still end up with two less cups than what you started with then we can rule out my steam theory.

Give that a try and then report back.

Pat: This is embarrassing, because I consider myself pretty well-versed in the kitchen arts, but...I don’t know how to make coffee without heating it up. I tried it but just got a mouthful of gritty dark water. It wasn’t very good.

Were you just pulling a funny on me?

Christian: Of course not. Remember, I know nothing about coffee except for the fact that I hate how it tastes. Are you suggesting it doesn’t normally taste like gritty dark water? Because that sounds like an accurate description to me.

But back on to the task at hand: How many cups of the gritty dark water did you have? Were you missing any cups?

Pat:  It’s the gritty part that caught me off guard. Hadn’t had that since I accidentally drank the last sip in Turkey, but at least THAT was hot grit.  

I don’t know if I was missing any cups, because after you tricked me into drinking cold water with ground coffee in it I went into a Hulk-like rage and smashed my mug and the coffee pot.

Christian: OK, we probably need to take a step back then. You don’t have a steam collector and not heating up the coffee apparently had some negative side effects.

Maybe we need to figure out where in the process of making the coffee you are losing the two cups. Can you just half make the coffee? If you can do that then we can see if you have only lost one cup at that point. If so then we’ll know we’re losing the cups over the entire process as opposed to losing both cups right at the end or something. I think this is called the transitive property of cups.

Try that and let’s see what that tells us.

Pat: Okay, I’ll try it. But then what’s your suggestion or what I do to treat the headaches that ensues from drinking only half my normal intake of coffee?

This is just seeming too damn complicated! Maybe it’s better to just let the mysteries of evaporation and liquid disappearance be!

Christian: That’s fine with me I don’t really care what happened to those two cups. And since I can’t stand the taste of coffee I actually wouldn’t mind if by the time you were done making the coffee there weren’t any cups left.

We can just leave it as one of those mysteries that science just isn’t powerful enough yet to explain. Like how the universe started or how gravity works.  Or why it’s so hard to get rid of styrofoam.

********************************************************************

EDITORS NOTE: In last week’s PCPPP post, which can be found here, here, here, or here, we gave thanks to some fellow bloggers that had given us accolades and shoutouts. Unfortunately due to a clerical error which we are assuming occurred in our accounting or HR department (heads are going to roll!) we forgot to say thanks to MOV over at mothersofbrothersblog, who recently gave us a great shout out on her blog. Thanks MOV! And for those of you unfamiliar with mothersofbrothersblog, after doing a shame cry for 15 mins you should head on over and say howdy. It’s a hilarious blog where you will find amazing posts about baseball people’s ability to fix anything, fighting with the self-checkout machines at the grocery store, and giving us an awesome shout out.  

Thanks again MOV and sorry you didn’t get mentioned last week. Seriously we are looking at firing 20 to 30 people from our staff because of this.

We Would Like to Thank the Academy. Finally.

Somewhat recently - keeping in mind that time is a relative thing - we received some blogging awards from some of our peers in which we are greatly appreciative of. You aren’t supposed to end a sentence with “of” are you? Oh well you already gave us the awards so it’s too late to complain about it now suckers!!!

Where was I? Oh yes, gracefully accepting these awards from our fellow bloggers.

First we would like to apologize for being so incredibly late on saying thank you for receiving these awards. But in our defense the quills we use to write our posts come from the rarest of Danish grouse which are very difficult to import. Not to mention time consuming. Plus we are really wanting to win that longest-to-say-thank-you for-an-award award. The LTSTYFAAA.

Anyways, the first award came from Trucking Tumbleweed (aka Stacey) from Confessions of a Tumbleweed. Before we get to the award part we should give a little history.

As you can imagine, when we first launched PCPPP there was an explosion of excitement across the lands. The housing market finally started to improve and there was an overall buzz in the air that the world had not experienced since Wang Chung first came onto the scene.

But quickly after launching, the PCPPP hysteria started to level off which we assumed was because of the European markets or something. Additionally, summer was just rolling around which is like the death season for blogs, so at this point in PCPPP historylore we were hardly getting any page hits or comments.

But during these dark times Tumbleweed became a loyal PCPPP follower and commenter. She was virtually there at the very beginning of PCPPP and has supported us right up to the present, where we now have well up to a half-dozen or more readers that have turned PCPPP into the empire it is today.

So thank you Tumbleweed for all your PCPPP support. Pat and I often talk about how once we are rich and famous, we are really looking forward to completely forgetting about all the people that supported us beforehand. Well, there will definitely be a special place in our PCPPP hearts when we completely forget Tumbleweed.

But not only does Tumbleweed have excellent taste in blogs that she comments on, she herself has one of the best blogs around, Confessions of a Tumbleweed which is about her life as a professional passenger. She and her husband drove around the US as a self-employed one truck-trucking team and her blog is all about their adventures and the places they traveled.

Tumbleweed’s writing is both humorous and fascinating. She has an uncanny gift for making you feel like you are actually experiencing her adventures with her. Confessions of a Tumbleweed is one of those rare blogs that even if you took away the great humor you are still left with an incredibly interesting blog. There are amazing posts about navigating New York City in a semi, visiting the spam museum, killing time with Liberace Rabbit, and giving us an award.

However, Tumbleweed has recently moved on to a new chapter in her life which included retiring from the trucking life. She has now opened up the This-N-That Second Hand Store, and based on the pictures she has posted on its facebook page, this store is the coolest second-hand store this side of the Mississippi. I’m sure you are probably now asking yourself “I wonder which side of the Mississippi he’s talking about?”. The answer is both sides. Including in the river itself.

Therefore you should go over to the This-N-That facebook page HERE and “like” it. Even if you don’t live in Douglas, Wyoming where the store is located it’s worth becoming a fan. The pictures and comments Tumbleweed posts are funny and quite captivating.

But onto the award! Tumbleweed created the Unicorn Chicken Award and gave us the honor of being its first recipient.

Thee Unicorn Chicken Award.

Since we were the first winners we are hoping that the award will eventually be named after us, like that dude Oscar that won the first academy award. Yes, someday people will be saying “and the PCPPPer goes to....”

The next award came from Robyn from Hollow Tree Ventures which is a blog that Wang Chungs the hell out of the European markets. I guess Hollow Tree Ventures is technically what one calls a “mommy blog” but believe me, even if you have no idea what a child is, you’ll love this blog. This woman is hilarious and has the ability to make you laugh out loud about any topic. And I don’t laugh out loud easily (LOLE!). Over at Hollow Tree Ventures you’ll find amazing posts about tips on how to be an artist, planning for summer, and giving us an award. She also has the dramatic and always intriguing soap opera series As The Dollhouse Turns going on over there. In a recent episode Sunny’s husband Buzz finds out their daughter Charmeuse is dating the Incredible Hulk!  Will it end in murder? I don’t want to give anything away but it totally does!

The next award came from Marian from Just Keep Swimming, which is another one of those “technically” a “mommy blog” but is more of a funny fun time fun machine blog. She’s the one who started the fantastic Swimming Telephone blog story-game (which we will be a participating in in the near future) and her blog has a cool aquatic visual theme to it. And when I say aquatic, of course I mean a heated-swimming-pool type aquatic. Like nature intended. Over at Just Keep Swimming you’ll find amazing posts about dealing with the evil Blockbuster corporation, winning a prize for creating a new He-Man Masters of the Universe character, and giving us an award.

The last wasn’t technically an award but was more of a very amazing mention and shout out to PCPPP and deserves just as much thanks. It came from Meredith of Mom of the Year who also has an outstanding blog. Mom of the Year is all about finding the humor in parenting which us parents all know is vital to keeping ourselves from diving off the deep end with the most expensive box of wine Safeway has to offer. Over at Meredith’s blog you’ll find amazing posts about how her husband is in awe of her, the things she’s currently not digging, and giving us a very honorable shout out.

Now most blogging awards come with some list of rules of things you are supposed to do when accepting the award but as most you I’m sure are aware, Pat and I don’t play by the rules. Except for when it comes to playing ping-pong. Because without rules, ping-pong would just be a firestorm of chaos.

So in lieu of following the rules we are just going to say thanks!

Pat, would you like to add anything? And why are you wearing a tuxedo?

Pat: I always wear a tuxedo. Just makes things easier.

Yes, I have something I’d like to add. Do you really think we’ve worked so hard to perfect our skill and craft as to belittle ourselves and our artistry by referring to what we do as “Ping Pong”? It’s Table Tennis, buddy, and how many damn times do I have to remind you of that? “Ping Pong” is what ruffians do in the basements of their miserable suburban dwellings. What we do--the skilfull back-and-forth volleying of reactive plastic--requires great skill and diligence and focus. Seriously!

So...we won some awards? Killer! ‘Course, the way you described those three blogs, it sounds like they should get the awards. They sound really cool! I think I may go check them out.

Christian: Fine. Without rules table tennis would be a firestorm of chaos.

But yes Pat, you should check these blogs out. You would be doing yourself a great disservice if you didn’t. That goes for all you too, dearest cherished readers.