Tuesday, July 17, 2007

I have made a huge mistake

we have a large bottle of liquid hand soap that lives under one of our sinks. I am making known its whereabouts only so that mila can no longer claim ignorance when it comes time to refill the soap dispenser. anyway, this soap was a bit too viscous for my tastes, so for the first while I would add a drop or two of water to the soap pump every time I refilled it. but why waste time individually diluting each batch of soap when I could go straight to the source and fix this problem once and for all? well, it seems I was a bit overzealous with the water, because the soap is now far too watery for comfortable use. so the way I see it, I could buy another bottle of soap, and do 50/50 blends each time I fill, hopefully achieving the perfect viscosity in doing so. this screams defeat, however, and so I think I will pursue option number two: hand soap distillery. I hope that liquid soap is heat-stable.

also, does 'still,' as in the distillery equipment, come from 'distill'? if so, and if I were into distilling and the like, and if I wanted to blog about my distilling, I would probably call attention to the fact that I am writing about stills on a blog, which is a rather tidy etymological coincidence (both 'still' and 'blog' are arrived at by dropping the first part of their parent word. I'll bet there is a word for that process, and do I ever wish I knew it). I might call the post "still blogging." the blog title itself would probably not have any wordplay of that nature in it, as that would be far too flippant given how serious my passion for distilling would be.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

great simon, now i will spend the next little while trying to find the etymology of "still" (I checked the OED online, but it was confusing)

Anonymous said...

Simon you are making me confused and tired trying to follow your thread here - just buy a new bottle and pour the two together and forget this crazy distillery business.

Anonymous said...

still (n.)
"distilling apparatus," 1533, from M.E. stillen "to distill" (c.1300), a variant of distillen (see distill).

simon said...

thanks anonymous. do you have a passion for words? I do.