One more thing before I go to bed. Yesterday morning, as I was signing a card, I realized my initials, JT, when written together with the top strokes connected, form a reverse pi (π). To think, all these years, I could’ve been using a symbol–or technically, letters that look like another letter that in turn also stands for a number–as my signature. Well, not my signature per se, since a single letter is so easily forged, but maybe I can find some interesting use for it.
Somewhat related note: it kind of annoys me (in an admittedly geeky and inconsequential way) how, in association with its documentary Russia: Land of the Tsars, the History Channel writes “Russia” with Cyrillic characters that, while trying to be clever in using the look of the language to suggest the word to non-Russian speakers, are technically misused. (What looks like a reverse R is pronounced “ya,” and the square U is actually “ts.”) I know, this is really nit-picky, so I’ll stop here, but I’m sure one could go on about the semiotics of it all.
5 replies on “π”
1. My own initials are BTW. Back when I first started bbsing, in the late 80s, I kept wondering why people were addressing all their parenthetical comments to me, and how they’d learned my first initial. 🙂
2. Da, ya ponimayu! I hate this. My undergrad degree was in Russian and Soviet Studies, and I minored in linguistics, so maybe I’m also a little touchier about this than most. I noticed this most recently not in a Russian context, but in the titles of Star Trek: Nemesis–which I watched this weekend–where they used the backwards R in “Trek,” to make a mirror image of the one in “Star,” (and they did the same thing with the two e’s in “Nemesis,” and that backwards “E” is a Russian character, too, though at least it has the “eh” pronunciation), so I kept wanting to pronounce it as Star Tyaek.
Dude, I tried that a while ago. Remember? I was printing out big Greek letters and snipping them and sh*t. Ah well, Tina nixed the whole thing by giving me the REAL Greek version of things–the whole project went down the sh*tter!!!! Dang.
Weaner Pig!! I’ve missed you!
Te heh heh… Jeff.
*Imagines Jeff making a rubber stamp out of his “JT” symbol and adopting it the way that Prince adopted that ridiculous symbol… you know… the artist formerly known as Winkletoes blah blah.
Te heh….You could be the artist formerly known as Rebelprince Jeff. What a weeze…
*Nate plays with his own initials whilst taking down his own particulars* 😉
Susan, baby, I’m here for you. Let the Pig help. *cue Barry White* *dim lights* *spotlight on golf clubs*