My name is CJMoss, and I am a teacher, mainly of English, but also French. My home base is currently Bolton, Ontario, although I wind up in interestingparts of the world now and again in connection with my work teaching English.
One of the great joys in my life is travelling. I have been to five continents – Antarctica and South America are the only ones I haven't visited yet. I've also been to what some geographers regard as a mostly sunken continent called Zealandia, although I stuck mostly to the parts that are still high and dry. I even spent ten years living in China, but oddly, I picked up very little Chinese.
The username? That's my Chinese name, 柯理思 (Kē Lǐsī), which I needed once for a bank account in China. The bank's system couldn't handle foreign names. The first syllable is a common Chinese surname which I was told had no particular meaning (although one dictionary that I looked in said it meant "axe helve"), and the two-syllable "given name" means "logical thought". It was not my own choice, by the way.
I also discovered at one job that I had a Chinese nickname among the Chinese staff at my school. It was 大胡子 (Dà Húzi), which means "Big Beard". I only found out about it when a Chinese colleague sent me an email with this as my surname in the "To" line. She obviously had my name like that in her address book.
I have translated a good number of articles from German about resistance fighters in Nazi Germany, and others who were unfortunate enough to incur the Nazis' wrath.
I have furthermore created or expanded articles about every municipality in each of the following German districts (Kreise):
Its worst shortcoming, however, is that it cannot deconstruct those long German agglutinations like Lebensversicherungsgesellschaftsbeamtenvereinigungsführungssondergespräch, a reasonably common word (6000+ hits on Google) that I'm sure every German says at least four or five times a week – those with big lungs, anyway. Seriously, though, compounds must sometimes be broken down into their constituent elements and run through the dictionary separately. You then have to work out their combined meaning.
Yes, Germany has several places with this distinction, likely more than I've listed here (these are only incorporated centres). Come to that, it has at least one place whose name is a German preposition. This is Ohne, in case you're interested, whose name means "Without". Now, here are the verb-towns, complete with their translations:
Quite a number of places in Germany have names that mean something quite incongruous, interesting, or just plain weird. Here is a list of some of them. Feel free to choose your favourites:
Eisenhüttenstadt — name means “ironworks town”; those East German bureaucrats were as imaginative as those from any country, I guess (founded in 1950, originally “Stalinstadt”).
I cannot quite remember how I got into it, but I have done quite a few articles about Spanish bullfighters, some being translations from the Spanish Wikipedia, and others being of my own creation, with the help of online resources. Others still were existing articles that I enhanced.
Félix Almagro — has the unenviable distinction of being the first bullfighter to be killed at the Las Ventas bullring in Madrid.
Paco Camino — twelve times borne shoulder-high out through the Great Gate at Las Ventas in Madrid, a record bested only by Santiago Martín Sánchez ("El Viti").
Perhaps you've noticed a "geographical" streak in those articles that I mentioned. As a traveller, I am very fond of geography (or has my love of geography made me interested in travelling? I'm not quite sure). To that end, I have made maps. Here come a few now (well actually, quite a number)………
If you would like to try your hand at making maps, for Wikipedia or other purposes, I also wholeheartedly recommend this link:
The Outer Harbour East Headland/Leslie Street Spit map up above was made using this site. This site produces maps that can be freely used on Wikipedia. There used to be another one, called "OMC", but it has undergone somebody's idea of "improvements", and is now useless.
What follows is a selection of articles that I have found on Wikipedia – none started by me although I've edited a few – which struck me as odd, funny, extremely esoteric or arcane, or whatever. Here they are...........
Inflation fetishism — (now deleted) Some people have some rather unwholesome preoccupations. At first, I believed the writer was pulling our legs, and I am still not thoroughly sure he isn't. It was not an article about sex dolls, by the way, but the idea of people inflating, if you can believe that.
Corn dolly — Ah, but are they inflatable? *ahem* Excuse me.
Jerome, Arkansas — Here's a place with 46 people that calls itself a "city". It also has an area of about 50 ha.
Illán de Vacas — Es el más pequeño municipio de España. En mi opinión, no vale la pena de mencionarlo. ¿Por qué hay un artículo sobre un lugar de ocho habitantes (o seis, según otra página)? ¡Noticia! Ahora sólo queda un habitante. ¿Cuántos harán después de un año?
Dierfeld — Diese Gemeinde in Rheinland-Pfalz hat nur acht Einwohner! Daneben sind die meisten Kuhdörfer Großstädte.
Trim (cat) — Now how many cats go down in history?
Stonecutters — A fictitious organization in a fictitious universe. Why is it worth noting in an article?!
Cyniclons — I don't like anime; so what would I know about this? Well, apparently that writer doesn't know much about it either. Update: It has now been greatly expanded and the new title is List of Tokyo Mew Mew characters.
Piss Beer — (now deleted) Leave it to the Aussies.
The CAS School, Karachi — If I had to give this a new title, I would choose How not to write a Wikipedia article. Update: It has been improved ever so slightly.
Infernum — Have you ever heard of these guys? I hadn't, but I'm not much into the Warsaw music scene. I get the impression from the article that they never exactly made a splash in the world of popular music. Are they really worth an article?
Cum fart — Only on Wikipedia, eh? Also interestingly, another article on a similar topic, called Vaginal flatulence, is being considered for deletion. Update: The Vaginal flatulence article is apparently all right, but the Cum fart article has now been merged into Oral sex, and this link will now redirect there.
Hollywood Left — Yeah, right. Celebrities are such brainless oaves they need a list.
Mr Danger — It's apt, but I rather think it would have qualified as an entry on the List of political epithets or the List of pejorative political puns (which have both now been deleted, I notice), and not as an article. Update: It has now actually been expanded beyond one sentence.
Ǯ — This is weird. This article doesn't even have a visible title, at least not on my browser, and here, the title is a little box. I guess this computer's a bit out of date with regard to funny foreign characters.
List of errors on Portuguese ex-Colonies stamps of Mozambique 1911 — (now deleted) Wikimedia was obviously worried that its servers would get overloaded, what with everyone busting to read this article.
Nerd — A sociological exploration of ostracism from a rather interesting perspective, I thought.
Carbon Defense League — And this is the kind of thing that nerds get into...and now out of (it's been deleted)
Ray Twinney — A dead mayor of a suburban town whose term in office came to an ignominious end as the RCMP laid various charges against him. He will soon be forgotten. Why is there an article about him?
Tai Mei Tuk — I have actually walked straight through this community and I didn't even realize it was a community. It is an utterly forgettable place. Why is there an article about it?
explodingdog — I don't care what it takes! This has just got to stop!
Toilets in Japan — and then there are other unwholesome preoccupations.
The Amorous Flea — Does it like anything that inflates or explodes?
Bach Aircraft — Wind, or perhaps Wing, on a G-String?
Samuil Shatunovsky — It says he's a famous Ukrainian mathematician, and nothing else. There isn't even a Ukrainian interwiki link. I'm sure he was very famous...Well, it's been expanded a bit now — and there is now a Ukrainian interwiki link.
Anti-Barney humor — This is quite a long article considering the kind of thing that it's about, which surely won't stay in vogue all that long (if it even still is among the few who practised it).
Penis panic — People have actually been killed in this, believe it or not.
Leisnig — A little hamlet that no-one's ever heard of.
Roderich Fick — A German man whose last name is a German vulgarism. Interesting. Even more interesting is the article about Raschau that I have translated from German. It mentions several people with the surname Ficker, and yes, to find the English meaning, one need only change one letter.
Fucking, Austria — Speaking of which...Aw! They changed the name to "Fugging" (2021)!
This user is being held hostage in a fortune cookie factory! Help! Ooooh.. here's a good one! Confucius says you will be held hostage in a fortune cookie factory.
I award this Barnstar to Kelisi for hard work making good maps. I just saw your map of the Hebrides, and I was very impressed. Having worked with the same OMC program before myself, I can appreciate what a great amount of trouble you must have gone to to make that map so large, detailed, harmoniously coloured, interesting and informative. Well done! QuartierLatin1968 19:10, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
The Rosetta Barnstar
For outstanding efforts translating articles about German towns, I award you this Barnstar! Kusma(討論) 22:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
For creating so many comprehensive articles on German towns and entities, I award you this barnstar. ßlηguγΣη
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The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
I, Callumm, award you this barnstar for contributing excellent maps to Wikipedia, and inspiring me to create my own. Thank you! Callumm 12:46, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Please accept this award in recognition of your contribution on the field of descriptions Germany districts. I've just found out whos' translation i used to retranslate to Russian wiki in Blankenrath. Thank you so much for your job! - Zac Allan (talk) 23:01, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
The Original Barnstar
Your maps are quite helpful and nicely made! Thank you for contributing!! SusiSansei (talk) 22:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
The Death Barnstar
Thank you for your consistent contributions towards improving recent death articles. Regards, --Classicwiki (talk) If you reply to me here, please ping me. 18:44, 30 June 2024 (UTC)