There goes my afternoon.

Ah, to have my own decoding machine...

Unfortunately they're only selling the one decoding machine; who would you have send you the encoded messages?

Oh, my. Shiny. Look at all the pretty things!

That's the word I wanted!

Thanks, Mad.

Ok, this is driving me crazy-I know the topic title's a quote from somewhere familiar. Where, please?

And those are fascinating toys!

The title is from The Fellowship of the Ring, in the Bilbo's birthday party section (courtesy of Google - I was pretty sure it was Tolkien but couldn't recall where from, exactly).

Details, Jakob, details...

Shiny.. I feel compelled to change the topic briefly and ask a question that's been bugging me.

Shiny is an interesting bit of "idiom" (I'm sure there's a better word than that, but I can never come up with the right words when I need them) introduced in Firefly -
but is it a bit of Chinese, like the cursing, or is it just something that was brilliantly made up/adopted from English, and and we'll all be using for the rest of our lives? When will it get into the OED?

Blast it, that Harry Eng bottle is going to keep me awake all night wondering how he got that deck of cards in there.

Steph--The same thing caught my eye. I was thinking he might've drilled a hole through the deck, then disassembled everything and added the cards to the deck one-by-one before resetting the bolt. Or maybe there's nothing in the card-box. Or did you *want* to be kept awake all night?

Re: "Shiny": I haven't seen enough Firefly not to identify this with The Tick. Which is apt in its own way.

Yes, shiny.

:slaps forehead: Of course! Thanks, Dan!

I'll send this link to my only relative who not only understood but truly appreciated getting a Klein Bottle for Christmas.

I am now frantically trying to figure out how to afford enough of those pop up snowman cards for everyone on my Yule list. Short of taking out a second mortgage, that is.

I wants it, Precious.

::le sigh::

Aaaaah! I remember that freaky dragon! (BoingBoing?)

For truly shiny:

Chris Ware, the eternally depressed and self-loathing funny book* author / artist, makes artifacts based on his comics.

Like a coin-operated automata based on his two-headed cat character. It is in antique-looking wood and glass case with olde fashioned looking fittings.

Re. "Shiny": I haven't seen Serenity, and I haven't see Firefly since the series first aired, but Madeleine's use of "shiny" is consistent with my own ideolect for years and years.

I know it was at least six or seven years ago that I rechristened a bassist I worked with "Shiny" because of his ability to become completely distracted by nearby pieces of technology for hours at a time. (We had a gig once that involved walking past a parked helicopter, and he very nearly made us late. OTOH, he once saved a gig by rewiring an old repurposed console organ with a paperclip, so it was all for the good.)

Wait a sec -- wasn't there some work of children's fiction that had a character who was an anthropomorphized packrat (or was it a magpie?), who could never finish a sentence? He'd say, "Of course I'll help you, Mr.--- Oooh, shiny!" and go running off after scraps of cellophane or whatever. Dim memories of childhood characters from thirty-odd years ago.... But I suspect that might be the source.

I also dimly recall the phrase "easily captivated by bright, shiny objects" as a mildly pejorative euphemism and a minor catchphrase around the same time.

Shiny is an interesting bit of "idiom" (I'm sure there's a better word than that, but I can never come up with the right words when I need them) introduced in Firefly -

You'll also find Kiki the ferret in Sluggy Freelance exclaiming "Shiny!"

I also associate shiny with magpies (my husband thinks I'm part magpie, because I'm easily distr) and often talk about the bright shiny object that is the Internet so I was well pleased to see "shiny" on Firefly.

wasn't there some work of children's fiction that had a character who was an anthropomorphized packrat (or was it a magpie?), who could never finish a sentence? He'd say, "Of course I'll help you, Mr.--- Oooh, shiny!" and go running off after scraps of cellophane or whatever.

I believe you are thinking of The Secret of NIMH, which was a movie of Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. There's a crow in the movie who keeps exclaiming "Sparkly!" and trying to get the titular Mrs Brisby (changed to avoid problems with the Frisbee people) to give him the Plot Coupon, a magic amulet which is not in the book.

Oh, side note: I noticed the other day that there's another Carrie around, so I'm going to be Carrie S. to avoid confusion

Shiny, indeed.

And I have ADD, so I'm all about shiny --

something just caught my eye, back later.

The Buffybot on Buffy said "oo, shiny" too.

I've been calling myself an intellectual magpie for years; I see a shiny new idea, figure out how it works, get bored, and go on to the next shiny idea. (Hey, I should have patented that!)

I downloaded and built that dragon, and it's really wonderful.

You have to look at it from below, and from a distance, and you have to move, not it (else shifting shadows will reveal the trick) but ... as something to put on a high shelf, it's Neat.

I've been wondering about Firefly's "Shiny", too, since it sometimes gets used in ways that are divorced from the Magpie meaning. I can *almost* see the one evolving into the other, but only almost.

Yes - that's what bugged me.
The meaning on Firefly seems to me _not_ to be the magpie "that's pretty", but more "that's cool" or often simply "nice".

Anyway, the magpie meaning is a fine derivation, and I'm convinced it isn't a corruption of the Chinese -
so we can return this hijacked topic back to its original shiny origins and illusions.

Carrie S:

"Oo, a sparkly! You're wearing a sparkly!"

I'd forgotten about that! My sisters and I quoted that line for weeks afterward. Dom Delouise did the voice, right?