To every linguistic turn (turn, turn, turn), there is construction...
Virginia was in town last week learning about... molecules (seriously, it was a week-long conference, and that's about what I got out of it, second-hand. They are possibly called 'sulfanes'. It's a petroleum-refining thing; we wouldn't understand). That was good for me, because I had an automatic dinner date any night I was free, and then she spent Friday and Saturday with me and we did sisterly things like shop and go to movies and endlessly pick at one another and become embroiled in etymologies and talk about boys.
If you remember only one thing about my sister, make it this: she has a problem with pigeons roosting - i.e., pooping - on her balcony there in sunny beachside Texas. A problem she has addressed through creative use of netting and, when possible, hitting them with a broom. Apparently pigeons are smug enough (pigeons are smug bastards, had you noticed? But even I didn't realize they were this smug) that you can tee them up like you've always dreamed of doing. I'm yet to have the opportunity, but I can feel the resulting "whump" in a very primal way. I must have whaled on some pigeons in a former life.1
So as I was saying, we went to see Corpse Bride, which, eh. There's an excellent Cowboy Bebop (the movie, which I also wasn't in love with, but hey: great choice for your Halloween weekend) moment near the end, and I loved the first shot of the rectilinear trees packed with crows. On the other hand - and I say this with the greatest respect for musicals - Sky! Call me! - - I didn't care for the songs. They weren't catchy, they weren't particularly clever, and they didn't move the story forward at all. Maybe I'm just old, but I never seem to be amused by comic-relief characters anymore, either. Shut up, "maggot" that in no way resembles a maggot. Writers: try assigning some of that likeability to your main characters, or making the needful dialog humorous. Spare me the punchline generators, especially if they're going to be saprobes in drag.
Also in the mixed bag, I'm not sure that A&E's masterpiece left the world in need of further film versions of Pride and Prejudice, but I see from the trailer that Hollywood managed to dredge up another pair of attractive brunettes, so the cycle continues. I cling to a naive belief that no one could make that book bad, so I give the project a "carry on" overall. Mmmm, mannered attraction. Here's a little AIMing I think of as "intellectuals in love",2 and while it's about another book entirely, I judge it applicable enough to include.njbreakstone: But I'll be most surprised if a book from *you* contains graphic love-making.
galadriel58: !
galadriel58: Never.
galadriel58: But oh baby is there some innuendo.
galadriel58: It is glorious.
galadriel58: I get all tingly just thinking about their archness.
galadriel58: Mmmmmmm.
njbreakstone: Man, Rachel. We need to get you a neo-Victorian fellow.
njbreakstone: No wonder you like Sky Masterson.
njbreakstone: All with the innuendo and the eyebrows.
galadriel58: You'll see, reading on, that the author is at least as in love with Lord Peter as I am.
galadriel58: And yes.
galadriel58: Find me one.
njbreakstone: Um... okay.
galadriel58: We'll sit around being witty, and under our clothes we'll have a doll-like lack of actual genitalia.
galadriel58: He and I, I mean.
galadriel58: You can have genitals if you like.
Also about movies: Dear makers of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe promotional stills/stand-ups: What's with the polar bears? How would one even get them into harness? I mean, a dwarf putting belled harnesses on a set of polar bears? Let's be realistic. Reindeer, dawgs. Reindeer.
I believe I promised you some dictionary tales. At various times over the weekend, I had to look up the etymology of "limpet", and also "cockles", for different reasons. Odd that they're both mollusks. Anyway, I wound up checking all my language dictionaries for "cockles of the heart", and I'm pleased to report that at least one (each) German and Russian dictionary included a translation. Also, the cockle=heart connection (Merriam-Webster's online entry doesn't cover it; check the OED or trust me) is preserved in both languages. While I was there, I got into words on facing pages, as one does, and determined that one of the Russian dictionaries, but neither German, contains a translation (well, transliteration) for "coaxial cable". Then I was diverted by the adjacent entry for "coax"; I was several seconds into a reverie on the possible verbal formulations for "co-ax" ("To cable"? "To string cable"? "To hook something up with coaxial cable"? It wouldn't be the first time I'd learned an English word from a bilingual dictionary, but what the hell?) before I realized that something else entirely was going on. Oh, brain. You're so suggestible.
Two realizations coming out of this weekend:
1) There's now a Hershey's store (I know!) catty-corner to the Ghirardelli shop at Watertower Place; given that there's a Godiva boutique3 in the mall on the northeast corner, you can probably do a chocolate hat-trick (sure, I made it up, but admit it: now you wanna) in about 8 minutes.
2) I always have something on my face. On three separate occasions Virginia drew my attention to some crumb of cheese or bit of undigested beef clinging about my countenance. I can only assume, therefore, that when she's not here to police my visage, I walk about for days at a time sporting jelly mustaches and/or peanut-butter moles. That, or I was the cruel victim of some kind of coincidence this weekend. You decide.
It's time for some thought-clearing. First, my gender theory class. We took the linguistic turn today (or followed it, I suppose), a process involving more poststructuralism than you could construct a stick at. Thankfully Achewood was right there with a perfect and bizarrely timely comic this morning. But it wouldn't be any kind of discussion of gender if I didn't link you to the relevant Dinosaur Comic, leaving aside for the moment my desire to marry, destroy, or become Ryan North. I do envy you, vislius, your proximity to the man himself there at Toronto (be sure to click that one for the .pdf of his thesis). And while we're on the subject (the subject: I love/hate/aspire to Dinosaur Comics), I must also point out this. I reread the whole site two days ago (when I realized there were alt tags, by which I mean words I hadn't read yet), and there is not a single strip I don't like; what's more, a remarkably high number inspire something akin to glee. Intelligence. On the internet. With clip art.4
One older story also deserves to be told. The main characters here are my mom, Spartan spirit, and the first lady of Cape Verde. So the first lady of Cape Verde came to visit the high school where my mom works, and your guess is as good as mine as to why, but since we've already got the who and where established, I'll go ahead and give you a "when": spirit week. I believe it was specifically Superhero Day, also known as the reason I have this picture of my mother (and her staff; no, I don't know what sorts of heroes they are, either, but I bet Dewey is involved):
At some point the first lady and her interpreters were about to have a PowerPoint presentation inflicted upon them, when an equipment malfunction required the summoning of the school tech support guy. Who was dressed as Batman.
If Cape Verde can't meet America's eye the next time they're at a party together, we know what it's thinking: it's thinking... however you say "What the fuck" in Portuguese. la_zumo may be able to help us here.
Lately I've been having stress dreams, the kind in which impossible tasks flock thickly about and, settling, lead to disaster, in this case a grass fire on Monday/Tuesday and an overdue paper from a Latin class I took my senior year of undergrad on Tuesday/Wednesday. I hadn't thought about that class in a while: it had the Spike look-alike (Spiegel, not the vampire... but then, duh: the latter wouldn't fit too well in my chorus line of spindly brunettes,5 would he?) in it, too. Yay for Hannibal and insane hair. The subconscious never fails.
1. I'm pretty sure, as a real-life Western Civ. TA, that substantial portions of the medieval economy revolved around bird-whumping. Actual things I've learned in lectures: "hocus pocus" is possibly derived from the words "Hoc est enim corpus meum" recited at the moment of transubstantiation. In related news: I got to fail a student's midterm! I was going to give it a D, but the prof dropped it to a flat F. Imagine.
2. Yes, I mentally (and sometimes parenthetically in the file name) name my AIM conversations.
3. I honestly think that any other configuration of the corporations and synonyms for "retailer" in question would be incorrect. Congrats, various advertising agencies: you have imprinted your brands on me like a longhorn.
4. As far as I can tell, the most points you could possibly get for "qwantz" in Scrabble is 108, using a double-letter and a triple-word score, and keeping in mind that one tile would already have to be in place. All that and a new entry on the Q-without-U list. Let's get that one in the dictionary.
5. I make the effort with "blond" and "blonde", but "brunet" is incredibly ugly. Go to hell and take "limpid" with you, word I don't like.
On a final (or arguably post-final) note, Virginia - who deals mainly with adults, and so is less fluent in our adolescent lingo, composed as it is largely of formulaic insults and storied innuendo and regurgitated bits of pop culture - nevertheless gets out the occasional line; at some point this weekend, she settled some dispute with "Put that in your LiveJournal and smoke it."
Here, however, I don't have to let her have the last word. Let's make it, um, "lordship".
If you remember only one thing about my sister, make it this: she has a problem with pigeons roosting - i.e., pooping - on her balcony there in sunny beachside Texas. A problem she has addressed through creative use of netting and, when possible, hitting them with a broom. Apparently pigeons are smug enough (pigeons are smug bastards, had you noticed? But even I didn't realize they were this smug) that you can tee them up like you've always dreamed of doing. I'm yet to have the opportunity, but I can feel the resulting "whump" in a very primal way. I must have whaled on some pigeons in a former life.1
So as I was saying, we went to see Corpse Bride, which, eh. There's an excellent Cowboy Bebop (the movie, which I also wasn't in love with, but hey: great choice for your Halloween weekend) moment near the end, and I loved the first shot of the rectilinear trees packed with crows. On the other hand - and I say this with the greatest respect for musicals - Sky! Call me! - - I didn't care for the songs. They weren't catchy, they weren't particularly clever, and they didn't move the story forward at all. Maybe I'm just old, but I never seem to be amused by comic-relief characters anymore, either. Shut up, "maggot" that in no way resembles a maggot. Writers: try assigning some of that likeability to your main characters, or making the needful dialog humorous. Spare me the punchline generators, especially if they're going to be saprobes in drag.
Also in the mixed bag, I'm not sure that A&E's masterpiece left the world in need of further film versions of Pride and Prejudice, but I see from the trailer that Hollywood managed to dredge up another pair of attractive brunettes, so the cycle continues. I cling to a naive belief that no one could make that book bad, so I give the project a "carry on" overall. Mmmm, mannered attraction. Here's a little AIMing I think of as "intellectuals in love",2 and while it's about another book entirely, I judge it applicable enough to include.njbreakstone: But I'll be most surprised if a book from *you* contains graphic love-making.
galadriel58: !
galadriel58: Never.
galadriel58: But oh baby is there some innuendo.
galadriel58: It is glorious.
galadriel58: I get all tingly just thinking about their archness.
galadriel58: Mmmmmmm.
njbreakstone: Man, Rachel. We need to get you a neo-Victorian fellow.
njbreakstone: No wonder you like Sky Masterson.
njbreakstone: All with the innuendo and the eyebrows.
galadriel58: You'll see, reading on, that the author is at least as in love with Lord Peter as I am.
galadriel58: And yes.
galadriel58: Find me one.
njbreakstone: Um... okay.
galadriel58: We'll sit around being witty, and under our clothes we'll have a doll-like lack of actual genitalia.
galadriel58: He and I, I mean.
galadriel58: You can have genitals if you like.
Also about movies: Dear makers of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe promotional stills/stand-ups: What's with the polar bears? How would one even get them into harness? I mean, a dwarf putting belled harnesses on a set of polar bears? Let's be realistic. Reindeer, dawgs. Reindeer.
I believe I promised you some dictionary tales. At various times over the weekend, I had to look up the etymology of "limpet", and also "cockles", for different reasons. Odd that they're both mollusks. Anyway, I wound up checking all my language dictionaries for "cockles of the heart", and I'm pleased to report that at least one (each) German and Russian dictionary included a translation. Also, the cockle=heart connection (Merriam-Webster's online entry doesn't cover it; check the OED or trust me) is preserved in both languages. While I was there, I got into words on facing pages, as one does, and determined that one of the Russian dictionaries, but neither German, contains a translation (well, transliteration) for "coaxial cable". Then I was diverted by the adjacent entry for "coax"; I was several seconds into a reverie on the possible verbal formulations for "co-ax" ("To cable"? "To string cable"? "To hook something up with coaxial cable"? It wouldn't be the first time I'd learned an English word from a bilingual dictionary, but what the hell?) before I realized that something else entirely was going on. Oh, brain. You're so suggestible.
Two realizations coming out of this weekend:
1) There's now a Hershey's store (I know!) catty-corner to the Ghirardelli shop at Watertower Place; given that there's a Godiva boutique3 in the mall on the northeast corner, you can probably do a chocolate hat-trick (sure, I made it up, but admit it: now you wanna) in about 8 minutes.
2) I always have something on my face. On three separate occasions Virginia drew my attention to some crumb of cheese or bit of undigested beef clinging about my countenance. I can only assume, therefore, that when she's not here to police my visage, I walk about for days at a time sporting jelly mustaches and/or peanut-butter moles. That, or I was the cruel victim of some kind of coincidence this weekend. You decide.
It's time for some thought-clearing. First, my gender theory class. We took the linguistic turn today (or followed it, I suppose), a process involving more poststructuralism than you could construct a stick at. Thankfully Achewood was right there with a perfect and bizarrely timely comic this morning. But it wouldn't be any kind of discussion of gender if I didn't link you to the relevant Dinosaur Comic, leaving aside for the moment my desire to marry, destroy, or become Ryan North. I do envy you, vislius, your proximity to the man himself there at Toronto (be sure to click that one for the .pdf of his thesis). And while we're on the subject (the subject: I love/hate/aspire to Dinosaur Comics), I must also point out this. I reread the whole site two days ago (when I realized there were alt tags, by which I mean words I hadn't read yet), and there is not a single strip I don't like; what's more, a remarkably high number inspire something akin to glee. Intelligence. On the internet. With clip art.4
One older story also deserves to be told. The main characters here are my mom, Spartan spirit, and the first lady of Cape Verde. So the first lady of Cape Verde came to visit the high school where my mom works, and your guess is as good as mine as to why, but since we've already got the who and where established, I'll go ahead and give you a "when": spirit week. I believe it was specifically Superhero Day, also known as the reason I have this picture of my mother (and her staff; no, I don't know what sorts of heroes they are, either, but I bet Dewey is involved):
At some point the first lady and her interpreters were about to have a PowerPoint presentation inflicted upon them, when an equipment malfunction required the summoning of the school tech support guy. Who was dressed as Batman.
If Cape Verde can't meet America's eye the next time they're at a party together, we know what it's thinking: it's thinking... however you say "What the fuck" in Portuguese. la_zumo may be able to help us here.
Lately I've been having stress dreams, the kind in which impossible tasks flock thickly about and, settling, lead to disaster, in this case a grass fire on Monday/Tuesday and an overdue paper from a Latin class I took my senior year of undergrad on Tuesday/Wednesday. I hadn't thought about that class in a while: it had the Spike look-alike (Spiegel, not the vampire... but then, duh: the latter wouldn't fit too well in my chorus line of spindly brunettes,5 would he?) in it, too. Yay for Hannibal and insane hair. The subconscious never fails.
1. I'm pretty sure, as a real-life Western Civ. TA, that substantial portions of the medieval economy revolved around bird-whumping. Actual things I've learned in lectures: "hocus pocus" is possibly derived from the words "Hoc est enim corpus meum" recited at the moment of transubstantiation. In related news: I got to fail a student's midterm! I was going to give it a D, but the prof dropped it to a flat F. Imagine.
2. Yes, I mentally (and sometimes parenthetically in the file name) name my AIM conversations.
3. I honestly think that any other configuration of the corporations and synonyms for "retailer" in question would be incorrect. Congrats, various advertising agencies: you have imprinted your brands on me like a longhorn.
4. As far as I can tell, the most points you could possibly get for "qwantz" in Scrabble is 108, using a double-letter and a triple-word score, and keeping in mind that one tile would already have to be in place. All that and a new entry on the Q-without-U list. Let's get that one in the dictionary.
5. I make the effort with "blond" and "blonde", but "brunet" is incredibly ugly. Go to hell and take "limpid" with you, word I don't like.
On a final (or arguably post-final) note, Virginia - who deals mainly with adults, and so is less fluent in our adolescent lingo, composed as it is largely of formulaic insults and storied innuendo and regurgitated bits of pop culture - nevertheless gets out the occasional line; at some point this weekend, she settled some dispute with "Put that in your LiveJournal and smoke it."
Here, however, I don't have to let her have the last word. Let's make it, um, "lordship".