The content of this post is inversely proportionate to its length.
=*=*=*=*=ABSTRACT=*=*=*=*=
LJing is hard, if you're me. Speaking of which, I like silent Rs. I want to be creative and write things! That aren't papers, because they suck. Instead I'm translating German! Which is making my head explode with the whole embedded clause, my verb is more than 30 words away from my subject way. I saw a couple of GAY GAY movies. I'm seeing things! I like to make up convoluted stories about people I have never met, including this Swedish divorcee/mime, and this sunburned leper who lives downstairs. I like to drink really insane things, and have this really great idea for a new drink recipe! Alert Martha! I have a student who wrote way too much for a paper, and I totally GET it, even though I am lazy and would never do such a thing, but I get how his mind works, because it's a lot like mine, and isn't that fucking scary? Research this weekend! I'm listening to music. I should eat something. I have a completely irrational reaction to bad editing. No one should be surprised by any of this.
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
I've been wanting to update since Monday but I haven't been able to muster the actual will to do so. I was actually busy at work on Monday (I KNOW!!! RIGHT?) was part of it but yesterday, I mean come on. It turns out that my LJ entries have become so ponderous that the thought of writing one is tiring. I mean, you all think reading them is bad, but writing them is exhausting. Not because I have to follow all of the mental jumps, which I make automatically, but because of the physical typing and the emotional stress. That's right, typing in my LJ is like losing a pet! Okay, not really. That's just macabre. I love that word. Macabre. It's the silent "r". I like words with odd silent letters. Silent Hes and Es and even Bs are a dime a dozen, but silent Rs? Those are sexy. In a really dorky, orthographical way.
So but anyway I get into these phases where I start feeling all creative and I'm all I WANT TO WRITE SHIT! And they usually hapen about once a year and usually what happens is that I end up sitting in dark room waiting for the urge to write to pass, because I don't actually have anything to write about, and I'm just enjoying the arty-ness of sitting in a dark room. I bet this is what it was like being Albert Camus. Who is not a whale. Of course this time around I actually do have things to write. Things called papers! But those aren't creative in the sense of like, writing stuff. Making stuff up. It's all synthesis, and it's even stuff I'm interested in, but it's not actually changing the fact that I have this urge. To write. Stuff. But as you can all tell I would be bad at that.
Instead for the last couple of nights I've been up late translating an article in academic German. Oh, my God. German isn't a simple language to begin with. I mean, okay, once you get the rules down, the syntax isn't really a problem, but remembering the rules of syntax when you're trying to keep several words in your head all at the same time is headache inducing. Some of you out there know how German works, so you're not surprised to hear this, but German sentences, like German words, tend to be very long. For all their ruthless efficiency when building cars or invading Poland, their language leaves something to be desired. Of course when the sentences get that long, the verbs are almost invariably at the end, and the subjects are almost invariably at the beginning. There was a sentence I was trying to translate that was six lines long. The subject of the sentence was the third word. The verb (not the auxiliary verb, which was fourth) was thirty-fifth. The intervening thirty-two words were all subordinate clauses describing the subject and with other verbs and gah. I think it would be a lot easier to translate if my vocabulary were a little larger, because as it is, I have to look up a couple of words per sentence (for nuance, and things), and so I have to keep reminding myself what those words are while I'm trying to decipher the syntax. Occasionally I'll jsut end up writing the sentence in the exact order that it comes in the original, so I end up with things like "The Austrian Navy was 1828 uncommonly in an extremely bloody but little successful bombardment of Morocco, which they did not want to 'gift' as was usual, involved." It gets the job done, but I'm going to give myself a headache when I try to re-read it. Oh, well. Wasn't that fascinating? Shut up.
I saw Camp and was thoroughly entertained. I also saw this bizarro British movie called Touch of Pink which was about a Cary Grant-obsessed Pakistani (ethnically, but British nationally; his family is muslim) who like comes out of the closet to his mother after hijinks ensue when she comes to visit him and his lover (who is white!, and whom she doesn't know is his lover, obviously) in London. Actually "hijinks" is a bit of a strong word to describe what happens in this movie. It's actually just one hijink over and over again. If you feel like you've seen this movie before, you have! Different characters, same plot. In the film's defense, I had also had a bottle of wine by the end of it, so maybe that had somethig to do with it.
stretch
Ooh! Floaters!
poking at empty space
School is school. Work is work. Bleh.
I like to make up stories about people I don't know. About a week ago there was this woman getting off the Metro at Crystal City whom I decided was a divorcee from Sweden. This may or may not be because I thought she looked like a refugee from ABBA, but I'm not sure if this was because of the fact that she was blonde and wearing dated clothing (like, black and white horizontal stripes and red coulottes and over-sized sunglasses, the latter of which I realize are back in, but the whole ensemble just felt really 1977 to me [and also kind of mime], and not only because I've seen pictures of what my mom was wearing when I was wee, and in 1977 I was very very wee) or like this aura of upbeat desolation that surrounded her. Okay I just made that part up. Anyway so in my head I was making up a story about how she had been married to this guy and come to the U.S. and they had gotten divorced and there was this whole scene on a plane, and it was really amusing to me that I was making up this story about this woman, whom I'd only ever seen the back of. And then also there was this kind-of cute guy in the elevator also within the last 10 days who was all friendly when I got in the elevator? Or maybe I was friendly first, I don't know. Anyway I remember I was about to ask him if he had been getting a lot of sun lately because his face was really pink but I didn't because 1) OMG what if he actually has some horrible skin problem like eczema or some flesh-eating virus or something and I'm all like, "Hi, leper! Nice sunburn!" and 2) What if he thinks I'm flirting with him?! I mean I kind of would have been, but what if he's straight or a freak or I don't know what! So I didn't say anything, and then he got off at his floor and then I got off at mine the end, except not really because then (and here's where I bring it all back to my over-active imagination, I mean, aside from the eczema/leprosy thing) I was all, I wonder how he got his sunburn? And so I made up this story about how he went to the beach and got a sunburn. I didn't really develop it more than that but I could have. Was my point.
I can also make up stories about people I know, but I don't. USUALLY.
So since the unfortunate and HEINOUS closure of the Safeway in the basement of my building I've been spending more money at 7-11. I could go to the Harris Teeter, but that's like, driving distance away, especially at 1:00 AM, and when it's not 1:00 AM the place is packed with like billions of people and the lines are long and, like, there are way too many choices. I don't know where my standard like ten things I eat are, so I wander around being all irritated because I'm scared and frightened like Country Mouse in the city. TOO MUCH CHOICE! CAPITALISM IS SCARY! So anyway I don't go there like I should so I end up with nothing to drink in the house (I'm trying to cut down on beer consumption over the summer, which is why there's none in the house right now) and so voila! I end up at 7-11 at 1:00 AM because I deserately need something to drink. Because I'm thirsty because I had been over at a fellow grad student's house drinking beer for several hours. Yes, yes, I know, shut up. So I was there! And I'm like, okay, there's a huge variety of sodas here that defy nature, so I shall try them all (MY OWN PERSONAL BEV-MO!). Well, not all of them. Like, there's Fanta Strawberry and I know what that tastes like, and so should you ALL, and it won me a free soda! Which I haven't yet used. But that was a couple nights ago, not last night. Last night I bought Sprite "Aruba Jam"! Which is a complete lie, it was not jam at all, and it was certainly not made of Aruba. But it was kind of citrusy and rather not unpleasant to consume, so I give it a thumbs up. BUT EVEN BETTER there were these bright red and green abominations of nature that are Jolly Rancher brand Watermelon and Sour Apple soda. I haven't had the latter yet (but I am very excited to try! Shut up) but I had the former this morning. For breakfast. Or something. Look, it gets really dry and warm in my apartment and I was thirsty. So I opened it and I drank it and it tasted pretty much like you would expect it to: Sugar. Not even raw sugar, but like SUPERsugar; sugar that's so sweet and concentrated that it actually overloads your sweet receptors and starts to trigger your sour ones, and then the synapses in your head start misfiring because it's so sweet it tastes like you're drinking electricity, almost, and so your brain assumes that you're being electrocuted and starts to make you spasm and twitch and roll your eyes back in your head out of some sick kind of syndroms that I'm sure had a name but that I don't know. It's either a syndrome, or complete confusion. Quite possibly both. Anyway. So that was the Watermelon one. And once I drank it I was all ready for the day! Woo! And then like an hour later I was all, NEED COFFEE. I'm thinking of going back to the Hazelnut from the Irish Creme. I don't remember why I swicthed, but now I can't smell the Irish Creme anymore, so it must be time to go back to the Hazelnut. Or else to switch to the third flavor which again escapes me, but is probably something like rutabaga. You know, I've never had a rutabaga. I have no idea what they taste like. Or even look like! I'd say I think they should look like rhubarbs, but I don't even know what rhubarb looks like. Unless it's in a pie. It's very tasty then. I like rhubarb pie. Come to think of it, it tastes kind of like Jolly Rancher Watermelon soda, with the sweet and the tangy and the electrocution. I bet if you pureed a rhubarb pie and then drank it? You'd have the same general effect going. I should totally submit that recipe to Martha Stewart or something.
I had a student write turn in a 15-page paper for an assignment that demanded 5-7. He's a good kind and I actually quite like him, but I pulled him aside after class, and said, sorry kid, you're going to have to cut this down. He was dismayed, but that was so totally not the assignment that I couldn't accept the paper. I kept a copy of the original (he had emailed it to me), though, and I read it yesterday? I'm very pleased I made him cut it. I mean, I haven't read the revised version of the paper yet, but somehow the student managed to get off-topic by the second sentence. Now, I know I'm not really one to be complaining about people getting off topic instantaneously (in fact, I've gone off topic after two words), but it's different when you're writing an LJ post than when you're writing a document analysis paper. Anyway, in addition to the 15-page paper, he submitted it with an email that was itself about two pages long and quite an entertaining read. It was, frankly, like reading my own LJ, only because I hadn't written it I didn't know where it was going to go next! So it was exciting and fun! And entirely inappropriate for a paper. But because this was only the accompanying email it was fine. Also, he should thank his lucky stars that he ended up in one of my sections. Because now I am talking about him in public! Yes. Not only that, though, but because I totally get the way his brain works, I just have better filtration and focusing methods, and if he had ended up in one of the other sections it would have been interesting to see what the other TAs would have made of this kid. The upshot of the paper: Fascism, yay! Okay, not really, but it comes pretty close. It's actually a pretty interesting argument. In an undergraduate kind of way. Er, no offense meant to the undergraduates (there are at least three of you?) out there.
Right, so this weekend will be all research, grading and race watching (YAY F1! And I've decided I can watch NASCAR again this season because I totally watched the whole NASCAR race last weekend and that asshole finished like 18th, or something, so that was pretty satisfying) and then more of the same during the week and then NOTHING MORE IN MY LIFE EVER UNTIL THE SEMESTER IS OVER! And I still have to finish that stupid "I'm a TA!" course. IT'S CRAP, I TELL YOU! But my funding is contingent on finishing it, so, feh.
OMG, I'm listening to this live concert (as opposed to a recorded concert? Actually, with people in the world like Ashleeeeeeee Simpson [WHOM I STAB BECAUSE SHE IS TERRIBLE], that really isn't such an alien concept anymore) that Jefferson Airplane did a couple years ago on my iPod and they're totally riffing on Tommy. That's pretty awesome. Also, if you look at the "Music:" box down there at the bottom (or wherever you weirdos have it on your default views) you'll notice that the song is not by Jefferson Airplane. I'm not sure what it's going to be yet, but that's the song that is playing when I finish the LJ. The main typing, I mean, not the Abstract. So that's what's going on with that.
Hmm. I should get lunch now. There are actually a lot of things I should be doing--researching, grading, exercising--but I can't do any of them. At work, I mean. I'm generally capable of doing them. But I can go get lunch. And I should! Eating is pretty healthy for you, I understand. So. Food! Yay.
Also, the editors of the Express today? Misspelled "navel." Rather, they used the other spelling of it. ("naval-gazing"? GAH.) WHY GOD WHY? I would go on a murderous rampage, but. Feh. Hunger. That's not something they tell you in those Snickers commercials, is it? Inability to engage in hate-filled murderous rampages induced by poorly copy-edited news items! Another symptom of HUNGER! Eat a Snickers, damnit.
I think I'll probably settle for a sandwich of some sort, instead.
LJing is hard, if you're me. Speaking of which, I like silent Rs. I want to be creative and write things! That aren't papers, because they suck. Instead I'm translating German! Which is making my head explode with the whole embedded clause, my verb is more than 30 words away from my subject way. I saw a couple of GAY GAY movies. I'm seeing things! I like to make up convoluted stories about people I have never met, including this Swedish divorcee/mime, and this sunburned leper who lives downstairs. I like to drink really insane things, and have this really great idea for a new drink recipe! Alert Martha! I have a student who wrote way too much for a paper, and I totally GET it, even though I am lazy and would never do such a thing, but I get how his mind works, because it's a lot like mine, and isn't that fucking scary? Research this weekend! I'm listening to music. I should eat something. I have a completely irrational reaction to bad editing. No one should be surprised by any of this.
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
I've been wanting to update since Monday but I haven't been able to muster the actual will to do so. I was actually busy at work on Monday (I KNOW!!! RIGHT?) was part of it but yesterday, I mean come on. It turns out that my LJ entries have become so ponderous that the thought of writing one is tiring. I mean, you all think reading them is bad, but writing them is exhausting. Not because I have to follow all of the mental jumps, which I make automatically, but because of the physical typing and the emotional stress. That's right, typing in my LJ is like losing a pet! Okay, not really. That's just macabre. I love that word. Macabre. It's the silent "r". I like words with odd silent letters. Silent Hes and Es and even Bs are a dime a dozen, but silent Rs? Those are sexy. In a really dorky, orthographical way.
So but anyway I get into these phases where I start feeling all creative and I'm all I WANT TO WRITE SHIT! And they usually hapen about once a year and usually what happens is that I end up sitting in dark room waiting for the urge to write to pass, because I don't actually have anything to write about, and I'm just enjoying the arty-ness of sitting in a dark room. I bet this is what it was like being Albert Camus. Who is not a whale. Of course this time around I actually do have things to write. Things called papers! But those aren't creative in the sense of like, writing stuff. Making stuff up. It's all synthesis, and it's even stuff I'm interested in, but it's not actually changing the fact that I have this urge. To write. Stuff. But as you can all tell I would be bad at that.
Instead for the last couple of nights I've been up late translating an article in academic German. Oh, my God. German isn't a simple language to begin with. I mean, okay, once you get the rules down, the syntax isn't really a problem, but remembering the rules of syntax when you're trying to keep several words in your head all at the same time is headache inducing. Some of you out there know how German works, so you're not surprised to hear this, but German sentences, like German words, tend to be very long. For all their ruthless efficiency when building cars or invading Poland, their language leaves something to be desired. Of course when the sentences get that long, the verbs are almost invariably at the end, and the subjects are almost invariably at the beginning. There was a sentence I was trying to translate that was six lines long. The subject of the sentence was the third word. The verb (not the auxiliary verb, which was fourth) was thirty-fifth. The intervening thirty-two words were all subordinate clauses describing the subject and with other verbs and gah. I think it would be a lot easier to translate if my vocabulary were a little larger, because as it is, I have to look up a couple of words per sentence (for nuance, and things), and so I have to keep reminding myself what those words are while I'm trying to decipher the syntax. Occasionally I'll jsut end up writing the sentence in the exact order that it comes in the original, so I end up with things like "The Austrian Navy was 1828 uncommonly in an extremely bloody but little successful bombardment of Morocco, which they did not want to 'gift' as was usual, involved." It gets the job done, but I'm going to give myself a headache when I try to re-read it. Oh, well. Wasn't that fascinating? Shut up.
I saw Camp and was thoroughly entertained. I also saw this bizarro British movie called Touch of Pink which was about a Cary Grant-obsessed Pakistani (ethnically, but British nationally; his family is muslim) who like comes out of the closet to his mother after hijinks ensue when she comes to visit him and his lover (who is white!, and whom she doesn't know is his lover, obviously) in London. Actually "hijinks" is a bit of a strong word to describe what happens in this movie. It's actually just one hijink over and over again. If you feel like you've seen this movie before, you have! Different characters, same plot. In the film's defense, I had also had a bottle of wine by the end of it, so maybe that had somethig to do with it.
stretch
Ooh! Floaters!
poking at empty space
School is school. Work is work. Bleh.
I like to make up stories about people I don't know. About a week ago there was this woman getting off the Metro at Crystal City whom I decided was a divorcee from Sweden. This may or may not be because I thought she looked like a refugee from ABBA, but I'm not sure if this was because of the fact that she was blonde and wearing dated clothing (like, black and white horizontal stripes and red coulottes and over-sized sunglasses, the latter of which I realize are back in, but the whole ensemble just felt really 1977 to me [and also kind of mime], and not only because I've seen pictures of what my mom was wearing when I was wee, and in 1977 I was very very wee) or like this aura of upbeat desolation that surrounded her. Okay I just made that part up. Anyway so in my head I was making up a story about how she had been married to this guy and come to the U.S. and they had gotten divorced and there was this whole scene on a plane, and it was really amusing to me that I was making up this story about this woman, whom I'd only ever seen the back of. And then also there was this kind-of cute guy in the elevator also within the last 10 days who was all friendly when I got in the elevator? Or maybe I was friendly first, I don't know. Anyway I remember I was about to ask him if he had been getting a lot of sun lately because his face was really pink but I didn't because 1) OMG what if he actually has some horrible skin problem like eczema or some flesh-eating virus or something and I'm all like, "Hi, leper! Nice sunburn!" and 2) What if he thinks I'm flirting with him?! I mean I kind of would have been, but what if he's straight or a freak or I don't know what! So I didn't say anything, and then he got off at his floor and then I got off at mine the end, except not really because then (and here's where I bring it all back to my over-active imagination, I mean, aside from the eczema/leprosy thing) I was all, I wonder how he got his sunburn? And so I made up this story about how he went to the beach and got a sunburn. I didn't really develop it more than that but I could have. Was my point.
I can also make up stories about people I know, but I don't. USUALLY.
So since the unfortunate and HEINOUS closure of the Safeway in the basement of my building I've been spending more money at 7-11. I could go to the Harris Teeter, but that's like, driving distance away, especially at 1:00 AM, and when it's not 1:00 AM the place is packed with like billions of people and the lines are long and, like, there are way too many choices. I don't know where my standard like ten things I eat are, so I wander around being all irritated because I'm scared and frightened like Country Mouse in the city. TOO MUCH CHOICE! CAPITALISM IS SCARY! So anyway I don't go there like I should so I end up with nothing to drink in the house (I'm trying to cut down on beer consumption over the summer, which is why there's none in the house right now) and so voila! I end up at 7-11 at 1:00 AM because I deserately need something to drink. Because I'm thirsty because I had been over at a fellow grad student's house drinking beer for several hours. Yes, yes, I know, shut up. So I was there! And I'm like, okay, there's a huge variety of sodas here that defy nature, so I shall try them all (MY OWN PERSONAL BEV-MO!). Well, not all of them. Like, there's Fanta Strawberry and I know what that tastes like, and so should you ALL, and it won me a free soda! Which I haven't yet used. But that was a couple nights ago, not last night. Last night I bought Sprite "Aruba Jam"! Which is a complete lie, it was not jam at all, and it was certainly not made of Aruba. But it was kind of citrusy and rather not unpleasant to consume, so I give it a thumbs up. BUT EVEN BETTER there were these bright red and green abominations of nature that are Jolly Rancher brand Watermelon and Sour Apple soda. I haven't had the latter yet (but I am very excited to try! Shut up) but I had the former this morning. For breakfast. Or something. Look, it gets really dry and warm in my apartment and I was thirsty. So I opened it and I drank it and it tasted pretty much like you would expect it to: Sugar. Not even raw sugar, but like SUPERsugar; sugar that's so sweet and concentrated that it actually overloads your sweet receptors and starts to trigger your sour ones, and then the synapses in your head start misfiring because it's so sweet it tastes like you're drinking electricity, almost, and so your brain assumes that you're being electrocuted and starts to make you spasm and twitch and roll your eyes back in your head out of some sick kind of syndroms that I'm sure had a name but that I don't know. It's either a syndrome, or complete confusion. Quite possibly both. Anyway. So that was the Watermelon one. And once I drank it I was all ready for the day! Woo! And then like an hour later I was all, NEED COFFEE. I'm thinking of going back to the Hazelnut from the Irish Creme. I don't remember why I swicthed, but now I can't smell the Irish Creme anymore, so it must be time to go back to the Hazelnut. Or else to switch to the third flavor which again escapes me, but is probably something like rutabaga. You know, I've never had a rutabaga. I have no idea what they taste like. Or even look like! I'd say I think they should look like rhubarbs, but I don't even know what rhubarb looks like. Unless it's in a pie. It's very tasty then. I like rhubarb pie. Come to think of it, it tastes kind of like Jolly Rancher Watermelon soda, with the sweet and the tangy and the electrocution. I bet if you pureed a rhubarb pie and then drank it? You'd have the same general effect going. I should totally submit that recipe to Martha Stewart or something.
I had a student write turn in a 15-page paper for an assignment that demanded 5-7. He's a good kind and I actually quite like him, but I pulled him aside after class, and said, sorry kid, you're going to have to cut this down. He was dismayed, but that was so totally not the assignment that I couldn't accept the paper. I kept a copy of the original (he had emailed it to me), though, and I read it yesterday? I'm very pleased I made him cut it. I mean, I haven't read the revised version of the paper yet, but somehow the student managed to get off-topic by the second sentence. Now, I know I'm not really one to be complaining about people getting off topic instantaneously (in fact, I've gone off topic after two words), but it's different when you're writing an LJ post than when you're writing a document analysis paper. Anyway, in addition to the 15-page paper, he submitted it with an email that was itself about two pages long and quite an entertaining read. It was, frankly, like reading my own LJ, only because I hadn't written it I didn't know where it was going to go next! So it was exciting and fun! And entirely inappropriate for a paper. But because this was only the accompanying email it was fine. Also, he should thank his lucky stars that he ended up in one of my sections. Because now I am talking about him in public! Yes. Not only that, though, but because I totally get the way his brain works, I just have better filtration and focusing methods, and if he had ended up in one of the other sections it would have been interesting to see what the other TAs would have made of this kid. The upshot of the paper: Fascism, yay! Okay, not really, but it comes pretty close. It's actually a pretty interesting argument. In an undergraduate kind of way. Er, no offense meant to the undergraduates (there are at least three of you?) out there.
Right, so this weekend will be all research, grading and race watching (YAY F1! And I've decided I can watch NASCAR again this season because I totally watched the whole NASCAR race last weekend and that asshole finished like 18th, or something, so that was pretty satisfying) and then more of the same during the week and then NOTHING MORE IN MY LIFE EVER UNTIL THE SEMESTER IS OVER! And I still have to finish that stupid "I'm a TA!" course. IT'S CRAP, I TELL YOU! But my funding is contingent on finishing it, so, feh.
OMG, I'm listening to this live concert (as opposed to a recorded concert? Actually, with people in the world like Ashleeeeeeee Simpson [WHOM I STAB BECAUSE SHE IS TERRIBLE], that really isn't such an alien concept anymore) that Jefferson Airplane did a couple years ago on my iPod and they're totally riffing on Tommy. That's pretty awesome. Also, if you look at the "Music:" box down there at the bottom (or wherever you weirdos have it on your default views) you'll notice that the song is not by Jefferson Airplane. I'm not sure what it's going to be yet, but that's the song that is playing when I finish the LJ. The main typing, I mean, not the Abstract. So that's what's going on with that.
Hmm. I should get lunch now. There are actually a lot of things I should be doing--researching, grading, exercising--but I can't do any of them. At work, I mean. I'm generally capable of doing them. But I can go get lunch. And I should! Eating is pretty healthy for you, I understand. So. Food! Yay.
Also, the editors of the Express today? Misspelled "navel." Rather, they used the other spelling of it. ("naval-gazing"? GAH.) WHY GOD WHY? I would go on a murderous rampage, but. Feh. Hunger. That's not something they tell you in those Snickers commercials, is it? Inability to engage in hate-filled murderous rampages induced by poorly copy-edited news items! Another symptom of HUNGER! Eat a Snickers, damnit.
I think I'll probably settle for a sandwich of some sort, instead.