This might be long. Sorry in advance.
I swear to many and various gods that last week was the most tiring, stressy week ever. EVER!
My fourth phonology assignment was due on the 5th, which got done the day before because, somehow, I had thought it was due on some other date and so neglected to do it during my week off. I'm a fucking legend sometimes, seriously. Fortunately I worked steadily(ish) on my Shakespeare essay during that week and had been dealing with sources in the weeks prior, so that all came together without too much to-do, but getting that done and dealing with my linguistics assignment which, stupidly, looked much, much less complicated than it was, was exhausting. I'm still wickedly pleased with my Shakespeare essay, though, lol. For only the second time ever, I think, I wrote an essay that actually needed to be cut down and reshaped to comply with the word limit. Extraordinary and deeply amusing. I'm not sure how I'll go marks-wise, even though I feel pretty good about it...You never can tell.
I've seen two really, really good movies in the last four (three?) days or so. The first I went to by myself (which I love) on Friday just gone and it was *gags* a chick flick...But, to redeem it, it was Crazy, Stupid, Love with Steve Carell in it and I freakin' love him. He's extremely funny but somehow manages to do the quiet pain thing well. Kudos. Anyway, I was surprised how good it was. I just picked it kind of at random (didn't have any plans, just wound up at the movies, lol) and I seriously recommend it. I'm not going to give away too much, because anything I say about how it ends will completely ruin it and wouldn't do it justice anyway, but family falls apart, people fall in messy, awful love and, eventually, after a measure of embarrassment, all is more or less well again. Heh, didn't give anything away, did I? But, seriously, go see it.
The second I saw with my mum today. Project Nim, people!!! There are too many things to say, most of them not nice. The film itself was deeply interesting; as fascinating as it was appalling (and it was definitely appalling), and it was about the people who were supposed to be in charge of this "scientific" experiment as much as it was about Nim, the chimp in question. That poor bastard really had a rough time. I loved how surprised everyone was when things didn't turn out the way they wanted it to, after all, you can't raise a wild chimpanzee in a human family unit and expect it to be a human. Nature always wins over nurture when it comes to wild animals. Always. The linguistics and psychology were against them all right from the beginning and they either didn't see it, or they chose not to see it. Methinks it was the latter. The aim was to see if they could raise a chimp as a human child and teach it to communicate via sign in a way that is comparable to human language use (among the myriad other things they were looking at), and -- as was seen with Koko the gorilla (whom I adore) -- it didn't pan out. Nim could sign, no doubt, and he could communicate effectively, i.e. he was able to sign about things that weren't in his immediate vicinity (food, toys, bathroom), but he never mastered syntax (word order), which is the key to human communication. He ended up in a medical testing facility and then in a refuge for abandoned/abused animals (primarily equines), but was left alone and without much contact with people and none with other chimps until much later in the piece. Eventually other chimps were introduced, as was someone who cared for Nim years prior (whom Nim still remembered, I might add), and he lived in relative comfort and happiness for the remainder of his life. Possibly as a result of his more difficult life, Nim died of a heart attack at 26 years old in 2000. That's pretty young for a chimp. Poor bastard.
Anyhow, if you can stand some of the anger-making, harrowing bits, the movie is a good one too, though, obviously, for different reasons than Crazy, Stupid, Love.
As for my more personal life, such as it is ;), not much is going on. I'm house-sitting again for my aunts as they trek around the world (see: fly in comfort) to Dallas and then on to New York, Massachusetts and all that good stuff on the east coast. I have requested a hoodie or t-shirt from either MIT or Harvard, either is fine by me, and I shall consider it remuneration for my services. I'm looking after their increasingly frail dogs (praying that nothing untoward happens to them while I'm here) and their increasingly weird cats and their beautiful house, and in so doing will have plenty of time and space to study and relax in preparation for my oncoming exams (of which I only have two. Life is decent).
So, that's about it for me...If life manages to keep its sometimes sedate, sometimes irritating pace, all should be OK and I'll get through exams and all that with relative ease. I'm sure you all are well (I know you are, I checked your LJs!!) and all in one piece xox
My fourth phonology assignment was due on the 5th, which got done the day before because, somehow, I had thought it was due on some other date and so neglected to do it during my week off. I'm a fucking legend sometimes, seriously. Fortunately I worked steadily(ish) on my Shakespeare essay during that week and had been dealing with sources in the weeks prior, so that all came together without too much to-do, but getting that done and dealing with my linguistics assignment which, stupidly, looked much, much less complicated than it was, was exhausting. I'm still wickedly pleased with my Shakespeare essay, though, lol. For only the second time ever, I think, I wrote an essay that actually needed to be cut down and reshaped to comply with the word limit. Extraordinary and deeply amusing. I'm not sure how I'll go marks-wise, even though I feel pretty good about it...You never can tell.
I've seen two really, really good movies in the last four (three?) days or so. The first I went to by myself (which I love) on Friday just gone and it was *gags* a chick flick...But, to redeem it, it was Crazy, Stupid, Love with Steve Carell in it and I freakin' love him. He's extremely funny but somehow manages to do the quiet pain thing well. Kudos. Anyway, I was surprised how good it was. I just picked it kind of at random (didn't have any plans, just wound up at the movies, lol) and I seriously recommend it. I'm not going to give away too much, because anything I say about how it ends will completely ruin it and wouldn't do it justice anyway, but family falls apart, people fall in messy, awful love and, eventually, after a measure of embarrassment, all is more or less well again. Heh, didn't give anything away, did I? But, seriously, go see it.
The second I saw with my mum today. Project Nim, people!!! There are too many things to say, most of them not nice. The film itself was deeply interesting; as fascinating as it was appalling (and it was definitely appalling), and it was about the people who were supposed to be in charge of this "scientific" experiment as much as it was about Nim, the chimp in question. That poor bastard really had a rough time. I loved how surprised everyone was when things didn't turn out the way they wanted it to, after all, you can't raise a wild chimpanzee in a human family unit and expect it to be a human. Nature always wins over nurture when it comes to wild animals. Always. The linguistics and psychology were against them all right from the beginning and they either didn't see it, or they chose not to see it. Methinks it was the latter. The aim was to see if they could raise a chimp as a human child and teach it to communicate via sign in a way that is comparable to human language use (among the myriad other things they were looking at), and -- as was seen with Koko the gorilla (whom I adore) -- it didn't pan out. Nim could sign, no doubt, and he could communicate effectively, i.e. he was able to sign about things that weren't in his immediate vicinity (food, toys, bathroom), but he never mastered syntax (word order), which is the key to human communication. He ended up in a medical testing facility and then in a refuge for abandoned/abused animals (primarily equines), but was left alone and without much contact with people and none with other chimps until much later in the piece. Eventually other chimps were introduced, as was someone who cared for Nim years prior (whom Nim still remembered, I might add), and he lived in relative comfort and happiness for the remainder of his life. Possibly as a result of his more difficult life, Nim died of a heart attack at 26 years old in 2000. That's pretty young for a chimp. Poor bastard.
Anyhow, if you can stand some of the anger-making, harrowing bits, the movie is a good one too, though, obviously, for different reasons than Crazy, Stupid, Love.
As for my more personal life, such as it is ;), not much is going on. I'm house-sitting again for my aunts as they trek around the world (see: fly in comfort) to Dallas and then on to New York, Massachusetts and all that good stuff on the east coast. I have requested a hoodie or t-shirt from either MIT or Harvard, either is fine by me, and I shall consider it remuneration for my services. I'm looking after their increasingly frail dogs (praying that nothing untoward happens to them while I'm here) and their increasingly weird cats and their beautiful house, and in so doing will have plenty of time and space to study and relax in preparation for my oncoming exams (of which I only have two. Life is decent).
So, that's about it for me...If life manages to keep its sometimes sedate, sometimes irritating pace, all should be OK and I'll get through exams and all that with relative ease. I'm sure you all are well (I know you are, I checked your LJs!!) and all in one piece xox