things I want to do, soon

National Gallery's snapshot exhibit

Spy Museum again (I have comp tickets! That expire in December!)

kite flying. On the mall? I have a kite!

People who are interested in these activities, please tell me; I like company.

baby brothers

my advice to you

this is how I recommend everyone spend their Thanksgiving:

This is the holiday of Thanksgiving. It is a day of eating food that is baked, and food that is lightly cooked in a sauté or a hot pot of liquid. If you can bear it then announce why you are thankful on this day. Remember that your opinions may seem boorish or those of an ass to every person who is here

Try not to get too clopsy on the Scotch, out there.

it's nice to be home

Montana has:
-snow
-brothers
-coffee
-wine
-dogs

Montana does not have:
-traffic
-Presidents
-taxis
-chicken bones on the sidewalk

doing math with words

As mostly everyone who has ever met me knows, I like mixing up my domains. A lot. It can get a little out of control. Anyway, hence my love of ridiculous cartoons and puns in which arcane linguistics terms are used as, for example, the names of imaginary fighting techniques.

At some point last year I was overcome by an uncontrollable fit of giggles and snorts* during a class discussion about morphology, during which it was asserted that a certain English grammatical item has the effect on a verb of "suspending its temporal profile and rendering it imperfective."

I found this hilarious and immediately began to draw diagrams and avoid the eyes of my classmates, in an attempt to not collapse in a puddle of hilarity. But it was too late, and too many vaguely threatening conversations were happening in my head. As in,

"you just watch out or I'll render you imperfective"

and

"don't make me suspend your temporal profile, young lady"



I am not at all disruptive to have in a classroom setting.

So, lately all of my energy of this sort has been focused on spoken-language phonology, because I am taking a class at Georgetown about spoken-language phonology and there are all kinds of new and enticing words for me to make up stories about. And not only words! But phrases and constructions and metaphors, etc. For some reason this happens especially much when we are talking about Rs. Vowels are R-colored (my new favorite color? R!). Last week the professor told us (kind of indignantly) that "Zero plus R equals R" so therefore we do not need a special symbol for an R-colored schwa. Math and letters and colors, all mixed up into one delicious idea. (see! Now we have cooking too!)

The main idea of this post: I am working on a new cartoon. Titled "Phonolohotonthologos". Everyone, bone up on your 18th-century British satire and your laryngeal anatomy, or you probably won't think I'm very funny.



*This did not only happen one time.