Progress report

Lindsay came to visit! If we had had our act together, we would have recorded a vlog of some sort (dog, grog, and/or Yule Log) or at least taken some documentary photographs of ourselves together, but instead we just drank a ton of beer and gossiped about Academics We Have Known. It was a lovely time.

Meanwhile, Big weighs 117 pounds these days but still can't get into a car without a stepstool. She remains inexplicably terrified of a number of unpredictable things, but also prone to gallop up to every person she sees, to lean on them and gaze adoringly into their face while they tell her how pretty she is.

I made another queen-size bed quilt and may never make a bed quilt again. Or at least not until I have an actual quilting machine. They are nice to look at but an unreasonably long and boring project, I've decided.

More later, I need several naps now.

Apocalypse soon

I said something flippant about how the world as we know it is not going to last much longer. (I believe this, although I have no specific predictions.) A friend who is cheerfuller than I am argued a little and then said "but don't you think if you had kids, you'd think differently?" (She has kids.)

This is crazy talk! I certainly hope not! The strangest part of the question, to me, was the implication that I should consider a hypothetical scenario in which I were more likely to have a biased assessment based on wishful thinking, and then use that hypothetical biased assessment instead of my current one. What!? No! I try hard to keep my current level of bias and wishful thinking out of my assessments of things! Why would I add more, just to come up with a nicer outcome? (...oh. Just to come up with a nicer outcome. This is how religions are invented, people.)

Anyway I said "no, but I'd probably be a lot more upset about it" and then we talked about other cheerfuller things.

***

More recently, someone else was telling me that they try to never vote Democrat or Republican. If there's a Libertarian option, the go with that. (It's Montana, so there usually is). If there isn't, they pick Republican.

I said "that makes me think you never read the news and you have no idea what's going on in the world. Have you noticed what the Republicans are doing?"

He said "What about what the Democrats are doing?"

I said "What are the Democrats doing?"

He said "They're dividing us! With their... words and arguments!"

I said "That sounds like something you heard on Fox News. Maybe you should try some other sources."

He said "I'm just kidding. And I don't watch Fox News."

I don't know which part he was kidding about, but this conversation did not change my opinion about how the world as we know it is not going to last much longer. (It did make me glad there are Libertarian options for nearly every race here.)

I'm saying that our system is in failure more than that we don't know what's wrong with it

 I wrote this last year:

Here's what I've learned from having a [mysterious, undiagnosed] debilitating chronic illness: When you have a system that's in failure, and you don't know what's wrong with it, you have to keep going. You have to keep trying to fix it, even though you lose hope, each time, that a new remedy will have any effect. You have to keep making plans for next week even though you might be too sick to show up. You have to pretend, to everyone else and to yourself, that there is a possibility that things will get better. You have to pretend to believe that someday soon somebody is going to identify the source of the problem and they will know how to fix it and your insurance will pay for the fixing and everything will go back to normal. You have to keep behaving like you believe this, even when you're sure it's just going to get worse and worse. You have to say to yourself "if there WERE a possibility that things would get better, what would I need to be doing with my time?" And then you keep going to see more doctors, and you keep trying new cures, and you keep alleviating the symptoms as much as you can, and you keep behaving as though you believe there is a chance  that it will get better soon. You have to, because no matter how doomed and hopeless you think the situation is, what if you're wrong?

It is about American politics (to make that explicit). The bad that things were then seems relatively innocuous beside the bad that things are now. (My health is about the same.)

My unconventional religious beliefs about the Constitution Gods* aside, this place** is on a slippery slope to hell in a handbasket without a paddle. I personally believe we're past the point of no return, which is scary and sad. On the other hand, we*** live in unimaginable luxury compared to nearly everyone in the world, in all of history. So I say bask in the Amazon delivery and air conditioning while it lasts. Also gather roses.

And using both hands, I hope everyone keeps fighting as hard as they can until the fat lady on the ship stops singing.

* I don't actually believe in them.****
** The US? The First World? Earth? D. All of the above?
*** The kind of people who read my blog and their associates
**** Or do I?

Straw [M|B]an

Straw Ban Man
If I didn't feel certain that the Founding Fathers are going to return any day now, sailing down the Potomac in all their glory to advance us all to the next level, I would be worried about climate change. I would still not support any bans on plastic straws, though, because they don't solve the problem and they actively hurt vulnerable people.

They Don't Solve the Problem
If there's any hope of saving the world (don't worry, there's not), it's going to involve a lot of sacrifices on a lot of levels from the wealthiest of us. (Us being humanity, not Americans, although that too.) Using fewer plastic straws should certainly be a component of that! Let's all not use straws if we don't need them. Let's also work on getting rid of all the all the HumVs and oil drilling and leaky pipelines and frivolous air travel and to-go boxes and extra packaging and microdermabrasion beads. Let's pass laws forcing restaurants to provide biodegradable straws even though they're more expensive. Hey! Let's ban restaurants from sending food home in STYROFOAM BOXES for christ's sake. And please let's ban coal rollers! Ban ordering shit from Amazon instead of going to the store on your way home! (Maybe Jeff Bezos could use some of his extra dollars to switch to biodegradable packaging in the Amazon boxes instead of space travel?) Starting with plastic straws is ridiculous, which is not problematic per se, but besides being ridiculous it actively hurts people who don't deserve it and shouldn't have to.

Bans Actively Hurt Vulnerable People
Many disabled people need straws to drink. Reusable or paper straws are a workable solution for some, but not all. Banning plastic straws would make these people's already disenfranchised lives even more full of barriers. Having prescriptions or special permits for straws puts the burden of accessibility on disabled people, who are already spending way too much energy fighting for rights and access, instead of on the venue. In this country we already force disabled people to live in poverty, remain unmarried, and endure stares, condescension, and criticism every time we are out in public. We already have to argue for hours to get interpreters or find out if a place is wheelchair-accessible or be let into a bar with our fucking guide dog. Strangers already harass us for parking in reserved spots and for buying a bottle of wine and for just being out of the house after 5:00. Let's not add to the difficulties we're already forcing disabled people to face. Let's think of a different way.

Straw Man Ban
Luckily in real life we don't have to worry about any of this because like I said, Abe Lincoln is gonna be swimming up that Potomac to save us all real soon now, and I'm sure that whereever he takes us there will be high-quality biodegradable bendy straws for everyone.

Completely Multipurpose

The puppy got bigger. Never having seen more water than is in her bowl, she found the wading pool I put in the front yard terrifying and spent three days circling it, barking suspiciously. Then I made her go camping at the lake.

After cowering in my lap for a while, she waded in and realized she loves water. Aw, what an adorable dummy. (She loves the wading pool, now, too.)

***

I have several interesting things to say but not the energy to type them up.  Instead, here is a picture of the most delightful storefront in all the land:

I drive past it pretty often but I've never been in. I can't decide if I want to or not- what if it's terrible? I'd rather cling to my illusions. On the other hand, I would really like to know which items specifically they sell in there. What a conundrum!

Plus One

Here's what I did last week:

 

 

 I drove to California. It was summer there. I got a puppy.

Then we drove back home. Now it is naptime.

Telescoping Reduction

This blog post will be of interest to an extremely limited audience.

A long time ago (ten years at least!) I noticed this phonetic fact about ASL: when fluent signers sign things that include a repeated gesture, the gesture often becomes smaller with each repetition. I made up a name for it: Telescoping Reduction.

Eventually I wrote a paper about this fascinating topic. I was in the middle of revising it for Language when my life went upside down. I still think it's interesting, though, and things have stabilized enough that I started thinking about linguistics again. "I should go back and finish that paper" was one of my thoughts, and then "I don't care about my CV any more!" was another. It is very freeing, not to care about my CV and not to have any reviewers or editors. (The downside is that editors make your work better and so this paper has infelicitous clauses all over the damn place.)

Anyway, for the 3-4 people who will find this a fascinating topic to discuss, here it is, in all its glory. (That's a 33-page pdf about phonetics and phonology. There are no cranky rants or amusing anecdotes. You have been warned.)

IT JUST SO HAPPENS

Here's a thing that I hate: someone (usually a journalist or a reviewer or something) is describing someone else. It is a man, or a woman, and they have a job, and sometimes they have an age or a location or something. And then, they also "just happen" to have a disability.

This happens SO OFTEN, and it makes me scream/groan every time because how do you not see what a low-key insulting patronizing othering BULLSHIT way to refer to people this is?*

You know where just so happens belongs? In a fairy tale. Or a whimsical anecdote of some sort. Or the Bible.

Not everyone liked the king of Persia. In fact, two of his servants decided they would kill him. Now it just so happened that Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, heard these two servants discussing their evil plan. He told Esther, who told the king for him, and the murder was prevented. Grateful, the king just so happened to write what Mordecai had done for him in his record book. And then, it just so happened that, for the time being, the king forgot all about it.

And you know what it means? It means that the narrator is introducing an unexpected coincidence of some sort. For example, The prince just happens to be riding through the forest when he hears Rapunzel singing and falls in love. MacGyver just happens to have exactly the necessary tools and knowledge to escape whichever trap he's in. Russia just happened to hack the US election system the same year Donald Trump was running.

Do you know what is not an unexpected coincidence? When a person has an interesting job or has created some interesting product or has said or done something interesting, and also the person has a disability. Swap in another characteristic to see how ludicrous and shitty this sounds. "Cecily is a cranky, sporadic blogger who also happens to live in Montana!" "Angela Merkel is the Chancellor of Germany who just so happens to be a woman." "Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States and he also just happens to be black!"

It's weird, dudes. Cut it out. I know it's some well-intentioned but misguided attempt to act like "hey, I'm cool, disability is no big deal and I'm TOTALLY NOT FOCUSING ON IT it's just, like, a coincidence, man!"  But this phrasing actually has the opposite effect. You're drawing attention to it and labeling it as unexpected and unusual. Lots of people have disabilities. All of them do things and say things and generally exist as members of society. There is no surprising coincidence.

You don't need to dance around disability in your description- just say it (if it's relevent) like you say all the other descriptive facts you're including. No coy Biblical/fairy-tale highlighting needed.


*I know this also happens for other "unexpected" characteristics, where it is equally shitty and irritating. She's a successful business executive who JUST SO HAPPENS to also be a loving mother! What a plot twist!

I also know some people with disabilities use this phrasing when talking about themselves. Obviously everyone is allowed to describe themselves the way they want, and if you want more space between yourself and whatever characteristic you just so happen to have, so be it. My complaint is with the sappy journalism overuse, which I think displays discomfort and internalized ableism rather than informed and conscious distancing.

Out in the wild

One time, teaching an upper-level college class, I assigned a paper: “Compare and contrast the American Deaf community with another minority group in the United States." Among other results, I obtained this sentence:

It is much easier to spot an African-American person than it is to spot a Deaf person.

That class was full of glittering gems. (Also some very nice insightful discussions and lots of lovely students.)

Anyway. Tricky though it may be, if you do spot a Deaf person, and you are in a restaurant when it happens, I have written up some advice about how to behave.

Grice Gricey and the Conversational Maxims

Don't you think that would be a good band name? All the linguists and sociologists would flock to your shows. (My grad students always really hated this joke. I made it a lot and everyone groaned and rolled their eyes every time. I think it's hilarious, though, so I win.)

Paul Grice was a guy who studied language, last century, and one of the things he came up with was a self-help book for lonely, shy, and bored people called Grice's Conversational Maxims.

That was false. He did not write a self-help book of any sort. But he did come up with theory of what the unspoken rules are for "How to Have a Successful Conversation with Another Human." Under this theory, when people are having a conversation, there is a set of rules that everyone uses. As long as we're all using the same conventions, we will successfully be able to communicate with each other!

[It turns out that much of linguistics just involves writing out, explicitly, things that everybody knows.]

Here's what to keep in mind, when you decide you want to contribute to a conversation:

1. Maxim of Quality: 
Try to make your contribution one that is true.

• Do not say what you believe to be false.
• Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

2. Maxim of Quantity:
Make your contribution as informative as is required

• (for the purposes of the exchange).
• Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

3. Maxim of Relation:
Be relevent.

4. Maxim of Manner:
Be perspicuous.

1. Be brief
2. Be orderly
3. Avoid obscurity of expression.
4. Avoid ambiguity.

And if you follow these easy instructions, you too can participate in the New Fad of Conversation! Some assembly required.

Really now we say that most people follow the Cooperative Principle, instantiated in various ways in different places and circumstances. People who routinely flout any rules generally get a negative reaction from their surrounding humans.  The Cooperative Principle says that any time you have a conversation, you are cooperating with someone else in a joint effort at communicating. Violations of the norms communicate something, too- hostility, or a funny joke, or a very different mindset, or a hallucinogen.

[I dearly love the phrase "Grice's Conversational Maxims" and I will never call them anything else.]

We were talking about Grice's Conversational Maxims the other day at a barbecue (as were the all the rest of you, I'm sure) and it suddenly struck me that all the problems in the government can be explained by the fact that President Trump doesn't obey the Maxims consistently. He's playing with different rules, and he knows what the rules of the game are and his interlocutors don't.  Many misunderstandings and frustrations ensue. (Also there may be some other reasons too.)

I would not have guessed it, but this turned out to be a surprisingly successful tactic. Trump gets to assume good will and cooperation from other people, but he arbitrarily switches between Cooperative and Uncooperative, and very little communication happens, however long the conversation goes on. It's like playing bridge without deciding which bidding conventions to use first (surely a universally understood analogy). The resulting "conversations" are sufficiently confusing (and unexpected and unprecedented) that no one knows what to do or how to handle it. No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition! In the short run, he is winning, in the LARP game he thinks we're playing. As long as he is winning, he doesn't really care what you think the rules are.

If he were in a different game, though, where winning required obeying Grice's Conversational maxims, he'd be really bad at it and lose immediately. So all we have to do is get the Senate to create a place where Trump has to go, and where violating Grice has severe negative effects. It's a trap! Who's with me?

I'm gonna make t-shirts and signs that say "Always Obey Grice's Maxims!" and proselytize in DC, around Capitol Hill. Advocate strict enforcement. Convince some powerful politicians to take this seriously. Every meeting from now on, everybody has to sign an agreement to play using Grice Rules. Get the Senate to adopt the maxims officially in their Rules book. Then hold some meeting that the President will need to attend and speak. He'll violate a maxim in his first three utterances- immediately out of the game. (For the purpose of this plan, I am assuming that the Senate Code of Conduct and their Rules book override every other jurisdiction/authority, and that amendments to both involve short, straightforward processes. If this turns out not to be the case, some revision may be necessary.)

Flagrantly violating Grice Gricey is not an effective long-term strategy, anyway. We hope. People get really mad when you violate even one Maxim, and Trump ignores them all half the time, so everyone's getting more and more angry. Eventually nobody will play with the kid who's always trying to change the rules. His turn will be over someday. Unless he throws the board or changes the rules.

N.B. He does seem like the kind of guy who might throw the board or change the rules.