My favorite pasttime is doing silly things with words. I had forgotten about this particular silliness; to really experience it properly you need to read it out loud or have someone else read it out loud to you so it's not that great for the deaf population. I still laugh until I cry anyway...
My personal favorite is Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, but they're all pretty good.
use your words!
18 November 2005
10 November 2005
you don't LOOK stupid
by Cecily
On Tuesday I went to see Noam Chomsky talk about language origins at Georgetown. At several points during the talk he mentioned ASL and directed everyone's attention to the interpreter and/or the "signers" in the audience.
That was fine; he was open and respectful and there was no problem. Sadly (in many ways), not everyone is Noam Chomsky. As I was making my way down the stairs after the lecture ended, I happened to be immediately behind one of the interpreters. Some boy came up and started asking the interpreter something. The interpreter turned around and (I guess) recognized me. "Are you deaf?" he asked. "yes" I said. Then we all started interviewing myself about if my internal monologue is in ASL or English.
That part was tedious and annoying but this is the best part: at the end of the conversation when I was trying to look like I had somewhere to go, the boy said this: "It's always been a dream of mine to learn to do sign language."
That's quite a dream, there, buddy. Keep your feet on the ground!
People say some weird things when they are confronted by deafness for the first time.
My main favorites are:
-Oh, I'm so sorry.
-Oh, that's great!!!!
-No, you're not.
-You don't look deaf
-When I was in 2nd grade 20 years ago there was a kid in my class with a hearing aid. We weren't really friends though. But he was cool!
One of my friends was once given a wheelchair during check-in at the airport. She doesn't use one. Several other friends have been given Braille menus or taken by the elbow and guided across the room. Or told (loudly) that they would for sure be going to Heaven, and in Heaven everyone can hear.
I understand that people are not familiar with disability in general in our culture, and with deafness in particular, and that people are just trying to be nice, and that they mean well, and they probably are actually really great people deep down, just like me.
I don't really care. Think, just a LITTLE bit, before you talk. That's all I'm asking.
That was fine; he was open and respectful and there was no problem. Sadly (in many ways), not everyone is Noam Chomsky. As I was making my way down the stairs after the lecture ended, I happened to be immediately behind one of the interpreters. Some boy came up and started asking the interpreter something. The interpreter turned around and (I guess) recognized me. "Are you deaf?" he asked. "yes" I said. Then we all started interviewing myself about if my internal monologue is in ASL or English.
That part was tedious and annoying but this is the best part: at the end of the conversation when I was trying to look like I had somewhere to go, the boy said this: "It's always been a dream of mine to learn to do sign language."
That's quite a dream, there, buddy. Keep your feet on the ground!
People say some weird things when they are confronted by deafness for the first time.
My main favorites are:
-Oh, I'm so sorry.
-Oh, that's great!!!!
-No, you're not.
-You don't look deaf
-When I was in 2nd grade 20 years ago there was a kid in my class with a hearing aid. We weren't really friends though. But he was cool!
One of my friends was once given a wheelchair during check-in at the airport. She doesn't use one. Several other friends have been given Braille menus or taken by the elbow and guided across the room. Or told (loudly) that they would for sure be going to Heaven, and in Heaven everyone can hear.
I understand that people are not familiar with disability in general in our culture, and with deafness in particular, and that people are just trying to be nice, and that they mean well, and they probably are actually really great people deep down, just like me.
I don't really care. Think, just a LITTLE bit, before you talk. That's all I'm asking.
08 November 2005
Safari (by Jocelyn)
by Cecily
(My sister's in Africa visiting our dad. And her friend named Anne. Here is what she has to say about Tanzania):
It's raining again, and I am sitting on the balcony again, watching it rain. The rainy season in Rwanda had not quite begun, and so everything was dusty and dry and golden, with only bits of green in the wetter spots. Here, it is still like a garden; I have found each a nice contrast to the other.
It took us much longer to drive to the Serengeti than we had thought it would; instead of two leisurely partial days of driving, it took us all of the hours of daylight on our first day driving to get to Mwanza on the shores of Lake Victoria, and much of the next day to get from there to Seronera.
I thought of Stanley and Livingstone and Burton and Speke and that other one, as we approached Lake Victoria. Not too long ago, a Rwandan man showed me decisively on a map the Source-of-the-Nile-in-Rwanda. There are, of course, sources of the Nile all over the place; in fact a whole watershed full of them, I would imagine. Makes me wonder just what those guys were looking to find, when they set out on their Quests for the Source, and whether Lake Victoria was ever enough of a Holy Grail for them, or whether they always felt unsatisfied. (I'm sure there are a lot of biographies about this in my future, waiting to be read.) I imagine Livingstone's journeys cut short by an enormous summer thunderstorm in Ethiopia - "This is it!" he cries, drenched by the rain that's about to flood the river, "I've found it! The Source of the Nile!"
But I digress.
Crossing the border from Rwanda to Tanzania took a long time. It is not that the Rusumo Falls border crossing is particularly high-traffic, but there was of course the requisite amount of standing in line to fill out papers, and the early-morning line of trucks waiting to cross that we had to navigate around.
On the other side, everything was different right away.
Okay, no it wasn't. But the landscape did change quite soon. The densely-packed farms with their banana trees and living fences, villages every mile, and people everywhere pushing bicycles loaded with water jugs and bananas, the children thronging their way to school, the steep hills and narrow valleys - these all all petered out almost immediately to be replaced by scrub woodland (the sort that looks as though it's exhausted from regrowing itself too many times) with occasional farms. And then as we drove east, the land flattened and the dirt stayed red. The woodland (some places fuller and better grown than others) changed to plains with enormous trees (some of them baobabs, Adansonia digitata, some of them not); the hills were made of exposed, weathered lumps of granite. There are not so many villages along that road, and not so much traffic on it, though more than half of it is paved. It is pretty empty country, is Western Tanzania. I mean - relatively speaking.
Driving is driving, I guess; not very exciting, either while it's happening or afterwards. So we did a lot of that, and then we stayed in Mwanza, which is a biggish town, and then we went on the Serengeti.
I feel a little dumb, trying to say anything about the Serengeti. I'm sure other people have said it better.
We found Anne (who is, for those of you interested in Anne, in glowing good healthy and apparently quite happy doing fascinating good work; as beautiful and amazing and fun as ever). Anne has a lot of fantastic bones at her house; all different antelope skulls with long curly horns, big beefy cape buffalo and also giraffe legs, looking like machine parts. I covet them, of course; knowing just how illegal it would be for them to have left the park in my possession, and knowing that I would never do that, does not make me any less covetous.
So, then, we went to a lodge and stayed there and drove around looking for animals for a few days. And found some! A few cheetahs, dutifully photographed and whatnot for Anne's Scientific Information. And so many other things.
We saw a pride of lions eating a zebra in the early morning under an acacia tree, with a bunch of hyaenas circling around. The lions would growl at the hyaenas, who were stealing a leg here and a chunk of skin there, making their hyaena noises (which, in contrast to what I had imagined, they make with their noses down almost to the ground) - until finally the lions had eaten enough and gave up and left or were driven off, leaving the hyaenas to chase each other around and jackals to lick the ground. Man, oh man are hyaenas ever beautiful and fascinating.
(In case anyone was wondering, these hyaenas were the spotted variety, Crocuta crocuta - the kind that people once thought were hermaphroditic, where the females have higher testosterone levels than the males, and false scrotums.)
We saw hippos out of water in the afternoon, a little suprisingly. A mother and two young 'uns eating stuff by the banks of a scummy pond. The mother had an oxpecker-dug hole in her side (with the oxpecker still poking his beak in sometimes) that looked ouchy. Anne says that someone published a paper recently suggesting that oxpeckers do not only eat the parasites off the large herbivores; they also seem to enlarge and keep open the parasite holes, and eat the flesh of the hippos (or whatever) directly. I say in response, a wildlife researcher is a wonderful companion to have in the Serengeti.
We a saw a porcupine that had stayed awake too long, rushing all waddly for cover in the early early morning in the shortgrass plains; warthog mamas and their little piggy babies running around; gazelles and antelopes and buffalo and jackals and all manner of neat birds; and then the elephants.
The managers of the lodge we stayed at, who are friends of Anne's, are Elephant Enthusiasts. And so I saw a lot of elephants. And I loved them! All huge and beautiful and intelligent - elephants often return to the bones of dead relatives and pick them up and touch them, and elephants sometimes bury their dead.
We watched some (a few mothers and several offspring) drinking when they had broken into a well near the lodge. The older ones with the long-enough trunks would kneel to reach down and suck out water. The little ones would suck it out of the mouths of their mothers and siblings.
We saw twenty-some of them, early one morning, heading off quietly and purposefully to god-knows-where across the plains. Anne took lots of pictures; we drove in circles around them for half an hour, and they looked at us, but just kept on going.
The most amazing part of looking at the elephants, though, is when they look right back at you. We sat one evening, drinking beer in the Land Rover parked right next to some elephants eating at sunset; we looked out at the elephants and drank beer, and they looked in at us and ate grass.
I'm back in Rwanda now; we are off to look at gorillas tomorrow, and then I will return to Virginia on Tuesday.
It has stopped raining. The sun has come out. I hope that all of you are well and happy.
It's raining again, and I am sitting on the balcony again, watching it rain. The rainy season in Rwanda had not quite begun, and so everything was dusty and dry and golden, with only bits of green in the wetter spots. Here, it is still like a garden; I have found each a nice contrast to the other.
It took us much longer to drive to the Serengeti than we had thought it would; instead of two leisurely partial days of driving, it took us all of the hours of daylight on our first day driving to get to Mwanza on the shores of Lake Victoria, and much of the next day to get from there to Seronera.
I thought of Stanley and Livingstone and Burton and Speke and that other one, as we approached Lake Victoria. Not too long ago, a Rwandan man showed me decisively on a map the Source-of-the-Nile-in-Rwanda. There are, of course, sources of the Nile all over the place; in fact a whole watershed full of them, I would imagine. Makes me wonder just what those guys were looking to find, when they set out on their Quests for the Source, and whether Lake Victoria was ever enough of a Holy Grail for them, or whether they always felt unsatisfied. (I'm sure there are a lot of biographies about this in my future, waiting to be read.) I imagine Livingstone's journeys cut short by an enormous summer thunderstorm in Ethiopia - "This is it!" he cries, drenched by the rain that's about to flood the river, "I've found it! The Source of the Nile!"
But I digress.
Crossing the border from Rwanda to Tanzania took a long time. It is not that the Rusumo Falls border crossing is particularly high-traffic, but there was of course the requisite amount of standing in line to fill out papers, and the early-morning line of trucks waiting to cross that we had to navigate around.
On the other side, everything was different right away.
Okay, no it wasn't. But the landscape did change quite soon. The densely-packed farms with their banana trees and living fences, villages every mile, and people everywhere pushing bicycles loaded with water jugs and bananas, the children thronging their way to school, the steep hills and narrow valleys - these all all petered out almost immediately to be replaced by scrub woodland (the sort that looks as though it's exhausted from regrowing itself too many times) with occasional farms. And then as we drove east, the land flattened and the dirt stayed red. The woodland (some places fuller and better grown than others) changed to plains with enormous trees (some of them baobabs, Adansonia digitata, some of them not); the hills were made of exposed, weathered lumps of granite. There are not so many villages along that road, and not so much traffic on it, though more than half of it is paved. It is pretty empty country, is Western Tanzania. I mean - relatively speaking.
Driving is driving, I guess; not very exciting, either while it's happening or afterwards. So we did a lot of that, and then we stayed in Mwanza, which is a biggish town, and then we went on the Serengeti.
I feel a little dumb, trying to say anything about the Serengeti. I'm sure other people have said it better.
We found Anne (who is, for those of you interested in Anne, in glowing good healthy and apparently quite happy doing fascinating good work; as beautiful and amazing and fun as ever). Anne has a lot of fantastic bones at her house; all different antelope skulls with long curly horns, big beefy cape buffalo and also giraffe legs, looking like machine parts. I covet them, of course; knowing just how illegal it would be for them to have left the park in my possession, and knowing that I would never do that, does not make me any less covetous.
So, then, we went to a lodge and stayed there and drove around looking for animals for a few days. And found some! A few cheetahs, dutifully photographed and whatnot for Anne's Scientific Information. And so many other things.
We saw a pride of lions eating a zebra in the early morning under an acacia tree, with a bunch of hyaenas circling around. The lions would growl at the hyaenas, who were stealing a leg here and a chunk of skin there, making their hyaena noises (which, in contrast to what I had imagined, they make with their noses down almost to the ground) - until finally the lions had eaten enough and gave up and left or were driven off, leaving the hyaenas to chase each other around and jackals to lick the ground. Man, oh man are hyaenas ever beautiful and fascinating.
(In case anyone was wondering, these hyaenas were the spotted variety, Crocuta crocuta - the kind that people once thought were hermaphroditic, where the females have higher testosterone levels than the males, and false scrotums.)
We saw hippos out of water in the afternoon, a little suprisingly. A mother and two young 'uns eating stuff by the banks of a scummy pond. The mother had an oxpecker-dug hole in her side (with the oxpecker still poking his beak in sometimes) that looked ouchy. Anne says that someone published a paper recently suggesting that oxpeckers do not only eat the parasites off the large herbivores; they also seem to enlarge and keep open the parasite holes, and eat the flesh of the hippos (or whatever) directly. I say in response, a wildlife researcher is a wonderful companion to have in the Serengeti.
We a saw a porcupine that had stayed awake too long, rushing all waddly for cover in the early early morning in the shortgrass plains; warthog mamas and their little piggy babies running around; gazelles and antelopes and buffalo and jackals and all manner of neat birds; and then the elephants.
The managers of the lodge we stayed at, who are friends of Anne's, are Elephant Enthusiasts. And so I saw a lot of elephants. And I loved them! All huge and beautiful and intelligent - elephants often return to the bones of dead relatives and pick them up and touch them, and elephants sometimes bury their dead.
We watched some (a few mothers and several offspring) drinking when they had broken into a well near the lodge. The older ones with the long-enough trunks would kneel to reach down and suck out water. The little ones would suck it out of the mouths of their mothers and siblings.
We saw twenty-some of them, early one morning, heading off quietly and purposefully to god-knows-where across the plains. Anne took lots of pictures; we drove in circles around them for half an hour, and they looked at us, but just kept on going.
The most amazing part of looking at the elephants, though, is when they look right back at you. We sat one evening, drinking beer in the Land Rover parked right next to some elephants eating at sunset; we looked out at the elephants and drank beer, and they looked in at us and ate grass.
I'm back in Rwanda now; we are off to look at gorillas tomorrow, and then I will return to Virginia on Tuesday.
It has stopped raining. The sun has come out. I hope that all of you are well and happy.
07 November 2005
Surprise!
by Cecily
My stepdad bought a new hot air balloon. "New to him" as my mother was quick to observe. Its name is the Surprise. It is very patriotic.
We (well, he) had a hot air balloon when I was little. Its name was Bad Gravity and it was substantially more aesthetically pleasing that this new one.
If less patriotic.
I am VERY excited about this new development, lest my snotty remarks about what balloon is the prettiest of them all throw anyone off. I love the Surprise!
Anyone who wants a hot air balloon ride, come to Montana in December. I'm getting my pilot's license so watch out.
We (well, he) had a hot air balloon when I was little. Its name was Bad Gravity and it was substantially more aesthetically pleasing that this new one.
If less patriotic.
I am VERY excited about this new development, lest my snotty remarks about what balloon is the prettiest of them all throw anyone off. I love the Surprise!
Anyone who wants a hot air balloon ride, come to Montana in December. I'm getting my pilot's license so watch out.
05 November 2005
those crazy German artists
by Cecily
Do you have quicktime on your computer? Go look at this movie immediately
I don't know what the soundtrack is, because I can't hear it. But it probably wouldn't help anyway since the website is all in German and I don't know any German. I really don't care, though, as it turns out, because just watching the movie as a silent film is still making me all teary-eyed in love with the world.
I don't know what the soundtrack is, because I can't hear it. But it probably wouldn't help anyway since the website is all in German and I don't know any German. I really don't care, though, as it turns out, because just watching the movie as a silent film is still making me all teary-eyed in love with the world.
04 November 2005
popularity
by Cecily
I had a weekend of more social interaction than ever before! It was fun but exhausting.
First, Maryrose and Trisha came to town. We drank beer and ate ice cream and vegetables.
Then Joanna came to town. We drank wine and hung out in the back yard.
Then we had a Halloween Fun Party at my house. It involved wearing costumes, and then becoming intoxicated and taking parts of the costumes off and putting other costumes on and generally being kind of drunk.
Also there was some dancing around in crash helmets
Then it was time to get back to work. The fun is over.
First, Maryrose and Trisha came to town. We drank beer and ate ice cream and vegetables.
Then Joanna came to town. We drank wine and hung out in the back yard.
Then we had a Halloween Fun Party at my house. It involved wearing costumes, and then becoming intoxicated and taking parts of the costumes off and putting other costumes on and generally being kind of drunk.
Also there was some dancing around in crash helmets
Then it was time to get back to work. The fun is over.
28 October 2005
by Cecily
This girl is so funny I want to cry a little bit. She says things like this:
I HATE IT WHEN JACOB FALLS ASLEEP BEFORE ME.
I GET BORED.
AND LAST NIGHT I WAS DRUNK AND BORED.
SO I CAREFULLY PLACED LITTLE PRAISE STICKERS THAT SAID THINGS LIKE 'WAY TO GO' AND 'EXCELLENT WORK' AND 'MUCH IMPROVED' ALL OVER JACOBS FACE AND ARMS.
I HATE IT WHEN JACOB FALLS ASLEEP BEFORE ME.
I GET BORED.
AND LAST NIGHT I WAS DRUNK AND BORED.
SO I CAREFULLY PLACED LITTLE PRAISE STICKERS THAT SAID THINGS LIKE 'WAY TO GO' AND 'EXCELLENT WORK' AND 'MUCH IMPROVED' ALL OVER JACOBS FACE AND ARMS.
27 October 2005
dress-up
by Cecily
My favorite party that I've ever had so far was a really spur-of-the-moment event that happened one summer when I was home from college. My sister was home, too, and our old family friend Anna. Plus some other hangers-on; a number of Anna's college friends were in town for the weekend. Jocelyn and I had never met them before.
Anyway we decided to have a party. "Come over to our mom's house later" we told a couple of people "we'll hang out over there."
When I say "party" here, you should not envision a bunch of people standing around drinking drinks and making small talk. Instead, you should envision about ten 20-something college kids rummaging through a treasure chest for costume items and dancing around the living room while "Camel Walk" is on repeat, really really loud.
A newcomer showed up, straight from the airport, in the midst of all this. He was one of the ones I hadn't met but he took one look at the scene and made a beeline for the costume box. A few minutes later, he was decked out in a brown wig, a tiara, a Marvin-the-Martian neck thing, a tutu, and some cowboy boots.
Then we played Zoom Schwartz Profigliano for a while, and practiced our Fancy Walkin.
My other favorite parties were the Science Parties we had in Minnesota. Those had costume boxes, too.
There is something really great about having people show up to your house and the first thing they do is dig through a box of stuff to find a costume. I think it marks the fact that now you are at a party; you MUST be at a party because look at that crazy outfit you're wearing!
We're having a Halloween party at my house on Saturday. I am partly excited and partly sad. The excited part is because Halloween is fun! And I get to wear that big giant head costume and dance around. The sad part is because I like dressing other people up and all of my fancy costumes are in a box in Minneapolis.
I'll improvise and everything. But it won't be the same. Last year I made an Evil Tooth Fairy costume for Trisha, including a tool belt with dental picks and a necklace of bloody teeth. And a Rapunzel-in-the-tower costume with a wig made out of bright yellow yarn. And an Andy-Warhol-painting-of-Marilyn costume where your eyes looked out of the picture, just like in Scooby Doo.
Then I made a lot of costumes for the adorable elementary school play I was the boss of. Wolves and ravens and a huge horse head. Princess hats. Fur-trimmed cloaks. Etc.
Why didn't I realize I would want these things for playing dress-up? It totally would have been worth the price of shipping one more box.
Anyway we decided to have a party. "Come over to our mom's house later" we told a couple of people "we'll hang out over there."
When I say "party" here, you should not envision a bunch of people standing around drinking drinks and making small talk. Instead, you should envision about ten 20-something college kids rummaging through a treasure chest for costume items and dancing around the living room while "Camel Walk" is on repeat, really really loud.
A newcomer showed up, straight from the airport, in the midst of all this. He was one of the ones I hadn't met but he took one look at the scene and made a beeline for the costume box. A few minutes later, he was decked out in a brown wig, a tiara, a Marvin-the-Martian neck thing, a tutu, and some cowboy boots.
Then we played Zoom Schwartz Profigliano for a while, and practiced our Fancy Walkin.
My other favorite parties were the Science Parties we had in Minnesota. Those had costume boxes, too.
There is something really great about having people show up to your house and the first thing they do is dig through a box of stuff to find a costume. I think it marks the fact that now you are at a party; you MUST be at a party because look at that crazy outfit you're wearing!
We're having a Halloween party at my house on Saturday. I am partly excited and partly sad. The excited part is because Halloween is fun! And I get to wear that big giant head costume and dance around. The sad part is because I like dressing other people up and all of my fancy costumes are in a box in Minneapolis.
I'll improvise and everything. But it won't be the same. Last year I made an Evil Tooth Fairy costume for Trisha, including a tool belt with dental picks and a necklace of bloody teeth. And a Rapunzel-in-the-tower costume with a wig made out of bright yellow yarn. And an Andy-Warhol-painting-of-Marilyn costume where your eyes looked out of the picture, just like in Scooby Doo.
Then I made a lot of costumes for the adorable elementary school play I was the boss of. Wolves and ravens and a huge horse head. Princess hats. Fur-trimmed cloaks. Etc.
Why didn't I realize I would want these things for playing dress-up? It totally would have been worth the price of shipping one more box.
22 October 2005
Enrichment Day
by Cecily
We didn't have any classes at my school last Tuesday, because it was Enrichment Day. That is because there are no real holidays on Tuesdays and they have to balance out the classes. Some enriching activities (including free lunch) happened on campus, but I did not attend. I had my own private enrichment day, which included having lunch at the Sculpture Garden with my uncle, drinking coffee, and reading. My day also involved one very delicious kind of enrichment, and its name is Birthday Cake
I have made some fancy cakes before, but this one is the hands down winner so far. I think it is because I used its weight in frosting to glue it all together.
It was a cake for Julie, and she liked it.
but the best part is how deceptively pink and white the outside is. Because really, it looks like this!
That was a fun and tasty project. I love enrichment day!
I have made some fancy cakes before, but this one is the hands down winner so far. I think it is because I used its weight in frosting to glue it all together.
It was a cake for Julie, and she liked it.
but the best part is how deceptively pink and white the outside is. Because really, it looks like this!
That was a fun and tasty project. I love enrichment day!
21 October 2005
language and anger management
by Cecily
I just read "The Linguistics Wars" which is full of smart academics saying nasty, mean things to and about each other and then being angry and offended. Plus there's some social commentary in there, too, about the 60s. The part that I like the most in this book is all of the witty examples that the rebellious Generative Semanticists use in their scholarly publications. Usually they are about Nixon, as it turns out. Often about Nixon lingering in a men's room somewhere. Oh, those wacky linguists!
Either that, or they are personal attacks on other linguists who disagree with whatever. Like Noam Chomsky for example, they all say mean things about him and then he says mean things back and then everyone does interviews in which they act like they were being totally mature the whole time and they are baffled by the reaction of the other party.
This is an issue that hit home with me, because there is some social uproar happening in my classes. I can't really tell why. Some of it is related to personal dislike, on the parts of various people and in varying degrees. Some of it is related to widely varying discourse styles. But a lot of animosity and general awkwardness seems completely inexplicable. One kid got up and left the classroom in the middle of a discussion a couple of weeks ago. There are sporadic rounds of vitriolic or defensive or apologetic emails sent all over. Meetings are had wherein students complain about each other to professors and about professors to each other and about some professors to other professors.
The whole thing is making me really nervous. Nervous and also annoyed. Maybe I'll start circulating underground revolutionary mimeographs denouncing all of the people who say stupid things. I'll do it anonymously and everyone will have to stop making offensive remarks and talking shit about each other for fear of being publicly ridiculed.
Either that, or they are personal attacks on other linguists who disagree with whatever. Like Noam Chomsky for example, they all say mean things about him and then he says mean things back and then everyone does interviews in which they act like they were being totally mature the whole time and they are baffled by the reaction of the other party.
This is an issue that hit home with me, because there is some social uproar happening in my classes. I can't really tell why. Some of it is related to personal dislike, on the parts of various people and in varying degrees. Some of it is related to widely varying discourse styles. But a lot of animosity and general awkwardness seems completely inexplicable. One kid got up and left the classroom in the middle of a discussion a couple of weeks ago. There are sporadic rounds of vitriolic or defensive or apologetic emails sent all over. Meetings are had wherein students complain about each other to professors and about professors to each other and about some professors to other professors.
The whole thing is making me really nervous. Nervous and also annoyed. Maybe I'll start circulating underground revolutionary mimeographs denouncing all of the people who say stupid things. I'll do it anonymously and everyone will have to stop making offensive remarks and talking shit about each other for fear of being publicly ridiculed.
18 October 2005
feline grace
by Cecily
My cat fell down the stairs last night. She leapt onto the bannister from the upstairs landing, in an attempt to be catlike and graceful. She really had no business being up on that bannister except to pretend like she wasn't trying hard at all and yet look, there she is, on a high narrow thing being graceful.
Sadly, though, she totally overshot. She made it up to the bannister all right, but then the whole act went south as she slid across the (very narrow) surface and tumbled over it, twisting and clawing and frantically trying to look cool as she went. During the fall I had a lot of nightmare visions about cats lying broken-backed on the stairs while I tried to call the emergency vet via relay on a hand-held wireless device.
But in fact what happened, at least from my perspective up on the landing looking down, was that the cat more or less bounced. Fell two flights straight south, hit the uncarpeted stairs, bounced, and ran off into the kitchen to recover her dignity.
She was kind of twitchy for the rest of the evening (every so often she'd suddenly bound across the room, fur standing straight on its ends, and glare at everyone wildly as though we had been making inappropriate racial slurs) but other than that, fine.
What the fuck? I can't even walk into a room without bruising myself in some ridiculous fashion. Accidentally kicking a table, running headfirst into the doorframe, etc. I am constantly covered with inexplicable wounds. Yesterday I cut myself on a plastic chair. Yes, that's right, I CUT MYSELF ON A PLASTIC CHAIR. Don't feel too bad, it's more like a paper cut than anything else. I'll live.
Maybe if I run into the kitchen real quick-like I'll find my dignity
Sadly, though, she totally overshot. She made it up to the bannister all right, but then the whole act went south as she slid across the (very narrow) surface and tumbled over it, twisting and clawing and frantically trying to look cool as she went. During the fall I had a lot of nightmare visions about cats lying broken-backed on the stairs while I tried to call the emergency vet via relay on a hand-held wireless device.
But in fact what happened, at least from my perspective up on the landing looking down, was that the cat more or less bounced. Fell two flights straight south, hit the uncarpeted stairs, bounced, and ran off into the kitchen to recover her dignity.
She was kind of twitchy for the rest of the evening (every so often she'd suddenly bound across the room, fur standing straight on its ends, and glare at everyone wildly as though we had been making inappropriate racial slurs) but other than that, fine.
What the fuck? I can't even walk into a room without bruising myself in some ridiculous fashion. Accidentally kicking a table, running headfirst into the doorframe, etc. I am constantly covered with inexplicable wounds. Yesterday I cut myself on a plastic chair. Yes, that's right, I CUT MYSELF ON A PLASTIC CHAIR. Don't feel too bad, it's more like a paper cut than anything else. I'll live.
Maybe if I run into the kitchen real quick-like I'll find my dignity
03 October 2005
morphology
by Cecily
One of my classes is studying morphology right now. This is my new favorite word. "morphology"- it means exactly what you would think it would mean, if your only basis for an educated guess were Saturday morning cartoons. It means studying how things (well, words, mostly) morph into other things (also mostly words).
I am spending a lot of time fantasizing about doing totally ridiculous and time-consuming projects that I know would not be widely perceived as a very good use of resources. Like for example, I'm really excited about the idea of re-captioning a Simpson's episode so that all of the dialogue shows up in phonetic notation.
And, for another example, a comic strip (or animated short?) where the Power Rangers morph in a linguistic sense, somehow, and words and inflections are used to fight the forces of evil…
Clearly, that one needs a little more thought.
I am spending a lot of time fantasizing about doing totally ridiculous and time-consuming projects that I know would not be widely perceived as a very good use of resources. Like for example, I'm really excited about the idea of re-captioning a Simpson's episode so that all of the dialogue shows up in phonetic notation.
And, for another example, a comic strip (or animated short?) where the Power Rangers morph in a linguistic sense, somehow, and words and inflections are used to fight the forces of evil…
Clearly, that one needs a little more thought.
02 October 2005
when you're a stranger
by Cecily
My third-grade teacher didn't let us use the word "weird." She said it meant "creepy" and "spooky" and "supernatural," and that all of us third-graders really wanted to express the idea related to the word "strange." Her name was Mrs. Wiggins. She was pretty old, I thought, but then again I was only 8 so what did I know.
I still feel a little guilty whenever I describe something as "weird" when I know Mrs. Wiggins would say it was merely odd. But I'm not as convinced as she was that those are two separate things, weirdness and strangeness.
Anyway, it's pretty weird to be back in school. I spend a lot of time in my bedroom, working on things and staring out the window. When I lived in Minnesota, I used to spend a lot of time staring out the window. Way more time than I do now, in fact, but it was qualitatively different staring. I had no goals. I wasn't trying to think of a word, and I wasn't taking a break from hard cognitive labor. I was just sitting there on the couch, staring out the window.
Now when I stare out the window it's only for a few seconds at a time and I feel a very complete sense of isolation. I'm way more in an ivory tower now than I ever was as an undergraduate. Or maybe I just notice it now.
Other people are pretty weird to me, lately, too. I've had a couple of conversations about how much I suck at accurately predicting what anyone else's reaction will be to anything. Obviously, that's an exaggeration- I was able to carry on the conversations, at least. But a surprising percentage of my interactions with other people involve me being completely taken aback, baffled even, by what they say and how they say it.
Which is mostly good, because it would be really boring if I already knew what everyone was going to say all the time. But occasionally not so great, because it is a great hindrance to relationships when I never know what anyone else is talking about, or why.
I still feel a little guilty whenever I describe something as "weird" when I know Mrs. Wiggins would say it was merely odd. But I'm not as convinced as she was that those are two separate things, weirdness and strangeness.
Anyway, it's pretty weird to be back in school. I spend a lot of time in my bedroom, working on things and staring out the window. When I lived in Minnesota, I used to spend a lot of time staring out the window. Way more time than I do now, in fact, but it was qualitatively different staring. I had no goals. I wasn't trying to think of a word, and I wasn't taking a break from hard cognitive labor. I was just sitting there on the couch, staring out the window.
Now when I stare out the window it's only for a few seconds at a time and I feel a very complete sense of isolation. I'm way more in an ivory tower now than I ever was as an undergraduate. Or maybe I just notice it now.
Other people are pretty weird to me, lately, too. I've had a couple of conversations about how much I suck at accurately predicting what anyone else's reaction will be to anything. Obviously, that's an exaggeration- I was able to carry on the conversations, at least. But a surprising percentage of my interactions with other people involve me being completely taken aback, baffled even, by what they say and how they say it.
Which is mostly good, because it would be really boring if I already knew what everyone was going to say all the time. But occasionally not so great, because it is a great hindrance to relationships when I never know what anyone else is talking about, or why.
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