my neighbor sings the blues

Via text message. By accident.

My arms hurt so bad
I laid down
And can't get up
Literally
Bob said
What ails you?
I said Chronic Loneliness.
And everyone felt reaaal awkward

My neighbor is a text-message-by-accident Blues GENIUS.

Q: If that same pirate were then to recite a 20th-century poem about the nature of poetry, what would it be?

Language Hat:

Archibald MacLeish famously ended his 1926 "Ars Poetica" with "A poem should not mean/ But be." I learn from Peter Howarth in the LRB that Robert Frost put a nasty spin on this in a notebook entry: "A poem shouldn't mean, it should be mean." So much for the grandfatherly figure maundering about roads not taken, so beloved of careless skimmers of anthologies.

Mean poems!

alphabet. ballet dancing. sort of.

She's 2 now. Watch out.

via

Thundersnow!

Weather is exciting around here these days. My life, not so much. I've spent 427 of the last 36 hours writing a paper. The end.

tickle tickle

You probably haven't been doing enough of this lately.

orthoexaggeration

Lukas and I had a fight* the other day about whether or not people should ever use the word "overexaggerate". Lukas said no, and that anyone who did so was being extremely irritating. I said well they probably were being extremely irritating but you theoretically could use the word in an acceptable way regardless and that the irritatingness was a red herring.

For example: Some people have a tendency towards underexaggeration when they are telling a story.** And they will tell you all about EXACTLY what day and time and what dress they were wearing and what they had for lunch and if they did something on the way to the bank or the way home. This is also extremely irritating.

Other people*** exaggerate precisely the right amount, being neither too boringly pedantically precise nor ridiculously hyperbolic. Neither under- nor over-exaggerating. The Platonic Ideal of exaggeration. The exact combination of facts and artistic license that everyone agrees is the Best Way. We**** should all try to be more like these people.







*There is some chance that this word choice might be considered an example of overexaggeration. Since in fact what we had was a three-turn conversation via text message in which no one disagreed with anyone else.

**Midwestern women particularly. According to Discourse Linguists.

***Like me, mainly.

****you

Valentimes is Serious Times

(www.homestarrunner.com)

oh, hi there internet

I'm in Seattle for this conference. Seattle is damp, the conference was great, now it is over. I have a fever. Tomorrow my goal is to go look at lots of fishes in giant tanks. Wooo! Aquarium!

I'll be back soon don't worry.

Who I is

Google tells us:

Cecily is the director of the Forest.
Cecily is slated to arrive at 7pm.
Cecily is a doll!
Cecily is no exception.
Cecily is such a tease.
Cecily is a dainty fascinator.
Cecily is not a quirky, ditzy free-spirit.
Cecily is no Donalda Trump.
Cecily is not a member of any Causes.

These things have been happening to me: (1) freezing rain (2) stomach flu (3) conference prep.

Now, of course, it is like 60 degrees and sunny around here. Will there be another 30-degree jump in temperature by tomorrow? Will I need rainboots or snowshoes or sunscreen? Will I want the windows open or closed? Will I ever grow tired of complaining about the totally whacked out weather in DC? Only time will tell, my friends. Only time will tell.

I am really excited to see what this post does for my referral stats

So I was thinking about the title I put on that post about the Chinese hotel bathtub rule and wishing I had titled it something else. I know, I know, life's too short for regrets, don't cry over spilled milk, what's done is done, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, you can't squeeze blood from a turnip. But listen! if you don't consider your mistakes and shortcomings how will you learn and grow? And by "you", I mean "me".*

Anyway I titled it thusly:

Attontion! Crazy Germans!

but it occurred to me today that a much better title would have been

Attontion! Naked German Tourists!

This would have been incrementally more pithy and entertaining and also a more accurate reflection of the post's content (which included mention of people who were German, who were naked, and who were tourists in China, but did not make any explicit reference to these people's state or states of mental well-being and/or lack thereof).

Oh, well. Life goes on. You win some, you lose some. The beat goes on. Don't change horses in the middle of the stream. Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead. The point is, you know what would not have been a good title? This:

Attontion! Naked Tourist Germans!

This is interesting** because "German" is a perfectly good noun in English, as well as being an adjective. And "tourist" can be an adjective too (examples, more examples). So I do not know why "German tourist" is so much better than "tourist German". It is a mystery! A mystery for the syntacticians to solve and then write incomprehensible papers about. Potentially a mystery that has already been solved and written about incomprehensibly by the syntacticians. Since I don't read syntax papers I will probably never know, and by extension, neither will you. Too bad for both of us.

In conclusion, what I really should have used for the title is

Attontion! Tourist German Nakeds!

Sorry guys. I'll try to do better next time.




*Actually I probably mean "I". Possibly "you", though. Maybe all three. In reality, it's usually kind of hard to tell what I mean. I don't worry about it too much.

**Interesting to ME. Why? Who did you think I meant?

Olive wins

You might think your baby is cute, and, all right, fair enough, it probably is. But does your baby have a heart-shaped birthmark on its cheek?



Well, Sarah and Brian's baby does.

Holy Moses!

Last night my neighbor friend hosted a Burning Bush party.



We all watched Bruce and Pete on the big tv and got teary eyed and patriotic, and then yelled while we put things on the fire, and then had a dance party.



I contributed a Bush to burn.



Yay! America! Woo! Fire!



photos by Holly, as usual.

smorgasomething

Dear internet,

A. okay have you guys seen this game? it is so, so great. I can't stop doing it, much to the sorrow of all my piles of un-dealt-with-other-things. All (or no, depending on your attitude) thanks to Michael.

B. the district is finally a state! A state of emergency that is. Ha ha ha ha ha. Good luck if you live around here and have to leave your house between now and Wednesday.

C. My friendly neighborhood neighbors have started a food blog, to which I might sometimes contribute something if I ever get off my high horse and write any blog entries at all.

D. My little sister got into vet school at Cornell. She is going to be an Ivy League Large Animal Veterinarian. I don't have a link for you about this topic, but I would just like to point out that my little sister is SO MUCH more badass than your little sister.

That is all.

kisses,
Cecily

family update: almost-a-dog-napping* edition

Remember Oscar?



Oscar has apparently been having adventures, over there in Mozambique. My father reports:

Oscar got lost the other day. In piecing together the various bits and pieces, it seems like he was outside in the afternoon when a mechanic was working on our "new" car. (We just bought a second car, and the belts needed to be replaced.). When the mechanic took the car out, Oscar apparently ran out. There was a new guard (Yes, we have 24-7 guards at the house, as do most people. It's a little strange walking around. I'm not sure if greeting all the guards on the sidewalk is a standard civility, or an intrusion.), who wasn't able to call Oscar back. That evening, I was walking around with the guard looking for Oscar, and left my phone number with some people saying we'd pay a reward for his return.

The next day, I got a call and from a guy who said he had a lead. It looks like there was a young guy who found Oscar, and took him to his employer's house. (She seemed to be a nice woman who likes dogs, not a Dog-napping Queen.) The person closest to sleazy was the go-between. He seems to be basically a street-savvy hustler. His role, I suppose, was calling around to his contacts to see who had a dog fitting Oscar's description. He was a sharp-dresssed guy, crisp white shirt with cuff links, crisp pants. His vehicle was unusual, by my experience. It was a small Japanese or Indian truck/pickup, one of those flat-nosed jobs, with a big flat bed and sides that come down like a tailgate. It was clean, and had sporty wheels with low-profile tires. An odd combination of sporty-looking and utilitarian.

Anyway, Oscar had a couple of wounds, apparently from encounters with other dogs. That suggests to me that he wasn't just stolen as soon as he got out, and that he got spooked, wandered around, and eventually the kid picked him up, figuring that there'd be a reward for him. (One of the local peculiarities is that there are street dogs, a lot of people who are unfamiliar with dogs, and a recognized stolen-dog market. People go there to shop for exotic dogs, and perhaps to buy their dog back.) When we got to the place that had Oscar, and then we were waiting for a while, I called the US Embassy, and they sent an investigator (Mozambican) over to inquire about the situation. (The local security guys like to know about strange things going on.) He came, and had some police friends come, too. None of the participants, except us, were very happy to see the police. They explained that we didn't have to pay anything, but that we could if we wanted. In the end, we decided that Oscar really had been found, not stolen, and paid rewards.

It's probably all because he is so famous on the internet.



What a ridiculous animal.

*Did you notice how this hyphenated term results in some ambiguity? It could mean there was almost a dognapping. On the other hand, it could mean an almost-a-dog was 'napped. Hell yeah I did that on purpose. I have a Master's Degree in Linguistics!

Attontion! crazy Germans!

my stepdaddy took this picture in a hotel in... somewhere in China.



Elizabeth, my resident neighborhood expert on Sino-Parental Affairs, says that the Chinese part actually tells you to be clothed when you have the door open.

She adds "probably because of all the naked German tourists", but I think this was commentary and not actually included in the text*.




*Do we call characters "text"? Or does "text" only mean alphabet-style phone-based writing? I should probably learn the answers to these pressing questions.