"I have a Bible, a Koran, and a Book of Mormon in my bag"

...Tom said sacrilegiously.

Oh, snap! You thought I forgot about this kind of hilarious joke, didn't you? That was your first mistake, thinking I would ever be capable of forgetting about something so ridiculous.

I've been working on one about poetry, and not being able to write it, and being despondent, but it hasn't really come together for me yet.

Everything else is the same as it ever was. Except that my mom is coming to visit soon and there is only a month left of school which is alarming.

I guess now I'll go figure out all the things I have to do this weekend.

She said listlessly.

This ain't no party

Daddy-O is leaving for Afghanistan today. His training has included Growing a Beard, Learning How to Get Along With the Military, and Practicing Getting In and Out of Helicopters.

Sadly, he won't be in an area where the Italians are the lead military. Sadly because, apparently they have lots of wine on their bases. Happily, he won't be in an area that has lots of violent danger. Happily because he's my daddy.

Afghanistan is farther away than I thought it was. Mainly because I've been basing "far away" on how my mom's in China and Lindsay's in Sydney, as one extreme, and whether or not I have to leave a 3 block radius, as the other. Turns out, Aghanistan is still pretty far!

Happy Halloween.

via Catherine

almost

I've been barely recovering from one germy disease just in time to be stricken by another one, for a couple of months now. Other than that I have nothing of interest to report so you should probably go spend a few hours looking at this guy's far more entertaining and far more frequently updated website.

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Argent two bars Gules in chief three mullets in fess of the second

Last summer Ben asked me why all the DC city type things (vehicles, buildings, license plates) had three red stars and two red strips on them. Like so:



I didn't know, and my powers of internet searching were weak.

Then this fall, instead of writing my dissertation, I found out! It is the Flag of the District of Columbia, and it is based on George Washington's family coat of arms.



And the name of the coat of arms is Argent Two Bars Gules in Chief Three Mullets in Fess of the Second.

So, I think we all learned something today. You're welcome.

Small v Superball

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Unclear what happened to the ball, at the end, there. Cat seems satisfied with the outcome, whatever it was.

The Best Health Care in the World: multiple choice quiz

1. Today I went to the doctor for symptoms including intermittent fever. Without being reminded, the highly-trained medical staff remembered to do which 2 of the following 3 things?

a. take my blood pressure
b. weigh me
c. take my temperature

2. I have been exhibiting flu-like symptoms. There is a flu pandemic, and it is Normal Non-pandemic Flu Season. I do not have white spots on my throat, and I do have a cough. Which of the following tests was I given? (pick one)

a. Strep
b. seasonal flu
c. H1N1

3. After it had been determined that I do not have strep throat, which astute follow-up question was I asked?

a. Can you hear?
b. Can you read lips?
c. Have you seen a doctor about hearing loss?
d. all of the above

There is no answer sheet. The answer is screaming.

A Celebration of Special-Ness

As I was leaving campus last week after teaching at College-That-Is-Past-Damascus, I was stuck on Main Street for half an hour because there was a parade.

I don't know what the parade was for. It wasn't a holiday. I was pretty close to it all, so I could see what the parade consisted of, and what it consisted of wasn't informative. What it consisted of was marching bands, walking people with glowy necklaces, pickups with people in the beds, and various emergency vehicles with their fancy lights all flashing.

I sat there smiling at them all and feeling alternately gleeful and guilt-ridden. Because all I could think about was True Stories and how much I love David Byrne.

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I have something to say about this. But I've forgotten what it is. I have it written down at home though.

Big Brother is taking good care of me

Cab drivers in DC used to just drive around until they got somewhere and then turn to you, palm up, for money. An amount of money that as far as anyone could tell they had invented, or dreamt, or received from the gods. And the place wasn't always the place you had in mind, either.

Now, cab drivers in DC have meters and GPS. And my world is much better.

It is particularly difficult to correct-en-route a cab driver when you are deaf. Even if your voice is pretty understandable and the cab driver can hear you, he* probably won't internalize the fact that you can't hear him*. So when you try to say "turn here" or "take a right on Rhode Island" he* will probably respond to you with something you can't hear, and then later chastise you for it.

If you don't talk, and you just hand him* a piece of paper with the address/directions written on it, then you have no way of knowing what kind of mental processes are occurring as you drive. Particularly if you are a little bit or a lot drunk, this is true. Which is problematic because everyone [read: me] takes cabs a lot more often when they are a little bit or a lot drunk.

But, now, with the new fancy Fare Meter GPS rule, it is much better! You can sit in the back seat, drunkenly musing on whatever you would care to muse on, and keep an eye on the little screens in the front. One little screen will tell you where you are, and what the cab driver thinks he* is doing. There is a big bright line telling you where he* thinks he* is going! It is easy to object and correct when necessary.

Tonight, for example, I gave the nice cab driver man* a piece of paper with my address and several other ways to consider my address written on it. First, the actual mailing address. Second, the cross streets with letter and number streets. Third, the actual closest intersection to my house. In the past, this same information has yielded widely varying results, including cab drivers who thought I meant I (Eye) Street when I wrote 1st (First), and also multiple confusions between quadrants even though I was very careful to specify.

But tonight, Cab Driver Man* just typed what I wrote into his little GPS meter dealy, and I could tell right away that we were on the right track. The GPS even knew the appropriate shortcuts to take. Cab Driver Man* did not get stressed out, and I got home with zero problems and for an acceptable number of dollars.

Moral: I love GPS.

*I've not yet had a female cab driver in DC. I have no idea if this is a statistically useful sample.

holy ridiculous, Small.

naptime.



Also, she purr-snores.

I mean, I'm proud of Elizabeth, too...

This kid kind of blows my mind. As usual.

School's going good. I might actually get a degree at some time in the not terribly distant future. A student told me my class was "one of the hardest I've ever taken" which my roommate thinks I should take as a compliment but I'm not quite as sure about. DC got taken over by rabid wingnuts this weekend, but since I never leave my house it didn't really affect me. Maryrose is back in town for a visit, and the air is cool enough at night that I am contemplating the addition of another down comforter. So all in all things are pretty okay.

Family Update: Bullet Point Edition

- my mother has a pet cricket.
- my father is moving to a war zone.
- all of my siblings are enrolled in institutes of higher learning.
- Happy birthday, Tom!

So far I have been neither lost nor converted

The semester started! Summer is over. The pool is about to close. Yesterday evening you needed a SWEATER. If you left the house I mean. Not that I did that.

I'm teaching two classes this fall. So far I've taught one of each. So far so good.

One class is at a small college way far north of me, in a state*. To get to it, I have to follow the road to Damascus. I find this endlessly entertaining, and I tell myself various phrases that involve "on the way to Damascus" over and over as I drive.

*I have to leave my neighborhood, and my quadrant, and the whole DISTRICT. It is very exciting.

U-huh, uh-uh.

I think my favorite discourse phenomenon in Standard American English these days is the use of the introductory phrase "Yeah, no."

I use it ALL THE TIME. It is the most awesome way to disagree with someone, ever.

There's no real great way to do it in actual manual ASL, but a smooth gradual transition between nodding your head "yes" and shaking your head "no", combined with appropriate transformation of facial expression, does the trick discourse-wise.

Julie always gets mad at me for starting every sentence with "right, but" (in both English and ASL). This is a similar but nonidentical expression. "Right, but" expresses that while what your interlocutor has just said is true, it has failed to account for some major point that you are about to bring up. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with "right, but"; I'm just saying it's a different kind of statement than "yeah, no".

"Yeah, no", as opposed to "right, but", does not imply that the content of the interlocutor was correct, but merely that you have understood what they meant and are now contradicting it. Surprisingly, this is not necessarily a hostile position to be taking- often, in my experience, "yeah, no" is employed to acknowledge that the interlocutor's position makes sense and would be a reasonable assumption, but in fact does not obtain.

For example,

A: I'd heard of the Barefoot Benefits and all that stuff - here, no less, with that fingery-shoe conversation - but I didn't realize that by "barefoot" they meant "nothing to do with bare feet whatsoever, but rather walking on barrels like an idiot".

B: Yeah, no, these are a different phenomenon from the barely-there shoes that hippie lifeguards like.

One of my favorite undergrad professors did a really fantastic super-subtle version of this: in class, when anyone was talking, he would thoughtfully listen and nod as you went. You would gain confidence (the professor is nodding thoughtfully!) and so expand on your thesis, often to somewhat absurd little thin branches (the professor was a Professor of Art History). Finally, having concluded your analysis, you would sit, quietly, while the whole class waited and the professor continued to nod thoughtfully for a few moments.

Then he would sit up straight and say "No, I don't think that's right." Then he would tell you about how wrong it was for a while.

I loved this professor greatly, and I think everyone else did too. And I really appreciated the fact that he thought carefully about even the dumbest, longest, most hare-brained expositions about art. He thought about them carefully, nodding all the while, and then, very politely, shut you down good.

Yeah, no.

rockin it contagious

I want this guy to be my new best friend:

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