I still exist

Here's a little something just for you. To tide you over until I finish my dissertation, or give up on it, or think of something funny to say:

Bittily brattily
Goldilocks, Goldilocks
What have you done with the
porridge and chairs?

Some stories make you a
defenestrationist;
others end sadly: you're
eaten by bears.

I'm a charmer is why

If papers, handouts, etc have a blank side, I put them in a drawer to use for scratch paper later. Here's what was on the "blank" side of the piece of paper I just pulled out:



Based on the other side of the paper, this is from a class about language politics and planning in 2006. I have no idea what the other relevant details were that led to this being drawn.

It's much harder to draw lots of hilarious cartoons during a class now that I am usually teaching the class.

Other in-class cartoons from my more-prototypically-studential days were about theta roles, morphology, and the extremely irritating and frustratingly common belief that gorillas can learn ASL*. I still haven't gotten around to the one about Phonology + Chrononhotonthologos = Phonolohotonthologos. Yet.

*Those last two, while they began in a classroom setting, involved substantial extracurricular efforts as well.

Oh, hello

I gotta make this quick because I'm under strict instructions from my advisor not to get distracted from working on my dissertation. He had a whole list of things I wasn't supposed to get distracted by, and I think "the internet" was on it, but I wasn't really paying attention because there was something pretty outside the window.

Speaking of writing my dissertation, hey, remember that time I was in college and I was writing my senior thesis and I accidentally listened to so much Bruce Springsteen while I was in my thesis office that I accidentally trained myself to ONLY be able to write my thesis if there was Bruce Springsteen in the background?

Seriously. It started with a 1-week period where I was all "ooh this live album is great! I'll listen to it over and over on giant headphones for a while!" And then I think it was habit, or I didn't have any other CDs in my office, or something. Anyway I kept listening to it for a few more days while I worked.

And then I got bored of Bruce Springsteen so I started listening to something else, but my brain had been Pavlov's-dog-'d into not being able to write my thesis to any soundtrack other than the Boss. I tried, and every time I tried, I didn't get anything accomplished. When I switched back to Live 1975-1985 (Disc 1) I would churn out lots of pages of beautiful ideas about Hildegard von Bingen and her sources of authority.

Man, by the end of that spring, I HATED Bruce Springsteen and his stupid E Street Band. I did graduate though.*

The point of this story is that I might have accidentally trained my brain again to demand only old school Billy Joel. Specifically, mainly, "The Longest Time" and "You May Be Right". I'm trying to branch out but it's hard work, and I'm worried that fooling around with my background music might count as being distracted.

Another thing that might count as being distracted is all the daydreaming/internet browsing I am doing about Bluetooth hearing aids. They are so shiny! If only I had $4,000. You know how I could get $4,000? If I had a real job. You know how I could get a real job? If I finished my stupid dissertation. So, back to that. See you around!



*My thesis advisor also mentioned to me, at one point, that I should try not to "get distracted by shiny things". I don't know why everyone thinks I'm so flaky, I totally know how to finish

My state is prettier than your state

While I was in Montana I drove to Billings. It was a very nice drive. Now I am back in the good old District of Constitution, daydreaming about mountains and open roads.

I been to wild Montana

I'm in Missoula. It took me 25 hours to get here, counting from when I left my house yesterday. That wasn't very fun, and now I'm kind of sick, but I'm sitting on the couch amidst many parents, siblings, and hangers-on, and somebody is probably going to build me a fire and bring me a beer any minute now so overall I'd say things turned out okay.

Petty complaints dept.

1. My downstairs, where I hang out with my friends, is very freezing. My upstairs, where I sleep, is very hot. This is the opposite of how I would prefer things to be.


2. My printer ran out of paper halfway through so I went to school, where one printer is busted and the other printer is very low on ink and neither printer prints color. My final printed product was unevenly inked and colored, which displeases me.


3. Then the post office was closed so I had to drive to a different post office and people in traffic did things of which I did not approve.


4. Now I feel like I'm done doing things. I have accomplished enough. Sadly, there are still things left that other people are expecting me to do.


5. I think I'm getting a sinus infection, and I have to get on bunch of planes on Thursday. Two thumbs down, Sinuses.


6. This list of complaints is way more "whiny and annoying" than "funny" or "provoking others to large amounts of sympathy and/or gifts", so I'm probably not even going to get anything out of it.

Whatever. I am almost done with the semester. Almost. See you soon, internet.

Q &/or A

A linguistics professor won a bunch of money on a game show. CBC News wrote this sentence about it:

Kennedy, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, won $17,700, capping his win by correctly answering "What is a Quarter Horse?" to the question "This American breed was named for its ability to race a distance of 1,320 feet" in the horse breeds category.

The question has become the answer, and the answer, the question. It's like that saying about chickens and eggs, sort of. Or like that other thing where you say "this sentence is false" and then everyone is so confused. Because what is a question, really? Or an answer? We may never know.

Alex Trebek, what have you done?

Toponyms

I was reading the news (instead of writing my dissertation or grading tests or applying for jobs or cleaning my room or doing the dishes or any of the other things I'm supposed to be getting done) and noticed this sentence that President Obama apparently said:

"She is a hero of mine and a source of inspiration for all who work to advance basic human rights in Burma and around the world"

The title of the article calls the country in question "Myanmar", and the article is at Al Jazeera, who I usually assume are on the leftest side of naming conventions. I remembered having at least one conversation with someone who knew about the difference between calling this country Burma and calling it Myanmar, but I did not remember the content of the conversation so I looked it up on Wikipedia. It is very interesting!

The two names are different-register variants of the same Burmese word (according to Wikipedia). Phonetic register variation: interesting.

Obama used the opposition version (according to Wikipedia) while stodgy old Al Jazeera English used the oppressive regime name (according to Wikipedia). Political implications/subtext: interesting.

Teaching is fun.

We had a really awesome (for me) and hilarious (to me) conversation in class yesterday wherein every one of the students was completely taken aback by my claim that nouns are NOT people, places, or things, but just words that have particular qualities. There was like a 20 minute tangential discussion/vocabulary review that wound up with everyone being sort of angry and confused by my claim that the chair I kept using for an example was not a noun, but the English word "chair" and the ASL sign for "chair" are nouns.

"BUT THAT IS A CHAIR."
"Yes."
"THAT'S WHAT IT'S CALLED."
"Yes."
"'CHAIR' IS A NOUN."
"Yes."
"SO THAT CHAIR IS A NOUN."

Eventually the discussion resulted in me writing lists on the board of "characteristics of the chair" and "characteristics of the ASL sign "chair"

chair: black, plastic, has wheels, has padding, can sit on it.

sign: made with 2 hands, both hands in "U" handshapes, one hand stays still, the other hand moves, noun.

Then for the next 5 minutes everyone kept zoning out and talking to themselves. When I would pause my lecture to ask what was going on, they would each (at different moments) be all "oh I was just thinking about if that cup was a noun, or if the sign "cup" was a noun" or "so the close-vision interpreter is not a noun, but if I sign "interpreter", that's a noun".

Mindblowing, for them, and incredibly entertaining, for me. Now I just need to get this shirt and wear it to class. Hilarious linguistics humor for everyone!

Linguistics Road Trip

Lindsay and Kyle came to town with their foreign sign languages and their foreign friends. Then we all drove to Indiana for a conference. Lindsay and I had big plans for our Linguistics Party Van, involving duct tape and fireworks and a keg, but Kyle is such a killjoy good influence.

Later, Lindsay and I will make a video for you, in which she tries to explain things and I make fun of her for not knowing which words go to which language.

DC politics update

Looks like DC's next mayor will be Vincent Gray. A solid standby of a spectrum election name- no frills, no nonsense, easy to pick out of a paint chip array, and in DC everyone is wearing a gray suit anyway about 80% of the time.

This was only the primary election, so most races with secondary-color-name candidates have yet to be decided. We'll have to wait for the final decision on the exciting Vincent Orange v Vincent "Kwame" Brown race for the council chair.

Dear internet,

Oh, hello.

This semester may well be the death of me. I am doing way too much of some things, and not nearly enough of other things. The first category doesn't really include anything I think anyone wants to hear very much about. The second category includes everything that is nice and good.

So far, it has been this semester for one (1) week. Maybe after some other weeks pass by, I will get a better attitude and think of something funny to tell you about.

your friend,
Cecily

bunny rabbits say "hop, hop"

Sunday afternoons are exciting times

It's a tiny town, and everybody knows what you been doin'

Random neighbor dude woke me up in the middle of the night by ringing the doorbell* repeatedly. At 2:30. My truck was parked on the next street over, and the lights were on. He was sorry to wake me, but wanted to let me know so I could turn the lights off and make sure the battery wouldn't be dead in the morning.

To clarify: when I say "random neighbor dude" I mean, I didn't recognize him. We haven't actually ever met, to my knowledge. And yet, he knows which house goes to my truck.

I haven't decided exactly how I feel about this. Famous? Important? Conspicuous? Flattered? Nervous? It's hard to say.

I didn't go turn the lights off because I was too asleep to function. Now the battery is presumably dead. Who wants to come help jump it?



*It makes the lights in my room flash on and off and the bed shakes. That's how.