In light of recent comments...

I have decided to post.

¡Qué Monstruosidad!

Well, it's turned out nice again, hasn't it?

I just bought a genuine monstrosity from an estate sale. Kenton says so. I don't have time to say a lot - got to write my paper, but here are some genuine pictures of this genuine monstrosity which I acquired for a sum total of $5. As an added bonus - you can see our new rug!





Until next time!

Veni, vidi, volo in domum redire.
Well we had a big thing today- 18 mice all over our house, as a prank. We've caught or killed most of them and now we're trying to collect some without killing them because people want them as pets. My sister is taking two - she's naming them Cerberus and Geryon (after the giant who lowers Dante into the 8th circle of the Inferno). That reminded me of a t-shirt I liked when I saw it: Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditiones habes. It would fit her.

Anyway, we're thinking of releasing velociraptors in the girls' house (those who pranked us) as revenge. That or trouts. Pterodactyls would be too good for them.

We also went to the beach today. That was fun, unfortunately. K well that's enough for now.

More non-entertainment

My family came over for the weekend, and it was great to see them. I always end up looking upon college as a sort of expensive exile where you end up making friends and learning stuff. But it's still exile, so having my parents over lessens the blow.

I'm afraid there's nothing else exciting to report. Our Arabic class just got SLAUGHTERED by our final. The length was a little longer than most of the prof's 2-hour finals, and we only had an hour to do it in. I thought I'd be all smart and take the hardest part, composition, first, and I spent less time on some of the other parts trying to write something for it. Then, right before the end of class the professor said "I see I've made the final too long. If you want to take the composition part home and do it tonight, that's fine." Oh well, at least I'm done. Heather taught me a shortcut to reading Arabic: hold it backwards up to a light, and read it through the paper, and it looks and reads just like English. I'm not kidding! Try it! No wonder their pronunciation sounds funny...

Tomorrow I have to do an oral presentation on Icelandic Literature. I've chosen to read aloud a particularly exciting segment of a saga in which a guy tries to get another guy to look at his sick cow. The guy responds, "I don't care about your cow." Maybe later, if you're good, I'll tell you how it ends.

A thing you all should look at if you haven't:
Honda's New Accord
It is not an animation, there are no cuts or camera tricks, and it took them 606 tries to film!

Dilemma

I just dunno anymore. Kenton had this really cool t-shirt design for beach bash based on the Otter Pops picture, but it turns out it would have been too hard or expensive or both to use it, so Tim and I drew another one. I've come to really like it over the past few hours, but I'm not sure if we should use it, since a lot of people are having trouble telling what the image on the front is supposed to be. Becky said maybe we should just put a girl on the front, and I sorta like that... But I do like the front we have now, too... Opinions? It's not supposed to be a crock-pot, a bong, or a toilet.

For the front:



For the back:

Et al.

List of Recent Events:

Saturday saw me at the UCU Parent banquet, where I ran the sound and participated in the fashion show (which I, of course, stole... and never returned). That was nice.

Saturday also saw me hanging out with my friend Chris from high school as his band, Racetrack performed at KEXP, the local eclectic radio station on a local artists show. It was a good peformance, and may be heard streaming for the next few weeks at the KEXP website. They are all excited to be playing with Built to Spill next friday in B-Ham.

Sunday saw me at church, and doing homework.

Monday sees me, and I wish it would look away. It's creepy just to have it staring at me like that while I'm trying to work on my paper...

Shelley is having issues with relativity. This has happened before, but it was infinity... She's so hard to console, and she's started reacting drastically- she has now declared herself a Newtonian Purist to the death. I will say that space is not the only thing that's warped around here...

In other news, Kenton now has a blog.

Woes of a closet prescriptivist.
I've just identified the three things that most cause me pain in this world, and they're all fairly common spoken grammatical structures:

"The thing is, is..." The phrase "the thing is" has become such a common saying for many people that the words have become glued together into one morpheme, and the "is" no longer has meaning. These people need to add another "is" before it will make structural sense to them. Unfortunately, I am not one of these people.

"As best as I can" or "as best as possible." I heard this one last weekend, in the dialog of the movie "Troy." Grammatical errors in supposedly classical settings are the ones that irk me the most (don't get me started on "from whence"). "Best" is a superlative, and traditionally superlatives can't occupy this position: You can't say "He ran as fastest as he could," or even "as worst as I can." The "correct" phrase is "as best I can" or "as best is possible." To use a comparative structure, you have to use a comparative adverb: "as well as I can."

"The reason being is that..." "Being" is already a progressive verb, and insertion of the "is" verb makes this ungrammatical. Traditionally. A correct phrase would read "the reason being that..." However, in the popular mind, "reason being" has become yet another phrasal noun, which results in the necessity of another verb to take over for the "being" that stopped having any constructive value.

Having said all this, I'm a linguistics student, and we're supposed to be descriptive about all this, instead of telling people what to say. And besides, I do stuff all the time that isn't grammatical historically (like starting sentences with "and"). It's not so much that I think I have the best grammar, but once I get a handle on any one point, its misuse drives me crazy. I think what causes me the most mental anguish is the knowledge that knowing everyone is "doing it wrong" only shows what a lame snob I am!

And if anyone is really reading this, they should click here.

Low Noises
Our house just got a subwoofer for our new PA system. It's a Mackie 600 watt 15 inch piece of low noise. I've already made people sick, angry, etc. with it. How many more must suffer? It is quite fun to play the bass through, though...

I felt bad, because I had guests over, and we were supposed to be jamming because they think I will fit in well with their progressive rock... But here we were playing techno, rap, and Billie Jean with only a subwoofer and no speakers... Tres gauche...

In other news, Shelley has a blog now.

I'm looking forward to being done with Arabic. I love the language, but it eats up so much study time... I've started to figure out exactly how much work I can get away with not doing at home and still not lose any class points or knowledge necessary for the final, which, incidentally, we're having early. Hopefully. If the teacher's new schedule holds up.

Not a real post.
This is the first post, which is not a post to the blog, which is not a blog.

I went to class today, then I came back. I had to read for a long time. Now I'm going to do laundry.

I'm getting the sinking feeling that a blog written by me will yield little to no excitement value.