Alfina the Vague: shamelessly overusing commas since 2004.
I?ve been waiting to bring exemplary student writing to Zembla for ages?I feel just like Navin R. Johnson when the phonebooks arrive: ?The papers are here! The papers are here!?
Read on for a selection of the broadest, unwieldiest, and least insightful sentences to cross my path. None of them, I will admit, however, makes my heart sink quite so fast as reading this clunker on an end-of-term course evaluation: ?Your a really great techer!?
…mind
But these two; ware of a world where but these | two tell, each off the other; of a rack
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, | thoughts against thoughts in groans grind.
from “Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves”
“I would think about his name until after awhile I could see the word as a shape, a vessel, and I would watch him liquefy and flow into it like cold molasses flowing out of the darkness into the vessel, until the jar stood full and motionless: a significant shape profoundly without life like an empty door frame; and then I would find that I had forgotten the name of the jar.” from As I Lay Dying.
That’s why I shall insist on introducing you to the newest perversion of German compound words to cross my mind. Behold! Freudenfreude! You guessed it, darling, it means taking joy from the joys of others. Isn’t that nice?
In related news, a German teaching colleague of mine mentioned the following problem her students encountered working with compounds and the genitive. How to do it correctly: der Autoverk?ufer = der Verk?ufer des Autos (the carseller = the seller of the car). How to screw it up: das Hundeklo = das Eklo des Hundes. Now, an Eklo doesn’t exist. A Klo, on the other hand, is a toilet. Perhaps, we thought, an Eklo is a digital waste repository?
Eklo : Klo :: Email : Mail ?
Handy as I must believe that is, why would a dog need one? My amusement at the above can be chalked up to Best?rzungsfreude, or taking joy from the consternation of others.
My great study of cricket may have to be postponed for a short while, purely so I can concentrate my energies on the baseball post-season. Surely it is important that fans not be distracted by confusingly similar British games when they are trying to will their team to victory. It is of paramount importance that one retain focus, n’est-ce pas?
In other news, I think I have hit upon the single worst aspect of the rainy season in Zembla: having to walk around all day with wet pants-cuffs slapping against your ankles. That’s right folks; wet pants-cuffs even beat out frizzy hair, which comes in a distant second. Some of you may have thought that grey skies and lack of sunshine might be the worst, and to you I say: too obvious!
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