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Monthly Archive for January, 2006
Arlington tagged me for this, so I must comply. The pull of an imaganery frien is undeniable. This is the first time I have done one of them thar meme things. I have had nothing good to write about lately anyway, so here goes:
Seven movies I have loved:
1. Harold and Maude: always and forever my number one movie.
2. The Graduate. For that amazing pool-to-bed cut alone. Also, "Elaaaaaaaine! Elaaaaaine!"
3. Casablanca: an easy choice, but an earnest one, too.
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. My default Kaufman pick.
5. The Big Lebowski. What, am I wrong? No, Walter, you’re not wrong; you’re just an asshole.
6. Blue Velvet, because the robins symbolized love.
7. Say Anything. Boom-box me, John Cusack, Boom-box me.
Seven books I like:
OK, what the hell, people. Why must I only "like" books while I "have loved" movies? The inconsistent tense aside, I dislike the implication that I am only to feel tepid about books, yet movies evoke some brief but fiery passion in response. Anyway, it’ll be hard to pick just seven, but here, not in order:
1. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, because my mother was a fish, too.
2. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov. By some arbitrary self-enforced rule, I’m only picking one of his, and if that is so then this is it.
3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is the book equivalent of my number-three film pick: easy, but earnest. I love that green light, man.
4. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, because it fucking astounds me.
5. The Spider’s House by Paul Bowles, which is not the Bowles you or I thought I’d choose.
6. History of Danish Dreams by Peter H?eg. Lest you forget, he is my boyfriend.
7. The Secret History by Donna Tartt because it is all about the whiskey and cigarettes.
Seven things I say:
This is hard. I have no idea what I say. I talk a lot, but generally wind up saying pretty much nothing.
1. Boobs. (I hate the word "breasts." Also, I am eight.)
2. Dang, man… / What the hell, people. / Yeah man, we doin’ this! / Some even got on the mayor! / [Insert Achewood reference here.]
3. Argh.
4. Oh, uh, nothing.
5. Does this mean I’ll have to get dressed?
6. I hate that fucker!
7. Y’all. (English needs an informal second-person plural pronoun. Oh, wait, it has one.)
Seven things that attract me to a city:
1. Proximity to a coast. Any coast will do; I’m not picky.
2. City is not Detroit or Newark.
3. Good food.
4. Lots of music, lots of art.
5. More than two months per year of sunshine, fewer than nine months per year of rain.
6. Absence of meth epidemic.
7. Not in a dry county, no smoking ban.
Seven things to do before I die:
1. Finish my fucking dissertation.
2. Write and publish something non-academic.
3. Have a dog.
4. Have hot pink hair, no matter if it is "unprofessional."
5. Live in Denmark.
6. Have a sailboat and use it a lot.
7. Get to that island with C. and M. and the tropical drinks and pearl divers.
Seven things I can’t do:
1. Ski.
2. Pretend to try to like skiing.
3. Eat buffalo wings (or any other sticky, messy, greasy, wet food) with my hands.
4. Fall asleep before 3 am.
5. Talk about politics.
6. Touch-type.
7. Take a shot in one attempt.
Seven people to tag:
1. Cr00kedletter
2. Mel
3. SuomiChris
4. Limey
5. Jenny
6. Oedipa
7. Jeremy
The Anti-Brain asks for semicolon help, and I am here to oblige. I haven’t done a grammar post in a while, and –as some of you know– the semicolon is my favorite punctuation mark. So strap in, grab a pencil, and let us embark on a journey of joined independent clauses. Wheee!
The semicolon has two main purposes: it separates items in a list when those items already have internal punctuation, and it joins together two independent clauses where there is no coordinating conjunction and where there is a closer relationship between the two clauses than a period (full stop, for you fancy people) allows.
Examples of the first sort are fairly simple: Last week we discussed the towns of Bucksnort, Tennessee; Cowpens, South Carolina; and Buggery, Idaho. We have to place commas between the names of the cities and states, so, to separate those list items, we employ the semicolon. Bo-ring! Let’s move on.
Examples of the second sort are the kind that get me all hot and bothered. Where in the first example, the semicolon serves as a kind of stronger separator between the list items, in this case it forms a stronger connection between the two clauses. I am all about making connections, baby. Consider these two nearly identical cases:
She had gotten little sleep. The readings were long.
She had gotten little sleep; the readings were long.
In the first line above, there is no relationship expressed between the two separate sentences. They seem almost to have been randomly placed next to each other with little or no sense of purpose. The second line above, having joined the two clauses with that simple, efficient, and seductive little semicolon, manages to convey a causal relationship: the readings were long, the readings needed to be completed, this took up time that could have been spent sleeping, and so on. Isn’t that wonderful? I need a cigarette now.
Often, however, in a series of repetitive independent clauses having parallel structure (like those immediately preceding this paragraph), one can use a comma instead of a semicolon. I suppose this might be frowned on by some, but I am not intimidated. After all, I came, I saw, I cut people.
Tim T. suggests "Ways to Amuse Yourself"–something happily involving LSD, I believe. There may or may not be monkeys involved; I don’t know. I stopped at LSD. "LSD?" I asked myself. "Yes indeedy."
It is "The Geek’s Wonder Drug," as Wired reports, citing a list of trippers throughout history (including Steve Jobs), many of whom are scientists and mathematicians. Other notables found here include: Francis Crick, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Phil Jackson, Cary Grant, William H. Macy, Ana?s Nin, and Steven Wright–a fairly wholesome, admirable group, I feel. I mean, I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs, grammar, and violence to just anybody, but they worked for me.
This term is going to be especially painful due to the weird, howling vortex that is my department’s scheduling scheme. Witness this conversation, which occurred sometime in September:
Vague: [Pops into office to check mail, photocopy things.]
Nice Secretary Lady: Oh, I’m glad you came by! I was just working on the winter schedule.
Vague: [Exchanges pleasantries]
Nice Secretary Lady: Do you know what time you’d prefer to teach?
Vague: Any time is fine, really, but I do prefer afternoons.
Nice Secretary Lady: Oh, that’s great! Afternoons! That really helps me out.
Vague: Really? Does everyone else want mornings this time?
Nice Secretary Lady: Yeah, it looks like pretty much everyone else wants to teach in the early mornings.
Vague: Huh. Well, that works for me.
Nice Secretary Lady: [Makes note in calendar.]
Vague: [Leaves office.]
Vague: [Fully expects to be scheduled to teach in the afternoon.]
Vague: [Is totally surprised to find out, months later, that she has been scheduled to teach in the early morning, a time slot apparently coveted by everyone else in the department except her.]
It’s hard to be too mad at the Nice Secretary Lady, though. As her name implies, she is indeed quite nice and is forever bringing candy and baked goods to the office for everyone. It’s tough to hate a lady with cake.
I can assure you, however, that tomorrow, when I have to wake up and drag myself out of bed and hurriedly pour myself into some clothes, pour some coffee down my gullet, and race out the door, that I will be cursing both her and her delicious cake to anyone who will listen.
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