If you haven’t been already, go fill out this Harvard professor’s online dialect survey. Make sure you have a lot of time to waste; it’s long, but it’s well worth it to find out that your fellow Americans have fifteen different phrases for the crap that you find in the corner of your eye when you wake up in the morning. (That’ll show those snooty eskimos, with their 300 words for snow.)
Check out the maps especially, though they are less illustrative than I would have hoped. The use of modals (“might could”), for example, seems to have less locational correlation than I thought. You have to wonder how much this is influenced by Internet use demographics. (I figure not only are Internet users more likely to be mainstreamed for their education, they’re also more likely to have moved away from their linguistic base.)
You also come to suspect that the maps reflect the population density of the US more than they do dialects. Still they seem to confirm the lament of folks as far back as Steinbeck and before that America is losing its regional linguistic charms.
When I write something like “pussy is pussy” in the context I write it in, it might or might not mean that I have a base-genitalia-level view of women. You’d have to know me and my interactions with women to know that. I assure you any disrespect I throw your way has nothing to do with the fact that you’re a woman. It has to do with you as an individual.
People I know roll their eyes when I tell them I’m going out to see Jon Land, former editor of the Omen, Hampshire College’s longest-running publication. Was it because Jon spent his final college years devoting a page a week to reviewing beef jerky at a mostly vegetarian college? Was it because his friends responded to feminist chalkings on campus with satirical pro-rape chalkings? Was it because the libertarian-rag-turned-string-of-ethnic-slurs-and-terrible-ersatz-linguistics-turned-pop-culture-review-slash-inside-joke he published every week was mostly a waste of paper? I dunno. But to those nay-sayers, I say you’e not paying close enough attention to what Jon’s saying.
Jessamyn makes a good point about protester shutdowns of cities. I wonder what it would be like to be a person who feels threatened by protests?
I’m still hoping that someone out there will be able to help me diagnose what’s wrong with my internal combo drive. To that end, here’s another clue: I have posted an MP3 of the sound it makes (with helpful narration!) If this brings any of you any closer to an understanding of what’s going wrong, please let me know; I’d be eternally grateful.
Thanks again to Roger for his suggestion… maybe I’m being too squeamish, but I haven’t been able to pry off the slot cover.
… by which I mean winter, as well as my patience for Sunnyside. The Mr. Softee trucks are back. I swear to god one of these days I will expose the one who lingers eternally at the end of my block playing that godawful song as the covert drug dealer he is.
Yes: UCLA (education), UC Riverside (dance history).
No: UC Berkeley (education).
… who may not remember it, but who for a while was my regular companion to a movie theater in Berkeley (or was it Palo Alto?) which distributed matinee tickets marked “BARGIN.” He laughed pretty hard about that.
This was the banner headline on a local-discount-stores circular which came in the mail today. It delivered what it promised, too. Interior headlines read “UGLY BATHROOM?” and “DANGER MOLD.”
So, what — is “bargin” a cutesy spelling of “bargain,” like “lite?” Or like the “Kalifornia Kleen Kar” car wash in Pasadena?
(I know, I know. Bless me for I have sinned, I haven’t posted anything real in about a month. It’s mostly ’cause I have this piece on being bourgeois that’s hugely long already but hasn’t come out right — I don’t feel like I’m making a decent point with it yet.)
Received word from UCLA today that I got in to their PhD program in education. hurray! The neat thing about their program is it’s combined with an Information Science program which seems to encompass librarianship and some other stuff. So if I, say, wanted to switch paths and suddenly become a radical librarian I could ostensibly do that.
to Sylvie and Ariel. Yeah, I know I should have called. I’m a bad sister. But you do know I’m working on your birthday presents, right?
I knew Ariel was keeping a running log, but I hadn’t taken a look at it. The sort of interpolation you’d have to do to use it to figure out what’s going on with her life (which isn’t its intent, I know) reminds me a little of reading A Midwife’s Tale (hey, I hadn’t known PBS did a docu based on the book!) I admire the minimalism of it.
There’s a very good reason why I missed Jacob’s Valentine’s Day cards this year, though looking back I’m sorry that I did. They were perfect. Knowing I had even the subtlest influence on this year’s theme would make me happy, but he never seems to draw them for anyone in particular. Jacob’s kind of an island.