…a way to find new artists I might like without having to actually tell someone I don’t trust their abilities to guide me…
no offense
I just don’t trust you and don’t want to put in the effort to prove you wrong
Extra! Extra! Zombies own LARPers! November 27, 2005
Doin’ homework, I accidentally came across these.
From what I can understand these people (call them Team Dork) would LARP in this park every Sunday (I don’t even know where) and these other people (call them Team Bubble-burster) decided it would be great fun to dress up as zombies and break up their LARPing nerdness.
Pretty funny.
Team Dork were apparently hangin’ out doing their LARPy thing when Team Bubble-burster…well…burst on the scene and gave them a jawful of zombie revenge.
Then, if I’m reading it right, they took out a drum circle.
I love anyone who takes out a drum circle.
Dirty hippies with their stupid lack of rhythm.
Check out the pictures.
more better November 22, 2005
I was telling eeners this today:
The other day in class, I used the word “polite-er”.
I was all like (to myself), “Hey, good answer. Wait. Did I just say ‘polite-er’? Damn.”
Actually, it wasn’t even a good answer.
It’s totally right about Little Red Corvette November 20, 2005
You Scored 60% Correct |
|
You are a solid child of the 80s You’d never confuse Tiffany from Debbie And while you may not know Prince’s first #1 hit You know every word to Little Red Corvette |
oh great. I’ll just eat Kraft Dinner… November 20, 2005
| You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy) |
 You’re a great thinker and a true philosopher. You’d make a talented professor or writer. |
not entirely true… November 20, 2005
| You are Agnostic |
 You’re not sure if God exists, and you don’t care. For you, there’s no true way to figure out the divine. You rather focus on what you can control – your own life. And you tend to resent when others “sell” religion to you. |
musings while driving today November 20, 2005
I got into the car and turned on the radio just in time to hear The Vinyl Cafe, and I smilled and thought, ‘alllll right!’ when I heard Stuart McLean’s voice.
I love getting into the car when my fave radio shows are on.
However, Stuart McLean’s voice was saying goodbye until next week. So I was all, ‘bummer’.
And then, after the news, they introduced Wiretap. That is totally even better than the Vinyl Cafe, so I ended up driving past Safeway and into some residential area just so I could listen to it.
I laughed myself stupid. I recommend it (the show…and laughing yourself stupid).
…
When I don’t feel like listening to what’s on CBC at that moment, i surf other radio stations. WTF? Why does almost every other radio station in Calgary suck? There is NOTHING good to listen to…’cept CJSW and sometimes they’re stinky, too.
…
Was thinking about my typology class and how I found a language atlas at a bookstore yesterday. Typology is a type of linguistics where you look at features in a language and compare them with the other languages in the world. You find that of all the possibilities, really most languages fall within only a few of them.
Anyway…I won’t get into it.
The guy who started it was named Greenberg who wrote this paper in 1966 that turned the linguistic world on its ear! *echo*
In it he wrote 45 ‘universals’, which is to say he studied a bunch of languages, compared them and found out 45 things that always or usually happen. And they’re written like this:
Universal #5: If a language has dominant SOV word order and the genitive follows the governing noun, then the adjective likewise follows the noun.
(Which just means that if the word order of a language (like Japanese) is subject, object, verb and if you use a possessive phrase (John’s car) the possessing thing (John) is after the noun in possesses (car John’s) then an adjective (black car) will also follow the noun it’s modifying (car black). If you care.)
This is an awful long setup for a stupid joke that made me laugh in the car…but Rush was on one of the stations.
Himbly’s universal #1: If a person’s genetic code (for gender) is XX and if their country of origin is Canada then, with greater than chance frequency, that person will dislike Rush.
…
Good lord. I got nothing these days.
yeah, ‘cept I’m not taking phonetics this semester… November 18, 2005
I still can’t sleep.
I’m not even tired. I go to bed late, wake up early, and aside from an unpleasant and tired hour or two in the morning, I’m okay.
I finished my paper and handed it in.
But…when we handed it in she told us if we wanted it back until Monday, it was fine with her.
I turned the offer down. I didn’t want to look at it again.
But now I’m wanting to read it over (it’s still on my computer) but I’m scared that I’m going to decide everything’s wrong and I need to redo the whole thing.
“…and my inner voice is saying, “Don’t go.”…”
–aww..heck. I’m trying to quote Best In Show but I don’t remember how it goes.
Anyway…I’m listening to my inner ‘fraidy-cat voice ’cause I was quite chuffed with myself earlier when I thought I at least knew what I was writing about in this last paper. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, my inner critic voice is yelling, “Fool! You don’t know the first thing about ergativity in Kalaallisut!”
But, right now, I wouldn’t trade this for anything.
I am so happy right now to be going back to school and studying stuff I care about.
The problem with linguistics is that you fall in love with every language you research. I’ve been working on Kalaallisut since September now, I’ve looked at its word order, morphology, how it modifies its nouns and where it puts its possessors. I’ve tried to prove that it’s ergative (or not in a small group of nouns), that it’s polysynthetic, and that it’s highly fusional. Oh, and certainly not least, I’ve researched its speakers…where they live, how, how many, how commited they are to keeping Kalaallisut alive (real committed, btw)…
And I know almost nothing about this language. Seriously.
There’s so much.
I don’t know how the writers of grammars do it, frankly. The guy that wrote mine had to spend…I don’t even know how long in West Greenland recording data. Then he comes home (or stays there…I don’t know) and writes a book based on his findings.
I don’t think I’ve ever read so many sentences about ptarmigan, sled dogs and polar bears in all my life.
Oh…and did you know that the Kalaallisut word for ‘polar bear’ is nanuq? Oh…and that Kalaallisut is a very close relative to Canadian Inuit dialects?
[q] is phonetic for a voiceless uvular stop. In other words…if you make a k sound, you feel the back of your tongue touching the back of your palate..the soft part…the velum? Your uvula is the dinger donger in the back of your throat. Now, try to get the back of your tongue to touch that and try the k sound again. If you can do it, you make a [q].
(I still remember the day we learned this in phonetics..all of us trying to make the [q] sound with our prof excitedly yelling, ‘Further back! Further back! You! (pointing) Try it! Further back!’)
So…since English speakers don’t make that sound, we use [k] to replace it. So, when people say Nanuk of the North…it actually means polar bear.
Neat, huh?
Anyway…to all those that think linguistics is easy, I say this:
Up your nose with a rubber hose.
And since this is my blog and I’ve been reading a lot of bloggers lately saying, “this is my blog, I’ll write what I want”…Ima write what I want.
’cause that’s just how this bi-atch rolls.
And what I want is to write this (so prolly best to skip it):
I’ve never worked with a language like this before. There is so much morphology (prefixes, suffixes, infixes) going on and I used to hate studying morphology…so it totally effed me up at first. But now, g-damn if I don’t think that it’s the coolest thing ever that you can incorporate a verb into your noun and keep going.
That means a whole sentence ~can~ be said in one word. Not always, but it can be done without it being weird to anyone speaking or listening.
Isn’t that cool?
Like you can say the word “aqissirniarput” and it means “They are hunting ptarmigan”
…
(told ya so about the ptarmigan and stuff)
…
because it’s actually one noun with two suffixes: aqissir-niar-put (ptarmigan-hunt-3rd person plural). A suffix just like in English when we say accomplish-ment-s (accomplish (verb) – ment (makes it a noun) – s (plural)). ‘Cept, instead of the middle affix meaning ‘make a noun/verb’ it is a verb.
The 3rd person plural at the end is a bit of a different story but I won’t get into it here. Probably no one is reading this anymore -if they even started.
Anyway..that’s just a small thing I had to get off my chest. Linguistics is so effing neat. I didn’t realize how much I missed it.
Oh dear. I’ve got to get to bed.
pwned November 18, 2005
I’m outing Black Mana.
If Black Mana was a warlock…
if he had a horse…
if he was level 60…
if he was…uh….human?
This is what he’d look like.
Well, ~I’m~ proud of him and his awesome looking dreadsteed.
w00t!
/grats blackmana
well, not exactly… November 17, 2005
I’m done.
I’ve finished another paper on W.Greenlandic and I’m thinking it’s much better than the last.
Whew.
The last few days I’ve not been able to sleep until late, and then I’ve had the most crazy, effed up dreams.
wish I could remember some.
So, running on little sleep lately but not feeling tired. Until the morning. The morning eats bags of dick.
But I’m finished that g-damn paper and this time…this time….I think I even knew what I was talking about. In about a week or two I’ll find out I totally didn’t…but shut up. Let me ride this post paper happy balloon.
Lots of stuff I feel like complaining about, but I’ll save it for another day.
Love, himbly
on the wagon November 12, 2005
Well…
that’s it.
Cake’s gone. It’s Saturday eve and the last night I’ll have sweets.
Back in the ’sugar-is-the-sweet-sweet-devil’ saddle again.
*sigh*…it’s gonna take a lot of soy smoothies to wipe the taste of homemade blackforest cake from my memory.
excuse me…
I…I…I think there’s something in my eye…
thirty three November 10, 2005
One of my dearest friends, Ivana, wrote me this yesterday:
…you’ve now lived as long as Jesus and are divisible by 11!!!
Oh my god.
She’s right on both counts.
But Jesus died at 33.
Gosh.
Now I need to find someone else to model my life on.
chubby girl November 10, 2005
*burp*
I’ve had left over birthday cake 3 times today.
I haven’t eaten sweets for 4 months, but I relaxed the rule until Sunday. I’m on a sugar kick that’ll rot my teeth and frenzy my brain.
…and how…
yee haw!
I ate so much yesterday that, aside from my b-cake breakfast, I’ve only been able to eat salads. Dad took me out for lunch, Mum made me dinner (and said cake).
I’m spoilt.
Only child.
Full only child.
That picture….that’s me naked.
