I bring you this, my friends, to signal the dawning of my return (is that semantically possible?).
small things December 17, 2007
Just makes me feel good to think that Jonathan Goldstein and I both spend hours in front of Macs editing our own voices. Though, what he says is hilarious and beautiful. What I say is ‘tlang’.Having a bitch of a weekend. Hope that everyone else’s was lovely.
Important enough to pause all else December 11, 2007
These are worrying times, my friends.Many things to discuss, many things to contribute one’s thoughts to…and most of all this:
It must be admitted that few girls, of whatever age, have ever fathomed the delirious appeal of Mad humor.
These are the words of Michael Dirda of the Washington Post. Girls don’t like Mad?? Then explain to me, sir, why I have a picture of Fonebone hanging in my hallway?
Of course, no girl, and certainly no mother, could be expected to appreciate the risqu¿ insightfulness of “Snap Ploobadoof” — the sound of “Wonder Woman releasing her Amazon brassiere.”
If I have no appreciation of it, sir, then why did the detailed image instantly appear to me the second I read Snap Ploobadoof? Not only that, sir, I can look it up within one of my three or four Don Martin books 5 ft to my right, if I were inclined to do so.Hmph.Michael Dirda has an obvious desire to make Mad a “boys only/no gerls allowed” club house because, apparently, his memories of buying Mad at the corner store would be sullied if he knew that his ‘dorky sister’ was also reading it when she built her fort out of couch cushions. I submit, friends, that Michael Dirda is, in reality, a dork of the same type as those who has ruined the memory of Monty Python sketches by continually and unceasingly yelling “Ni!” every bloody g-damn opportunity. However, Dirda’s intention is to review The Completely Mad Don Martin…a compilation of Don Martin’s work over 30 years at Mad…and convince you, the reader, to buy it. I agree, and if I had $150 kicking around, I would certainly pick it up. His article, however, reviews memories of his favourite Don Martin gags in such a way that they manage to dampen the impact. How can you describe the Freak Accident, the Drag Race, or even the Rat Race:
My favorite single drawing — one I remember from boyhood — is “An Evening in the City.” A stubble-bearded guy with rolled-up shirtsleeves peers out of an office window and says, “I tell you, Mrs. Frimp, I’m getting sick and tired of this Rat Race!” At the next window the blowsy Mrs. Frimp answers, “I know what you mean, Mr. Eck! We’re all getting sick of it!” Below the couple, one sees the street: full of large, very determined rats, in track suits, running a marathon through the city. Mrs. Frimp then adds, needlessly, “Besides . . . a 7-day Rat Race is such a stupid idea in the first place!!”
Sure, it recalls fond memories…but nowhere near as funny as the original cartoon was…because it was a drawing. Does one describe the Mona Lisa?
Don Martin made up that sound, and that poster, and those names. But, as Gary Larson emphasizes in his foreword to The Completely Mad Don Martin, the man most truly dazzled in his drawing. His jowly, cross-eyed characters stare at us from the page with an utterly sublime imbecility, unaware of their smug silliness, confident that they are in control, the captains of their destiny and the masters of any situation, no matter how complex or improbable. In fact, Martin’s characters — half of them named Fonebone — resemble and behave like the Three Stooges, but Stooges without the least modicum of intelligence. Martin’s naively stupid fairy-tale princes, incompetent surgeons, hapless Tarzans and demonic dentists generally end up with cracked skulls and dazed what-hit-me grins. Whatever happens to them, though, they never, ever see it coming. But the reader does — and this is part of the pleasure of Martin’s humor: Like silent-era comedians, his characters toss a banana onto the sidewalk, then slip on it.
I think Dirda spent too much time intellectualizing something that wasn’t meant to be intellectualized in the first place. Then he made it lamer by essentially claiming something along the lines of “girls have cooties”.
Obviously, one’s dopey sisters could hardly be expected to grasp the sheer genius of a name like Elwood Pleebis, Fornis J. Plebney, or Horace Veeblefetzer. But even those girls one kind of, sort of, liked might actually fail to roll on the ground with uncontrollable laughter at a political poster that proclaimed: “Help the mentally incompetent. Re-elect your congressman!”
Yeah. ‘kay. Oh..one more thing. I’ve read Mad lately. If boys want to lay claim to the current state of Mad, they’re welcome to it.
MIA December 10, 2007
Once again, I’m sorry for the lack of posts around here…
*listening*
*crickets*
yes..indeed. All you folk clamouring for more posts. I’m sorry to you.
Anyway, again, been busy and sorta focused on getting some work done on my thesis. Yes! It’s already ~that~ time. The time where I begin to write the effer up. Someone hold me. Week or two longer and I should have small bit to hand in to my advisor…I’m even hoping for some time off around Xmas to sleep and knit and bathe and pluck my eyebrows. That ~will~ be fun.
holy crap holy crap holy crap holy crap November 15, 2007
It’s already mid-November
Holycrapholycrapholycrapholycrap…
I has teh coldsweatz
best music videos of all time October 30, 2007
A friend of mine recently challenged me to find my list of the best music videos of all time.
Well..when I say challenged me, I mean he mentioned it to me and I accepted bravely.
This is a work in progress…so I’m not going to post them here just yet (via youtube, that is). But I will construct my list here.
So far, off the top of my head (and not in any particular order):
I know..I know…it’s so wrong. And that’s what makes it so right. There’s no way this video will ever be made again. And watching Diamond Dave with the “Siddown, Waldo” makes me laugh until I pee.
My friend listed Sabotage…which I agree is a spectacular vid. I just happen to like Intergalactic more because of robots.
Oh! What about, then:
Because, well, I have a crush on Ad Rock and it makes me smile when he does.
Of course, theres:
Jaw droppingly brilliant in its simplicity and sweetness.
Because who doesn’t want to see Rufus cover his face in mock horror?
I’ve got an Erykah Badu toss up here:
or
I think that’s it for now. It’s way past my bedtime.
–X-Files theme here– October 12, 2007
I’m not sure I”m swayed in either direction when it comes to the ‘life on other planets’ debate. There might be, there might not be.
I, however, don’t particularly believe that aliens have ever come to this planet. It just seems so unlikely. The probability of us is pretty staggering…but believable. The probability of other, more advanced, life forms in the universe is even more staggering…but…well…still believable, I guess. Who knows.
The probability that one should visit the other…I don’t know. I just can’t wrap my head around it.
Anyway…my point is not to try to work out my issues on the universe via the ol’ bloggity, but to introduce this news item:
The ATA is being run by the SETI Institute and the Radio Astronomy Laboratory from the University of California, Berkeley.
“For SETI, the ATA’s technical capabilities exponentially increase our ability to search for intelligent signals, and may lead to the discovery of thinking beings elsewhere in the universe,” said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in a statement.
I mean holy shit. In a society where alien abductions are kinda laughable (except Sammy Hagar’s…it’s true. Google it.), alien autopsies are faked and alien dolls are marketable toys, it just seems like an insane amount of money to put towards finding life in such a vast area. Vast! The universe, I think, falls under the heading of “vast areas”.
I’m back! October 6, 2007
Whew. Well, that was tough being away like that.
3 weeks ago (!!!) my computer fell into a coma and so it’s taken this long to get her back and operational. I have to say, she’s never looked better.
So, lots to talk about but I can’t remember any of it right now, so it’ll have to wait.
*deep inhale*…yup…it’s good to be back.
where our heroine believes in omens…sorta September 9, 2007
caveat: When I feel the need to caputure my spiritual leanings in a word or two, I label myself ‘agnostic’. This is more a convention than anything, since the word agnostic seems to be to be broad enough to cover the gap from “not quite atheist” to “not anything I’ve heard of so far” fairly conveniently. What I do believe whole heartedly is, and I’ve mentioned this not too long ago, that there are many things I cannot, do not, and won’t be able to understand in this universe…and nor will any of us any time soon.
So, bearing this in mind, I shall continue on with my story.
I believe in omens. I believe in them like some people believe in astrology. Like, not the people who go to professional astrologists, but those ones who have a particular newspaper or magazine they like to read their horoscopes in because 60% of the time it give sound advice about something that vaguely resembles whatever it is they’re going through. My omens, however, are based entirely upon the viewer. I interpret them like dreams…one is only aware of one’s own mythology and so one is the only one able to interpret one’s dreams or omens accurately if one chooses to do so.
ha
Actually, I’m sure I’ve written about this before…actually, I know I have but it was a long time ago and I’m too lazy to search back. Something to do with squirrels and squeegie kids throwing pennies. Anyway..I’ve got a new one now and I’m not sure quite how to interpret it. But certainly, it means something.
Yesterday I was on my way to school to put in a couple of hours in the lab working on a project I’m involved in. This project includes major use of puppets, so I certainly enjoyed my saturday morning.
As I steered my bike out from the back alley, I saw tens of elderly lawnbowlers all dressed in white (their white hair made it even more noticeable) and it looked kinda neat against the manicured green grass, but I paid little attention and forgot about it until much later on.
Got to the lab. Did my work. Hopped on my bike.
On the bikepath coming home, I came across a small clearing where there was a little congregation involving a magpie or two, a bunch of crows (a murder, if you will…but I always think of a murder of crows being more populous and in flight), and a squirrel (very possibly a couple more…I passed this scene pretty quickly). All of these birds/animals were black. Chillin’. No one was fighting, humping, chasing off…just hanging out. Together. All black.
It wasn’t until a few hours later that I realized I saw the all white-clad human crew previous to the black-feathered/furred animal homies.
That’s gotta mean something, but I can’t tell what. Like I said before, only I’m able to interpret this for myself, but any guesses?
all I’m gonna say…for now August 27, 2007
all I’m gonna say is that I’m starting to have a few twitches and twinges here and there when I hear mention of the following words:
“35”
“november”
“turning”
I thought I was sailing through this…but it might be a doozy. I can’t wait to see if I totally flip out or what.
new development in creaky voice August 23, 2007
My June post on creaky voice seemed to be somewhat of a hit. Y’all ought to be ashamed of yourselves because the only reason I drew you in was because I seemed as though I was going to talk about Paris Hilton. ha!
Blackmana (blog now gone) mentioned recently that he had heard a young man do creaky voice. This was news to me but I have to report, I’ve heard it now. Interestingly enough, the first male where I noticed it was our brand new phonetics prof. Ironic because it was the old one who pointed it out to us/me. Also, I noticed it in the voice of Ira Glass and some other announcer on my current favourite podcast “This American Life“.
(holy crap..that was the first time I’ve ever seen his picture and now my sort of crush is full blown…dang.)
I love Ira Glass (even more so within the past 5 minutes) and I love This American Life. The creaky voice phenomenon has now been reduced only to a faint irritation in my books. Is that shallow of me??
Shallow as I wanna be June 28, 2007
Okay…okay…okay…
I resisted but I do have a small weakness for celeb gossip. I wish I didn’t, but there it is.
Now, I certainly did not want to support this whole ruckus about Paris Hilton’s first interview out of jail. Fascinating (well…maybe less fascinating than rubbing the frail ‘feel good spot’ inside us all) as her persona is, I do think enough is enough and that woman needs to be set free from our minds and our attention.
I didn’t watch the Larry King interview. Not even on purpose…just didn’t occur to me. However….I did take a peek at the Anderson Cooper ‘reflections’ or whatever on youtube. Actually, only partly because a/ my connection sucks and b/ it actually is getting to me that we’re now deciding that a panel of experts discussing Paris Hilton constitutes air time, if not news. There is nothing to read into. Even I have to wonder who effing cares…and I’m the queen of the trivial.
But…here I am. I’m about to comment on Paris. I’m about to comment on something that I’ve noticed in young women and is starting to drive me nuts. I’m talking, of course, about voice quality.
Ha! Just when you thought I’d zig, I zagged, mofos.
And…I didn’t notice it on my own, it was pointed out once in a phonetics class I was auditing…so I’ll start there.
There is a cool little tool you can download for free called Praat. I won’t bother linking it right now ’cause no one will care, but it’s a phonetic tool where you can see the patterns of sound waves in speech (through .wav files). I used it when I was building my stimuli. Praat (and other tools like it) are used to isolate certain characteristics in speech…like you can see each vowel, consonant…blah blah blah. You need to develop an eye, but it’s pretty cool.
As Teh Octogenarians say around here: Anyhow…..
Dr. D was playing us a sentence as spoken by a young woman in her 20s. He intended to show us a certain feature of the sentence but then stopped himself and imitated the ending of her sentence…which I can’t remember…but he turned himself into a “cute girl” as he imitated her…not by miming brushing her hair, putting on makeup, carrying a small dog or shopping but by the voice quality.
We all can do it. You constrict your vocal folds to a point where what you’re saying comes out creaky. Like when you imitate a creaky door…do ‘creaky door’ but talk at the same time. There you go. In some languages of the world it distinguishes words from each other, but in English it doesn’t. And chicks super dig it.
Young women in North America use creaky voice and I don’t know why, it seems cool or something, but they do and until Dr. D mentioned it I had no idea. I do it too, occassionally (probably to seem younger and cooler than I am and offsetting my love for computer games and Led Zeppelin), but next time you see a hip, pretty young woman and talk to her…check out her voice quality. Lots of times she won’t speak clearly…she will employ the use of creaky voice for something or other.
And now I can’t NOT notice it.
I was not surprised to hear Paris use it. I’ve actually, while writing this post, have been trying to find a good example of creaky voice to show y’all, but I think I might just do it this way…let Paris actually do it herself. No idea if she does it throughout the entire interview, this is all I saw. At around 2:26 she reads from her journals *snort*.
You thought ‘upspeak‘ was driving you nuts. Wait until you notice this all the time.
Class A sap April 15, 2007
Here’s the story.
I”ve been a bit ‘sensitive’ today what with all the late nights, early mornings and constant frank talks with myself that the late nights and early mornings would be more productive if I didn’t procrastinate so durn much. It’s more than the blogging…the blogging is actually a short break to get a thought out of my head. It’s the aimless wandering, it’s the facebook (god, its the facebook), it’s the staring into space, it’s the starting a sentence and……
About an hour ago, I decided I needed a change of venue, so I ran across the street to Starbucks with a gazillion articles in hand and a whack of highlighters and pens. I was gonna read the eff out of those papers! I actually got halfway through a rather interesting paper that fit in with a bunch of awesome, so I was patting myself on the back for doing that last minute search at Rutger’s OT archive (no, I couldn’t hear about the Imus story without thinking of OT) and this group of two men and a little boy sat down beside me.
They started talking and I was still interested in cluster formants (turns out /tl/ and /dl/ are perceptually alot like /kl/ and /gl/ so that’s why we’ve got that phonotactic gap in English…at least according to this guy who’s name is somewhere in my bag). Slowly, though, their conversation started to sink in.
One guy was telling the other about speaking at his wife’s funeral. Jesus. The little boy was there with them. It sounded recent. Annnnd…I had to leave ’cause my eyes were starting to tear up.
Poor guy. Poor kid. Poor me.
(kidding about the poor me part)
heeeyyy…now ~that’s~ something
I’m number 53 on wordpress’ ‘growing blogs‘ list.
Is this where I make my acceptance speech? Oh? What? Get off the stage? Huh? Me? Oh…’kay…yeah. Bye.
What am I doing with a blog? 
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