Archive for: September, 2006

A Series of Lists With No Particular Theme

Sep 29 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Speechifying

Things to Buy Today

  1. Cat Food
  2. Big ass Frappucino
  3. Croissant?

Things to Buy Tomorrow

  1. BSG 2.5
  2. Weed Eater
  3. Shovel
  4. Some postcards
  5. Utility knife
  6. Deodorant

Words I Like Lately

  1. Disco
  2. Fortitude
  3. Bebop
  4. Xanthippan
  5. Conundrum
  6. Oodle
  7. Encyclodictionalmanacapedia*

Slang Trends I Can’t Figure Out

  1. Calling men you don’t like “douche”
  2. Adding “bag” to “douche” as an intensifier OR for insulting a woman, but never both
  3. How “hells” (interjection) didn’t supplant “hella” (adverb), but the latter has disappeared while the use of the former has completely supplanted all forms of hell other than then original noun.
  4. How the slang representation of the slur for “I’m going to” went from “I’m-a” to “I’ma” to “Ima” with little to no fanfare and whether or not this is the morphological equivalent of present tense progressive aspect verb participle prefix ascendancy and therefore a coup of Appalachian regional dialect or an example of pervasive idiolective haste and/or imitation
  5. The root of the popcult mad lib, “I’m in your (noun) (present participle verb) your (plural noun).” When I read “I’m in yer internetz eatin’ yer toobz!” all I can think is, “Who now and which tubes exactly?” Is part of it making fun of that congressman who said the internet was a series of tubes?

Fears That Are Both New and Irrational

  1. Bedbug infestation
  2. That something could set up shop in my eyeballs or tear ducts without me knowing about it
  3. That listening to NPR every day is turning me into a liberal

TV Shows I Want to Watch and May Just Start, Despite Not Being Current with Episodes, In Some Cases By Whole Decades

  1. Veronica Mars
  2. Doctor Who
  3. Supernatural
  4. Eureka
  5. Venture Brothers

From the Ministry of Undoublespeak

  1. You can’t suspend the writ of Habeus Corpus outside a time of revolution. It’s the goddamn writ of Habeus Corpus, you jackass!
  2. Context matters, certainly, but not always as much as you think it does.
  3. A month is 29 to 31 days. Six months is six periods of 29 to 31 days. Six consecutive months is one period of 29 to 31 days followed immediately by five concurrent, commensurate periods. Thinking that consecutive months could be defined as concurrent periods of 29 to 31 OR MORE days so long as those periods were consistent and called different things like “December, January, February, March” etc. is obviously folly.
  4. Truth is not personal. When you say “My truth is” you best follow it up with something that’s objectively provably true.

Foods in the Dream I Had Last Night about Getting Lost in an Old Science Lab Building While Trying to Find Chinese Class Where There Was Also a Party with an Open Bar

  1. Mojitos
  2. Cheese biscuits
  3. Ham
  4. Miniature chocolate bundt cakes stuck on little wheels of white cardboard**

*This is totally how I’m referring to The Intarweb from now on
** There was a portion of the dream that seemed like I might need to defend myself against people who wanted to prevent me from getting to class, and I decided that I would use these as projectiles and was well into determing the relative advantages of lobbing them overhand or using the cardboard to whip them as a sort of splatting slicing edge before the dream changed such that I didn’t need them.

10 responses so far

Y’all Act Right

Sep 28 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Speechifying

Last night, after a trivia win (tho not another flawless victory), I had to point out to Christopher how HD opened the car door for his companion. Christopher then did me the kindness of handing me his leftover wings using the remote to unlock all four doors of our car so I could put the wings in the back and not have to hold them on my lap the whole ride home. When I said, “Look how [HD] opened the door for [her]” he said, “That’s so inefficient.” I snorted. He said, “By the time I unlocked your door, opened it for you, got you situated, closed your door, walked around to my side of the car and got in, we could be on the road.”

I protested lamely, saying that it was just good manners. He countered by saying, “Not since like, 1946!” I let him know that at work, men opened the door for me all the time and he countered with, “That’s because you’re going to the same place” conveniently forgetting that twice that evening we had been going to the same place, namely into and out of Hooters and he opened the door for me neither time.

My good manners argument doesn’t seem to fly with him. He assumes none of the traditionally courtly roles of a gentleman toward a lady, or even of a man toward a woman. Despite his scorching Republicanism, Classical economic sensibilities and benign misogynism, he completely flouts the guidelines for male-female interaction—or those we practice in the South.

He’s not a total boor. He says “yes ma’am” and “yes sir” to his elders and peers in most situations, even friendly ones, where the appellations just enhance respect rather than breed it. He has fine table manners—will wait to eat until the host has taken the first bite, knows his forks and glasses, can negotiate a bread plate and a salt cellar. He can confidently order a bottle of wine and endure the ritual decorking but he frequently leaves it to me to do, because I’m more interested in wine than he is.

I am much more formal, though, and it leads to tension because I’d like him to be as well. I wait to be introduced before speaking to a new person and if an introduction is not forthcoming, I’ll introduce myself, asking for a full name and then referring to the other person as Mr. or Ms. Last Name until I’m told to do otherwise. In many cases I’ll remain standing until I’m offered a seat, or if one is not offered, I’ll ask, “May I sit?” For the most part, I expect men to open doors for me and I always, always, always thank them for taking the trouble, even if they open four or five doors in a row and there is five whole minutes of nothing but “thank you; you’re welcome; thank you; you’re welcome.”

I think that functioning by default under this level of formality makes things easier on everyone. In this system, there is little room for misunderstanding. So long as you understand your role and your place within the system, interpersonal relations are greatly smoothed—one might even say lubricated. I was shocked once, at Purdue, when I approached a set of doors in line with or behind five men. Each of them went through before me, none even pausing and the last guy didn’t even marginally hold the door behind him. It actually took me a minute to register why I felt so incensed—I was dealing with uncultured Yankees who had no idea of how to act right. Later a peer in my department took me to task for “always making [a man] open the door for me.” Before I could protest that I was hardly making anyone do anything, said man spoke up and reminded her that where we came from, Tennessee and Texas, respectively, that’s how we did things and that I thanked him each and every time. Respect breeds respect.

I know that Doc is up there in the scenic Greater Seattle area rolling his eyes into Canada, probably. I know that most everybody is probably thinking some variant of “Bitch, please” and wondering what our address is so they can send Christopher some sort of condolence fruit basket that he has to live with me and my crazy ideas. I don’t actually want to send us all back to 1946—I’d have to wear stockings held up by garters and a girdle and skirts all the damn time and no way in hell I’m doing that. Nor do I think that we should have rigidly defined, pre-determined sex roles that limit opportunity. But so many of our issues could be set aside if we all agreed on a system of interaction and stuck with it; you’d know your friends, and your enemies and be able to open their doors and slam doors in their faces, depending.

10 responses so far

That’s for Chickens to Laugh At

Sep 26 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom

When I woke up this morning, the only thing I had to blog about was dreaming that we all had to learn a new language, called Caratois (pronounced very Frenchly), for use in airports. It was based on numbers (here I’m assuming that Da5id and Ma3a are only the tip of the numerophilological iceberg).

Then I got a new comment that, in part, goes like so:

Oh and BTW becca and I have seen SERENITY I was reading your site and I was like OMG BECCA remember that crazy RANDOM space movie we went and saw with the REAVER guys in it that is SARAHS FIREFLY OMG I gotta tell her (SO I AM TELLING YOU) now update us on what the hell firefly has to do with it cause the movie ended with everything being right in the world and the psyhic girl lives and all is good…. FILL ME IN

Oh Peggy baby, where to start?

The film Serenity is based on a short-lived television show called Firefly, now assumed to be one of the great cult hits of all time. The complete series is available on DVD and I encourage you to buy it as soon as humanly possible, like maybe on your lunch hour or some time in the next fifteen minutes. There are quite a few different theories as to why Firefly was canceled, from the worst conspiracy theories (like Fox is a Republican network and Firefly’s democratic ideals weren’t welcome) to the lamest excuses (like the World Series was so disappointing people stopped watching television altogether). Firefly was canceled because nobody watched it. Its ratings started low and went lower, only rising a little for the final episode. Most fans will tell you that there were quite a few mitigating circumstances that led to those low ratings. For the most part, I agree—there were indeed mitigating circumstances, some of which could have legitimately contributed to low ratings. But for the most part, the masses of people needed to make the show a hit just didn’t watch.

Firefly was a space western, literally. There were spaceships and horses and six-shooters and people who said “ain’t” and a creepy monolithic government in flying fortresses and guys with blue wands of bloody death. It was the story of nine people in the reconstruction period after a galactic civil war, many of whom were the losers. The show had bad ratings from the beginning, but because it was created by Joss Whedon, came with what amounted to a built-in and activist fan base—all the Buffy and Angel fans who were used to fandom, community, and rallying for action. Within weeks, fans took out an ad in variety to help the network see how much they were enjoying the show. Fans wrote and sent postcards to network execs and companies that advertised on the show. But it was still canceled.

The fan outcry was enormous. They wailed and rent their garments and gnashed their teeth and kept sending postcards and kept posting on forums and Whedon believed in his little TV show that could and vowed to find it another home or something, anything to keep it from disappearing. No other network would pick it up. So there started a massive trade in underground VCDs and p2p episode sharing.

A year after cancellation, Fox released the show on DVD. The sales were huge and unaccountably so—if everyone who apparently purchased the DVDs had watched the show, the ratings would have been plenty high. Either fans were buying multiple sets, or Firefly’s fan base had grown after cancellation, thanks in part to new and better file sharing technology like Bit Torrent.

Universal Studios noticed the huge DVD sales and around that time, several major news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, did articles on the success of cult-hit shows on DVD and how built-in fan bases could give properties and advertisers new life. Universal execs called Joss Whedon and eventually they made a deal for a movie. Eighteen months later (the release date was set back so as not to compete with Star Wars III), the film finally premiered. But not before there were several double super secret fan shows in different cities around the country, letting people who could get their hands on tickets see the show up to three times ahead of schedule.

Weekend grosses were far, far lower than expected. Fans again decried mistreatment—as Fox had mistreated Firefly, so Universal mistreated Serenity. Low domestic returns the first weekend put off international premieres and in some cases, the film was removed entirely from foreign markets to save on recouping cash. New statements by Universal executives confirm that the money spent on advertising Serenity was no more and no less than they spent on advertising any other movie, nor was it spent in a different way—such as contributing more to viral and web marketing instead of the traditional routes. People just didn’t watch it. Again.

When the DVD came out, it again sold far beyond expectation, confirming the idea that the built in fan base was buying extra, skewing the statistical results and making it seem like a far more beloved commodity than it actually was. The fandom, for the most part, holds out for a sequel or a revived series. As cynical as I obviously am about the whole thing, if I found out they were doing either, a sequel or a revival, I would weep with joy, and then with grief, because it would be so fundamentally different again, and then with relief, because any Firefly is good Firefly.

I’ve seen Serenity 14 times. I’ve seen each of the first 12 episodes upwards of 200 times each and the 3 “lost” episodes probably half that many times. I can recite them, for the most part, word for word. Not a day goes by that I don’t spend a significant chunk of time thinking about Firefly. I consider Serenity a piece of corporately-funded, source-approved fanfiction because I can’t bear the idea of not having Wash. I’ve made some of the best friends of my whole life because of Firefly.

Does that help? Does that answer your question? If not, this is what Mal said out front of each episode (when Book wasn’t doing a variant of it):

Here’s how it is. Earth got used up. So we moved out, and formed a whole new galaxy full of earths. Some rich and flush with the new technology, some not so much. The central planets, them’s formed the Alliance, waged war to bring everybody under their rule. A few idiots tried to fight it, among them myself. I’m Malcolm Reynolds, captain of Serenity. Got a good crew: fighters, pilot, mechanic. Even picked up a preacher and a bona fide Companion. Got a doctor, too. Took his genius sister outta some kind of Alliance camp so they’re keepin’ a low profile. Got a job? We can do it. Don’t much care what it is.

2 responses so far

The Plan: Get Over Self

Sep 25 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

Exercise doesn’t make it better. I go home and change into comfy pants and take a walk around the neighborhood, but spend most of my time trying not to be so conspicuously white. What time I don’t spend doing that I spend reaffirming to myself that it’s my neighborhood too and there’s nothing wrong with me taking a walk around and I do not represent the ugly facets of gentrification because gentrification is a good thing, ask anybody who’s not a total hippy liberal. Then hypocritically, other days, if it is raining say, I go in and change into comfy pants and unroll the mat and do yoga. To the soundtrack to Much Ado About Nothing, which is heavier on the trumpet than most yoga music. And I do okay, remembering poses and I spend the whole time thinking about whether or not I’m opening myself to demonic oppression by doing yoga. Well, not the whole time. Sometimes I think about how much I like the trumpets.

Actually the yoga does make it a little better. When it’s not giving me Charlie horses in the soles of my feet or hips. I did achieve a good start on the King Pigeon pose, too, but without my back leg touching my head.

Buying clothes doesn’t make it better because when you find a style of trousers that you like (except for the lack of pockets) because the clasps are just right and the length is just right and the fabric is just right and everything except the pockets is just right they only come in black. What the fuck, bitches? Would it kill you for brown or gray? Hell, I’d be willing to back away from my all-neutrals-with-some-blue-maybe-green uniform for fucking burgundy for these pants. Or something in a pin stripe. Or, really, depending on the colors a plaid. That’s how far I’m willing to go for these pants: plaid! They are that comfortable! And the twinsets that look so good on the dummies on the internet turn out to not look very good on me because they’re scoop neck and scooped just enough that I look both cleavageless and huge-busted (thank you, cable knit!) and it creates so much cognitive dissonance that I think, “I’ll just have to get the cardigans. Fuck this shit—no shell, no twin set. I hate everything.”

I tried buying lipstick, which usually always makes it better, but the lipstick I thought would look so good on me turned out to look oogy, as it was a nice translucent grapey-purple in real life whereas on the internet it looked rich and burgundy. And they didn’t have the lip gloss that I wanted, which was a deeply shocking magenta and made me feel powerful. And they didn’t have the lipliners that I wanted. And some teenagers got themselves a karaoke set right outside the Parisian and started singing Celine Dion songs really really loudly. Did I mention I hate everything? I hate everything.

The new anti-depressants make it a little better. They give me the energy to exercise. They give me the appetite of a horse and I’ve been told I can count on gaining weight. Side effects also include two fits of uncontrollable yawning a day (very interesting—I thought my jaw was going to lock up once) and anorgasmia. How sick and wrong is it that I’ll take the yawning and the inability to get off, but I’d really like to trade the 10 pounds for slamming my face into a wall for half an hour or so per day; like, I could get that in while yawning. Should I quit and just start taking meth? Anybody know where I can get some? The sooner I get it, the sooner I can start hating it.

I’m considering spending less time on the internet and more time cleaning house. I’m considering buying a coffee pot and making coffee every morning. I’m considering getting a new kitten regardless of what Christopher says. I’m considering not answering the phone anymore because every time someone calls they want to know about surgery and it’s so hard for me not to start dropping sarcasm bombs starting with “Me too! As soon as they deign to let me know, I’ll tell you!” I’m considering taking a pass on World of Warcraft for a while, because I have stories that need finishing. I’m considering taking a pass on fanfiction, because I have original ideas that need fleshing. I’m considering not writing stories anymore because the original ideas intimidate me: I’ll have no one to blame but myself if the stories turn out not very good.

In conclusion: More exercise, more shutting up, more writing, more bugging the surgeon’s office until I get some sort of answer about something so I can either fish, cut bait, or start some sort of sit-in at the Blue Cross offices in Riverchase, more loving of everyone and everything, despite the fact that it seems so hard.

9 responses so far

Yingping, Yangping, Shangsheng, Qusheng

Sep 22 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Speechifying

Last night in Chinese class we started learning tones. I’ve always suspected that this is what will separate my dilletante linguist Chinese-for-fanfiction self from the people who are learning it because they need to know it and I think I’m not wrong. Though I find that I spend less of class trying to think up plot ideas and more of class actually concentrating on learning and memorizing for the sheer joy of learning a new language.

It reminds me of sitting on the floor in my dorm room, Pearsons Hall, in the fall of 1996, reading my Hebrew texts out loud and being massively frustrated because I was so slow, but massively happy because I was starting to know what I was doing. I think I ended up very stymied, because I was so frustrated I wanted to quit, but every time I quit, the good feeling went away, so I kept it up. The same things, over and over: barach Elohim h’adam min h’adamah.

Different tones give identical phonemes different meanings. Ma1 means mother. Ma2 means hemp. Ma3 is horse. Ma4 is to scold. We practiced those words for I bet forty minutes. Eventually someone asked, “How do you say ‘I’m sorry’?” and we got a bit of new vocabulary. I couldn’t help adding to the woman next to me “…sorry for calling your mother a horse.”

5 responses so far

Victory at Last

Sep 21 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Never Off the Record

We won so hard last night. Like, by hundreds of points. So much so that I got doused in tea, like a champeen coach. No, not really. I used my jacket to knock over my own tea on myself and it was cold and I was wet and the drive home in the unseasonably cool weather was unpleasant. An entire glass of it, stewing around a lot of ice, and it all went into my lap.

Nevertheless, we won! And though we tried on many names, we went with Tight Skirtz, in honor of the scorekeeper’s outfit– black patent pumps, a super-tight, super-short black mini-skirt, and a demure little white blouse open to her navel so you could see the edges of her black bra. I still sorta want to make out with her.

The guys started off the evening by making fun of me:

Skillzy: I’m gonna dress up like Snape [for Halloween].
HD: Me too. Let’s all dress up like Snape!

Then the started making fun of Batonga:

HD: Say something, [Batonga]!
Skillzy: Say something Sarah can write down!
Batonga: Shut. Cake. Hole.

Then, there was quite a bit of discussion about the controversy of late at An Utter Waste of Time. Skillzy and I filled HD in on all the details, recounting with quotes the various innuendoes, doubles entendres, and uses of the word “duckling.” And I was forced to admit that I’d emailed Shadowhelm pretty much right away to find out the scoop, because, as Skillzy puts it, I always want to know about people’s dark sides. He’s right. I’m making a new banner soon, to the effect of Sarah, etc: Pruriently* Interested.

But then we had to take care of business. Hooter’s is starting a trivia tournament, which will just be like normal trivia, except they’ll keep score over something like four or eight weeks and the trivia team that does the best wins wings for life or lap full of sweet tea immunity or something, I wasn’t listening. Our tournament team name will be Space Pen.

Skillzy: The answers are non-negotiable. Cheating is not allowed.
HD: Does that mean I can’t cheat anymore?

Skillzy:Are we gonna let [HD] be captain?
Sarah: Space Pen is the captain. It’s the boss of us all.
Skillzy: It’s our spiritual leader. We’re spacepenologists.

There were some really funny questions. Like what was the official state sport of Alaska**. I suggested drinking, impregnating people, and drilling, but it turns out none of those was correct. Then we were asked what the only sport invented in America is, that does not have roots in the sport of another country. The answer is basketball and we got it no problem, but HD did try to sway Skillzy’s written answer:

HD: Hot dog eating! Brian said it!*** Write it down!

And then I found out some more about my friends’ dark sides.

Skillzy: I used to use a slide rule. I got over it.

HD: When I had a 300 baud moden, I used to play a game called Snugulite the Oogle Board.

Evidently Snegulite the Oogle Board was one of the first MUDs out there. If you can tell us anything about it, you also win wings for life and lap-full-of-tea immunity.

* The word prurient is believed to be ultimately derived from the Sanskrit plosati, meaning “he singes.” It becomes the Latin prurire, “to itch or crave.” The present participles of which are prurient and pruriens.
** The official state sport of Alaska is dog-mushing. I think I’d rather drink.
*** Brian was a new guy.

9 responses so far

Creme Brulee of Havoc

Sep 20 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Never Off the Record

Every once in a while my friends come up with the most hilarious metaphors. We’ll just be going along, talking about something completely innocuous, like the tomfoolery of Pirate Name Generators, and the conversation swerves so hard that all I can do is sit back and marvel at the wonder that is my life. Email conversations are even better for this, as it gives you the extra response times to craft something really hilarious.

That said, this is the funniest email conversation I’ve had lately. Also, it contains the word Carnage, which is near and dear to my heart for obvious, Doc-oriented reasons. It’s with a newish friend, Chris. Yes, I have yet another friend called Chris. Not my husband Christopher. Not my blogger friend. Not yet another friend and frequent commenter who answers to Chris. Whole other Chris. Who’ll be referred to in this context as Just Plain Chris, because all the other Chrises in my life have handles or are serious about that “-topher” at the end.

JPC: To really steep myself in embarrassment, and knowing that you rarely watch the telly, did you happen to watch Wife-Swap on ABC last night? The only reason I dare bring it up is because one of the families was a band of PIRATES. It was like a car accident with fatalities. And fire. With the fatalities on fire.
Sarah: If I even so much as accidentally saw Wife-Swap, you’d be reading my obituary notice, as I’d've committed ritual suicide. So, no. Was it like the fatalities on fire were running around in circles, banging into one another? Cos that’s comedy gold.
JPC: There were even fiery banana peels for slippery death. It was one big enormous Bananas Foster of carnage.

Now, in your best Ode-To-Doc-Home-Simpson-Voice, say, “Mmmm, bananas foster of carnage…” and drool!

Speaking of television shows, I’m going to start watching a new one soon. This coming Monday is the premiere of Heroes on NBC. I’m interested. We’ll see how long the show lasts or, conversely, how long I last, since it does not, at first glance, contain spaceships or wizards.

6 responses so far

Hot Nights In Zul’Gurub

Sep 19 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Gaming

I did my first 20-man instance last night, and boy is all my gear totally 100% busted. Possibly forever. Twelve druids, one mage, one warlock, one warrior, and one priest and a couple paladins is no way to compose a group for effective boss ass-kicking. Especially if the priest fails to bubble the squishies during AoE Happy Fun Time and then quits mid-mob.

Getting a Paladin with a sense of humor, however, is the way to go. For all people kvetch about pugs and their myriad failures and annoyances, sometimes you can put one together that has a gem of a person who uses the instance time, especially if it fails, to enterain as well as roll dps. Last night was one of those nights.

The larger raids have a raid warning system where someone can throw up a statement that appears in your chat window, and in the middle of your action, right there in your face, with a little off-key bonging noise so that you can’t ignore it. Observe below as dude starts out all business and eventually devolves into stating the obvious and swearing.

My favorite is “aoe.” There were no fewer than four coming down and at least two coming up and dude still wanted to let us AoE types know to get right on that. We, of course, obliged him. And not, as would have befitted, by running around in circles casting Arcane Explosion and hoping to get a crit. I, for one and on top of an existing flamestrike, threw frost nova, then instant cast a flamestrike, then brought down the ice shards from the top. And died, natch.

I also really, really enjoy the inability to type out simple words like “you” juxtaposed with typing “por favor” instead of “pls.” That’s solid right there– one warlock to make you your healthstone, so chat him up in Spanish so that he knows you respect him.

I won a badass purple, too. So now I have to spend the rest of my life in the Zul’Gurub instance just so that I can farm enough rep to get a robe that will make me indestructable, totally awesome, and probably smell like cookies.

2 responses so far

I Recommend the Mai Tai

Sep 18 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Geekery

You know, it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day. I hope you didn’t need me to tell you, but if you did, well, welcome to it. Tell somebody “aye” or “yar” or, failing all else, have a rum drink with dinner. I plan on spending the afternoon ordering people to walk the plank so that I can get the pirate out of my system and have a glass of red wine with dinner, thus making it Act Like a Belligerent Frenchman Night at my house.

I don’t have much experience with pirates. Certainly not the level that Honu Girl does, which is ACTUAL experience with REAL pirates, making her the WINNER. What I do have is a longstanding crush on one Mr. Alan Tudyk, known to most of you as Steve the Pirate.

As portrayals of pirates in popular folklore go, Steve the Pirate is not super-pirate-like. I don’t think there’s an objective scale of Pirate-ness or anything, but if there were, I’d hope it would be called The Scurvy Plank of Dread. If you rated a ten, then you’d be like Bluebeard or some actual pirate with an eye patch and a parrot. You’d be tops. Captain Jack Sparrow gets a seven for being omnisexual and wearing more eyeliner than is right in the eyes of God. About halfway down, rating a five, would be the Dread Pirate Roberts, all swashbuckling and romantic able to French kiss and run a bad guy through at the same time. Down at about a two rating is Steve. I merit a ranking of one, because I once dressed up like a pirate for Halloween.

Steve had a cool outfit and a headscarf and cleverly mixed up his be verbs. He could also catch a brew on the fly and wore humongous leather boots to play dodgeball. And, in the words of the great Vince Vaughn, “He is more of a pirate than you’ll ever be.” And it’s true.

So here’s to Steve the Pirate, and Alan Tudyk wherever we may find him. Yar, matey, avast, et cetera.

7 responses so far

Z is an Unaspirated Voiceless Apical Affricate

Sep 15 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession, Uncategorized

I had my first conversational Chinese lesson yesterday and wow is my palato-velar region tense. I didn’t learn any new vocabulary, but I now have a very thorough grounding in pinyin orthography and phoneme pronounciation. I am going to have to practice a lot, though, as many of the sounds are just different enough to be tricky. The sounds made by j, q, zh, and ch are all very similar, but the placement and angle of the tongue is different for each, making them all unique sounds, everything from similar to English j as in jump to ch as in chipmunk. From the handout we received:

q is an aspirated voiceless palatal affricate. It is aproduced in the same manner as j, but it is aspriated. Note that the Chinese q is similar to English ch except that it is articulated witht he tip of the tongue resting behind the lower incisors.

The instructor read that out loud and then added, “whatever that means.” I put my hand over my mouth, because I know what that means and nobody likes to hear anatomical explanation from people who got all their Chinese interest from a canceled television show. Later, as we were practicing pronouncing groups of vowels (some diphthongs, some not, interestingly enough) I finally broke down and used phrases like “high back” and “think of it like a schwa.”

And I loved every minute. There were umlauts. I was in heaven.

8 responses so far

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