Archive for: May, 2007

Permission to Put it Down

May 31 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Recovering English Major

I made an agreement with myself when I was about 11 years old that I would give any book at least 100 pages. At that point in my life, I was plowing through Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High books at a prodigous rate. If you’d asked me what the most significant book in my life was to that point, I probably would have said Harriet the Spy. But I encountered several books around that age that didn’t seize me the way I was used to being seized. And someone, probably my mother, helped me work through it by telling me to give every book at least 100 pages of my attention before discarding it.

I’ve been doing it ever since. There are very few books that don’t show enough potential in 100 pages to keep me with them. I actually altered it to 200 for Atlas Shrugged because Christopher recommended it and as life changing as that book is, wow does it start out slow.

This weekend I reneged. I broke a nearly 20 year old agreement with myself and put away a book (I’ll try again in six months or a year) before I’d hit 100 pages. It’s The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. I bought it because I very much enjoyed The Lathe of Heaven when I read it a few months ago. All the press and all the criticism says that The Left Hand of Darkness is a triumph of intellectual science fiction.

I guess I’m just not feeling so intellectual lately. I left the computer last Saturday afternoon (I’d set out to write some and had been less and less successful as the day went on) to read the book. It’s not that long and I figured I could just read it to the end, if I wanted to. I fell asleep twice in 30 pages. I tried to nap, but couldn’t. So I’ve added a sleep addendum to the rule: 100 pages or two nods off, whichever comes first.

Meanwhile, I feel ashamed at not immediately connecting with “a triumph of intellectual science fiction.” In the spirit of solidarity, tell me what books you’ve ignored, please. Which triumphs of whatever have you read 60 pages into and just said, “meh”?

15 responses so far

Bad Touch!

May 30 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Speechifying

  1. Go to iWanex Studio – Professional Photo Retouching Services
  2. Click the Portfolio link at the top.
  3. Choose any celebrity from the thumbnails at the bottom and click.
  4. Wait for the picture to load, then move your mouse over and away, over and away, to see the differences in the real photo, and the retouched photo.
  5. Close the website.
  6. Go look in a mirror.
  7. Marvel at how beautiful you are.

7 responses so far

Never Give Up! Never Surrender!

May 29 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

You never know when, after months and months of looking and hunting and searching, you’ll find your copy of Galaxy Quest. Even if you were pretty sure that some sort of DVD wormhole had opened between Shadowhelm‘s house and yours, because he inexplicably found a copy of the movie at the same time you inexplicably lost yours.

Turns out it was under the couch and it was the icing on the cake of achievement that was my weekend. I caulked the tub. We put together some bookcases. We cleaned the place top to bottom. I vacuumed most all the cat hair off the furniture. We rearranged the living back to summer configuration and lo! My copy of Galaxy Quest! Hooray!

So we spent a fine evening watching that, like welcoming home a friend you haven’t seen in months. And then we watched Sin City which was a whole different experience.

7 responses so far

Language Changes… of the Future!

May 25 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Lexpionage

Lentition is the weakening of a particular sound, usually in the middle or at the beginning of a word, that is one of the primary drivers of language change. One of the largest unified examples of lentition is something called Grimm’s Law: the statements that explain the large and consistent consontant shift between Proto-Indo-European languages (like Latin and German) and Proto-Germanic languages (like German and English). Grimm’s Law is why we in English say “ten” when the Romance-language words for more-than-nine and less-than-eleven are all some variant of “d-”.

The first step was a slide from voiceless stops to fricatives– from [p] to [f] essentially. Make those sounds to yourself. Though there’s a large shift in where your front teeth sit, it’s otherwise just a change of air flow. The [p] stops the air. The [f] lets it flow, and is thus a fricative. We say “foot” but the Latin root is “ped.” The first step also gives English its unique interrogative orthography. Our question words are all spelled “wh” as in what, where, when, who? But we tend to pronounce them “hw.” Say “what” out loud to yourself, slowly, several times. Notice the first thing you do. You likely purse your lips, almost to the point of whistling, and begin a sound (and I’ll bet it’s from down in your chest, like [h]) before it resolves into the more familiar, open [w] sound. In Latin, you’d say “quod,” which is much sharper for that lack of fricative.

The second stage is a moving from a voiced stop to a voiceless stop, or the difference between [b] and [p], or [d] and [t]. In other words, is your larynx getting in on the action or just your mouth and lungs? This particularly, the “decem” / “ten” difference. Make the [d] sound to yourself several times and notice how it’s nearly impossible to say anything other than “duh.” You’re getting that schwa in on the end there, because the d needs to be voiced. Now make the [t] sound and notice how you don’t have to say “tuh.” It’s voiceless– you might as well be fidgeting with your tongue.

The neatest thing about this is how regular it is. The evidence suggests that when the shift occured, it occured consistently and across the board. All labials (sounds made with your lips) worked the same and all the dentals (sounds made with your teeth on your lips) worked the same and all velars (sounds made with your tongue and the roof of your mouth) worked the same. Even the exception is consistent: if it’s preceeded by an “s,” it’s probably not going to change. This makes “spew” look and sound the same in every PIE descendent language.

Past that basic lentition that undergirds so much of our language, I came across “flapping” this weekend. Intervocalic alveolar flapping, sometimes called “tapping” is the process by which we merge voiced and unvoiced alveolar stops between vowels, like [d] and [t] between a mid-vowel (like [A] or [e] and a high vowel like [i]). Say the following words pairs of words out loud to yourself:

  • betting / bedding
  • kitty / kiddie
  • shutter / shudder

Do they sound exactly the same? You flapper, you! We all do it. It’s almost impossible not to without really concentrating on sounding super-snooty.

The exceptions to flapping rules are also really interesting. The presence of [n] tends to prevent the flap, so “written” and “ridden” sound far more different than “writing” and “riding,” which have no [n] sound. A first syllable vowel stress also prevents the flap, as you’d never hear “redale” when someone meant to say “retail.”

Though I’ll never live to hear about it, I wonder at flapping’s closeness to the shift outlined in Grimm’s law and wonder if it will ever cause another shift of whole language. What will [t] and [d] look and sound like a thousand years from now? How will they act in the presence of vowels and nasopharyngeals (like [n] and [ng])? I get tickled thinking of Doc Brown saying, “Where we’re going, we don’t need intervocalic alveloars!”

2 responses so far

An Impossibility of Sources

May 24 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom, Geekery, Speechifying

I’ve had the opportunity lately to tell a lot of people about open source software– as a concept more than recommending particular packages or operating systems. I showed someone Open Office a few days ago and the look on her face, when she realized that she was not actually going to have to shell out $500 to get the Microsoft Office suite when she really just wanted a word processor and a spreadsheet maker was amazing. I almost teared up. She was just so thrilled.

Since then I’ve been sort of half ruminating on how everything is become more and more open source and that sharing and collaboration is making things better. There’s been a kerfluffle in metafandom lately because of something called FabLib– essentially a site where you can post your fanfiction and megacorporations can profit from it, all while opening you to the legal risk associated with appropriating a copyrighted work. Scalzi weighed in on FabLib, but the best is Lis Riba’s deconstruction of the marketing pamphlet. All of this is about to go boom, so I’m going to get good seats.

At any rate, it’s an interesting example of someone trying to close a source that is and will ever be open. They saw something that worked, saw passion, and furthermore, saw rising clicks and dwell time and said let’s round it up and cut it off. And it’s going to backfire in the biggest way because the source is always open. Information wants to be free.

And though I was already happy about things, enjoying watching the fur fly, I was tickled to see a featured WikiHow this morning for OpenCola– coke with a GNU license. Life is beautiful. Effevescent, super-sweet, and beautiful.

5 responses so far

Storge, Philia, Eros, Agape

May 23 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Speechifying

Aside from Sylar-centric Heroes commentary, most everything I read lately has been about the great gulf of understanding between men and women. Or maybe it should be the great, contempt-filled, violence-riddled gulf between what men think women think of them, and what women assume men think of them. It’s like a national dialogue that’s playing 6th grade note passing: Do you like me? Check yes, no, maybe. And everybody’s still checking maybe, hedging their bets against rejection.

Over the weekend, Joss Whedon published a rant of sorts about why men hate women so much. His theory is womb-envy, best encapsulated in Jubal Early’s statement, “Man is by far stronger than woman, yet only woman can create a child. That seem right to you?” Well, Early, it’s a false analogy; try harder. I don’t know about you, but I have never met a genuine misogynist. Perhaps I’m sheltered or blessed with a highly educated peer-group, but I have never, ever met a man who hates women merely for being women. And the only people I know who think that men are an extremely secondary part of the child-creation process I’ve met through Whedon’s television shows.

But I have met women who hate men for being men. And though it’s tempting to say that that’s worse, it’s not. It’s not worse. It’s just as grotesque and awful. Misandry is just as serious and disgusting as misogyny. And I found the wrecked sentiment of that misandry echoed in Food or Sex by Susie Bright at Alternet.

Bright’s thesis seems to be that it’s very strange how men, especially young men (20 and 30-somethings) have vastly increased their use of Viagra, not because they are impotent or otherwise medically compromised, but because they don’t often feel desire for sexual contact. And when they do feel desire for sexual contact, their needs aren’t being met by their partners, who expect them to just be ready to go, fully erect and crazed with lust. She says:

These aren’t men looking for dreams of youth, they’re youth who’ve discovered sex, in the prime of their lives, to be disappointing and even humiliating, because their penis didn’t “behave” the way they believe it’s supposed to, or because the pleasure it afforded them seemed less than the hype.

Viagra was created, at first, as a heart drug– and it’s still being used as one, just not in the way people think. If a man expected a woman to take drugs so that she’d be aroused at a moment’s notice, the outcry would be defeaning. But Bright seems to be the only voice pointing out that for men, regardless of what stereotypes say, it’s hardly as simple as insert tab A into slot B; thrust; repeat. And women are encouraged in the social contract to endlessly ruminate on their pleasure, how to make it better, how to get more, do more, and be more sexually. The same culture assumes that a man would be satisfied with any warm, moist, enclosed space. Bright wraps it up, saying:

… men have had it with women’s inane stereotypes about their bodies and minds. After all, men can be turned on without erections; they can achieve orgasm without a raging hard-on, and their emotions and minds are just as tied to their cock as any woman is to her clit.

How many women, conditioned by a feminist movement remarkably removed from it’s foundations in genuine equality, have been taught or encouraged to use men as egregiously as men are purported to use women? And how much of that use is defensive on both sides? I’m not about to collapse into any thoughts that the sexual revolution was an awful thing, damaging to both culture and spirit, as many so often do, but perhaps it’s time for a follow-up. Let’s call for a bloodless coup that reconnects love to the sex act so that neither half of a lovemaking pair ever has to rely on pharmacopeia to achieve something that goes beyond priviledge or right and into instinct. Refocus the ideals away from the perfect orgasm toward the need for emotionally stimulating human contact. Love and be loved. Shut your bedroom door to proscriptions by anyone who is not you or your lover. And have a lover, not a partner! Revel in the love of a man, and the love of a woman, and how they are so different and so very, very similar.

5 responses so far

Sylar is a Rock Star

May 21 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom

Less than 12 hours to the Heroes season finale. I have to work tonight, so I figure I might go crazy around 7:45, which is the last moment I can leave my office to get home by 8:00, and even then, I’ll have to play fast and loose with a few red lights. Still, it’ll be on NBC’s website when I get home, so I won’t have to worry about missing out by too long.

I am deeply, deeply in love with Sylar. I think I spent a good 50% of this weekend thinking about him, playing fanon games with friends online, talking about what it is that makes him, as a character, so compelling. I have nothing concrete yet except for that whole, I don’t want to be a bad guy, but if I had to be, I’m going to bring sexy back doing it ethos. He is just plain stupid hot.

And here’s a video, chronicling his path from Watchmaker to Serial Killer. It’s got nearly all his best lines, including his southern-accent, “Maybe I’ll kill you first!” And his beautiful, tearful, wrathful, “Give me that list!”

7 responses so far

Dirty Bad Naughty Words

May 18 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Lexpionage, Speechifying

I have another smashed car window to cope with (that’s four in two and a half years– think I ought to move?) and so I’m feeling very growly. Frankly, today’s word is “motherfucker.” As in, “Bring me the teenaged motherfucker whose idea of a good time it is to break my car.”

Are there any varitants of the word “fuck” or “fucker” that have a harsher connotation than motherfucker? The only one I can think of that even comes close is “clownfucker.” That has for years been part of the harshest insult I know and use, invented with Honu Girl and another friend: clown fucking whore wagon.

The only other new word I learned this week is the slang term for vagina, “meat curtain.” Evidently, there’s an extended version of the Serenity DVD gag reel wherein Alan Tudyk says, “Oh yeah. I’m gonna pull back that meat curtain and put on a one man show… and an encore.”

How vile and repulsive is that? I feel like I should not like him anymore, having said something like that, but really, I still do. I might love him more, really, because “clown fucking meat curtain” is a pretty good insult.

5 responses so far

Let Me Sink My Teeth Into It

May 17 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom

Shadowhelm has a great post up lately exhorting everyone to watch Heroes. It really is all on the NBC website for immediate viewing and, surprisingly, you don’t have to sit through a bunch of obnoxious commercials– there are fewer on the web than there are on the actual television.

However, if you’d like a very fast look at how it works, this is a great vid. And, from my perspective, it doesn’t hurt that it features Sylar extensively. There’s nothing quite like a really good villain, is there?

Yes, it’s the James Bond song, but I think it really works. And if you can’t get into that, try this, maybe:

2 responses so far

Religion as Fandom, a WiP

May 16 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession, Speechifying

Y’all, I heart Joe Carter. I realize I should probably let him know on his own blog, but his commenters are quick and intimidating and when they get done, fangirling him just seems stupid. Luckily, I have my own blog where I can fangirl everybody, all the time. Last week Joe wrote Fads and Fixtures: Ten Deadly Trappings of Evangelism. Yes, the title is a little over the top, but the rest of the post is good. So good that as I was reading it, before I had even finished it, I was IMing Honu Girl with excerpts saying, “I want to french kiss this man!” Which is naughty, I know, but still.

I still haven’t found a church to attend, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to go to one. And when it comes to saying why I don’t like going to certain churches or speaking in certain ways I find myself relatively inarticulate. Most of this is not wanting to speak badly of something most people hold dear. The rest is, to some extent, my natural inclination to lurk– much of what people do and say and think of as religion seems to me to be fandom. And I can appreciate that they’re parts of that particular fandom and I can even really dig their main character, I’m not into it. That is to say, I don’t know their tropes and speech patterns; I’m not a part of their community.

Joe’s post is a top ten of evangelical fads, and it reads to me as clearly as if he were writing meta for fandom_wank or similar. The first three topics read straight, too: making converts, the sinner’s prayer, and the awful “Do you know Jesus as…” as if anything other than “personal savior” could follow. I ask these questions all the time, except I do it by asking if people know the story of Malcolm Reynolds and I’d be pleased to buy them some DVDs, genuinely, and what’s it about? Well, it’s starts, “Here’s how it is. Earth got used up.”

I’m being facetious, but I need to be facetious to get a handle on things. So much of my life I was told that if I didn’t participate in and love and embrace these things, these memes, that I was hellbound. And that never sat right with me, because no where in the bible did it say that I was doomed if I didn’t speak in tongues, or did go to church for seven hours on a Sunday, or any of the things that are so important, so many of the things people flash as cred. His number four is where I really freaked out though– Tribulationism. I read the first three or four books of the Left Behind series because my mom seemed to really love them, everybody seemed to really love them, and they were just sitting around. I stopped not because I don’t like Christian literature, but because they were crap. They are awful. Not as bad as The DaVinci Code, but in the same zip code of awfulness and furthermore, people started to think they were the history of the future. And Joe summed it all up perfectly:

Ask a non-believer to give a rudimentary explanation of “the Rapture” and chances are they can provide a fairly accurate description of that concept. Ask the same person to give a basic explanation of the Gospel message, though, and they are likely to be stumped. The reason for this curious state of affairs is that evangelicals have promoted what I refer to as “Tribulationism” — an overemphasis on eschatology that overshadows the Gospel. I’m sure that somewhere in the three dozen novels that comprise the Left Behind series the Gospel message is presented. But there is something horribly wrong when the greatest story ever told is buried beneath a third-rate tale of the apocalypse.

At this point, Doc knows more about the Left Behind series than I do, because he’s read more of them and as far as I know, he’s not big on The Religion. And I can’t find anybody who can talk about what charismatic eschatology was before 1890, because this idea caught on so hard (undoubtedly because it’s the most dramatic– yet another mark of fannishness) that now even Catholics, for whom this is most certainly not dogma, accept it as fact that just doesn’t get talked about in any homily they’ve ever heard. And the literature itself is drivel! Pure, unadulterated nonsense. What the hell kind of name is Rayford? Carpathia? That’s the best last name you could come up with for the Spawn of Satan? And Chloe and that reporter guy are like, 25 years old and you’ve got them worried about kissing? I’m fixin’ to throw my Oxford Chinese minidictionary across the room because it’s the only book handy and some book needs to get thrown!

Calming down a bit, even if you’re not all het up about lousy literature, we can all agree on Joe’s eighth point: the endless rambling of protestant prayer that contains a minimum of 50 “justs.” I don’t know how many times I’ve sat or stood or whatever rolling my closed eyes in my bowed head because the prayer went, “LORD, we just, we come here to today to just, Lord, we just worship you and praise you right now. We just come before you as sinners to praise you and we just want you to hear us and just feel the stirrings of our hearts, Lord.” And on and on like that for ten more minutes while we begged forgiveness for our sorry worthlessness, then “just” asked for a random blessing then “just” asked for a more specific blessing then “just” said kthnxamen. Almost as if someone started a meme that said you wouldn’t get taken up in the Rapture unless you could pack 35 uses of the word just into any given prayer, even those out front of dinner.

We have entire books to teach us how to pray yet Jesus managed to wrap up the lesson in less than forty words. Why isn’t that prayer good enough for evangelicals to use? Why do our prayers sound nothing like His example?

Indeed. In the end, I only want to redouble my effort to find somewhere to worship that’s not all covered in this, if there is such a place. I don’t want to go to a church with 3000 people and all kinds of programs. I don’t want to go to a church where I have to read 4 pieces of outside literature a month to keep up with the teaching. I don’t want a church that’s more about “support” than learning, or where I can’t raise my hand to ask a question. Are there such places? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one.

10 responses so far

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