Tag: language

The new mail order brides are here!

Quotes from some that just arrived in my mailbox:

“The friend on correspondence. Clever, kind, idle time.”

“Difficultly about itself to write, as in me it is combined two persons: serious lady and very lovely girl. ”

“You were lucky once if you haven’t known me.:)”

“I love much to write in the questionnaire it is not meaningful, I AM MARRIED here not such unit therefore it was necessary to play a cunning trick)) and to write that lonely to whom interestingly write necessarily I shall answer)”

“Has finished university of culture and arts, by a trade the manager of tourist sphere; I like to learn for myself a lot of new and interesting; I am fond of a photo. I earn additionally model, I like to leave on a nature, I play in the big tennis, I am engaged in navigation”

“The attractive girl formed, with good sense of humour)) About itself it is hard to write..”

“The man of my dreams has soft adoring eyes,a loving faithful heart, and strong nice thighs. “

and our hair cut the wrong way

Cornmeal-crusted baked chicken breasts with black pepper; beet and tomato salad with garlic mayonnaise; steamed French beans with butter.

My cat is barking at me. I keep saying to her: WRONG ANIMAL.

atrustheotaku linked to the strangest book I’ve seen in a while, a turn of the century guide to some kind of jacked-up Japanese pidgin. My favorite page of his scans so far is the Review from the Native Press.

It’s so quiet in here I can hear my eyes moving like in a Ren & Stimpy cartoon.

language notes

  1. It’s easy to convert a simple statement into a simple asshole statement. Simply prefix it with “Um”. Try it! It works every time!
  2. The following usage is proscribed and prohibited and will be punished: use of the German word “uber” as a generic comparative or superlative. Examples: “We didn’t want to swear around her because she’s uber religious”; “Of course, if there are things on an uber level that any of you see as problematic, please let me know ASAP so we can figure out the best way to resolve.” The second example arrived in email today and caused me to swear and frighten the cat.
  3. “Righteous” and “self-righteous” do not mean the same thing. A righteous person is one who does the right thing. A self-righteous person is someone who declares him or herself to be righteous, and this usage is pejorative. In short they’re almost opposites. Thanks.
  4. Dear the Kia Company: Like many car manufacturers, you’ve chosen Italianate names for your car. Sorrento is a very nice town and an acceptable name for a carr, but why did you take a letter out and call it the “Sorento”? Was it just to hurt me, every time I see that ad? Was that it? WAS THAT IT?

Academic stories from all over

Well, just from my father. He taught English, comparative literature, translation, and fiction writing. Most of his later career was spent helping MFA students write first novels, so he had a low idiot ratio. He taught undergrads too, though, and there were moments. I now present two: one goofy final exam quote, and one what the FUCK story.

Dante was a traditional figure. He had one foot firmly planted in the medieval world, while with the other he waved a triumphant greeting to the dawn of the Renaissance.

At one point he taught an upper division short story writing class. This was mostly English majors but not mostly people serious about fiction, so generally nice kids who wanted to learn the basics of writing stories. Along with the outlining and exercises and other Writing 101 stuff, there was required reading from an anthology of classic short stories.

On reading the final story for one student Dad found a bad problem. He called her in.

“I have something very serious to tell you,” he said. “This story is plagiarized, almost completely. You could be dismissed from the University.” The girl burst into tears immediately. After she regained her composure, he went on.

“Actually, it’s a bit worse than that. You’ve plagiarized a story from the required reading. This means that not only did you steal a story as your own, but you stole one from a well-known author, and one that you should have read in the second week of class if you were participating.” Again she collapsed in tears.

“It’s even worse!” she wailed.

“How?”

“I didn’t read the book anywhere, not even in the reading for the class. I stole it all from a Twilight Zone episode I saw in the Thanksgiving marathon!”

He gave her an incomplete in the class so she could take it over with a different teacher, on the condition that she never take another fiction class at that university again. Clearly she had no idea what she was doing on any level.

Then he came home and had a really big drink.

a babel into the void

If eye of the list “of the amis,”, that it has this in this service, that is tests smooth-to love. She is people, admits to the year in the person. Others are new the acquaintance 0ccasional or friends, the V in the first place in the Internet, exact of you that the screw gushes on one changed cliff of left of the position. And it has then of you that I probably do not satisfy never, possibly, because it is distant characterizes he saws that therefore or their screw is various, than is not probable we with the part of the same zone. Which entire it in the common distance of the earth must, is clay/tone. The Internet can form a lot, in order to limit the world, but of a specific sense the zones do not become between we. To fine the fifteen years the friends from this new sense have earned the dozen, but too much so that they were only under, than always. Task that is does not originate them. It is of the crystal – to face the density and not of the face. It wants slowly to times that it could give the return to the distraction and to the stay of the better acquaintance and, of the idealizada before this entire communication.

What’s all this about a clam? Oh no…

After today’s phrenology session I had an interesting talk with Brain Lady. I found myself explaining to her why she sounded like a postscientific wacko at first, before I learned more about her. Most of the problem is her language. She speaks Science and has been working at very technical jobs in the mental health field for 20 years, but when she’s explaining things to a client she uses analogies and metaphors that have been totally ruined by New Age bubbleheads.

For example, she will say “I’m doing this site to push the energy back over to the other side of your brain”. On further questioning, she explains that this is a thumbnail description for a poorly understood phenomenon in which treating one site causes the voltages to go down there and up in another part of the brain. She doesn’t literally believe that she is pushing the energy around. She refers to treating multiple injuries as “like peeling off layers of an onion”. This sounds like she believes in concentric spheres of some intangible substance, but again it’s a simile. Her observations show her that multiple injuries often require multiple stages of treatment, but there isn’t any proven one-to-one correspondence between the injuries and the stages of treatment. And when she’s talking about electrical activity and mental acuity increasing after treatment, she calls it “waking up the brain”; another analogy. All of these things sound like something the local Crystal Anus Delver at the Metaphysical Bookhonk would say. In Brain Lady’s case, she’s working off many years of academic study and clinical experience in developmental disability, head injuries, special education, substance abuse treatment, and psychotherapy.

The other bad news I had for her is that her stuff sounds like Scientology. Wires on your head, healing old injuries, increased states of awareness, oh dear. You’re expecting Tom Cruise to appear stage left and congratulate you for choosing the right path. Here’s the hilarious part: she knows nothing about Scientology. As I was explaining how many parallels there are, her eyes got wider and wider. “Oh no, do people think this is like Scientology? That’s just a dumb cult!” Poor thing, she’s spent 20 years in the Science Hole and working with actual patients, and hasn’t noticed some weird cultural trends.

She pointed out that she doesn’t speak in Science much to clients because communicating the statistical links between voltage differentials and affective disorders to people with head injuries can be frustrating to both parties. I think I did manage to get across that she was using language and analogies that had been poisoned, though.

For my own part, I told her I had only really started trusting her judgment the day she went off on a rant about attribution errors and the importance of knowing your independent variables and not trusting your subjective observations, with several anecdotes of failed studies that hadn’t taken these precautions.

discount therapy joints where you put a door buzzer in because of its striped appearance

brianenigma posted some geek-intensive instructions on how to make a Markoff chain of your entire LJ. I did it, and found it a bit of a pain especially since I also had to wash the text of non-ASCII weirdness and control characters. The result was worth it, though. I think it’s my finest writing ever, but it’s long so I used a cut.

Pat Sajak narration of ‘Casey at the Savage Republic/Mike Watt/Urinals/Human Hands show

Hillary, get a copy editor.

My mother, who is on all liberal mailing lists, received this note from Mrs. Clinton:

Please join Friends of Hillary and help me meet the dual challenges of fighting for our priorities in the Senate while running a strong but forceful campaign that will ensure my re-election by sending a donation of $25, $35, or $50.

AU: Strong and forceful are synonyms and should not be separated by “but”.

AU: You set up a parallelism of “dual challenges” and then used “while” to join the clauses, leaving the reader hanging.

AU: The campaign appears to be sending the donation.