Williams does it again

I just had to share this article by Walter E. Williams. Not his most recent, but I just found it today. He makes a good case for the "original intent" school of Constitutional interpretation. The only person I've ever heard make better arguments for that school is Justice Antonin Scalia.

Anyway, here's the article: The law, or good ideas?

I'm sitting in the library right now, working on my assignments, and boy is it hot! I'm sitting next to the window, and it's unusually sunny outside. On top of that, i'm also wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and dark jeans, which doesn't help the situation.

Laugh it up, fuzzball. (5 points)

happy birthday, Leslie Howard

In the past few days, I've been learning a little more about Leslie Howard, the famed actor. His most famous roles include Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind (1939), Henry Higgins in Pygmalion (1938), and Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934). (This last explains my current interest in him.) Howard was a man of high principle and courage. Before acting, he served briefly in World War I. After a very successful career in acting, directing, and producing, he became dissatisfied with Hollywood and returned to England just days before Britain entered World War II. Along with many others, Howard had sensed the coming of war in Europe, and he returned home largely in order to assist in the war effort. At the time, he was just shy of 50 years old, and he spent the next few years actively speaking out against the Nazis. In 1943, a few months after his 50th birthday, he was killed when the commercial airplane, in which he was returning to England from Portugal, was shot down by the German Luftwaffe.

I always highly admire those in Hollywood (or any other high-profile career) who leave it to do what they feel is right. I also am constantly in search of celebrities who marry before becoming famous, and stay married to that same person, after fame and fortune make their appearance. Both of these are true of Leslie Howard, and that makes him particularly admirable in my opinion. Happy Birthday to a great man!

Devilish clever race, the French. How they speak that unspeakable language of theirs defeats me. (12 points)

further exploits

Today I tried making Yorkshire parkin. It's a traditional sweet bread made in Yorkshire, a lot like gingerbread. I found a simple recipe on the internet for it, so today I decided to try it out. It turned out decent, edible, but it could have been much better. It was a learning experience, in other words.

First, I didn't have any baking powder, only baking soda. I had heard once long ago that you could substitute these for each other, but you really can't. But I tried it anyway. I think it would have been OK, but I should have used about half as much baking soda. It overflowed in the oven, and I had to scrape it off the bottom of the oven while it was still baking.

The other problem was that the recipe said to bake it in a moderately slow oven, and I just guessed at what that was. I guessed high. So, it also turned out rather over-cooked. Like I said, it's still edible, but it could be much better. At least I'll know next time.

Maybe the dingo ate your baby! (10 points)

Happy Easter!

During the sacrament in church today, I read through the account of the Resurrection from the four Gospels. I really love the account in John, and today particularly it made me think of the glorious day when I will meet my Master and worship at His feet.

I have been listening again today to one of my favorite hymns, one by John Rutter. It's called "As the Bridegroom to His Chosen," and the version I have is by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It is so lovely. I would like to do an analysis and explanation of all the metaphors in that hymn.

I was so lucky as to be invited to dinner with the Kureczkos, and that was lovely, as always. I will really miss that family when I leave. Right now I'm going to read for a while, and then I will call my family in Idaho Falls.

The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature. (25 points)

good eats

For dinner tonight, I made chicken tikka masala, an Indian dish, and it's quite yummy. I just had to share.

I also went and sat outside for about an hour, since the sun was sunshinying. It was pretty cold, though.

"But it isn't easy, mind you. It takes all my brains."
"I'm sure it would." (23 points)

ginormous update

Lots of things to talk about, since it's been so long. (Sorry about that!) Pick and choose your favorites.

Shame

First, I have to say that I'm feeling rather ashamed of myself right now, for my lack of robust faith. Ironically, all the stuff we talked about at church (which had a lot to do with this) did not move me nearly as strongly as a pair of articles by Doug Giles, called "Robust Faith". They're part of a series that he's not finished with yet, but the two he's done already really moved me to consider how limpid I've allowed my faith to become, and how desperately I need to learn to make my faith a strong, visible part of my everyday life, even in those situations where I may feel most uncomfortable doing so. If you're interested, the articles are here and here.

Psych study

I've been helping out with this psychology study on campus. They're testing the effects of different sugars on the cognitive processes. So, we fast for 12 hours before-hand; they take a blood sample, and then give us this nasty sugary drink and wait 15 minutes; they take another blood sample, and then we do some cognitive thinking tests on the computer, etc. Well, I've been noticing that this tends to give me a bit of a headache, only natural after a sugar high like that. But yesterday was especially bad. It may have been helped along by the fact that when I got home, I spent essentially the rest of the day reading an online text of a book. In any case, I had a nasty headache all day long, and all I had to relieve it was my peppermint oil. It did help, but never lasted long. I guess it's time to buy some ibuprofen.

Weather

The temperature out here has been much nicer lately -- I rarely need more than a sweater to keep me warm when I go out. It's even been more sunny, and that's wonderful! Today it happens to be really overcast, but yesterday was beautiful for most of the day (it started to rain in the evening). It's making me very happy. Oh, and I finally went and got myself new flip-flops yesterday at ASDA.

Reading

Recently, I've been reading some Georgette Heyer. The first (These Old Shades) was one that my friend Katie brought with her when she visited, and left it with me. It was all right, and I was annoyed with it even as I was engrossed in it. It was a very strange experience. Anyway, after that one, JoAnna lent me hers (Bath Tangle) to read, and I liked it much better. It was written later in Heyer's life, and it was set in a later period, and the main characters were more grown-up. I think that all contributed to me liking it better.

Anyway, I can't find Heyer at the library or online, so then I had to start reading some other stuff. Having read Heyer lately, I'm now in the mood for romances, and so I started with some Jane Austen. I finally read Persuasion, which was quite short, comparatively. It was very good, but there's nothing much more that I would want to say about it at the moment. Except maybe that it made me want to go to Lyme Regis and Bath.

After Persuasion, I then was really in the mood for some Scarlet Pimpernel. It has been a long time since I read it, and it was great, as always. I found a website entirely devoted to the Scarlet Pimpernel, www.blakeneymanor.com. Actually, I had found it long before, but this time I found that they have e-texts of all the Scarlet Pimpernel books, and even some others that Orczy wrote. I may have to read a few more of them right away.

Easter

Spring is here, and Easter is this weekend. I can hardly believe it! I don't have any plans as yet. JoAnna was going to try and convince a family in the ward that they should invite me over for dinner that day, but I haven't heard anything about it. I need to talk to the husband anyway, so I'll probably try and call him today.

Easter always makes me think of my mission and my trainer Sister Gordon, since that's about the time that I first arrived in the field. It was a very good time of the mission for me, and I can't help but think of it whenever Easter comes around. That's probably a good thing, since it also serves to remind me both why I went on a mission and why we celebrate Easter, namely, for our Savior. I plan to do some good Easter reading, about the Resurrection. Interestingly, my favorite teaching about the Resurrection is from before it had taken place. It is when the Lord is about to raise Lazarus from the dead, and he explains to Martha that, "I am the Resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die" (John 11:25-26). I suppose I love this so much because it makes me remember that Jesus Christ is the Master of my soul -- that without Him, there is no resurrection, and there is no life.

Today's quote

The old man shrugged. He had seen so much misery, so much sorrow and pain, it was difficult to be compassionate to all. There had never been but One in this world who had compassion for the whole of humanity, and humanity repaid Him by nailing Him to a cross. (50 points - one of my favorite quotes ever, from a little-known and little-read book)

ashley smith

I didn't listen to Rush last night (I was doing a little work on my essay instead), so I didn't hear about this until just a few hours ago. If you haven't heard about Ashley Smith, you need to read about her ordeal last weekend. What an amazing woman, and a wonderful example of a true Christian and a woman of God.

God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate. (50 points)

judicial nominees, filibusters, and the "nuclear" option

I was just re-reading this wonderful article by Thomas Sowell, and I wanted to pass it along, just in case anyone else is interested. I'm very interested to see what will happen with all of this -- and I'm personally outraged at the whole situation in the Senate with the judicial nominees. But I'll spare you an elaboration of my personal opinions on this matter. Anyway, Sowell does a great job outlining the issues at stake in this struggle, and anyone wanting to think more about it would do well to read the article.

Here you go.

He who hesitates is sometimes saved. (30 points)

politeness conference

Yesterday I spent the whole day in Nottingham for a Politeness Conference at Nottingham University. Before you ask, let me clear up a few misconceptions. No, politeness (as an academic study) is in no way related to sensitivity. No, we did not sit around and learn how to be polite to other people. No, there was nothing there about Robin Hood or Maid Marian. And no, we didn't analyze each other's politeness strategies. And yes, politeness really is an academic study -- it has been quite influential, especially in the linguistic study of pragmatics.

Politeness deals with how people display polite (and impolite) behavior. In linguistics, it is concerned with the language people use to be polite or impolite. It tries to make sense of statements like the following:

Can you pass the salt?

See, usually the person who says something like that knows that the person they're addressing literally is capable of passing the salt. So, why do they question it? Why do we put it in that way? Well, it's one way of being polite (namely, in this case, by being indirect) - it softens the blow of what the speaker is really trying to say. If we didn't make the utterance polite, we would end up saying something like, "Give me the salt." In some cases, that might be fine; but in other cases, that kind of statement might offend someone. So, this is what politeness is all about.

The conference was interesting. They were also launching the start of a new journal on politeness, so they gave us all free copies of the first issue. That made me glad, since there are some articles in there that I've been looking forward to using. However, for the most part, I was just annoyed by the sense of academic self-superiority that pervaded all the proceedings. I don't think that people in academia try to be superior -- but they really get accustomed to thinking that way. Never before in my life have been so distinctly aware of the Ivory Tower.

Don't get me wrong -- I did enjoy myself, and there were some really interesting things discussed. But I just kept wondering what the point of it all was. Who really cares whether or not 'face' is a real concept, or whether it's the same across cultures. Of course there are practical implications for it all -- such as teaching people how to be polite in other cultures, countries, and languages -- but in the long run, is it really going to matter whether or not our theory of politeness accurately reflects the way things are? It's like the classic question about the chicken and the egg -- you know, which one came first? Why does it matter? It might be interesting to theorize how things happened, but in the long run, it really doesn't make any difference which was first, because they're both here now. If we actually knew for certain that it was the chicken that came first, how would that change the way we do anything?

The older I get, the more of a pragmatist I become. And modern academia is really no place for a pragmatist.

Anyway, on a bit of a happier note, I'd like to recommend Walter E. Williams's online 'course' (a series of 10 articles) entitled "Economics for the Citizen." Dr. Williams had last fall semester off from teaching at George Mason University, so he wrote up this series of 10 articles to try and teach some basic economics for the average citizen. Very interesting stuff. Between Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't have gone into economics. (Don't worry - I'm just kidding.)

Oh yeah, and I found out the other day that Jonathan Culpeper will be supervising my dissertation. I'm excited about that, since I'm using his framework on characterization for my dissertation. That, and I just generally like Jonathan. My dissertation, by the way (or, incidentally), is about the characterization of James and Lily Potter in the Harry Potter series.

I ask a simple question, and I get a parade. (30 points)

the latest update

I just got thinking about my blog today and realized how long it's been since I posted anything (a whole week! how could I?), so I thought I'd post a little something.

I'm currently listening to today's Rush Limbaugh Show, with Walter E. Williams guest hosting. He's "interviewing" Thomas Sowell over the phone, and it's been fascinating. These are two of my favorite columnists ever. Very clear thinkers, and very clear writers. It makes me wonder sometimes if I shouldn't have gone into Economics instead. To view their columns, use these links: Walter E. Williams ~*~ Thomas Sowell.

Also, while at the British Museum recently, I was struck once more by the nature of Egyptian hieroglyphs. So I have taken it upon myself to learn some Ancient Egyptian. This is proving a bit difficult at the moment. I've got little flash cards for the 'alphabet' glyphs (the ones that stand for just one letter - this is how they 'spell' your name in Egyptian at places like this). But the other characters have been difficult to work with - on one site, the glyphs are too small to be able to really reproduce them (which is the only way I manage to learn things), and another site doesn't have the transcription for them (so that I know roughly how to pronounce them). Plus, all of the sites I've found use a completely different set of glyphs once they get past the 'alphabet', so there's no way to compare them and find missing information from one site on the next. I'm thinking I may have to wait until I get home and buy a real textbook for it before I really make much headway. I also want to learn Akkadian cuneiform sometime soon. I have mused many times that if I were not in stylistics, I would want to be in historical linguistics, reconstructing ancient languages.

Lately, I've been watching more Strong Bad Emails. I'd really quite forgotten about Strong Bad and Homestar Runner, until Katie visited. After watching a few with her, I remembered how hilarious they are. And then I played Peasant's Quest on the games page -- too fun! I strongly recommend that you check it out. Play Peasant's Quest ~*~ Peasant's Quest Walkthrough

Run the straight race through God's good grace. (20 points, plus another 20 for a movie it's in)

London trip

All around the cathedral the saints and apostles look down as she sells her wares. (10 points)

So, London was good. It was a weekend of disappointments, though. First, on Saturday morning we went to find 221b Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes was supposed to live. The plan was just to get my picture taken standing outside, and then find the nearest 'smart red pillar box' (aka round, red mail-box) and take my picture by that, since that should be where Danger Mouse lives (er ... lived). However, we couldn't find any smart red pillar boxes there. In fact, there seems to be some confusion about where Danger Mouse does live, after all. In the cartoons, they say that he lives "somewhere in Mayfair", but when they show his pillar box, the sign behind it says "Baker Street", and Baker Street is not in Mayfair. Hmm. Sounds supsicious.

Well, after getting over my disappointment about Danger Mouse (which took a whole 2 minutes, I think), we then headed to find Temple. This is a section just off the north shore of the Thames and barely inside the City of London (which is only one square mile), where the seat of law in England has been since about the 17th century. It was named largely for the Temple Church, which was built by the Knights Templar in the 12th century. Unfortunately, when we got to Temple, we found it closed. Checking the guide book, we then realized that the Inner Temple and Middle Temple are closed Saturday and Sunday, but that the Temple Church was supposed to still be open to visitors. Now we just had to find a way in. We eventually did, and then wandered around a bit till we found the church. However, we then learned that the church was closed to visitors that day only. Shucks! Well, we got some good pictures of the outside of it and then found our way out again. That was a bit tricky, since we got in someplace where we apparently weren't supposed to. But, we did find our way out again, right on to Fleet Street, where we were greeted by the majestic Royal Courts of Justice. Amazing building! Wow.

By this time, we thought it was time to head back toward the hostel and the British Museum, right across the street from each other. The British Museum was well worth the trip. It's the grand-daddy of all museums, and just what a museum ought to be. Lots of great stuff from Egypt, Assyria, and Greece. They had lots of other great stuff, too, but that was the wing JoAnna and I were interested in at the time. (Oh yeah, I nearly forgot to mention that we got to see the Rosetta Stone, too. It was much smaller than I had expected.)

After the Museum, we then found 48 Doughty Street, where Charles Dickens lived for a while. While there, he finished Pickwick Papers, wrote most of Oliver Twist, and then wrote all of Nicholas Nickelby. It wasn't quite as interesting as I had hoped, although there were some neat artifacts. The displays left something to be desired, though, for the most part. I was very close to joining the Dickens Society, but then I realized that I would have to have them change my subscription (for The Dickensian) from domestic to international in the middle of the year, and they cost different amounts, and I just decided that I would wait until I get home to America and then do it.

By that time, we were both very tired and cold, so we ran back to the hostel for a while to warm up and rest a bit. While there, we checked out the guide book, trying to decide if there was something else we wanted to see while there. But nothing caught our attention at the time, and then I decided I needed to do some email about ward business. We found an internet cafe, and I sent my emails, and then we went back to the hostel again to get ready for the theater.

Right about here is where things get confusing to me. See, somehow, we lost an hour of our time. We neither of us know what happened or where that hour went, but it seems that when we got to the theater to collect our tickets, it must have been 7:30 already -- the time when the show was supposed to start. However, we thought it was 6:30 and that we had another whole hour to kill. We briefly considered finding our seats right then, but we figured with a whole hour, we might as well go find something to eat. So, we wandered around Piccadilly for quite some time trying to find good chips. Let me just say, Piccadilly is not the place to find chips. Unless you want to sit down and have a full dinner. We eventually asked the bouncer at a pub, and he told us someplace to find some. As we sat eating our chips, I mentioned to JoAnna what a nice feeling it was to know that we didn't have to worry about our seats, since they were reserved, and it wouldn't matter if we got there only 5 minutes before the show.

Eventually, we went back down to the theater, arriving at quarter past the hour. We thought we were doing quite well, with 15 minutes to spare. The usher rushed over to us to ask if our tickets were for that night, and we said they were. He told us he would take us to our seats, and then proceeded outside. I wasn't sure what was going on, since it looked like there was a door just off to our left that would have taken us where we needed to be. Anyway, as he led us around the side of the building, he commented that the show had already begun.

"What do you mean?" we asked. "What time was it supposed to start?"

"Half past seven," he said.

JoAnna and I were lost. "Yeah ..."

"It's quarter past eight," he told us.

"What?!" I checked my watch again, more closely this time, and found that it was, indeed, quarter past eight. We were both flabbergasted, having just been informed that we somehow lost an hour of our time.

Anyway, we got inside just at the beginning of The Music of the Night, and we had to stand at the back and wait for the song to finish before the usher would show us our seats.

The show was good, but to be honest, I didn't love it as much as I had expected to. Maybe it's because I was late, or because I had heard it built up so much, or because the stage was so much smaller than I had expected, or because I wasn't feeling too well (I kept shivering all the way through the show, despite the warm atmosphere). In any case, the acting and choreography just seemed terrible to me. Raoul was cute, but he seemed to be more angry with Christine than in love with her. Christine's voice was wonderful, but she was a little too old, and she also seemed to be more frustrated with Raoul than in love with him. There was far too much shouting, and not enough feeling. The sets and costumes were amazing, but most of the actors were far too melodramatic for my taste. The Phantom was far and away the best actor there, but that's rather to be expected for a man who's been doing the role for almost four years -- he knew his role inside and out, and it showed, with very little stagnancy coming through. It was his last show that night, and we got to hear his farewell speech, which was kind of cool. If I ever went back, though, I'd be willing to pay a few more quid and get a seat in the Royal Circle, which would have made for much better viewing than where we were.

Well, the next day we went to church at St. Paul's, and that was the highlight of the trip for me. The cathedral is definitely the best I've ever seen -- absolutely breath-taking. Unfortunately, they have been cleaning the ceiling and had scaffolding up in half of the Whispering Gallery, so we didn't get to test out the whispering from 100 feet away. The worship service, which was Anglican, was also nice. We sang "Fight the Good Fight" for the last hymn, which made me very happy. However, most of the service was sung by the choir, and most of it was rather ... well, boring, frankly. The sermon was preached about Paul's description of God as the "God of all comfort" (2 Corinthians 1:3). Interesting insights.

After church, we wandered down Fleet Street toward Temple, thinking we might try and see Temple Church again. However, we learned that they wouldn't be open for another 45 minutes or so. We thought we might try and see something else in the area, but nothing that was open on Sunday sounded interesting enough to us. So instead, we ended up having lunch at The George, a very famous pub across from the Royal Courts of Justice, where lots of famous people have eaten througout the years, including Dr. Samuel Johnson and Madonna. I had bangers and mash (read: sausages and mashed potatoes), which was excellent. Many scholars believe that this is the pub where Sydney Carton takes Charles Darnay for supper after his London trial in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. It's one of my favorite scenes, and the whole time we were eating, I kept thinking about lines like, "Do you think I particularly like you?" It was great.

After that, we just hung around London a bit. We took the Underground to Paddington Station, just to see Paddington. (We'd both heard about it quite a bit, what with Paddington Bear and Agatha Christie's The 4.50 From Paddington.) Then we took the tube back down to Westminster to see the Ritz Hotel, again just for the sake of seeing it.

By that time, it was close to the time for our train to leave from Euston, so we went up there, found our friend Denise, and all took the train home together. It was torture, just as it was last weekend. What with all the work going on with the tracks up here, it takes forever on the weekends to get between London and Lancaster. But we did get home all right, and we had a good time chatting with each other, so that was nice, too. I now have lots of pics of London, but I don't have time to put them up on my site yet, so you'll have to wait.

like a chicken with its head cut off

OK, so that's not quite what I've been like lately, as I'm simply not busy enough for that, but I'm closer to it right now than I have been for a while. I've been trying to get things set up for Enrichment next week. Our original plans didn't work out, and we've been really late getting things set up. So tonight I made some phone calls to ask a few sisters to help us out, but that proves a bit difficult, since many of them are not in and I will be gone for the rest of the weekend. Ergh. So much for a fun, care-free weekend in London. Actually, I'm afraid I will be all too able to forget about this stuff once I'm on the train tomorrow.

Which brings me to the other part of my near-busy-ness. I've been trying to get myself packed for our trip tomorrow. I desperately need to do some laundry, so I will have to get up early to get that done before class. Then, I only have 30 minutes after class to run home, dump my back-pack, grab my weekend bag, and hike it back up campus to catch a bus in to town and catch the train. And I haven't been able to get hold of JoAnna (my travelling partner for the weekend) to confirm plans, figure out where to meet, make sure I have everything I'll need, and so on. I'm a bit frustrated about that -- somehow, talking to JoAnna always makes me feel more prepared, so not being able get hold of her makes me a bit edgy.

I'll be sure to blog my whole London trip and tell you how wonderful it was. I plan to have my picture taken outside of Sherlock Holmes's residence, and then outside of Danger Mouse's residence (the 'smart red pillar box' in the same street), and we intend to go to church at St. Paul's as well. I look forward to a good time.

"I just thought you had hidden depths."
"No, no, you've always had that wrong about me. I really am this shallow." (20 points)

back in the saddle again!

10 points for that quote.

Well, it's been a long time. My good friend Katie has been here with me for the last week, and we've been busy enough that I couldn't bring myself to spend the time updating my blog. Sorry for that. And while I'm at it, I ought to let you all know that I no longer use my LiveJournal -- I really only keep the account so that I can keep track of my friends who use it. (*waves to Jen and Emily*) So, I will remove the link from here so that you don't get confused. And now, a few words about my week. OK, more than a few. It's quite a long post, but I tried to condense, and I've split things up so that you can pick and choose what you're most interested in.

Great news from Denton

Last week, I received an email from the University of North Texas, informing me that I have been accepted for a PhD in their English Department. Yay! They also gave me a Teaching Fellowship, which (if I remember correctly) waives my tuition, offers fairly minimal pay for my actual work hours, and includes a living stipend. However, I've been unable to find anything current on their website about the financial details of the position, so I'm not too sure. I'm looking forward to receiving more precise information from them. I do know that the Teaching Fellowship position requires that I teach at least two courses a semester. Anyway, I'm 100% positive that I'll be going there, as that just feels and looks like the best place for me to be right now. I'll be studying for a PhD in English, with emphasis in Poetics -- which means that I do the coursework for a Master's in Linguistics and in Literature, and then I do a dissertation that combines the two. I'm pretty excited for it.

Tripping with Katie Bills

Katie and I went to the Lake District last Tuesday, but we didn't have enough time to do anything other than taking a short walk from Windermere down to the lake at Bowness (that would be Windermere Lake). It's very touristy, and I was sad that we didn't have enough time to take a nice walk in the woods or anything like that. We did get some nice shots of the lake, though. Then we ate traditional fish and chips, with lots of vinegar and salt. Mmmmm!

On Wednesday, I had a class, so we stayed here in Lancaster and went to the castle. That's always fun, and we managed to catch them on a good day, when the courts were out of session, so we got to see lots more of the castle than usual. Lancaster Castle has been, and still is, in operation for about 1200 years, and that makes it very unusual. It has been a court and prison for nearly all of those years, and that's still what it is. So, the Crown Court is usually in session and you can't see the rooms they use, but this time they were gone and we were allowed to see much more of the castle, including lots of Gillow furniture. They also locked us in an old jail cell again, which was pretty creepy. I sure wouldn't want to ever be in one of those for an actual crime, or for a very long time.

Thursday we went to London to meet our two friends who have been on study abroad in Paris. In London we hit the really big, tourisy sites: the Tower of London, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and then Harrod's. We had a good time, although it reminded me once again how much I detest living in large cities. With London, as with Vienna, I felt that I would be able to live there for a year or two, but certainly I wouldn't want to be there much longer -- definitely not for the rest of my life. I was very glad to get back to the countryside and Lancaster. I was quite impressed with the Tower of London, but wished that there weren't so many durned people there, as I felt like cattle being herded around the place. We did have a wonderful beefeater giving our tour, and he made things very entertaining! At Westminster Abbey, I was frustrated once again with the hordes of tourists, and the only part I really enjoyed very much was standing on Charles Dickens's grave and basking in his genius. Well, OK, I did also enjoy touching Henry III's tomb, but not nearly as much as Dickens. Unfortunately, there is now a gift shop at the Abbey, and that means that they no longer do rubbing of grave sites -- they used to supply the paper and chalk that you could take over to people's graves and make a rubbing as a souvenir of your visit there, and I fully intended to make one of Dickens's grave, but alas! it was not to be.

On Saturday we came back to Lancaster, which took pretty much all day, because of work going on with the train lines on the weekends. Sunday we went to church, and afterward we were invited to eat at the Kureczko's home. They are my favorite people in the ward, and Vic and Sue both are a lot of fun to talk to. We, the students, had been planning to feed the missionaries that day, so when Sue invited us over, we told her that was fine if she wanted to feed the missionaries as well, and she agreed. We had a good talk with the missionaries. One of them is from Shelley, right by Idaho Falls, and is a fairly quiet young man, although he gets pretty animated when you talk about things he's interested in. The main thing is that his companion, who comes from a little town in Arizona, is very extroverted and tends to dominate the conversation whenever he's around -- and the two of them don't get along very well. The next transfer is the first week in March, and both sets of missionaries are expecting to have one Elder from each set change during that transfer.

Monday night we had Family Home Evening with the YSAs in the ward, and that was also quite fun, as usual. JoAnna taught a few of us to play euchre, and Denise and I won. :) But all of this was only after we went to a charity event for Palestine. Let me explain: The Sunday before last, one of the girls in the ward told us that she had a good friend at the university, and this friend belonged to a society who were holding a charity dinner on Monday night, where they were serving Indian food and all of the proceeds would be donated to buy food and clothing for children someplace in the Middle East. So, we all decided to go and then have FHE afterward. Well, when we got there and had paid, we then found that the society was the LU Islamic Society (which I'm OK with, by the way) and the LU Friends of Palestine (which I'm not OK with, by the way), and they were sending the proceeds to Palestine. This is one of the problems with people who don't pay attention to politics or details of what their friends are doing ... :) Well, we were already there and we had already paid, and so we stayed. JoAnna and Katie and I just hope the pictures don't get back to our political roots, and that we'll all still be allowed back in the country when we go home. On the bright side of things, the food was good.

Oh yeah, Monday afternoon we went down to Preston and did a little shopping. Katie had been wanting to go to H&M some time, and that was the closest we could find one. Even if there had been one in Lancaster, I'm not too sure I would have wanted to go, since everything in Lancaster is so tiny, you don't get anything good anyway. However, Katie didn't find anything she loved and just had to have, but I found a great new shirt that I'm going to take with me to London for the theatre this weekend.

Speaking of which ...

This weekend

JoAnna and I are going to London this weekend to see Phantom of the Opera. We have big plans for what else we're doing while we're there, but I'll wait to tell you those things after we actually do them. But let me just say that I'm really excited for it. Not least because we're going to the West End for a marvelous musical, and I get to dress up for it.

Last but not least

School is ... OK, I guess. As I told Katie (who left this morning to go back home), last term was good for school, bad for social life, and this term is much better for social life, but terrible for school. I still hate my CDA class, and I'm really annoyed about having to do an assignment for it. I still have no idea what I'm doing for that class, but these days I'm leaning towards doing a 'theoretical' discussion of the concept of 'critical' (as in, Critical Discourse Analysis), mainly because that one sounds like it will give me the least trouble and nausea. Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing with my sociolinguistics assignment as well. I understand the concepts that we talk about just fine, but I don't feel like I have the necessary knowledge and direction to actually do a sociolinguistically-oriented analysis of anything. I know what data I want to use, but I'm not sure what to do with it. The only class I'm feeeling OK about right now is RIAL (Research Issues in Applied Linguistics), for which I have to write a 5,000-word introduction to my dissertation. I know exactly what I'm doing for my dissertation, and I've thought it through enough to feel comfortable with writing that long a paper on it. This week, my dissertation proposal is due, and that's what I'll be working on for the rest of the day.

funny dreams, again

Funny as in strange, odd, unusual, weird ... you get the drift.

This morning, before I woke up, I dreamt that I, as a college student, had to take a high school, junior-level English course. I got there late on the first day, as I had a hard time finding the classroom on the second floor (my high school didn't have a second floor). The teacher was an absolute dolt, and he had given out these papers that we were supposed to color on with markers -- our names, the alphabet, silly stuff like that. I was sitting there with all my hand-outs, starting to color them, since I supposed that I would have to if I didn't want the teacher to hate me. I tried to listen to what he was talking about, but it had nothing to do with English. He was just prattling on about fluff, and then one of my old high school friends came in, whom I haven't seen for ages. Figuring I had found an ally, I whispered to her how much I hated this class, especially the teacher. She said that she didn't really like him, either, but was taking the class to get an easy "A". I said I didn't have any problem with getting an "A", but that I at least wanted to be treated like an adult. I remember feeling insulted that I had to take this high school class, in which I was being treated like a 5-year-old, when I was enrolled in a Master's program, for heaven's sake! I had just gotten up to leave the classroom and find my friends in the senior (not junior, for some reason) AP English class, since I knew that they would be at least talking intelligently about something like the Heroic Paradox. Something in the back of my mind told me that that class wouldn't count for whatever credit it was that I needed, but before I had even gotten out the door, I woke up.

These are some more quotes from the same movie as the wrist one recently, but since no one has gotten that yet, and since I just watched it again last night, I thought I'd throw a few more out there and see if they get any better response. First, I'll recap the first one. Since it's apparently a hard film, I want to give more than 10 points for it; but since I'm giving so many quotes, I don't want to award too high for it. So, I guess 25 will have to do.

"It's all in ze wrist."

"The 20th century? Why, I could pick a century out a hat, blindfolded, and come up with a better one."

"A woman happy in love, she burns the souffle. A woman unhappy in love ... she forgets to turn on the oven."

conferences galore!

So, I think I posted something earlier about submitting some proposals to the Accio 2005 Harry Potter conference, in Reading, UK. I was supposed to hear back from them by the week of January 31st, and as of today, I hadn't heard anything, so I thought they hadn't accepted either of my proposed papers. However, it turns out that I had forgotten which email address I gave them, and I only checked that one today. They accepted me for a presentation called "Exploring the Language of Harry Potter", which is intended to be an overview of stylistic devices in the Harry Potter books. I will link the abstract on my website, for anyone who's interested.

Also, there's a Politeness Conference being hosted at the University of Nottingham this March, and one of my professors is a keynote speaker (he's been doing lots of work in impoliteness, and has gotten lots of attention for it recently). At the end of our pragmatics course last term, he told us all about it, and said that if anyone was interested, to email him around February, and we would get together a group of Lancaster people to go together. I emailed him recently, and so we're getting the plans ready for it. It looks like I'm pretty much the only student interested in it, so I will basically be going out there with Jonathan Culpeper, Mick Short, Geoff Leech, and a couple of others. These are heavyweights in the stylistics and pragmatics arenas, so that's pretty cool. And I've been waiting for a good way to get to know Mick Short better ... he's a personal hero of sorts. Should be exciting!

"You want the moon? Just say the word, and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Say, that's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, [name]."
"I'll take it." (20 points, just 'cause it's such a great movie!)

email scams and Mozart

Amadeus
I went with JoAnna to see the Lancaster University Theatre Group production of Amadeus. Frankly, it was terrible. It was like watching a high school production. The pacing was laggard (the show lasted about 3 hours) and the acting was lamentable. Once again, as with David Thewlis in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I had to wonder whether these people are at all aware that sometimes an emotion is far more forcefully conveyed through its repression than its release. Mostly, I kept thinking, "These are people who have no real life experiences." They seemed to have no idea what real envy is, what real hatred is, what real depression is ... the list goes on. They certainly had no idea who a real God is.

Probably worst of all for me, because it could have been quite easily fixed, was the fact that everyone looked like 21st-century young men in tights, pantaloons, gold-embroidered waistcoats, and white wigs, and trying to look like 18th-century courtiers in Vienna. None of them actually contrived to look like 18th-century courtiers in Vienna. And this could so easily have been fixed by simply tweaking some body movement -- posture, stance, gesture. All that would have helped it immensely.

I'm deeply disappointed by the LUTG.

On the brighter side, though, I did get to hear some great Mozart music, and I am now motivated (a) to listen to some more Mozart, whom I've sadly neglected in the last year or so, and (b) to find the film of Amadeus and watch it again, just to clear my palette.

Email scam
Just how stupid do these people think I am?


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*\link deleted\*
and ent‮re‬ing y‮ruo‬ b‮kna‬ A‮D-MT‬ebit C‮ra‬d n‮rebmu‬ and P‮NI‬ t‮ah‬t you use on A‮MT‬.


Maybe they didn't think I'd realize that I have never bought anything from Yahoo! or from any of their affiliates. Or that my bank would never ask me to click a link sent me by a some entity completely unrelated to the bank, and enter my debit card and PIN numbers. Or that if I click "Reply", I can actually see that the link provided is not a text link, but an image link, obviously designed to redirect me to a site on a different, non-Yahoo! server. And don't even get me started on the linguistic features...

Today's Quote

"It's all in ze wrist." (spoken with a French accent; 10 points)

on the lighter side ...

Well, to make up for yesterday's deeply serious (and rather critical) post, today we've got lots of lighter things.

Pancake Day
Today is Pancake Day here in the UK. That's their much milder version of Mardi Gras, or Fasching -- basically a day when you glut yourself before Lent begins (and you have to give up the sweets, etc). So they make lots of pancakes and eat them. But these aren't pancakes like we're used to -- they are kind of a thicker version of crepes. They traditionally eat them with sugar and lemon juice, but my friend Denise likes them better with fresh-squeezed orange juice instead. So, the girls planned a get-together for lunch, and we ate lots of pancakes, which were very tasty. We also finished some valentines from last night, and I made thank-you notes for the ladies who helped with our last Enrichment. Oh yeah, and JoAnna and I bought our tickets for London in two weeks, when we go to see Phantom of the Opera.

Chinese Spring Festival
Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year, and I got to celebrate New Year's Eve with some Chinese friends from the Linguistics MA program. Since 2005 is the year of the rooster, we had lots of chicken (yum!). I helped make home-made Chinese dumplings, and I never knew how complicated it was to fold them up! We ate lots of good food, I was given several nice little gifts, and I got to use my chopsticks for the first time (which were a Christmas gift from one of my flat-mates). I also found out that my chopsticks are decorated with phoenixes, which made me very happy. (I really *am* a Gryffindor, after all!)

Assignments
Today, I got my last two assignments back from last term. For all who might be interested, I got 68 on Pragmatics and 65 on Corpus Linguistics (that would be the paper that I hated). If you remember, 70 and above was a "distinction" mark, so 60-69 is a "good pass" mark. So, I'm quite happy with that, on the whole. I am still in line for an overall distinction, but a lot of that will ride on my dissertation, which has me worried right now. I plan to go talk to my advisor tomorrow morning, though, and see if she can offer me some advice for narrowing down my possibilities. I'm seriously considering doing an analysis of the characterization of James and Lily Potter in the Harry Potter books, but I have some worries about that. So I'll see what Elena has to say about it, as well as about some of my other options.

Today's Quote

Look! There's a rhythmic ceremonial ritual coming up. (10 points)

Marxism in the linguistics classroom

Remember way back when I posted something about Linguistics apparently not being as good a place as English for teaching Marxism, feminism, and queer theory? I based that statement on the fact that the English Department at Lancaster Uni had much better facilities than the Linguistics Department. If you remember that, I hope you'll also remember my retraction, in the next post. I would like to add to that retraction today, with a description of a brief encounter from my CDA (critical discourse analysis) class.

The class was focused today on the CDA approach of Norman Fairclough. After giving us some background about Fairclough, the professor then outlined the most recent evolution of his methodology in CDA. At one point, she mentioned that his work is clearly influenced by Marxist theories. A moment later, a young man in the back of the classroom raised his hand to ask a question, which went something like this: "Just what implications does Marxist theory have for academic study? Because in my country, Zimbabwe, we view Marxism as a totalitarian theory." The prof's ridiculous answer went something like this: "You have to be sure and differentiate between the theory and the application of Marxism. The theory is not the same as the application, and the theory itself is not necessarily totalitarian."

What tripe! If you've ever read the Communist Manifesto, the basis of Marxism (and note that it was he and not Stalin or Lenin, as the prof further claimed in her little speech today, who termed his ideas 'communism'), you'll know that it is an inherently totalitarian theory. If you disagree, please let me know, because I'd love to hear just how anyone thinks that Marxism -- either communism, or its 'softer' form of socialism -- could possibly be applied without a totalitarian government.

Even moving beyond that claim, though, I'd like to ask what is probably the more pressing question in modern Western academia: What good is a theory, if its application consistently produces bad results?

Today's quote (60 points):

"Rebellion to tryanny is obedience to God."

not much

I watched The Third Man again tonight, before I have to take it back to the library tomorrow, and it was just delightful. When I watched it last weekend, I was left feeling a bit disturbed, which I think is largely what the film is supposed to do. But tonight, it was just a great, well-made movie. I'm sorely tempted to share several of my favorite quotes, but I'd much rather you all go watch it for yourselves and enjoy the experience afresh. Oh, all right, you've convinced me -- just one, to whet your appetite. And it's a fairly innocuous one that won't give away any major plot points or themes.

Calloway: What happened to your hand?
Martins: Parrot bit me.

Next week is the Chinese New Year, and my good friends from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have invited me to join them in their celebration. I'm very excited for it, and I will get to use my new chopsticks, which my flatmate gave me for Christmas. :)

The same day as "Chinese New Year's Eve" (as we might call it) is also Pancake Day here in England. It's their much more mild version of Mardi Gras, for the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins. To glut themselves before Lent, they eat all kinds of sweets, but mostly pancakes, which seem to be a sort of mixture between French crepes and American pancakes, mostly eaten as a dessert. We're planning to celebrate it another day, so that I can experience both that and the Chinese Spring Festival (as my Chinese friends call it).

Tonight's quote, 10 points:

Would you like to see where I was tattooed?
Sure.
OK, I'll drive you around there someday.

random

"Common? Man, I got class I ain't even used yet!" (20 points)

Last night we had Enrichment, and it went quite well. After BYU, though, it's weird to have Enrichment nights where a turnout of 12 is considered successful. In any case, everything went smoothly, and we had a good time.

I'm starting to feel like JoAnna and I are missionary companions or something -- we've done a lot together this past week, including Enrichment last night. She came early with me so she could get a ride with the Marshalls, and it just seemed that I'd seen a lot of her lately. And that's fine, because I like her.

Dinner with the missionaries the other night was fun. I really enjoyed cooking -- I do so little real cooking out here. I get lazy and decide that it's just easier to do "fake" cooking -- the kind that goes from the box into the microwave or oven, and it's done. So it was nice to do some real cooking and eat my own, homemade food. And guacamole especially.

So, other than that, nothing much to say right now. I'd best get going and try to do some real work. Hopefully I can make it through the whole chapter of my sociolinguistics book today.

Before I go -- I was just looking at my picture of Paul and Christina, from a Christmas card they sent me, and which I hung up on my bulletin board. They sure are cute!

lots of stuff

Once again, it's a beautiful day here in Lancaster. It started out pretty yucky, but by about noon, it had turned into a sunny, mild day. It's about 50 F outside, and I feel like I should be wearing shorts!

Last night we had FHE in Preston, and it was a blast. Before going on, I should probably explain that some of the YSAs from our ward go to the university in Preston (University of Central Lancashire), and they have a house down there that they share. Well, really only Nathan lives there, but the others have all lived there off and on before, and it's sort of their base when they're in Preston. Nathan and Alex have been coming to FHE with us lately, so we decided it was only fair that we should go to Preston, since they always come to Lancaster. I was uncharacteristically giddy during FHE, for my part. I think it was a combination of being somewhere other than Lancaster, not having to be in charge of anything for FHE, having funny guys around, and having eaten nothing but a Lion candy bar for dinner (I was starting on my dinner when I realized it was an hour later than I had thought, and I had to rush out the door without eating most of my meal). Anyway, I was very giggly and a bit irreverent for the first part. But luckily, I sobered up just enough to be respectable, and we had a fun time. We wrote to the lone missionary from the ward, who'll be back from Ireland in the summer, if I remember correctly. JoAnna had also brought fake, rub-on tattoos, and so we each did one of those. Mine is a feather. :)

Tonight we're feeding the missionaries, and I'm really excited about it. We're having chicken fajitas (the kind that aren't really fajitas, because they don't have fajita sauce on them, but they're a specialty of mine). We talked to the district leader on Sunday to make sure it was legit for three or four college-age girls to feed two Elders, but it's all OK. I've been wanting to feed them ever since I got here, and I just hadn't really taken the intiative to get it going.

This past weekend, both Sarah and Denise had gone home for the weekend, so JoAnna and I were the only ones there at church from the uni. JoAnna spoke in Sacrament Meeting, and it was really weird to not have her sitting next to me during the meeting. I kept wanting to poke her and tell her about something, but then I realized that Ruth Lisgo was next to me, not JoAnna. On the way home from church, she invited me to her place to have dinner with her, which was very nice. We had tacos, including yummy guacamole, and talked about a bunch of stuff. I've been really enjoying getting to know JoAnna a bit better, and I'm looking forward to going to London with her in three weeks for Phantom of the Opera.

I'm also really looking forward to having Katie Bills come out in two weeks! Today and tomorrow I plan to spend some serious time making firmer plans for when she's here, and figuring out how much things will cost and what-not. I've got to try and work out whether we'll be able to make it to Edinburgh or not. The north-south train lines are crazy-hectic these days, and while I'm not too worried about getting up to Edinburgh, I do worry a little about making it down to London in time to meet Scott and Elizabeth, who are coming over from Paris to spend the weekend with us. So, time to get down to some serious planning for all of this.

Well, I suppose it's time for me to get going, so here's the quote for the day:

"In a world where what we want is only what we want until it's ours." (10 points)

I'm still waiting for someone to get these as well, from earlier posts:

"You talk about him as if he had occasional bad manners." (upped to 30 points)

"Who put me in this bed? I'll bet his face is red. I call him down with every tear-drop that I shed." (upped to 30 points)

Erin's back, and she's gonna get you!

I hope that Paul didn't get too excited about being on top of the scoreboard for a few days there. I knew that as soon as Erin returned from her Florida vacation (SO jealous!) she would shoot back up again immediately. And indeed, when I came home today, there were 9 emails awaiting me, 7 of which were Erin racking up the points.

Lots to talk about today, but I'm very tired, and I need to call my parents, so it'll have to wait. Sorry.

"You talk about him as if he had occasional bad manners." (25 points)

"wouldn't it be loverly?"

Name that quote for 10 points.

I chose that for my title because of the bee-yutiful weather today here in Lancaster. It's partly cloudy, and the temperature's been around 46 F (8 C). Now, that may not sound so wonderful to most of you, but for here in cloudy, cold, windy Lancaster, this is gorgeous! In fact, it's just perfect for me. OK, so I wouldn't temperatures a little higher -- maybe up to about 60 F -- but this is just how I like things. Unfortunately, it's not supposed to stay too long. The next week is supposed to be relatively warm, but cloudy most days as well.

I'm feeling productive today, because I went to the library. I was probably there for a whole half hour, even! :) I photocopied some journal articles I've been planning to read, about Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). They're a series of critiques by non-CDA scholars, and the responses from CDA scholars. I've been wanting to see what other scholars have had to criticize about CDA, and it should be interesting reading.

I also got some books about Orson Welles from the library. The last few days, I've been working on transcribing an episode of the Jack Benny radio show, an episode with Orson Welles as guest star. It's been getting me interested in Welles again, and I also wanted to look at some biographies to make sure that some of the things I want to say about him are backed up. Orson Welles was a very interesting man, and I have quite mixed reactions to him. My very least favorite film adaptation of Jane Eyre is the one with Orson Welles as Mr. Rochester, from 1944. But I digress -- all of this Orson Welles stuff is for a different day, preferrably after I've looked over the two books I got.

But what I really am excited about is the DVD I got from the library, The Third Man, which Welles starred in in 1949. I remember this film from when I was very little. It's one of the few movies my Dad has ever bought, and I remember watching it as a family once when I was pretty young. I've always loved the theme music from it, especially the Anton Karas version, and I seem to remember enjoying the film too. It's been a long time, though, so I don't really remember it too well, but I'm looking forward to watching it. As soon as I'm finished with it, in a few days, I plan to get Citizen Kane, which I've never seen before -- I figure it's about time.

new OTR site

I just have to share this site with you all, and many thanks to Donovan for introducing me to it. It's called RadioLovers.com, and they have lots of Old Time Radio mp3's for free. They don't necessarily have a whole lot of episodes of each show, but they quite a wide selection of shows, and many that I had never heard of before. I plan to try out some shows like Harry Lime (a spin-off of the movie The Third Man), Witch's Hour, and The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen in the next several weeks (or months?). I also downloaded 22 more episodes of The Whistler, that I didn't have before. That makes me very happy!

Speaking of OTR, I got my website all ready to upload, and the silly department lab computer won't read my CD-RW! So, I'll have to try again sometime.

So, a quote. "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." This is a tricky one, and here's why: you get 10 points if you can give me the most recent movie this is in (the most recent that I'm aware of, that is), 20 points for the name of the song, and 50 points for the name of the movie it was first used in. Enjoy!

moles, alarms, and mice (or mouses?)

My Brother The Chiropractor recently sent me a little jar of C-4 Cream, which is a mixture of C-Herb and Replenishing Cream. C-Herb is an herbal product for removing cancerous or cancer-prone areas of skin, such as warts and moles. I have these two moles I've been wanting to get rid of, and after applying the cream for the last week or so, the first is starting to come off. It's pretty cool, actually. It just eats away at the weird skin and leaves the normal skin just as it is. I expect that it will be completely gone in about another week or two.

Recently, my alarm clock stopped working. I think I wrote about it last Sunday, when I was late for church because I slept through my alarm. Well, on further investigation, I learned that I hadn't slept through my alarm; rather, my alarm hadn't really gone off. I've been using a software application that I downloaded off the internet, and it's been great so far. I usually wake up to a nice mp3 from a list that I've selected, and it works like a charm. It worked great last Saturday, when I had to get up early to go to Chester. But Sunday, it suddenly stopped. The application still starts up, but the music doesn't play. I've tried everything I know of, and nothing has gotten it to work. I'm going to send an email to the company and see if they know what's giong on. In the meantime, I may have to rely on friends to give me a call on the mornings when I need to wake up early -- which luckily, is only Sundays for the next few weeks. And if anyone has any brilliant ideas for me to try out, I'm open to suggestions.

Just before Christmas, my computer mouse also quit working. One day, it just decided to not work with my computer. So for the last month or so, I've been doing without a mouse, only using the pad at the front of my laptop. It felt weird, after four weeks of this, to use the department computers and have to use a mouse again! Anyway, a few days ago, my mouse suddenly changed its mind again, and decided to start working. So I now have a mouse again. But now, I'm so accustomed to my mouse-pad on my laptop, that I don't like using the mouse for everything anymore -- just some of the more difficult things, like cropping photos ans such.

QUOTE: "The hardest thing I've ever done is keep believing there's someone in this crazy world for me." (15 points)

forgot

I was going to post something, but I forgot what it was I wanted to say. So, here's today's quote:

"Who put me in this bed? I'll bet his face is red."

20 points

a few HP memes

I gacked these from Jen -- thanks!

Hmm, not thrilled, but I can handle this. I actually quite like Percy, and I think he gets the shaft sometimes.




The Weasley Boy Marriage Quiz made by Sapphire.

OK, this one I don't get at all. I mean, *Cedric*? I've never been one for the athletic type. Although, come to think of it, Cedric does have a strong sense of right and wrong, and that's very important to me, so I can handle this one too.




The HP Boy Marriage Quiz made by Sapphire.

This is my favorite. What else can I say?




The HP Male Marriage Quiz made by Sapphire.

And one more quote, for 10 points again. "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think whether they should."

Ah, what the heck, another one from the same source, just because I love it so much -- even though it might give it away.
"God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs."
"Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth."

a post with no point

A little while ago, I had a brief online chat with Paul, one of my readers (wow, I have 'readers'!), who mentioned that he checks my blog about twice a day. He also checks twice a day all the blogs of everyone else he knows, basically, and I hope this sentence confuses you as much as it does me. Anyway, point is, I suddenly felt like I had to post something so that I wouldn't disappoint Paul too much. So here it is. There's not a lot to talk about right now, but you're getting a post anyway.

First, let me take care of the quote for the day, worth 10 points this time:
"By the way, why did you kiss me?"
"I don't know. I was about to be hanged, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Ah, the memories! I remember the first time I went to see that movie. But not too well apparently, as I seem to remember seeing it with some high school friends, but it came out a few years after I had graduated from high school, and I don't recall having any contact with those friends during that particular year. I think I'm mixing it up with the first time I saw another classic film of the same type of genre, which may just end up being tomorrow's quote. We'll see.

Well, for all those who haven't yet heard, let me make you all aware that I have been called, sustained, and set apart to serve as the Enrichment Counsellor in the local Relief Society presidency. It will certainly be an interesting experience, and one that will stretch me. Our February Enrichment is next week, on February 2nd -- not much time. I'm starting to freak about it a little bit. In any case, I'm anxious to get some new people in as Enrichment Leader and Enrichment Teacher. The sisters who are there now are wonderful, but one of them is moving very soon, and I feel very strongly that it is important to get new people into those positions so that I can train them to do things how I think they should be done. The Enrichment activities in our ward have largely been just for entertainment, at least the ones since I got here, and I have very strong feelings about making Enrichment something that really addresses and fills the needs of the sisters in a spiritually uplifting way. I also have strong feelings about the division of responsibility in planning and executing Enrichment meetings. All of this, you understand, is within the bounds of what the Spirit dictates in particular circumstances -- I don't want anyone thinking that I'm trying to be dictatorial and impose my own ideas about how things should be, with no regard for what's going on in the ward and what the Lord wants.

Moving on, though ... I'm getting my data ready for my assignments of the semester. For one class, I'm analyzing linguistic variation (read: accents) in an episode of Jack Benny. That should be fun, and I've been working on the transcript for that particular show, which is always both enjoyable and tiring. For the other class, I think I'm going to do an analysis of some news articles about car accidents, and see whether they display a bias against SUVs. Lots of articles tend to personify SUVs and talk about them as though they have a mind of their own, and they go around purposely doing destructive things and killing people mercilessly. I'd like to see if that's a trend specifically linked with SUVs, or if it happens in reports about other cars as well, and the phenomenon occurs simply as a way to save words. Anyway, if you find any articles from the last 5 years or so about car accidents of any type, and specifically about SUVs, please let me know. Maybe drop me an email with a link.

Oh, and just one last note before I go. I'm working on updating my personal website, including a page with links to some of my favorite old time radio shows, so that you all understand what I'm raving about when I go on about Jack Benny, Phil Harris, and the Whistler. I'll be sure and let you all know when I have it uploaded.

Chester, soulmates, and coursework

Chester

On Saturday I went to Chester with a group that was organized by the Graduate College (kind of like when I went to Whitby in October). We stopped first at a factory outlet shopping center for 2-1/2 hours. I was done shopping after 1 hour. After that, I read for my CDA class -- that lasted about 20 minutes before I was so annoyed I couldn't take it any more -- and then I wandered around the complex for the next hour or so, reciting to myself the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, which I'm working on memorizing.

After that, we went to Chester. A lot of the students did more shopping there, as there are some great stores, and the sales are on big-time right now. I, however, went to the cathedral. I was highly impressed -- I've seen some great churches in my day (including Notre Dame de Paris and the York Minster), but this one blew them away, in my opinion. The outside wasn't that much to look at, although it was unusual, being made of sandstone. But the real kicker was inside -- the decorations were amazing. I kept taking pictures of the floor, because the tiling was so wonderful everywhere. Then there were the choir stalls, which are just always fascinating to me, and misericords. Good stuff. I will be sure to let you know when I've added those pictures to my website, and put some links in here.

I also tried to see the castle in Chester, and the moment I found it, I realized why the guidebook didn't really say anything about it. There has been a castle on the site since around 1070, but it has been so altered and dismantled down through the centuries, that by the time anyone was interested in preserving things like castles, there wasn't much left to preserve there anyway. I did, however, stop by at the Grosvenor Museum, which had a very interesting display about Roman Chester -- there was a Roman fortress at Chester by at least 76 AD, and many people think there was a Roman settlement much earlier, although there's no conclusive evidence of that. They had some interesting stuff in the display, including a Roman-style lock (fascinating!) and an abacus, with an explanation about how to add and subtract in Roman numerals. The main parts of the Roman fortress have left their mark in Chester, as the main streets of the fortress remain the main streets of the city now, and parts of the city wall mark the boundaries of the fortress as well.

Soulmates

Last night, "the girls" got together for dinner. (If you're not aware by now, "the girls" refers to JoAnna, Denise, and Sarah, all of whom are both students at Lancaster and members of the Church, and active ones -- there are other students in the ward, but they don't come to anything.) We had a sort of potluck meal together, and then we sat around doing silly girly games afterward. JoAnna taught us how to find out who our soulmate is (and I'm so planning to do it with lots of you!), and Denise taught us this numerology-type thing to find out if you're compatible with someone. Many of you will be pleased (and probably not surprised) to hear that my soulmate is Edward Fairfax Rochester. And if you don't know who that is, you can't be my friend anymore! :)

I had a great time, though! It was the sort of bonding experience that I really miss these days -- being able to sit around with girls who are not drinking, swearing, speaking a different language, or talking about who they want to shag, and just being silly and having fun together. Good times, good times.

I'm also very excited for FHE tonight. We're going to watch Napoleon Dynamite, with root beer floats, microwave popcorn, and rice crispy treats. Yum!! I'm so pumped for this movie -- I've heard tons about it, and I plan to like it. So I hope I'm not disappointed!

Coursework

I got my first piece of coursework back today, with my mark (read: grade) on it. I got 73%.

Wait, wait! Before you get all sad for me, I have to tell you that in the Social Sciences Faculty, anything above a 70% is a "distincion" mark. So, that means I did really well. REALLY well. So, yay! :) Elena put some really good comments in, and looking through it, I realized how badly I need an editor for things like this -- there were several mistakes, the natural consequence of doing 3 drafts and then revising all of them before turning one in.

So, big sigh of relief on that one! I was starting to get really nervous about it, so it's great to see that I did all right. That grade, of course, is subject to alteration when the external examiners review the work, but I hear that they rarely change the grades, except in unusual circumstances. That grade, though, also means that I'm on track (so far) to get an overall distinction for my degree, which would be really great. I'd also have to get over 70% on my dissertation in the summer, along with high marks on all of my other coursework. So, there's much left to do, but hey! it's still a possibility.

Quote

I've been trying to think of harder ones for y'all, as I keep thinking of the same books and movies. But, for today, I'll have to stick with a fairly easy one again.

"Only during thunderstorms, sir." (10 points)

Jack Benny link

I was checking out the website of the International Jack Benny Fan Club (of which I am a member!) today, and they had a link to Yuks television, where there are clips from four of the greatest classic comedians of American entertainment. For those of you who have never experienced the wonder of Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, or Groucho Marx, I highly recommend that you use this link. (Red Skelton is also in there in a classic role as Freddie the Freeloader, but not nearly as funny.)

Today's quote, for 10 points: "I would be quiet if he liked, and as to talking rationally, I flattered myself I was doing that now." And just for good measure, one more (from a different source), for 20 points: "What's a Chinese urn?" "Depends how long he works!"

Happy Inauguration Day!

Today is a good day in American politics, and I mean that whether you're Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green, or whatever else. Inauguration Day is always historic, and I hope we pay attention to it. I've added one of my favorite quotes from Bush's Inauguration Speech on the sidebar. It was a great speech -- and I mean that if you're conservative. :) It was great because it reached beyond the bounds of President Bush himself, and stretched to the ambitious topics of freedom, God-given rights, and the founding and preservation of America. Weighty matter, that. If you didn't hear it, please read it. I promise you'll be better off for it. President George W. Bush's Second Inaugural Address

I also watched National Treasure today, and that in conjunction with the Inauguration today has made me ... pensive, I guess? I want to say that I'm reminiscent about the Declaration of Independence, but let me clarify that. It sounds like I'm saying that I was somehow involved in the drafting of the Declaration, which (of course) I was not. However, I have personally adopted the Declaration of Independence as a statement of personal belief, and that's what I've been reminiscing about. It's now on my desktop wallpaper. Unfortunately, I can't read it.

About the movie, though. It was good, not great. The writing was weak, and it had a plot that was bursting to the seams -- so much so, that you felt completely out of your depth by about 3 minutes into the film. There was no time to catch your breath before you were thrown into the middle of this huge plot. Action and conflict are important in plots, and you have to have it at the beginning to pull people in, but you need to allow your audience time to soak it in, as well. But enough on that.

Today's quote, worth 20 points: "One may have that condition by fits only."

weird dreams, and State of Fear

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. But I've separated everything, so you can pick and choose what you want to read.

Let me start with the QUOTE, so you don't have to scroll all the way down to find it. "I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me." (10 points)

weird dreams

I've been having really weird dreams lately. A few nights ago, I dreamt that I was at home and it was Christmas time. We all sat down for Christmas dinner, but the mood wasn't very bright. Soon, people from the family started drifting away from the table and didn't come back. There was also a little spat starting up between my brother and my mom. Eventually, everyone was gone except for me and my brother (not the one who was arguing with my mom). I could hear my mom in the kitchen, complaining about how she had to do all the work, and no one appreciated what she had to go through. And I started crying, and yelling about how Christmas in England was so much better, because they actually all stayed at the table and talked with each other and acted like a family. My brother was goading me on all the while, agreeing about how our family wasn't acting like a family. It was so intense that I actually had tears in my eyes when I woke up a few minutes later.

Then, the night before last, I dreamt that I had applied to the University of North Texas to do a Master's in Physics. They wrote me back with a rejection letter, stating that they were not accepting me, mainly due to the poor recommendation that one of my high school teachers had given me. I hadn't asked this teacher to recommend me anyway, and I couldn't help thinking that it sounded like they had gone specifically to this teacher to try and get some dirt on me. They quoted parts of his "recommendation" to me, saying things like that I was "hopelessly ignorant and dim-witted" and that my "presence in the classroom had caused disruption to the other students". Things that really didn't sound like me at all. But the thing that really annoyed me was that this particular teacher taught a math class, which I admittedly hadn't done well in, and they had purposely ignored my high grades in other math classes and in my high school and college Physics classes. The teacher who had slandered me was one that I never had in high school in real life, but the really weird thing is that I remembered him from another dream I had months ago. I had taken the first half of this math class already and done really well in it. But then I had him for the second half of the class, and for some reason, the two of us just couldn't stand each other. So I would sit at my desk in the back of his classroom and seethe with rage at him while I tried to work out my problems, and it was like everything I had learned in the previous semester had suddenly disappeared from my memory. So I didn't do well in that particular class, but all the rest of my grades had been very high. The dream ended with me writing back a letter to the UNT Physics department, accusing them of bias and cherry-picking, and outlining my argument for why I was qualified for a Master's in Physics.

State of Fear

I'm almost done reading State of Fear, by Michael Crichton. It's typical Crichton drivel and reads more like a film script than a novel. It's riddled with profanity and is much more overtly sexual than I appreciate, especially the first 100 pages or so. Its only redeeming quality is intriguing ideas.

The novel has had several reviews, many good and many bad. And while I haven't read most of them, the ones I have read seem to ignore an important part of the novel. Most of the reviews, from what I've read, focus on the idea of global warming and environmentalism. That's a big part of the novel, and a very intriguing one, as Crichton cites all kinds of commonly plugged evidence for and against global warming and other environmental 'catastrophes'. The heroes of the novel come out on the side against these issues, and I completely agree with their arguments. But there is a bigger issue at play in the novel. State of Fear is not really about global warming, any more than Amadeus is about Mozart. Both are about a wider and deeper issue, and the overt subject is merely a means to an end.

State of Fear is about just what it says it's about: the State of Fear. Its central theme is that modern society thrives on keeping its citizens in fear about something or other. People are very easy to manipulate when they are afraid, and our modern society illustrates that point as well as anything. There is, as Crichton calls it, a politico-legal-media organization (the PLM) that operates to keep people in fear so that they can control them. Modern universities feed the fear by 'discovering' new things to fear.

Now, while all this sounds a lot like a crack-pot vast conspiracy theory, I must say I agree with it on the whole. My one problem with Crichton's theory is that he doesn't seem to move beyond the Communist scare. Right now, he says, the fear is environmental catastrophe. Before that, it was the Cold War and nuclear threat. Before that, it was Communism. But before that ... ? He doesn't mention anything. Which raises the question for me, if the theory is correct, then what was the big fear before Communism, and before that, and so on? Which also raises the question, when did this 'rule by fear' begin? Can it be pinned down to a particular time period, a particular theory, or is he suggesting that it is perpetual - has always been around, and always will?

Crichton answers the first question, in part, in his appendix, where he discusses the theory of eugenics, which was highly influential at the beginning of the 20th century. But he still doesn't move beyond that. And, as far as I can tell, he doesn't answer the other questions (keeping in mind that I haven't quite finished it yet). But I would have to ask whether it isn't possible that this 'rule by fear' can be pegged down as arising around the time that Marxism came into favor?

random

So, I can't sleep. I have tried everything I know, including sleeping pills, but nothing is doing the trick tonight. I even put in Robin Hood, hoping it would soothe me to watch a familiar DVD, eventually lulling me to sleep. Didn't work.

There is no point whatsoever to this post. Sorry to disappoint you.

I suppose I ought to go try reading my CDA textbook now, that ought to make me sleep. On second thought, though, it might just end up making me so mad that I'll be up for another two hours.

"London ... now home of the world's greatest secret agent, who has his home in a smart red pillar box somewhere in Mayfair." (50 points -- get that one, Erin!)

more phantom-ness

Today's quote is one that I couldn't help thinking about when I watching The Phantom of the Opera yesterday. It wasn't quite appropriate at that point in the movie, and I had to stifle laughter. It happened during the reprise of All I Ask of You, when the Phantom realizes that Christine is in love with Raoul, and he's sitting there singing and crying. It's one of my favorite parts of the musical, actually. Anyway, I couldn't help but think, "Is that a tear? How do you people do it? Did you pinch yourself? Or are you thinking right now, 'My dog is dead.'" (20 points, just because it's so durn funny, and you deserve it if you know this quote)

I've also been ruminating on my attraction to the story of The Phantom of the Opera. It's such a dark story, but I truly love it. I'm not just talking about the musical -- that I love primarily because of the music. But the actual story, completely apart from the musical, I also just love. The novel manages to make me bawl like a baby every time I read it, and that's not too common for me. The story touches something in me that nothing else has ever managed to quite get at. What is that something? Any thoughts out there?

phantom of the opera ... again

Yeah, it's just as good the second time.

A friend of mine hadn't seen it yet, and I certainly raised no objections to accompanying her, despite having seen it once already. So we went tonight. It's just fantastic. Can I say that again? It's fantastic!!

Patrick Wilson is perfect as Raoul, Gerard Butler is perfect as the Phantom, and Emmy Rossum is perfect as Christine. Minnie Driver is hilarious as Carlotta (although she doesn't sing for herself -- surprise! -- which everyone else does). Honestly, my only complaints are these: First, Emmy Rossum doesn't quite do justice to the high notes on a few songs, notably "Think of Me" and "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again"; second, the chandelier falls in the wrong place -- plot-wise, not physically.

And I would also like to state here that I believe the height of men's fashion occurred right around 1850 - 1860. In my opinion, there is no fashion of any other time that is quite so becoming to a man. Similarly, there is nothing so sexy as a cloak or greatcoat in the hands (or, preferrably, around the shoulders) of a man who knows how to use it. However, let me also state quite plainly that, while I find these fashions most satisfactory in the proper context, that context is clearly not nowadays. Most people who try to get away with this stuff in the modern era are usually, well, kind of creepy. Or just plain weird.

OK, today's quote. Oh, and before I forget, I didn't assign a point value for yesterday's, so I'll have to say that it's the default of 10. As is today's.

"Why, you speak treason."
"Fluently!"

dvd-o-rama

So lately, I've been watching lots of DVDs. I didn't realize this until just today. But in the last week, I have watched several hours worth of Danger Mouse, 13 Going On 30, Emma, The Four Feathers, Zoolander (not worth it), and ... well, the last one I'm going to leave for my daily quote, so read on! And then today I got my Christmas package from the Pehrsons (thanks!), which included two DVDs of Jack Benny television programs. Yay! You know, for being such a fan of Jack Benny's, it might come as rather a shock that I have never, ever seen one of his TV shows. So thanks a ton, Paul and Christina, for this brand new experience! :D

Oh, and as if all this were not enough, I am planning to go watch Phantom of the Opera again with a friend who hasn't seen it yet. Movies galore.

On the academic side of life, things are getting better. I started reading my first CDA textbook today, and although I still think it's a woolly area, I'm more at ease with the idea of studying it for three months. Happily, after that, I can turn back to traditional stylistics (which I enjoy much more) and not worry about CDA ever again, if I don't want to. Although I suspect I will, but probably not for the reasons that Ruth Wodak would want me to.

All right, the 'daily' quote: "If there's one thing I know, it's not to mess with Mother Nature, mother-in-laws, or mother freakin' Ukrainians."

school frustrations

The new term started today, and I have to say that I'm quite annoyed with things. I'm starting to be truly disillusioned with academia. Mind, I've been aware for several years that modern academia is terribly biased, but I've always felt that my desire to teach outweighed that fact. Right now, though, I'm not so sure.

My two main classes this term are in Critical Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics. Now, I've been deeply interested in both of these topics (well, maybe not CDA, but discourse analysis in general), and I was excited to take the classes. Until about the last week or so of last term. That was when the CDA teacher taught our mandatory colloquium-like class. Maybe it's just her nationality ... you know, culture-related issues ... but I just can't get over the feeling that she sure thinks a lot of herself and is so excited to teach this course so that she can talk about how brilliant she is and how much she's done, while dropping names every five minutes. But besides all that, it seems that the whole philosophy of CDA is rather "woolly", as Hermione would say (5 points for the right book). It seems to me that it's very much based on intuition and previous bias, which is rather ironic, since it claims as one of its main tenets that the researcher should "question everything". And I get the same feeling about modern sociolinguistics, although I haven't been to that class yet. Now, I suppose that it's always possible to just move away into areas that are more interesting and dealable to me, but I'm disturbed at the trend that seems to taking place in modern academia, this trend toward the touchy-feely disguised as science. And now I'm wondering whether I really want to be pushing against that for the rest of my life. But on the other hand, I currently don't feel like I really have many marketable skills right now. Aargh. I hope I'm able to come to terms with this soon.

Well, on to today's real quote of the day (the last one was just an hors-d'ouevre -- I think that's how you spell it!). This one's worth ... 35 points, I'd say. "The impertinence lies, sir, with those who would seek to influence a man to deny his beliefs!"

sigh of relief

So, I'm done. All assignments completely finished. The only thing I have left to do is to print one more copy of each, as I forgot that we're required to hand in two copies of all our coursework. So I'll go do that in the morning, before my first class of the new term at 11:00.

Also, I want to make it clear that you can still grab points for quotes even if someone else has already left a comment with the correct answer. We're operating on the honor system here, and if you say you knew it without looking, then I trust you. "And remember -- this is for posterity, so be honest." (15 points)

I'm now off to read some more Harry Potter before the term starts for real, and then to bed, to bed! I've had some really late nights recently, so it will be nice to get to bed at a decent time finally. :)

pocket-knife found, eyebrows tweezed ... ah, what a relief!

For the last few weeks, I've been unable to find my pocket-knife, which was quite disconcerting, partly because I just really like my pocket-knife, and partly because I always use those tweezers to clean up my eyebrows. All other tweezers are just so hard for me to deal with. Anyway, I've been trying to use these silly tweezers that I got from a Christmas cracker on Boxing Day, and they were terrible. But today, I found my pocket-knife again! I had accidentally put it in a different place in my backpack than I normally do, and it was hidden quite effectively so that I couldn't find it. So, I tweezed my eyebrows again today, and boy do I feel better!

I've been forcing myself to write this paper for corpus linguistics, and I just hate forcing myself to write. I'm sure this is going to be one of my least favorite papers ever, but you have to do what you have to do, huh?

OK, and now for today's quote of the day. This one's worth ... let's say 20 points. "You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!"

making the switch

So, I'm planning to get an iPod in the next month or so, and in preparation I'm trying to actually get used to iTunes. I've had iTunes on my computer for some time now, but I haven't really used it that much (I mostly downloaded it so I could use the feature on the music store that lets you look at the playlists from radio stations -- I love that!). But, I'm starting to think I'd better make the switch from Windows Media Player. For one thing, we all know that anything from Apple is better than anything from Microsoft. Secondly, I like that iTunes uses standard file formats (like mp3 and AAC), since that makes it easier to work with the files in other programs, many of which don't support wma format. And, besides all that, if I'm going to have an iPod, then I'd like to actually know how to use iTunes so that all my music is in it when I want to synch.

The biggest problem I've had is that I've downloaded a lot of music from Walmart.com, which downloads as protected wma files -- which, of course, iTunes can't convert. So, for all of those, I'm having to write them to CDs first and then re-insert the CD so that iTunes will be able to rip the files. Sheesh! What a pain! But, I expect it to all be worthwhile in the end.

the plague of the boring titles

So, tonight I really truly finished my pragmatics assignment. And I suppose I ought to happy that my biggest problem these days seems to be finding interesting titles. I used to give my papers cool titles like "Did you say 'beets' or 'beats'?" and "From ignorance to expertise". Now those are intersting titles. But no, right now all I can come up with is the boring stuff that really ought to be in the subtitle. So for now, at least, my pragmatics paper has no better title than "Pragmatics and humor in an extract from The Jack Benny Program". How boring is that?! Doesn't exactly jump out at you and make you want to read it, huh? Sounds like "chloroform in print", to quote a famous American humorist (let's say ... 20 points for the person who said it, and another 10 for what they were referring to).

So, any ideas? Let me know. I'm getting desperate about this. Especially as I don't want to send two papers to UNT with my grad school application that have practically the same title.

two down, one to go

Congratulate me! Tonight I finished my second assignment, this one for pragmatics. (Well, I'm almost done, that is -- I still have to look up a few references in the library and tweak my conclusion.) That means I only have one more to write, about corpus linguistics. I'm really dreading that one, as I feel like I have very little to say. However, these past two papers have made me feel like 5,000 words was very little, so maybe it won't be so bad.

So, yay!! I'm feeling rather accomplished now.

Oh, and one more quick quote for you. This one is worth 50 points, as I doubt that any of you will know it, but we'll see ... OK, here goes: "I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes, I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak."