A Girl With a Sword

sometimes children are cooler than iPod minis

This weekend, in honor of Emily Jade Barfhead Schwa Lapish not having anything better to do than read blogs because her baby refuses to exit the warm security of her womb, we are going to have a rundown of my favorite music videos.  This is mostly about me, but I am still claiming that it is for Barfhead because it sounds better that way.

The first one is Sigur Ros's "Glosoli" (in honor of children):

p.s. if you're not too lazy, this video looks much better if you watch it on the Sigur Ros site (just click the word "Glosoli" above)

you do it to yourself

In our Syntax and Morphology lab today we wrestled with how to define and catagorize reflexives in feature assignment rules and inflectional spellout rules. (I just love using these terms, partly because I'm still trying to figure out what they mean.)

As we examined the data I just kept thinking of this song:

getting excited about linguistics

Okay, for those interested in the linguistics stuff I just found a really cool theory in my sociolinguistics book (and granted, I am a complete newcomer to this stuff so this may be old news to some people). Apparently this guy named Bickerton has a theory on the way that creoles develop that goes like this: "Typically, creoles are developed by children who find themselves born into a multilinguial environment in which the most important language for peer contact is pidgin. Children are compelled to develop that language because each child has a bioprogram to develop a full language. Children use this bioprogram in the same way wherever they happen to be and the consequence is that 'the grammatical structures of creoles are more similar to one another than they are to any other language.'" (Wardhaugh, 1986)!! Do you understand what this means? This means that the structure of creoles is natural! This has always been intriguing to me, the idea of what would happen if children were just left alone on an island to develop their own language. What would the structure of it be? Apparently this kind of happens with creoles. Of course this is only a theory, and one that has "found only lukewarm support." But it makes sense to me.

pretty words doled up on silver platters

Yesterday I spent the afternoon listening to Jeff Mangum Live at Jittery Joe's (the Pitchfork review is actually quite eloquent). I actually started listening because it has recently taken up residence between the two Neutral Milk Hotel albums on my iTunes, and I had to cross it to get to On Avery Island, but then after a few tracks it sucked me in and whatever I had been doing before (reading about syntax, I think) became secondary to this amazing experience I was having with some people a long time ago at a bar I hadn't heard of. There's this baby that keeps making shrieking noises in the background. It actually really adds to the music. I thought it was just part of the music at first, but then I realized there was definately a live baby on that live album. (Barfhead, perhaps you should become a traveling musician while your baby is still young enough to function as a musical instrument).

I've also been listening to Laura Viers lately. I love her. I saw her live and I just looked at her and thought, "she's like me." It wasn't a profound moment, it just felt true. Laura Viers and Jeff Mangum, beautiful and strange metaphors. "Furnaces burn everlasting black tattoos of you onto me."

Yesterday I also moved rooms. I was on the second floor of the building everyone at SIL is staying in, but then yesterday I realized that the third floor was so much cooler. Think of it like this: the second floor was like Carter and I was fifth north, but I was the only fifth north, and the third floor is like Founders, lots of community and lobby action. So I came up here, scoped out the room situation, found an empty room and moved in. I did talk to the authorities about it before I moved my stuff, so I am totally legitamate. And very happy--I spent about an hour tonight doing Syntax and Morphology homework in the common room with a lot of other people who felt very strongly about their own views on the homework. It was loud.

the bishop

It was recently brought to my attention that the Episcopal church has ordained a woman bishop. This reminds me of my days as a woman bishop. Notice the similarities:

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

Me

"disfluencies" is a great word

Here's something for everyone who, while taking a foreign language, tried to trick other people into thinking they were more proficient by using that language's pausing words (like "euh" in French). I did this through all of my French oral exams.

Also, this wikipedia entry brings up an interesting question, has the word "like" become a disfluency in our language; has its presence become merely a pause in thought? Personally, I don't think so. I use the word "like" because it's hard to translate thoughts into words and sometimes I need signifying words that show my thoughts are going through translation and should not be taken at face value. I've also realized that I use the word "like" in written communication. Which hopefully means it's more than just a filler word, but I've seen "uh" and "um" used in written communication as well. Blog comments bring all these things out in us and almost don't count as real written communication at all. This is what I'm interested in right now, how written communication is becoming less formal and more reflective of how we communicate verbally.

(I've been reading Language Log this afternoon and I just found an entry called Like is, like, not really like if you will. Sheds a little more light on my vague explanation of the use of "like.")

saturday night on the prairie

Tonight I went to see A Prairie Home Companion at Grand Forks's only cinema. It seemed appropriate to watch the movie surrounded by people from a small town on the prairie who laughed good humoredly at all the midwestern jokes and repeated the funniest lines over to each other in their North Dakota accents.

I don't know how many people have seen it yet, so I won't give too much information here. I do want to say that the redemption of Lindsey Lohan has begun. The highlight of the movie for me was when she sang a song with Garrison Keillor. About beans. And Kevin Kline, man, that diction IPA may have screwed me over, but it did him a lot of good (yes, the woman who wrote the textbook for our diction course tutored Kevin Kline and he wrote a glowing review that was printed on the back cover). Garrison Keillor was undeniably brilliant. It was amazing watching him. It was like Huck Finn had agreed to play himself in a movie version of Huckleberry Finn. I'm still living in the wake of my awe.

Tomorrow I'm going to go check out St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Grand Forks. Everyone else here seems to be Baptist and there is no PCA home for me so I'm off to discover new, or rather old, territory.

so we can understand

"This situation is familiar to all of us, but in a different context. Superman and Clark Kent are also in complementary distribution. Clark Kent is around when ever life is going normally; Superman is around whenever there is danger."

--my textbook, explaining how two allophones of the same phoneme are like Clark Kent and Superman--they can't be in the same place at the same time. Brilliant.

alphabet dilemma

Oh, such confusion. I learned two different versions of the IPA in college (I don't know how you have different versions of an international alphabet with its own association, but somehow it happened). The problem is, the one I know best is not the one they're using here (I have my suspicions that it was actually a fake IPA used only for teaching diction in English, but I could be wrong) and now I am struggling to unlearn that system and learn the symbols that they're using in my classes here to represent the sounds that we're dealing with. Really I learned the real IPA for linguistics in college, but Dr. Wildeman wasn't half so stubborn about us knowing the symbols as my Voice and Diction professor was. For the next few weeks I'm sure I will be going around muttering fricatives and plosives under my breath, trying to tell the difference between a retroflex and a palatal, since I need to know this stuff for both Phonetics and Phonology. Sounds, they're all we have to go on.

hildebrand

in the Nebraska sunset:

there's nothing I can see but possibilities

The newest development in the Linnea 1-Year Plan is teaching for a year. William says that if I do teach I will just be proving that there's nothing else you can do with an English major, but I really want the thrill of standing in front of a class and telling people stuff. And my ultimate goal is to be a college or graduate professor, surely teaching for a year will help me to decide whether this is what I want to do. For the past few months at my library job I felt frustrated because I didn't feel like I was being paid to think and I didn't feel like I was really helping anyone through what I was doing. So will the move from public library to public school make me more fulfilled as a helpful human being?

The teaching options right now are a Christian school in Omaha that is looking for an English/Drama teacher for high school and middle school and the possibility of teaching in the Hamilton County Public Schools of Tennessee. I'm leaning toward Hamilton Co right now just because I'd really like to live in Chattanooga. I already have a house and roommates there and friends and a brother and Lupi's. The Christian school in Omaha would probably be the better job, but I don't have friends here, and I've learned that I don't make friends very easily without other friends (i.e. Hope) to make them for me. The third possible "Plan" is to go to Boston and temp. I'd like to go back there, I'd like to get to know everything better. I miss Davis Square and Brookline and the Paradise Rock Club and all the little shops that aren't chains. But I don't know if Boston Public is for me, I mean, they did make a show about it. I tend to avoid jobs they make shows about. No, NYPD. No, Rescue 911. No, Beverly Hillbillies.

The thing is, I do really want to teach, even though it seems like a fall-back job. It would be so much better than working in a coffee shop or similar non-thinking employment. I am enthusiastic about this, but also scared. Mostly scared of hating myself all year for the decision I've made. Boston turned out really well. I don't want to screw this one up.

I like this title

Teaching the Indie Kids to Dance Again "feet are for moving, not for staring at"

booming music scene

Back in Nebraska, I decided to go to the Tilly and the Wall CD release party tonight at Sokol Underground. I've always wanted to go to Sokol Underground, ever since I attended a high school a few blocks from there and drove past it every day, but I never found a band compelling enough to make me drive over to 13th St. So tonight I got here after nine and a half hours of driving, ate dinner, then popped out again at nine to see this show. I arrive there and I'm all proud of myself for parallel parking, a skill Eb taught me a few days ago. Then I get to the place and find out it's sold out. So. bummer. but I've been in this position before, with that Stars show, and I know what to do. I must have asked the entire hipster community of Omaha if they had extra tickets. So many people, so many sad, apologetic, vaguely hopeful responses. Then, when I was just standing there because it was a nice night and I hadn't decided what to do next, this guy comes up to me and asks me what time the show started, then starts telling me about the crazy evening he's already had what with going to see Nickel Creek, then having to rush over here for the Tilly and the Wall show. He seems annoyed with having to go to the show so I kindly offer to buy his ticket from him. He's surprised and happy. I'm surprised and happy. Everything works out.

So I get inside and get my hand stamped and breathe a sigh of relief in the cigarette smoke filled room. Here's that Omaha I've been looking for, the girls with their cotton dresses and the boys with their tight jeans and carefully disheveled hair. The room was sizable, a little smaller than the main room at Lamar's, with a drop ceiling painted black that had uniquely shaped light fixtures hanging from it. There were streamers hanging all over and streamers shaped like palm trees hanging over the stage, I'm not sure if they were the band's idea or the Sokol's. Tilly and the Wall were fantastic. How can you argue with a tap dancing percussionist and a hot bass chick? It was great seeing them in their home town, too. They kept saying hi to their moms and dads and friends. The audience participation level was amazing. The crowd knew Tilly and the Wall better than Tilly and the Wall did. All those fast, crazy words--they knew them. With hand motions. The show flew. For the last song, "Nights of the Living Dead," the band invited all their friends and "anyone who felt like a friend" to come up. Half the audience was on stage. They didn't really fit. And was that Conor Oberst holding that microphone? We will never really know. The show faded into a dance party. It made me so happy when they played "Crazy" which some of you may know from the "Seth's Mix" and some of you from Hope's Fifth North CD and some of you may know from me having it in my head all last weekend. That was awesome. There is nothing like dancing to music you love. This is why I love Infradig. And had to make a last minute stop for their stickers before I left Chattanooga and practically interrupted their band practice. Anyway, I left the dancing after a few songs because I drove a long time today and I am tired.