Syntactic Sugar

Whoa, this post is way overdue.

I survived the last week of school and finals (or should I say "final"), drunken senior week, and graduation (with honors!).

Now I'm just chillin'in da hood (Boulder) wif my mommy. We're living in this studio apartment and sleeping in the same bed which is funny because she always used to hate it when I came in after getting scared in the middle of the night. Apparently I'm a lot better to sleep in the same bed with, and *she's* the one doing the honk-shuu-ing.

The only thing of note during Senior week was the infamous Booze Cruise. People were getting super silly and screaming and stuff towards the end and my laptop battery died, but it wasn't as boring as I thought it would be. I wore a silver dress that I found in the donation pile in Kirk - they were going to throw it out, and it was never worn and had a 90 dollar price tag on it! I got lots of compliments and I didn't have to worry about getting booze, river water, or vomit on it.

Oh yeah, and me and Oliver went to a Laura Veirs concert. Here's the funny thing, this is what I thought she looked like. And this is what she looked like in real life (my mom commented "She looks like a soccer mom") Actually she looked cuter than that but nothing like the publicity photos they take of her. She was so adorable and said cute things, and I loved her even though I was supposed to hate her since she went to Carleton. Oh, the opening act was kind of crazy. Liam Flynn, I think? The songs started out fine but then he'd do this crazy looping thing and distorted guitars and screaming...it was actually quite funny. But anyway Laura Veirs was brilliant and she sung a lot of stuff from her new album I hadn't actually heard (if you check me out on Last.fm you'll see that I'm listening to her way too much now) I really liked Pink Light, Nightingale, Drink Deep, and Cast a Hook. I was gonna talk to her on the way out but a stupid indie idiot was all introducing her to his DAD and stuff so I chickened out and left.

My dad and Shaeri came on the Thursday before Sunday graduation - unfortunately my mom got sick and couldn't come *sad meow*. We had a pretty fun time - we went to a tea/coffee shop and saw live music with Oliver and all had dinner together with Oliver's parents at that Thai place. I don't think I've had more photos taken of me in my life!! Thankfully my hair was behaving so I looked pretty good. Oliver's dad is totally old skool (respect!) and he brought a film camera. I got the prints in the mail the other day and uploaded them here along with uploading the few photos I took on the riverboat cruise. Enjoy! And I apologize for the stuff on the scanned photos, apparently our scanner has some dust on it or something -_-

We have been making tons of vegan food here. I bought a cookbook (The Whole Soy Cookbook - deceptively vegan) with my dad that I had stolen a recipe out of before because it looked like it had more stuff in general that I'd like than the Veganomicon. We made curried tofu with mango-pear chutney, and picked spinach out of the garden and put peanut sauce on it (that wasn't in the book, I stole it from the Thai restaurant on Selby). Both were super good. We tried an alfredo recipe that wasn't in the book because it looked interesting (it had tahini in it) but it also had some beans in it which made it weird. It was good but not alfredo-saucish enough. Tonight I made this pizza thing where I took a whole wheat tortilla and put some soy sausage and marinara on it with a few chunks of soy cheese. When they say "it melts" they lie. Big time. I had that shit under a broiler and it only looked a little gushy. Anyway that was pretty good and easy to make.

I'm sure there's more to write about but I am very tired out - I'm not sure why. We're moving into the house on the 28th and the kitties are coming back YAY! More news then. xoxoxo

Apparently people are already living up to the "Girls Gone Wild" spring break stereotype. I heard the bell ring (a sign that someone lost their virginity) quite early in the day and then several times after that. Sometimes that gets irritating.

I have been doing absolutely nothing all day except for going out to BreadSmith/Jamba Juice to get some food. I recently have gotten hooked on Jamba Juice's Chunky Strawberry smoothie, but the workers there are absolutely inept. I have to watch carefully to make sure they really DON'T put yogurt in it, and a worker helpfuly informed me that "it has peanut butter" when I made it really clear that I don't eat dairy. I thought he was just being, well, an idiot, but afterward I realized that they might actually put dairy in their damn peanut butter. I mean, they don't have the greatest track record.

I am looking forward to being able to make my own damn smoothies with no dairy within a 10 foot radius. I'm leaving in the morning, hopefully unmolested by some stupid race that is going through Snelling during the day sometime.

Oh yeah, I know why I'm posting. Well, I wanted to go upload some cat shelter photos but realized that I haven't been using Flickr since my Pro account ran out and it started eating some of my pictures. I asked Matt on the bus ride back from the cat shelter yesterday if he knew of any good Flickr alternatives, and he didn't (not sure why I asked him in the first place, actually). I found a lot of candidates, like SmugMug (pay service? No thanks), Zooomr (too many Os and a MySpace wannabe) and some other random crappy sites. It took a while for me to find Ipernity, which is sort of like a refuge site for Flickr users who have been censored. Apparently it doesn't cut off after 200 pictures on the free one and has a monthly upload limit of 200 mb...that and you can upload movies and sound files, which I certainly had some fun with. There are a lot of private files, so if you want to see them hit me up on my mufuggin' MySpace. Or just leave me a comment :) I did upload some sound files that I recorded in 7th grade during class...I'm kind of torn on whether I should make those public or not, because they're hilarious, but I don't want to condemn those involved.

Anyway, my account is here, so enjoy the stuff that's publicly available. I'll be deleting my Flickr account soon. I also put a music video on YouTube that I did with Megan and Geneva a zillion years ago. It's kind of hilarious.

Sweet as, mate - I got runner up for Bardic in Lusternia, giving a (roughly) 40 dollar prize. If anyone's interested, you can view it here, but the text seems a little messed up for some reason, and it's probably boring and as irrelevant as hell for most people. Next month I'll probably try again. Pretty dorky, eh?

I've been doing a lot of retro-blogging lately...Anyway, I meant to post what's going on in my Syntax class, but haven't gotten around to it until now. It's really ridiculous. The teacher comes in 15 minutes late every class, goes off on random and irrelevant tangents for half the class, and gives fairly unacceptable answers to the random tangent things she's supposed to know about. I love syntax, but I'm sorry, I don't really want to be paying attention if she's bringing up the same (irrelevant) problem every single class and leaving me scratching my head wondering if it really is the same problem.

The class isn't an entire waste, though. Remember how I said I got a lovely drawing from someone sitting next to me? I got yet another lovely drawing from my friend Hannah. Where syntax dies, creativity blooms.

In our world, there is a growing epidemic that the vast majority of people are unaware of. Each year, hundreds of people subject themselves to a cruel procedure without being aware of the dire consequences it could lead to. This growing trend is Uvula Mutilation. This consists of a ring, bar, (or in extreme cases, perhaps several) placed through a hole in the uvula, more commonly known as "that thing in the back of your throat". The piercing is often done under unhygienic situations without the use of anesthesia. While several piercing studios refuse to perform this cruel act, other studios are willing to do so without giving their clients the important information that they need. Many languages worldwide use uvular stop consonants or trills, which require an intact uvula to produce these sounds. (Imagine removing one's lips and trying to produce the consonant sounds "b" or "p" ). Another risk that people with pierced uvulas face is involuntary nasalization, due to a possible incomplete closure of the velum.

The renowned phonetician Sarah Dart, has this to say on this controversial issue:
As for piercing the uvula... don't you even think of it!!!! I would predict that it would be next to impossible to make either a uvular stop or a trill. They would both come out as fricatives, because of incomplete closure. Depending on how it was done, and the individual shape of the person's anatomy, it could also contribute to a lack of complete closure at the velum-- so involuntary nasalization. As far as being able to be understood, I'm sure the speaker would learn to compensate in various ways, to better approximate the sound. And people would hear it as that person's particular idiolect.

Uvula piercings are gaining popularity every day, despite the linguistic disability that this piercing inevitably causes. Please, help spread the word about Uvula Mutilation. If you only tell one person about this, perhaps you will have kept one uvula perfect and intact, as nature intended it to be.

I'm not really sure why, because the class really isn't all that silly, but Sanskrit brings out a very silly streak in me.

First, is this comic, inspired by a sentence we had to translate in our reading. The word harass was conjuring up really funny images, so I made this small comic. Rated M for language omg!!!

Having acquired a pair of goth TROUSERS* and my kitteh boots, which are kind of like Gothic Lolita style (maybe?), I decided to do a small goth photo session after borrowing a flat mate's black eyeliner.


*note use of British terminology

Oh my, I have not blogged in a while. This is because Sanskrit is eating my brain and driving me to Chocoholism. I think I have a few things to write about, though!

The secret mission which I referred to in my last post was heading to CyberCandy in Covenant Garden. I wanted to get Dan some Twizzlers as a gift and also maybe stock up on some American candy. I got Hershey's Kisses and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups since for some reason, Brits aren't so big on the peanut-butter chocolate thing. They also stock Marsupial Butt Poop Coffee (I would have bought some, but it's so freaking expensive), a candy called Goetze (*shudder* I think I'll pass), and Lucky Charms - BUT they were out of stock when I went there. I'll have to go there again sometime when they have better stock of things. I actually had to buy the straw type Twizzlers so Dan didn't end up getting as much but oh well. I also sent a very artistic gay card since I still don't know where to get cards except at Gay's The Word.

I didn't go to Notting Hill to shop that evening but I did hang out in China town a little bit. I got some expensive Bubble Tea which wasn't quite what I expected (more like a smoothie or something almost) but it was good. I still have to find a real bubble tea shop. Anyway I also bought some Udon noodles and stuff at a little grocery store, as well as cutesy buttons to put on my boring day bag (I just can't drag my kitty bag around town anymore).

Since I couldn't go shopping Friday night (it was too late) I decided to go with Heidi Saturday afternoon. I found out later that Saturday probably isn't the best day to do Portabello Road - that's the antique day, not the fashion day. I hardly saw anything that I was interested in even when we went to the promising looking "retro" stores. I put that in quotes because I guess their definition of "retro" is "things that your Grandma wore in the 80s." The sad thing is that a lot of this stuff was 20 pounds or something crazy. I wanted to keep my general spending range to 10 pounds and under unless I saw something really special.

And guess what - I did. We passed a hippy-ish Indian clothes store and I stopped dead in my tracks. That's when I saw what Heidi calls my Technicolor Dream Coat. It was a long velvet coat which was tie dyed crazy colors and embroidered with flowers. It was 50 pounds though and wayy over what I wanted to spend for the day. I decided to think about it and me and Heidi then walked down Porabello road a little longer and stopped at a "free trade coffee house" - which I'm not really sure what that means now that I think about it -  and then later to the closest thing we've seen to a real tea shop. I bought some loose leaf berry green tea there which turned out to be quite good, but I'm still looking for a place that rivals the Teahouse in Boulder. I mean, this is the UK, where is all the flippin' tea?

Anyway, after thinking it over, I went back to the place with the coat and decided it wouldn't kill me to use my feminine wiles to bargain for the coat. I fluttered my eyelashes charmingly and got him to take it down to 44 pounds which was quite decent! It was getting cold and I hadn't bought anything, so I thought, fuck it - and I bought it. Strangely enough, it's been really cold here lately so I have been wearing it pretty much every day! I thought people would think it was a little too over the top, but I have gotten several complements on it so far. Here's a photo of it if you're so inclined:


Sunday night I stayed up forever doing Sanskrit...as usual. Then Monday evening I went to a Jan Svankmajer film at the London Film Festival! Heidi let me know about it and I was thoroughly excited. I had a headache but I dragged myself down to Water Closet station or whatever. Nothing will stop me from seeing a Svankmajer film! There was a small cafe there and a very nice Italian man who made my weird sandwich choice (Cucumbers and cheese with Mayonnaise). I also had a guy giggle at me since I sauntered up to the bar looking all cool and then ordered hot chocolate.

The film is called Lunacy in English. I'm not quite sure how I feel about the plot yet. It seemed a little cliched, because the students at a Zaki Gordon workshop I went to came up with a similar plot. You know, there's a looney bin, and you don't know who is crazy and who is not...But of course, since this is Jan Svankmajer, a bunch of animated brains, flesh, eyes, and of course tongues were showing up in between every other scene. It was a pretty blasphemous film and I'm glad I didn't take anyone because they probably would have never spoken to me again! I recommend the film with caution - maybe see Conspirators of Pleasure and then work up to this film.

The rest of this week I've just been scrambling to get all my work done - especially all my Sanskrit. This has involved me chanting noun paradigms under my breath while walking to school, causing one guy to mutter, "Crazy" at me (I think so, at least.) I didn't do anything on Halloween which was a little sad, but I did eat too much chocolate and then talk with Heidi for a long time. To prove a point to her, I posed a sort of ridiculous hypothetical question, but I think it's interesting to analyze this question. Here it is:

Just wanted to make that last post separate!

Anyway, I'm sorry I haven't written in a while (I just spent like 10 minutes looking for a blog post on people who write ridiculous excuses for not blogging, but gave up). I'm not going to give a silly excuse because I have quite a sensible one: I got sick on Wednesday last week. I thought it wasn't so bad, but then on Thursday night, Zulu really zapped me and I felt awful. I had to miss my Sanskrit quiz on Friday and spent most of the weekend feeling weak and recovering. I read Howl's Moving Castle again to see how it matched up with the film, and was surprised to find out that Howl the Hottie is actually a Welsh guy. Wooo, can he get any more sexy? I also read the second book of the Inheritance Trilogy about Saphira the dragon and Eragon. It was okay, but I got really sick of all those emo descriptions of Roren (was that his name?) whining about his town getting burned down and his girlfriend getting kidnapped. Get over it, man! Strangely enough I saw a review that said the only thing they could relate to in the book was this emo shit. Huh!

Anyway, I said I spent most of the weekend, right? Over the weekend, Dan (myveryownme ) came to visit from Edinburgh since he somehow scored a bus ticket on eBay for one pound. So we met up for coffee on Sunday and ended up hanging out until he had to catch the bus back home! We had a really fun time. I love meeting people from The Internets in person, it is so fun, because you don't know what to expect yet it ended up feeling quite natural. After coffee and Sanskrit fun...


We tried to get into this exhibit at the Museum that was this video game thingy. It sounded awesome but we got there a little too late and wandered around the exhibits featuring things like a game that tells you whether you're male or female (I kept getting the male responses, Dan kept getting the female...) a "realistic" operation game, which had a cutout figure marching around with no walking animation plopping shapes into a hole in this guy's chest. Wow, I can really relate to surgeons now that I know from a realistic perspective what their job entails. We got kicked out pretty quickly, but not before we saw this random-ass baby lying on the floor:

Then we kinda touristed out down by um, Picadilly Circus or whatever it's called. I actually hadn't been down there before. We walked around Chinatown and Dan bought a ton of these Japanese snacks as well as some pocky for me (*nibbles pocky*) I have to go back there myself now that I know where it is.

Me and my mom went out to Target (pronounce it taɹˈʒeɪ of course!) to get some junk I might need for my trip. We didn't end up getting much because a lot of the things I'm going to buy there...But I got somethings like mini-shampoos and stuff for my punch biopsy wound (which is FINALLY scabbing up, after getting a cream from the derm.) I wanted to buy more than we ended up getting since I like Target so much. I tend to stay away from Wal-mart these days even though it might be a little cheaper, because the whole store always looks like crap. Once I went there to find some lip balm and the area where it should have been looked like it'd been ravaged by wolves. And of course no one can help you with anything there.

After that we went to Borders. We sat down to have some iced coffees and I brought a bunch of books about London back to the table so we could look at them. Most of them ended up being BS because they were talking about touristy stuff and hotels, which I won't have to bother with. The most promising book was called London for Kids or something, but even that had some lame suggestions for little boys that I didn't relate to - War Museum? Ew! In the end I didn't buy one because I didn't want to look like this:

Wow, I just found out about a fantastic geeky webcomic. I love computational linguistics - really pretentious terminology is the best! A big change from emo kids, indeed :)

We are in Boulder, CO now. Yesterday when we got here, there was a huuuge hailstorm. It hailed so much it looked like snow - I felt like I was back in Minnesota! Thankfully, my new Digicam came to the rescue, documenting with high res images and videos.

Check out the two videos I took of the hail storm here and here.

I took a video of lightning in my backyard. I'm making silly sound effects and comments in the background, but whatev. (my mom liked it) :) Check it out here.

I took it on my new digicam, a Casio Exilim EX-Z110. Sure, laugh at me for getting a Casio. But does YOUR camera have a "BS" mode, or make ridiculous boinging and ribbiting noises? I THINK NOT. Japanese people sure have a problem with the word "BS" - they even have a news station called "BS News". In this case, it stands for "Best Shot". It lets you choose what kind of subject you're going to take, and then it loads all the good settings for that picture. The only bad thing I've found about this camera is that it always takes devil pictures of my cat Zig.

myveryownme pointed out a funny photoshop contest going on at SA. The theme was "mispelled movie titles". I liked this entry:


Since I just revealed my phobia of computers messing up in the middle of the night with no one around, this movie might be really scary for me! Especially if the ending is, "Error reading drive C: Abort, Retry, Fail?"

Is this cute enough for you? AAGHGH BUNNIES AND SHOOTING STARS MY EYES ARE BURNING

Create your own here, or click below to see more random avatars I made while goofing off.

( More avatar randomness here... )

I just realised to my delight that LiveJournal decided to give me twice as many user pics as I had before, which I think is very reasonable of them because the ammount they had before (15) was a very small amount indeed. I just tried to fill all my slots and it took me some time. I probably should have been doing homework but oh well.

Last weekend I bumped into Jospeh and Ola at dinner and suggested we watch Conspirators of Pleasure by Jan Svankmajer, my favorite surrealist film maker. The thing about surrealist films is that you can't really describe the plot, and the name of the movie was hard to remember, so it kind of just became "the masturbation machine movie" because that was the thing that I remembered from the description. Apparently this made Joseph and Ola pretty interested (Matt less so) and we decided to watch it. It had no dialogue in the whole movie and still managed to keep me entertained (in the sense of going WTF? every 5 minutes). The funniest part must have been when someone walked into the lounge where we were watching it during the masturbation machine / fish fetish part which is one of the weirdest parts of the movie, and then ran out to go get a friend. When they came back, it had gotten fairly boring looking again but the person was saying loudly, "I swear, there was this hand massaging this guy and these fish..."

Matt tried to tell me that Jack Sparrow and the dude from Djengis Khan (Louis Potgieter) don't look alike. He quickly took back his opinon after I showed him the following (*cough* badly photoshopped *cough*)  picture.



Uncanny!

I suppose OpenOffice doesn't quite cater to this crowd. (speaking of which, 2.0.2 was released a few days ago. Get it!)



Speaking of Word Processing applications, I've been dying the past few days because there's no version of LyX 1.4.0 for Windows out yet. No HUGE changes, but the GUI got a major reworking, and there are much better toolbars now. I think I might write a Linguist Toolbar when it comes out. I helped other LyX users figure out how to use LyX for linguistics papers - you can see the wiki here. (they really overwrote everything I did but I was the person to start it off!)

I just bought a Pro account on Flickr, because I wanted to be able to archive my photos. Too bad my Germany trips are on my hard drive that I can't get files off of right now. You can see my Japan and Ireland photos though.

So ridiculous.


Why do I always find weird crap like this on ebay? (No erectile dysfunciton, guranteed!) I wonder if there's a version that comes in a nose stud.

This is brilliant.


(original link from SA with more funny remixed CYOAs)

This is what Pirates of the Caribbean should have featured: