a wolf angel is not a good angel

As it turns out, one of my dearest friends is moving back to Canada City, probably in May. I have a job there for the summer. And we both intend to be in Europe at around the same time — she’s going to be there travelling between jobs, and I’ll be there for a conference. So we figure: let’s travel together, for about a week. We’re debating between London and Paris: the final decision seems to be London if my cousins will let us stay there (no hotel is worth a great deal), Paris otherwise (I’ve never been). Then I’ll go off to talk in Berlin. On the way back I might just spend a day or two in Paris anyhow; it depends on money and other fun issues.

My schedule, weekend by weekend:

Feb 28-29: possibly at the Penn Linguistics Colloquium, probably back to Canada City Sunday.
March 6-7: Canada City (classes cancelled this week, for some reason)
March 13-14: Canadaville if dear friend is there, otherwise perhaps travelling (with her) to — I need new names — Canadaburg. (Spring break weekend 1)
March 20-21: Canada City (Spring break weekend 2)
March 27-28: Tulum Mexico (with a different friend, to what I believe has been misinterpreted as a lesbian weekend of sin; mostly it will be a weekend of beaches and ruins and, sadly, no sex)
April 3-4: Possibly Canada City so I can be home for the (first) seder
April 10-11: Easter weekend somewhere in the US with my parents
April 17-18: London or Paris
April 24-25: Berlin
May 1-2: Probably Dullnesss (finally)

This is pretty nice, because it means I can avoid being in a place I’m quite so unhappy. I mentioned to my old advisor today how terribly unhappy I have been, as a part of why-I-plan-to-go-into-industry. With luck I will see her in March, but otherwise I believe she will also be at said conference in Berlin. Berlin! Another place I’ve never been.

it’s Creme Egg time! I found dark chocolate ones, which may be wonderful or terrible; I’m not yet sure. I didn’t taste them yet, because my mother made Kahlua chocolate cake, and fresh cake beats out Creme Eggs.

I wanted to try a Caramilk[1] Creme Egg, but they didn’t have any there. I like Caramilks, though both the chocolate and the caramel are not so good.

[1] A chocolate bar unfortunately unavailable in the US, milk chocolate with little caramel centres. The ad campaign is always “how do they get the caramel into the Caramilk?” Unsurprisingly, Google provides the answer.

The Gender Genie says that my blog entries were all written by men, except for the ones about (a) family, (b) cats or (c) how miserable I am or how little work I am doing or other things along those lines.

Irritatingly, when I click on “am I right?”, and say that I am actually female, I get told That’s one butch chick, which just doesn’t hit me as funny.

I wonder if they’re going to work on their algorithm. I also wonder if humans do better, especially on blog posts.

I confused a friend today by talking to him in French when I said hello. He just went silent for a bit (his mother, who answered the phone, told him it was me, so he was expecting English. He is one of my friends who likes his parents — indeed, he still lives at home, as does his sister). Our conversation involved me speaking both languages and him speaking French, which is rarer, for us. Also he told me that there’s a change in French spelling being propagated through the Francophonie, but I can’t find information on this online.

I wasn’t actually planning to see The Passion. I am, however, mighty amused b what the official merchandise is:

Replicas of the nails used to hang Jesus on the cross have become the red-hot official merchandise linked to Mel Gibson’s controversial new movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”
Pendants made from the pewter, 2 1/2-inch nails - selling for $16.99 - all but flew out of the Christian Publications Bookstore on West 43rd Street as soon as they were put on display.

Once I understood a little bit about the story of Jesus, I always thought that having the cross as a symbol was a little macabre, but this just goes beyond. At least they don’t drip blood.

Did I see the previews wrong, or are they actually putting the nails through his hands?

via asmallvictory.net

I’ve been trying to prepare some research for my important qualifying paper, and failing. I have, on the other hand, been mostly succeeding at figuring out what I need to do for my far-more-interesting semantics paper.

First, I need to get in touch with someone who speaks Indonesian. But let’s pretend I’ve done that, since I don’t think I’ll do it before my conference (which is in 2 months, oh dear).

The question, as I see it (or one of them, anyways) is this: what difference does the word order (V initial or S initial) and the affix position (pre- or suf-) make to the semantics of voicing in Austronesian languages? Neither necessarily make any difference, of course, but given the theory I’m working in, the basic assumption is that they should. The prefix/suffix distinction might be more interesting, because many of these languages have voicing contrasts of each type. It could be just coincidence, but it would be nice to know if it mattered.

In Tagalog, I’ve only looked at two voices. (Bad, bad. I know. I’m going to look at applicatives and benefactives shortly.) One — agent=subject — is a prefix, the other — theme=subject — a suffix. And I spent time trying to interpret them both before the verb, or after, whatever worked consistently. Finally I gave up and tried the one before the verb and the other after, and it worked much more easily. (I wouldn’t say it was easy, though.) I don’t know why I was fighting it beforehand. Maybe because I was trained with Chomskyan syntax, and this is terribly, terribly non-Chomskyan (the syntax I’ve been doing lately is minimalism, though). (I think this semantics has a lot going for it, obviously, despite being a little too extreme. In part what I like about it is my professor’s reliance on non-IE languages; I continue to disagree with Chomsky and some of his students that everything of interest could be learned from English if we just understood it well enough. My ass it could.)

Where was I going? I’m so distracted.

Yes, word order and affix order in semantics. I always liked morphology (though it tends to be taught from a phonology lens, even by syntacticians), so this almost morpho-semantics is fun, too. Now I need to read a friend’s work on the semantics of intensional verbs in this theory, so that I can maybe use it to work on Tagalog.

Home today, home today! Before this: class today! Class for which I’ve not read the readings today! (Maybe I should be a bit less excited. I’m definitely not taking this class for credit.)

I’ve almost finished putting stuff in the car, so after class I can come back home, pick up the last minute stuff (cats, food, coffee), and leave by 2, making it home for Law & Order. Yes, this is a priority, why?

Interstate forecast is beautiful all the way to the border. I have 4 books on tape. As long as I don’t sleep (too much), it should be fine.

I realised that of the people I know, very few of them like their family — in particular, their parents. I do, and of my closer friends, I’d say one definitely and one probably does. The rest are in varying stages of tolerate to dislike.

My roommate last year spoke to her parents maybe once a month, and went back home (to her fiance) a few times without telling them (she warned me, at least, so when they called, I didn’t say anything). My roommate now sees her parents more often than that, but less often than I do — and she lives 45 minutes from them.

My mother’s parents come to our house regularly. Until recently (it’s getting too hard for my grandmother), we went there every week for Friday night dinner, and usually I see them a few times a week.

Is my family crazy or is everyone else’s?

I am utterly unmotivated to do anything. I worked a lot — not, note, researched — this weekend. I should still be working on their stuff: the one pressing deadline is done (and I finished everything in just under 20 hours) but I have much else I should do. Nope. I should pack up shit, so my move in August will be easier. Again, not so much. I could even try to do my tax return, or fill out the forms asking for travel money for the conference I should hear about on Friday. Guess how much I’m not doing those. I can, however, read terrible (but fun) books. I can nap. I can watch television. I can read blogs, and get caught up in what is and is not the ideal in blogging and the A-list and all that.

This is really not good.

I screwed up when I ordered my computer. There was a 200$ rebate; you had to send it in within 30 days. Now, the person who sold it to me didn’t say it, the confirmation email didn’t say it, and the front page of their rebate page didn’t say it, but the packing slip (which I didn’t look at) and the actual page you’re supposed to print out did.

Of course, I didn’t look at those pages until after 30 days had passed. When I phoned, once I got through the maze of service options, a very nice woman helped me out, and sent in a request with my explanation. And I checked, and they have sent out my rebate cheque. Yay, and phew.

Now to wait and see if Hartz will refund me the almost 500$ I spent on vet bills. Remember: don’t use anything made by Hartz if you like your cats or dogs.

I went to the library yesterday to take out some books. They have a terrible catalogue interface, and when I had trouble using part of it (saved lists of books), I mentioned to the librarian who was “helping” me that the program was terrible, and they should consider ditching it. (I worded it more carefully.) She informed me that they bought it — which was obvious — so they couldn’t change it, and that they were getting a new one in a few months and “hopefully it would have a better interface”. Hopefully? What, they choose at random? User interface should be one of the primary concerns.

Not that any academic library in the world seems to worry about this. I hated the system at Canada U until I came to Dullness U where, miracle of miracles, it’s worse.