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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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FUN WITH WORDS: At work, one of our manuscripts had an extra author added to its byline, and I wanted to indicate this on the front for the copy editor, so I started to write "See new author (enclosed)" on the envelope before I realized how wrong that was. MORE FUN WITH WORDS: I'm still all about the linguistics articles, and this one includes a few things that I like a lot, such as this list of types of communicative acts: Constatives: affirming, alleging, announcing, answering, attributing, claiming, classifying, concurring, confirming, conjecturing, denying, disagreeing, disclosing, disputing, identifying, informing, insisting, predicting, ranking, reporting, stating, stipulating Directives: advising, admonishing, asking, begging, dismissing, excusing, forbidding, instructing, ordering, permitting, requesting, requiring, suggesting, urging, warning Commissives: agreeing, guaranteeing, inviting, offering, promising, swearing, volunteering Acknowledgments: apologizing, condoling, congratulating, greeting, thanking It is my goal to cover each of these types of communicative acts, here in these web pages, at least once. I think I've got a fairly good start. (Plus some other kinds, like "ranting," "bragging about extraordinary capacity for beer," and "signifying." YET MORE FUN WITH WORDS: I saw a kid with a high school letter jacket (how cute! those still exist! I always thought it was just a 1950s thing!) and he had two activities in big felt script on the back---FORENSICS BAND. At least I think those were meant to be two activities, but maybe they have some sort of forensic band at Conant High School (and isn't that school just the most depressing piece of architecture you ever saw?). Interview with Kevin Drumm in which he bitches a (very little) bit about the "experimental" music "scene" (Mimi's prayer: please god* let the day come when I don't feel the need to put quotation marks around those words), and even in that brief section manages to convey a lot of the disgust I feel for a similar phenomenon: college writing programs and workshops and the MFA and the scramble to get published in the right little magazines. It's all calculated to squeeze every last drop of creativity out of kids and turn them into brand-identity poets or writers that can be promoted and marketed, even in the limited, "underground," tiny little world of Serious Literature. *(it being understood, of course, that my personal god is a combination of particle physics, really old rocks, Google, and the perfect fifth.) I'm really asking for it now: dissing Paglia and William Carlos Williams and college creative writing programs all within a month or so! Bad Mimi! Bitter Cranky Mimi! Someone get that girl an ether-soaked rag! PREAMBLE TO A LINK: I got this link in the (electronic) mail, and it cheered me up immeasurably, in a weird bleak nihilistic way, and for that alone I want to hunt down H (the link's sender), hug him, and bake him a pie. (I often use the idea of baking someone a pie as an expression of gratitude, because I can't really think of anything that takes more effort than making a good pie.) So the preamble is over, and now I share with you The American Gallery of Psychiatric Art. Check out this one! Take some amphetamines and vacuum like a mofo, with yellow rays arcing out of your body, yo! The patient becomes "more communicative and approachable." Approachable nothing! She'll approach you, tweaking her brains out and talking all fast and dry-mouthed about her vacuuming theories! Hoo yeah! ---mimi smartypants is waiting for her man, $26 in her hand. back/forward |
