Gems

Oh, this book is so awesome:

I can think of two very good reasons for not splitting an infinitive.

1. Because you feel that the rules of English ought to conform to the grammatical precepts of a language that died a thousand years ago.


2. Because you wish to cling to a pointless affectation of usage that is without the support of any recognized authority of the last 200 years, even at the cost of composing sentences that are ambiguous, inelegant, and patently contorted.

[from the mother tongue: english and how it got that way by Bill Bryson]

In my most recent Shakespeare class, the prof took marks off for split infinitives. I maintain that the rule of the split infinitive is an urban myth. On the other hand, there are some people who think I'm too draconian and fastidious about grammatical things. I just can't fathom how "then" and "than" and proper punctuation and the simple difference between superlatives and comparatives can be so difficult for some people. You don't have to know the terminology to use the darn language right, either.

[By the way, a split infinitive is putting an adjective between the "to" and the "verb," as in "to quickly run." Some people would have you believe that this is impossible, just because in Latin the phrase would be currere celeriter, and you can see how it is impossible to split the infinitive currere, therefore the proper English rendering would be "to run quickly" ... ok enough of that. Oh, how I would love to turn this blog into a series of lessons in little-known linguistic and etymological(?) trivia!]

I suppose I never formally acknowledged that I finished my degree early last week. Or that I also turned 22 a little earlier last week. Both are duly noted. But we must never speak of either.

Oh, and as of today I have become a nomad. Good thing I have a caravan of llamas under my command. By the way, if anyone would like, say, 5 brown female baby llamas, you should really contact me. Really.

Error! Error! Banjo not found!!

• dark matter

The music page has been renovated, so songs are not actually available there anymore (except some Most Recent songs are still available there). The mp3s are still on the web, as well as a couple new songs, but I don't plan on posting the links anywhere. But you can listen to a medley of the piano recordings and of electronic/MIDI/guitar/new voice songs, and as always you can contact me for more information. Of course, if you're using IE or some other crappy browser...you won't be able to access the Most Recent or Medley mp3 links anyways.



Warning to motorists in Tokyo: "When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor."

You may have noticed that lapsura.com has been significantly renovated. It should work at all times now, even though a lot of it is being regularly hacked. I've found a way to co-exist peacefully with this hacker, so that everyone gets what they want. But, if you're still one of those Internet Explorer people, I vehemently urge you to consider Firefox. It's so much more superior in many ways; plus, Internet Explorer severely butchers the awesomeness of lapsura.com (turns the title into a big ugly block and the floating windows—i.e. most of the links—don't work). In fact, I find Firefox a heck of a lot faster than Safari, plus you can't beat tabbed browsing. That's Firefox folks; just click the highly conspicuous button on the sidebar.

fucking sick to death of all this shit. ALL THIS SHIT. hacked again classes crazy too much work nowhere to live school is all I know and now it is done what do I do now (and yet none of that is bothering me half as much as I am bothered) everything is falling apart and they call these fucking antidespressants?

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. —Gore Vidal

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. —H. L. Mencken on Shakespeare

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. —Alan Kay

That's the secret to life... replace one worry with another. —Charlie Brown

Music is essentially useless, as life is. —George Santayana

I hate my life! I hate everything! I wish I was dead! ...Well, no I don't. Not really. I wish everyone else was dead. —Calvin

Verbing weirds language. —Calvin

Apparently I released my first album (without my own knowledge), which not only made it into Gil's "Listened to" the last few days, but was also featured as the on-hold music at work today. Soon I will have infiltrated all of North America!

Two birds attacked me at once today. I should really stop walking that way back from class.

• ouaouaron
  
• foofawfery
  
• preantepenultimate
  

Here's some of the Francis 100th Anniversary Parade in pictures:

Old tractors led the way:



Then came the fire trucks/bus and grader:



I remember making this sign for a parade at least 5 years ago for the Ag Society (I could have sworn it was Francis's 100th Anniversary then). It looks suspiciously like they changed the date:



Some horses:



Young hooligans on bicycles:



Then the police came to break up the riot:



Well, there was a lot more to the parade than that; floats and things that threw candy (and even Santa on a quad) but I'm not going to post those. Now here's some llamas and chickens:



All these and other pictures are in the photo gallery.

And of course, somebody HACKS MY WEBSITE, just when I hadn't made any backups...

ok so the hacking was probably almost entirely my fault, and it's also my fault that I didn't back anything up, but still! Anyways, the Lapsionary required complete reconstruction, and I'm still working out glitches in it. You can check out what the damage used to look like on almost every page here (old obsolete drawings page).

And if it was YOU who did it...don't do it again!

Today was the awesomest day in a long, long time. It's about time, too, because this week was pretty hellish. The awesomest part (today) was Ryan coming to visit. Then I finished reading a lengthy book for my Old Moldy Books Class. There's still a lot of reading to be done in order to get all my final assignments in this week, but then it will all be over. I also went on a very lengthy stroll by the lake (the first time in a long time that I've been outside during the daytime). I was going to go into the waterfowl park, but I didn't like the looks of those geese, and considering my recent encounters with attacking birds, it was probably for the best that I didn't. Tomorrow I'm going to the farm to take a bunch of stuff home and retrieve my camera. Since I've been going through my room, I've found a multitude of scraps of paper from months and months ago with ideas for drawings jotted down on them. So, there's a small collection of drawings piling up.

What it feels like:

Like somebody cracked open my skull, poured the entire contents of my head on some pavement, spread it into an even layer, sprinkled on some shards of glass, jumped on the entire mass for good measure, then scooped everything back into my head, where somehow someone wearing stilettos still manages to jump on it.

I just spent 18 hours in bed.

That bird attacked me again today.

I think I mentioned at some point that my anthropology prof is related to me in some irrelevant way. Anyways, we were talking after class last week and he asked how things are going (probably concerned because I've been missing classes—still managed to get 98% in the midterm though!). So he asked what my English class is about. Admittedly, I've had trouble focussing my thoughts in any coherent way lately; but seriously, all I could come up with (without ranting on the utter uselessness of English in general) was "Ohh... it's mostly about... old books." Yeah, he laughed at that.

Anyways, the point of that story is that the classes I've been taking are very discouraging. But today... was one of the best English classes ever! How is this possible? Because my Lit Theory prof from last term was the guest lecturer! She's so intense, and she argues with the force of a thousand hurricanes. She should be a politician, or at least a lawyer. She singlehandedly inspires me; I come out of her classes actually thinking—really, thinking! Or I would, if I were in a thinking sort of mood. Nothing else even remotely connected to English does that for me. Somehow, she manages to present English in a way that actually matters. She's also the one who keeps after me to do an honours or masters. It's tempting, very tempting, but I don't think it would end well.

Back when I was in Music, I took a Masterclass where the guy gave us this advice: "If you truly want to perform, then go for it and it will be the greatest thing in life. But if you don't, then quit now, because it will break your heart." I don't regret quitting performance, because it would have broken my heart.

I feel very defeated.

Happy Saskatchewan Day!

I went out to the farm this weekend. It's Francis's 100th Anniversary this year, so there was a parade on Saturday. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera at home, so pictures of the parade and baby llamas and mangled augurs and whatnot will have to wait. As well as drawings. The parade was mostly dominated by old-fashioned tractors. It's not like the Chokecherry Festival at Lancer, where everyone marches down the street waving chokecherry branches, though. So I'll post the farm-weekend-pictures maybe next week or so.

Other than that, things are uneventful. Classes, work (due to a Saskatchewan Day Miracle, I had to come to work today. I don't really mind, I'm just complaining for Gil's sake)... yeah, pretty much just classes and work, classes and work, every day. And the nightmares. Oh, and in about 2 weeks I'll be homeless. I could do with less stress, maybe a vacation, maybe a little stability in my life, maybe some time just to try to appreciate life and find some meaning. You know, be a tiger instead of a slow elephant person...or something.

My greatest aspiration right now... is to someday create a graph as informative as this. So far I have failed.

Here are some toothpastefordinner comics that I feel are applicable:

• oh god
  
• old pants
  
• youthful idealism
  
• usually don't give a crap
  
• job requirements
  
• you don't want all that food
  
• horrible dream
  
• new office
  
• take it to the next level
  
  

I keep having nightmares. It's really starting to bother me.

A bird attacked me today. Repeatedly. And then at work Col Sanders kicked me in the shins. Ok, I made that part up, but the bird story is true. It grazed my head! Jerks.

• Spinny spinny (have I mentioned the Photo Gallery?)
  

Today in Anthropology class we watched a film about the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. That's right, I'm 7 years behind in current events. Why do I never know what's going on? Anyways, I've always been very pro-protests, but the issue we discussed in class was the extent to which protests and demonstrations have the effect of just reinforcing the existing system. In the film, the demonstrators claimed victory at the end. That was 7 years ago, and they thought they had changed the way WTO meetings would be conducted from then on. But there's demonstrations at every WTO meeting. Being involved in demonstrations sustains the illusion of freedom of speech and all that... maybe that's all it does; the powers that be still ignore the people. But as long as we can do these demonstrations and claim victory, we feel like we've made a difference. It's all HEGEMONY (see the Lapsipedia of Literary Theory [woefully incomplete still] for all my biased definitions—hegemony is under Marxism).