your FACE!!!!!

Whole Foods and Costco are officially conspiring to crush my soul. How? Oh, I will tell you. I will tell you indeed.



Two things that make life worth living: 1) Wild Oats' lemon creme sandwich cookies (I have to actively work to NOT eat an entire box in one sitting, they're that fucking delicious) and 2) bulk packages of Orbits bubblemint gum to feed my addiction (I go through a pack a day. Good thing I'm not a smoker, this oral fixation is serious like whoa.)


Fucking Whole Foods. I liked them until they took over Wild Oats. So Whole Foods, when they bought out my beloved Wild Oats, stopped carrying my goddamned lemon cookies. I asked a cashier lady about them, I put a pleading note in their comment box, and then i put THREE MORE comment cards in when they responded to everyone's question except mine. Every single time. I put in comment cards every time i went there---so like once a week. No freaking response. So I started e-mailing them. And requested that Amazon e-mail me when my cookies become available, if they will ever again. OH HOW I NEED THEM.
So while i've been pining after my lemon cookies, i discovered on a recent trip to Costco that they no longer carry my favorite flavor of Orbits gum---they decided it was sufficient if they carried two kinds of mint, and some fucking watermelon mint crap, because yeah, one average and one weird-ass size fits all.

Enough whining. Time for funny stories and randomness, kids!

Funny story:
So I was sitting in the passenger seat of my friend's car one day coming back from climbing, and we were having a Serious, Deep Discussion about Life and Pain. And since we were in this far-right lane that turned into a turn-only lane where we didn't want to go, i interrupted my friend, who was in the midst of a Rant about Life, to say "this lane ends." and she said, "YES. EXACTLY. this lane ENDS. for all of us, at some point. it's so true!!!"
and it was true. the lane ended, and we had to change lanes. METAPHORICALLY?? perhaps.
GOD i'm so deep.

On my Facebook profile under "activities," among "climbing" and "drinking copious amounts of white tea" and "chocolate ice cream" and "spaghetti" (i love food like a fat kid at fat camp) and "being a badass" (i'm not modest but i'm honest), i have listed "making everything you say into an insult about your face." and it's true. But it doesn't always work as an insult, per se. For example: a friend says "man it's hot" and i go "your FACE is hot!!!! ohhhh snap!" and they're like ".....yeah.....burn." and i'm like "yeah. burn." When such an event occurs, and the other person thinks you're in fact complimenting them, it's key to keep a snide, smug look on your face like you just gave them the burn of their life. And they don't even FEEL burned, (so in your head you're like "OH SNAP you don't even KNOW!") that's how damn good you are. Covert. Yeah. Word.

Randomness:
Here are three of my favorite pieces of clothing:



hehehehehehehe. words on a shirt.
it's funny 'cause it's true.

BED OF EVIL AND LETTUCE!

When i was on the bus the other day i was reading the sign above the front seat that says to get your big 'ol butt up and move if some old person wants to sit there. but they don't say "old person." they say say "elderly persons." but i don't call my dad an "elderly person." I call him an "old person." I think he appreciates my honesty.

at a thrift store yesterday, my boyfriend found a video entitled "Evolution: Anti-God Religion of Death."

I started laughing, and then I saw that it was serious. It was, in fact, christian religious video. Wow, Blogger says with its fierce, cruel red underline that that is spelled wrong...because it's not capitalized. EFF YOU, RED LINE--i see you sitting under "eff."Taunting me. LEAVE ME BE!!!

On the cover, a happy Adam and Eve chilled in the happy Garden of Eden. On top of a pile of human bones that took up two-thirds of the cover.

One word*: wtf?

*acronym

So: Summer. The best and the worst things about summer is the change in my sleep schedule. Instead of going to bed at midnight and tossing and turning for a while, waking up at 7 and then sleeping in til noon on weekends.....oh summer. During the summer, I have teh freeeeedom to go to bed at 4 AM and sleep til....4 PM. Oh yeah, in case you ever need to defeat me in a battle, know this: My superpower is that I can sleep for 12-14 hours at a time. every day. YEAH, BRING IT!!!!!!!!!!!

/don't call me before about 2. kthxbai.

it's funny 'cause it's true.

ATTENTION GIRLS WHO WEAR THOSE CLEAR BRA STRAPS: you are not fooling anyone.

a few days ago a tiny bug flew into my nose and died. it was a very strange feeling--i don't know how fast that thing was flying, but when it made that ill-fated upward turn, i did NOT have ANY idea what the HELL was going on, did a whole-body twitch, shrieked and frantically rubbed at my tickly itchy nose. ha, you BETTER die a snot-covered death, you stupid little bug you....

the next day, another weird thing happened. i saw this hippie-lookin dude walking around while playing a ukelele. no wait, it gets weirder. i saw him twice more that day, and he was still singing.

i wish i could play the ukulele.

every time i hear a famous person's name, i try to image their name not being Famous: like what it sounded like when their 4th grade teacher called out "drew barrymore?" or "jon stewart?" et cetera.

i am a big fan of spelling out 'et cetera.'

here's a fun game: make the most retarded noise you can make. and i mean literally like how that kid in ESL in elementary school made noises. you know, like..."ennnh. NYEHHHHH!"
now image being the driver of the short bus.
and that sound being the honk.

i was doing homework (read: "browsing facebook") the other day in the evercrowded computer lab at school when i came across this picture:
oh, but first: i learned this in 5th grade sex ed but it is still true: everything is funnier when you're not supposed to laugh. so i clicked and here comes this picture and because i'm in a crowded, dead-silent room of studying college kids, my attempt to not laugh hysterically turned into my snorting into my hand for about ten minutes until i clicked away from the picture--that was the only way to stop the madnesss!!!

the End of Eloquence

Dun dun dunnnn.....

The annual Conference on World Affairs is going on at CU this week, and I FINALLY went to some talks today (Monday i was busy puking, Tuesday i had a Fiesta for the kids i teach spanish and then rapped in Chinese for Asian Language Night, and yesterday they all looked boring).

The End of Eloquence!!!! Such a dramatic title. The room was PACKED with middle-aged Boulderites and fleece-wearing retirees and like, 2 other college kids. I was interested to hear this talk because as a linguist, I have some very strong opinions (wait, are they opinions if they're Correct?) and know more about grammar than most Hoity Toity Non-Infinitive-Splitting College-Educated retirees. For example, I know that stupid grammar rules like splitting an infinitive are considered incorrect ONLY by snooty, ignorant prescriptivists who subscribe to the outdated notion that Latin is the Best Language Ever and English should be Just Like It. Just because something is impossible in an ancient language (and one that English is not even a daughter language of) doesn't mean it's wrong in our language---people just wanted English to be prestigious like Latin and so assigned Latin's grammar rules to English. Pretty silly, no?

So this one guy spent his entire allotted time quoting famous authors and bemoaning the lack of such eloquence in today's society. Apparently being a talented writer in the 1800s is analogous to being the average American of the 21st century. Wait, what?? Yeah, exactly.
Another dude blamed music and technology for the proliferation of 'like' and 'uh.'
One more bitched about how students in his writing class 'don't get laid' (HAR HAR) because they don't know the difference between 'lay' and 'lie' and pondered about where today's kids learn to talk like we do (which is, by the way, DISGRACEFUL)

So for the first time of all the talks i've been to at the Conference, i went up to the mic to ask a question. I started off by answering their question about where/how/why kids learn to speak like they/we do (over a hundred curious gray heads swiveled in my direction at this) and I talked briefly about how when i was in middle and high school, every paper i wrote was full of 'like,' 'frickin,' and cuss words---I wrote exactly how i talked, and every single time, i was praised for having Voice, and always got A's. Then the panel moderator stood up and said impatiently, "Do you have a question?" and got interrupted by about a dozen people in the audience shouting over him to me to "keep going!" so i grinned and kept going. I explained that with certain grammar rules such as the lay/lie dichotomy, there is no reason that English speakers would suspect which to use because transitive and intransitive pairs are so few in English, and asked the panelists if they thought that it was important or even valid to maintain such outdated, strict standards that don't represent standard English grammar. I then pointed out several valid uses of 'like,' such as as a quotative and an approximant, and that by saying 'you know?' the speaker is soliciting participation from the listener---so is it possible that today's speech is more oriented not only towards brevity in a short-attention-spanned world, but also in eliciting participation rather than showing off one's own smarts in soliloquies?
The audience applauded.
It rocked.

And then Steve picked me up on his way home from work--he left early because the ditzy intern was driving him INSANE by saying 'um' and 'like' loudly and repeatedly every few words while making phone calls to (possibly now ex-) supporters of the non-profit. So i thought about how i absolutely do agree that some people literally need to be slapped every time they say 'like' to stall and i HATE it when people use apostrophes incorrectly (PLURALS DO NOT NEED AN APOSTROPHE) and i LOATHE it when people use the POSESSIVE 'your' when they mean the contraction of 'you are'. But there are reasons for all of those things--'your' has a completely different meaning from 'you're' and apostrophes mean possessive, '-s' just means plural. Basically i just like pointing out to a room full of highly-educated bourgeois Boulderites bitching about Kids Today that a) we're not all dumb blondes, and b) don't follow the Rules just because your 3rd grade grammar teacher told you to--actually understand if they're relevant, useful, and valid for the structure of your freaking language.

Picture of the Day:I literally laughed out loud (lloled if you're Hip) for about ten minutes when I saw this picture.


Opinions of interest to linguists/language nerds only:
1. I have no problem with the disappearance of the English subjunctive. ("If I were you" --> "If i was you")
2. I actively want English to adopt "they" as our singular neuter pronoun. We NEED it, and "Everyone must do his or her own work" sounds stupid.

Nerd out.

random lists and randomness

You can learn a lot about your mother tongue form non-native speakers. Here are some questions I was asked recently by a Korean exchange student in my linguistics classes:

1. What is the most offensive word you know? (fag)
2. What do you call petting a PERSON'S hair--petting, stroking, something else? (petting?)
3. What is your favorite metaphor? (he/she's 'hot')
4. Ambiguity....is nebulous? (yeah, but we don't really say 'nebulous'....)


Every morning I wake up with a different random song stuck in my head. Last weeks mental playlist:

Monday: Everybody was Kung Fu fighting!
Tuesday: the corny Titanic song
Wednesday: the states song (aaaalaaaabama, alaska arizona arkansas california colorado conneticut...)
Thursday: System of a Down-Lie Lie Lie


Random thought: Misuse of apostrophes should be banned.


I asked the (elementary) kids I teach Spanish to name some Spanish speaking countries. Their FIRST guesses:
1.New Mexico (NEW Mexico?)
2. Africa
3. Asia
4. Europe
It took about an hour of prompting to get them to guess Spain. heart kids.


I had an interesting conversation with my boyfriend today that perfectly exemplifies indirect speech acts:
Me: Hey Steve, you wanna go get ice cream?
Steve: No.
Me: I wanted to go get ice cream.
Steve: Why didn't you say so?
Me: I did!


I just found this epic quote:
"It is common knowledge that standard English inserts a glottal stop before a tautosyllabic voiceless plosive."
Common knowledge, indeed.

Randomness:

my week

Restless Legs Syndrome: Quit Being a Pussy

Seriously. It's beyond pathetic. and no i'm not a Crazy Bitch, just a crazy bitch because apparently i have this Dreadful "Disease." ah, i remember back in high school on AIM at 2 a.m. when my legs would get all achey and i'd be like "oh hey, i should get to sleep, my legs are starting to hurt" and everyone was like wtf kaley. and i was like "what, you don't get that?" and then i started seeing the commercials about those Poor Souls whose legs feel funny at night. Clearly that means you have a Problem and require a Pill. it really says something about america, that there are websites and forums and medications dedicated to something as sad as "legs feeling funny at night." and yeah sometimes it gets so that it hurts and it's kinda hard to sleep, but still, NOT the worst problem to have. Not Even Close. i checked out some of thee said websites and am just so scarred from america's lack of knowledge of What Actually Sucks that i don't even want to talk about it. oh, your legs feel funny at night? Life is So Hard. at least you don't have voices in your head telling you to kill yourself, or AIDS or some real fucking problem.

On a different note.....forts sure are fun! I discovered you really can tell a lot about someone when your plans for Friday night are to make a fort (sober) with some friends. Yes, a fort. with blankets and pillows. And tea and Shoot 'Em Up, which scarred some of us for life and made me point out that I've known all along that carrots are truly evil. Anyway, some people (the people I consider to be Awesome) respond like so: "A fort? AWESOME! Can I come??!" and then they wear their pajamas and bring twine, because it is more helpful than you might think. Then there are, well, the Chad Beer-Pongers who are just Too Cool for forts, oh well, must be so sad to be dead inside.






I want one of these:







I've had the flu for the last week and spent a lot of time watching tv...a lot more than, say, at my old place where there was no tv, which i found i can live without pretty damn easily. (BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE AMERICAN WAY!) regardless, i have spent the last 7 days lounging on the couch sucking on Ricola (Rocolae?) and watching Family Guy, Seinfeld, Iron Chef (fuck yeah!) and whatever the hell else is on. two of my favorites were What Not To Wear and one of those shows about fighting on the discovery channel. Fight Quest? Yeah that's it. i really don't get why people have such a big problem with What Not To Wear. I myself am all about getting ugly people less ugly! we're the ones who have to look at them! oh, and watching guys voluntarily get the shit beaten out of them all over the world is pretty entertaining too. I'm watching this and i'm like, "only men would do this." if girls got together and were told to fight, we'd just end up telling our life stories and becoming BFFs. okay, maybe not, but there are admittedly fewer fighting women in the world, and as a chick who used to do (A LITTLE) martial arts, let me tell you, it sure does hurt to get punched in the boob.