I heart language evolution.

I'm a big fan of verbal communication. Not only can I cuss like a sailor, I can also sail! Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Although I was on the Stage Harbor Yacht Club float one year in the Fourth of July parade. Kind of a big deal, but whatever.

Just look at all those friggin' yachts

My romance with the spoken word began with poetry. My parents were all the time reading to me in a not so subtle attempt to shut me up. My father's big contribution was Dr Seuss while my mother favored an omnibus containing the collected works Shel Silversetien and Robert J Service (among others.)
My favorite stuff by the good Doctor were One Fish Two Fish--I could totally read that without being able to read yet, and of course, The Lorax. C'mon son, the premise was flippin genius and just heavy handed enough to get through to a kid like me. Probably also explains the summer I spent trying to save trees in Eastern Oregon.

My Mom's poetry choice was a lot less silly and colorful than my Dad's. She was all into the grittiness of life and shit. Have you ever read The cremation of Sam Magee? Well,
"There are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun
by the men who moil for gold.
And the Arctic trails have their secret tales
that would make your blood run cold."
If an opening stanza like that doesn't compel a kid to read the Hobbit as soon as their brainwaves are big enough, nothing will.

She also used to love telling me she would sell me to the gypsies if I was bad. I was like, whatever, I'm your best shot at early retirement. Plus, really, Ma...?

 But then she totally whipped out:
The Gypsies are coming, the old people say
To buy little children and take them away
Fifty cents for a fat one
Twenty cents for a lean one
Fifteen for a dirty one
Thirty cents for a clean one
A nickel for a mean one

You can go ahead and laugh, but her once idle threat was now in a book. <GASP!> And I had it on good authority that books were a good authority. She of course thought it hilarious that I now feared being sold into slavery. Fun fact, later editions of the poem changed gypsies out for googlies....uh, if you're wondering why, please refer to above gif.

You mean you didn't have a favorite
 part of the dictionary entry?

My next fascination, linguistically speaking, were etymologies. I first encountered them when I learned that the guy who invented the toilet was named John Crapper. Not able to see the chicken for the egg, I thought it was ironic that we said crap to mean shit and shit was something you put in the toilet.
(I was quite clever for my age.)
I soon became fixated on uncovering new root words, it was basically my favorite part of the dictionary entry. Hey, this was before Google-times. If I had been old enough to drunkenly dispute whether that was a Culkin in the lead role or not, we would have had to skip right to hugging it out and admitting that we had no frickin' clue.  Remember, even though the internet rocks, "Man is still the greatest computer, and women are even cooler." -JFK

Hey, it's all right. You wanna brewski, Broski?

The next sweet-ass thing I learned about was probably word chain devices from my man, Steven Pinker. My linguistics class was trash, because the professor was basically crazy by then. But his TA was on his game and gave me a copy of the Language Instinct which I read voraciously, two summers later.
Word Chain devices allow you to take one word from each column to generate a phrase, sentence or concept.  Here is an example, as well as the way he defines it:

Still with me? Well, than here is another example:
Pretty nifty, right? These things are super fun and if you make one, please, please take a picture and let me have a looksy. They're sort of like reorganized flow charts, if that inspires you.

Lastly, I would just like to say...
 I've always been a fan of the 'you're' and 'your' rules but I'm award-winningly bad at spelling. I therefore tend towards pity for the folks who fall short of even my poor example. I have to strongly dislike a person, and there can be no [relevant] information in their argument which could be used against them in the court of the thread, for me to resort to commenting on their grammatical fluidity.

And that my friends, is how you win teh internets. You're welcome. If anybody need me I'll be in the next room, thought provoking myself.

You have read this article Brad Neely / Gollum / grammer / Poker Face / stage harbor yacht club / That's Racist / The Language Instinct / the Lorax with the title October 2011. You can bookmark this page URL https://trendcelebrity2014.blogspot.com/2011/10/i-heart-language-evolution.html. Thanks!

To England, this one time.

So this one time, like, last weekend or whatever, I got up wicked early to get on a bus bound for London. My super good friend Claudia was in town and she knew a guy who could put us up for a few days.
Natch, we had a good breakfast and I made us a road lunch--apples, cookies, sammies and energy drinks. Our room was clean, and leftovers were stowed in the freezer.
We were set to go and we even all bought our tickets on Wednesday. Style for days! Plus, I just love packing. Can I be both practical and cute while traveling light and turning heads?

The night before we embarked, I downloaded some apps for my itouch about London.

 Sebastien was the only one who had ever even been to London...and us girls couldn't give two turns for Britain.  In fact, we had no flippin clue what we could do there besides eat fish, drink Newcastles and tea and stand in front of a clock. Turn on your itouch and five minutes later--there you go, downloaded: Tube maps, street maps, points of interest and cheep eats. From those combined efforts we picked out some sweet shit to do. Some military blah blah blah for Seba, somethin artsy for Claudia and Diagon Alley for me................ becauseI'm ten.
Being that Claudia's from the former English colony known as Toronto, we also talked about going to the Occupy London protests with really funny signs. I'm serious, I packed markers. Mine was all, "Fuck the Stamp Tax." And hers was all, "England out of Canada."
Ideally, this cunning mockup would also potentially be arranged:

We are gods of cleverness.

It was perfect. We got to the bus on time, we handed over our passports to the ticket man, everything checked out. We waited on the bus for like 45 mins while stragglers found seats and four hours later we came to the French frontier in Calais. Instantly, I got nervous. But all my ducks were in a row. Nervous was just habit. I had packed my American passport, Sebastien's French one and our livre de famille--proof that I was married to him, a Frenchmen.
Claudia was in line with me, and Seba was in the EU line. It was then that I looked down at my passport and saw Sebastien's face in lieu of my own. When Claudia tells it, she says my eyes bugged out, I laughed once and my mouth closed. How I remember it, was that the room started to spin and my guts tightened. As I ran back towards the bus knowing I didn't bring the other American passport, I struggled to keep my inner monologue from bubbling out of my mouth in all caps and bold print: I gave my passport to the man at the ticket couter back in Paris!  I watched him open it!! Holy fuck I am so fucked!!! I'm going to be deported!!!! I am clearly going to be deported!!!!
The bus driver walked up to me and I wasn't even faking 'kicked puppy' when he asked me en Francais if I was alright.
"There is a problem. I do not have my propre passport." 
He didn't understand.
"My passport," I said gesturing, "in fact it is the passort American of my husband. Not mine."
He didn't know what to do and as such was basically useless to me at this point. Ready to puke, I ran back inside and got in line with Sebastien.  To his credit, after listening attentively to our shared predicament he tried very hard not to murder me with his eyes. The guy behind the counter felt differently about my imminent death.
"Why do you not have your propre passport? It is not possible for me to go to England with the passport of my sister." And so on, while I held my hands up and said ok, ok, ok. Over and over again.
I knew I had done wrong. I knew I was finally caught. I had overstayed my welcome and I had just painted a big red button on my back that said "Exit strategy obvious. Kick me out, maintenant!" That's all there was left to do. But he was a cop, so he read my body language and finally heard my words and he smiled.  He gestured us over to a nonfuctional computer so that people could get back on the bus faster than not at all.
Did we live part-time in France part time in U.S.?
I was ready to say yes, but Sebastien was an Honest Abe.
Did I have a carte de sejour?
Why, would that show up on the computer?
Why yes it would. Did I have one?
I trailed off with a good solid um and he went to the back room to touch computer keys and talk about us, if I am to make presumptions based on the stream of key strokes, rando french phrases and curious boarder police officers that kept coming around the corner with curious, quiet eyes to gawk.
Given a moment to converse: No, Sebastien. I do not have a wallet with a credit card or my driver's licence. I packed light after all, and none of those things would be useful in any situation but this.

Again, I knew I was to blame. I knew he was rightfully indignent.

So all I could do was keep asking him not to yell at me.
We came to some sort of arrangement with the boarder patrol about my remaining in France and even after we insisted, Claudia would not go on without us. So the three of us were let out of a code-operated door in a barbed wire fence and told to walk to the town center and get a train back to Paris. "Call ahead, maybe you could get your ticket refunded today." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We started walking. We didn't have the cellphone. We left the cellphone on the bus. It was a long walk to Calais town center and a longer ride back to Paris.
Ho-hum. We didn't make it to London. But we did make it a good weekend.

We went for a hike, broke into an abbey, had a homemade fondu and occupied Paris. Plus, did I mention I still live in France?

You have read this article challenge accepted / diagon alley / fuck this guy / London / Travel with the title October 2011. You can bookmark this page URL https://trendcelebrity2014.blogspot.com/2011/10/to-england-this-one-time.html. Thanks!

Life, it's a numbers game

Linear relationship between waiting to take out the recycling and how much I look like a drunk:

The Discrete Number of miniatures I've painted and mounted in the last 10 months:

Time spent eating cheese in France:

The total amont of plants I have watered in my kitchen:

.3333333333333333333333333333

I was getting there..

Wine consumption from December 2010 to July 2011 (where one cork = 3 bottles) Shut up, I shared.

Sum of all cockroaches "Brave Little Tailored" in one swipe:

Enlarged to show texture.

Number of caffeinated beverages I drank today:

Frequency with which I wear my new plaid shirt:

Just playin. I got 99 problems, being a hipster aint one.

This post was inspired by the awesomeness of Nosomatic, one of the best blogs available on the double you double you double yous, since before dinosaurs could open doors.

You have read this article graph jams / Jay Z / Math jokes / Nosomatic with the title October 2011. You can bookmark this page URL https://trendcelebrity2014.blogspot.com/2011/10/life-it-numbers-game.html. Thanks!