10 Years After

2005-07-25T12:03:00.000-04:00

Everybody Enjoys a Holy War

2005-07-12T19:45:00.000-04:00

The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils

2005-06-21T23:22:00.000-04:00

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One BeerI first encountered Kingsley Amis a few years back when I picked up his "The King's English: a guide to modern English." It was witty and fabulous. Then, last year sometime, I picked up his "On Drink" from The Book Thing in Baltimore. Fantastic. I thought three things from "On Drink" worth blogging:Publisher's NoteLinguists tell us that the the differences between

2005-06-19T18:27:00.000-04:00

Do Not Go Quietly Unto Your Grave A short time back I picked up "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" by Jean-Dominique Bauby from the shelf of free book at the campus library. It's a wonderful true story about a French editor who inexplicably becomes paralyzed. There is a chapter that tells how he was able to write this book since he was paralyzed:The AlphabetI am fond of my alphabet letters. At

2005-06-18T04:10:00.000-04:00

MonsoonOften while I am bored at work I'll look up the etymology of groups of words at dictionary.com to amuse myself. I was doing weather terms the other day and was surprised by Monsoon. I was thinking it was some a word from maybe an Indic language or somewhere from the Indian Ocean or South Pacific.[Obsolete Dutch monssoen, from Portuguese monção, from Arabic mawsim, season, from wasama, to

2005-05-31T13:53:00.000-04:00

Do You Realize??. . . [I]t is interesting to note that the English vocabulary that refers to spoken discourse is often the same as that used to describe cordage-making and weaving. One weaves a story, or unravels an incident, or spins a yarn. WEe follow the thread of a story and stitch together an excuse. Lies are made from whole cloth, reality is na endless golden braid. Does this shared

2005-05-10T21:41:00.000-04:00

Maybe Prince Charles should have told Bush!

2005-05-05T19:14:00.000-04:00

Careless Talk Saw this survey and thought it'd be fun. The questionaire is short but fun. There was so much more that could have been added. Also, a break down response by response would have been nice. Unsurprisingly there were no AAVE questions.My Linguistic Profile:60% General American English30% Dixie10% Yankee0% Midwestern0% Upper MidwesternWhat Kind of American English Do You Speak?

2005-04-27T23:15:00.000-04:00

Black Letter DayThere's something about the introduction to Lewis Thomas' Et Cetera, Et Cetera that I find so very romantic:As far as I can remember, dictionaries have been part of the furniture in our house. I have the American Heritage Dictionary propped against one leg of my easy chair, amd a heavy etymology book, usually Barnhart, against the other, and Pokorny's Indogermanisches

2005-04-09T19:29:00.000-04:00

Who Put The Alphabet In Alphabetical Order?here are a few excerpts from Tom Robbins' Still Life with Woodpecker:[Sunday] The day of the full moon, when the moon is neither increasing nor decreasing, the Babylonians called Sa-bat, meaning "heart-rest." It was believed that on this day, the woman in the moon, Ishtar, as the moon goodess was known in Babylon, was menstruating, for in babylon, as in

2005-03-26T10:00:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow Never KnowsFinished reading Joseph Heller's God Knows and absolutely loved it. Here are two things from towards the end that I thought I'd include:Boy, did we have laws - laws thirteen commandments, which I found a rather remarkably large number for a society witha language that had no written vowels and a total vocabularly of only eighty-eight words, of which seventeen can be defined

2005-03-24T20:39:00.000-05:00

Black TongueLast Friday I picked up a few books at lunch:Derrida Of GrammatologySaussure Course in General LinguisticsI really wish I had paid more attention in my Literary Criticism class. By the time we made it to these two I was already feeling swamped and just trying to keep up. Now I'm really looking forward to a chance to sit own and look into these two with much more attention. I also

2005-03-07T17:54:00.000-05:00

Automatic SchmuckThere's not much of interest left for me take at school; it feels like just officious paperwork and a few required clases. I'm uncertain of so many things.Here are some linguist books I've picked up over the weekend in Knoxville:Stabilizing Indigenous Languages - CantoniThe Other Tongue: Ebnglish across cultures - Braj B. KachruDeep and Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax -

2005-02-12T13:06:00.000-05:00

Let's Take A Trip TogetherToday is my first day of vacation. I was going to go to the bank and open a bank account so that Monday I could just drop off the application for the apartment I want. Instead, now, I need to do that early Monday and then drop off the application. I also need to stop by the courthouse and renew my car registration. Busy - busy. I don't have any real plans as to what to

2005-01-01T14:01:00.000-05:00

The Botticellian Trees William Carlos Williams The alphabet of the trees is fading in the song of the leaves the crossing bars of the thin letters that spelled winter and the cold have been illumined with pointed green by the train and sun -- The strict suimple principles of straighjtht branches are being modsified by pinched-out ifs of color, devout conditions the smiles of love-

2004-12-09T20:25:00.000-05:00

Ghost Of A Good ThingIt's nearly the end of the semester and I've managed to put off posting this long. What could cause me to break this silence? Boredom. So much has changed in the past few months. However, in some strange way as I look back over it all it doesn't seem so different. I'm still not graduating. About midway through the semester I learned that the onlne history class I hd signed up

2004-05-12T21:12:00.000-04:00

Long Distance MoanI had emailed the linguistic professor that I spoke to a few weeks ago and received a reply earlier today. I was led to believe that he was going to Europe during the first part of the summer and would then be doing some sort of linguistic project in the later half of the summer. I also offered to return his book when he returned from Europe. His

2004-05-10T15:39:00.000-04:00

Ashes and GhostsI had seen a flyer up at the end of the Spring semester for a class on the Aztecs (Span 4956/5956: Aztec Culture and Western Literature). Bonus was that the class, while being a senior level Spanish class, was that it was to be in English. However, due to my economic situation I couldn't fit it in (it's a pre-summer class, too). In anycase, I emailed the professor and asked for a

2004-05-09T16:30:00.000-04:00

Unofficial Guide to Backstabbing Well, Thursday I was fired from work. I had worked a double shift the day before, filling in for the third shift person who had a mandatory day off. I came home, slept for a couple of hours, and then went back into work. As I was waiting around to go to the main center I dozed off on the couch. My boss's boss came by and saw me asleep. She droveoff without saying

2004-05-01T16:39:00.000-04:00

Watching You Watching UsLast week while at work I watched (read: subjected to) an episode of Oprah dealing with her revived book club. The first book up, and the only one really interesting to me, was One Hundred Years of Solitude. I had read some of the book the first semester back in school. I had had to stop when the semester really heated up and just haven't gotten around to picking it back

2004-04-28T10:10:00.000-04:00

Wake Up Time For FreedomI quit working on the take home exam for the Holocaust last night around 2:30 am. Oddly enough, my short essay portion was longer than the regular essay. But that was more due to the short essay being so long rather than the shortness of the regular essay response. At least that is what I would like to think. You know, sometimes it feels right to answer with a succinct

2004-04-28T00:20:00.000-04:00

Zombies And HobosI had my final exam for the West this morning at 8am. I stayed up all night. It was a good idea. The test could have gone much better. It should have gone much better. Still, it wasn't too bad. The test consisted of six multiple choice essay questions of which we were to answer four. Actually, the instructions on the test said to "answer question four." When one of the students

2004-04-23T19:52:00.000-04:00

The Chemicals Between Us I had a discussion the other night about tortillas and cheese dip, which I referred to it as con queso. Oh, how could I not know that it was chili con queso and that simply con queso made no sense since that would mean "with cheese"?! To my defense I argued that a lot of naems for food do not make sense. I recalled having read that shrimp scampi literally means "shrimp

2004-04-20T23:34:00.000-04:00

Wave Of MutilationNot much of interest today. At the end of the Holocaust class the take home final was passed out. It is due next Monday by 10am (when the end of our final exam would have been). However, I did run into the professor that taught my American Government class (Fall 02). I was walking out of the student center and he was walking in. I waved but he actually changed the direction he

2004-04-20T03:16:00.000-04:00

How Will I Laugh TomorrowTuesday, today. is the deadline to have all the documentation in for the "extenuating circumstance" required to drop my History of East Asia class. I was banking on my supervisor at work writing me a letter. He was suppose to have handed it to me Friday. Friday he said to page him early Monday morning and he would write it for me. I've been paging him all day with no

2004-04-14T02:44:00.000-04:00

Mr. Self Destruct I have no one to blame but myself. It's hard to believe that I actually thought I'd be able to take 20 hours this semester. It feels like I've been doing nothing but backpedalling this semester. I started with 17 hours and, after dropping Bio, had 13 hours. Now I am going to talk to one of my professors in order to drop his class. Since it is so late in the semester I need his

2004-04-09T02:19:00.000-04:00

Kiss The DevilThis was mentioned by the professor of my Philosophy as Conversation class last spring: Boylan said this to two of the station’s on-air reporters, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, a husband-and-wife investigative reporting team. WTVT is a Fox-affiliated station in Tampa, Florida. The station manager was trying to get Akre and Wilson to falsify their investigative report on Monsanto’s

2004-04-01T02:18:00.000-05:00

Ashtray MonumentI went by to see Dr Gross today. I had emailed him to ask for some assistance in picking out a graduate school for linguistics. We talked some about my interests in the various fields and he gave me a good idea of where to start looking. Basically, in the South East the University of South Carolina is the only real option. There was several places in the South West and along the

2004-04-01T02:00:00.000-05:00

Sail on SailorI just finished typing up my book review of Primo Levi's "The Drowned and The Saved" for my History of the Holocaust class. I loved this book. The mood was dark but I felt like Levi had a lot to say. I especially enjoyed the vignettes such as the story of Chaim Rumkowski, the Jew who ran the Lodz Ghetto as a king until he too was sent off to Auschwitz. Levi wrote clearly and frankly

2004-03-27T21:05:00.000-05:00

Black Tongue(from Grosse Pointe Blank)Waitress: What do you want in your omelette, sir? Marty: Nothing in the omelette, nothing at all. Waitress: Well, that's not technically an omelette. Marty: Look, I don't want to get into a semantic argument, I just want the protein. Isn't this how it goes?!Is there really a huge differnce being being sympathetic and empathetic? I'm inclined to say that there

2004-03-18T15:13:00.000-05:00

Fear Of GhostsOn December 8th, 1941 the Japanese took control of Shanghai. The Japanese occupation of Shanghai, and their treatment of the Westerners living there, is fascinating. What's more, in "Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City" (by Stella Dong) there is an interesting account of how the Germans sought to have the Jews living there treated:. . . the Japanese soon began relocating

2004-03-14T22:45:00.000-05:00

Excuse Me But Pardon My French I've been thinking of doing my research papper in my Holocaust history on the use of language by the Nazis in dealing with the Jews. In particular I've found the use of scientific metaphors to dehumanize the Jews and, at the same time, support a "scientific rascism to be interesting. The professor (and a student in the class who is also a linguistic emphasis English

2004-01-16T13:27:00.000-05:00

March The Mad ScientistBio lecture was okay. The instructor began class by wasting a good 5 or so minutes setting up his videocamera to record his lecture. The first day of class he told us how he received a $4,000 grant that netted him the videocamera and a large screen monite- not a television, he noted, but a monitor. If we missed class for a good reason we could talk to him and watch the

2004-01-15T10:32:00.000-05:00

The Science Of Selling Yourself ShortI actually got up and made it to my bio lab this morning. It's only one day a week, Thursdays, at 9:15 and It's suppose to last until 11:05, right before my History of the West; which I won't have today due to the instructor going to New Orleans for a confrence. Class was strange. The instructor is a grad student and someone I noticed yesterday sitting off

2004-01-14T23:36:00.000-05:00

Crushing DayToday was my long day at school. I had Bio and History of the Holocaust. Plus, I had 2 hours of East Asian History since 1900. Despite being a bit long, classes went well. I'm a bit anxious over all the reading that I'll have to get done this semester. Oh, and I have a 10 page paper to write in my East Asian history. My first thought for a topic was to build up a paper based on a off

2004-01-14T12:09:00.000-05:00

Faaip de Oiad Rather than go through the hassle of arguing with Burgess about getting into his class I took the easy way out and decided not to take the class. Not only do I get to avoid a conversation with him but I also get to split up the final requirement, which I had sought to consolidate with History of Rome, so that I can help pull up my GPA a bit more. Still, I need to get cracking on

2004-01-09T16:44:00.000-05:00

The Intentional FallacyI overslept this morning and missed my chance to swing by campus and talk to Dr. Burgess about cutting into his History of Rome class. I did manage to redo my car registration as well as swing by work to pick up and cash my paycheck. Then I went over to my parents house to give them the money for registration and use their credit card to pay online rather than wait in line

2004-01-09T03:15:00.000-05:00

If Things Were PerfectOne down and one to go. I returned to campus today and spoke with the other History instructor that I needed a cutcard from. Initially he was hesitant to let me in. But, when I explained I was a graduating senior and that the lecture based World History Since 1500 conflicted with another essential class, Bio, he relented and cut me in. I had to wait outside the department

2004-01-08T03:23:00.000-05:00

Look's Like I'm Up Shit Creek AgainAnother round of talking to advisors. First I went to see the undergrad dean of the English department. I needed him to fill out some paperwork for graduation. Also, I needed his permission to take an overload, 20 hours, so that I could squeeze in everything I need this semester so I can graduate in May. Usually this guy is not the person students want to go

2003-12-23T01:33:00.000-05:00

lost for wordsIt's been well over a month since I posted last. I made it through the semester. Finals were a bitch and, on top of that, I broke things off with my fiance. My GPA barely rose and is nowhere near the 3.0 I really need to get into a good grad school. My feeling of a sloppy semester was reflected in the B I pulled in Literary Criticism and the A- in one of my technical writing classes

2003-11-12T13:48:00.000-05:00

Southern ManIntro to Linguistics was okay this morning. Actually, I dozed off to sleep for 2 or 3 minutes at one point. Norah nudged me and inquired if I was okay. I felt good about the homework we did yesterday. I was stressing over it all day yesterday and then last night when I finally sat down to work on it the answers came to me in a flash. I slipped out of the staff meeting at work this

2003-11-11T16:06:00.000-05:00

Guild of Mute AssassinsIgnored again in Milton! The instructor raised the issue of whether Satan's punishment after his return to Hell in Book xi was justified or not. Most people in the class who spoke up thought that the punishment was just. One girl in the back of the class stated that it was different than the typical religious idea that only Satan was punished ~ which seems strange since

2003-11-10T11:04:00.000-05:00

Two-Headed BoyPicked up my Intro to Linguistics test this morning before class. He had that and a homework assignment of mine that he had misplaced to give me. He told me, when he handed me back my bluebook, that I'd done a great job. I quickly skimmed through to see my grade. It was a 97.5, but received 2.5 points on the curve to bring my grade up to a 100. In the hallway I spoke with the girl

2003-11-08T14:15:00.000-05:00

StinkfistThe Milton Marathon reading of Paradise Lost was today. I spent my three hours between 10:00am and 1:40. I stayed a bit over 3 hours so that we could walk out during a break between books vi and vii, rather than disturbing everyone. The reading was easy. Mostly it was students in the Milton class, a few other instructors, and students in other classes stopping by for extra-credit.

2003-11-07T13:47:00.000-05:00

Your X-Rays Have Just Come Back From The Lab And We Think We Know What Your Problem IsI stopped by and picked up and turned in an Intention to Graduate form. I'll squeek by in the Spring with just the bare mininum number of hours (128) and, unfortunately, not with enough time to pull my grade up to a 3.0. It'll be close, but not quite. What a shame. Still, I'd rather get to graduate school and

2003-11-07T13:36:00.000-05:00

Nobody Hears In dialectology the guy who taught ESL in Japan was talking nonsense again today. Several of us in the class were discussing the test and which of the two answers we chose. Everyone selected the history of English over the compare/contrast question dealing with levels of dialect. I mentioned how I had forgotten exactly what was meant by levels until halfway through answering the

2003-11-04T15:25:00.000-05:00

Lost WeekendLiterary Criticism was interesting today. More talk about Marxist criticism. I will definitly use this rather than psychological analysis for the joke I am suppose to read and analyze next week.Milton felt like a complete bust. First, the journal entry that I wrote up last time was returned and I received a 7 out of 10. His comment was that it was an interesting topic, the two-fold

2003-11-03T13:28:00.000-05:00

The Best Dishwasher I Ever Had Friday night I went to a show, a stop in Kid Koala's Short Attention Span Theater, in Asheville with Rich and Greg. At the end of September, when I learned that Rich was moving back to the area from Minnesota, I had stumbled onto the fact that the show was stopping at the Orange Peel (a place I previously overlooked in my exploits in Asheville). While Kid Koala

2003-10-31T13:39:00.000-05:00

Son of a Son of a Sailor This afternoon I had my midterm in Dialectology. It consisted of choosing one of two essay questions. The first was to discuss the various levels of dialect. The second was to write an essay about the History of English in America. I chose the later and wrote three pages in which I attempted to cram in as much of what I remembered as possible. I included not just

2003-10-28T12:16:00.000-05:00

St. AngerLiterary Criticism consisted of finishing up Jungian criticism and then covering Jacques Lacan. I find both of these much more appealing as psychological critics than Freud. Freud seems over used in pop culture. For some reason that makes it very hard for me to take it too seriously. Maybe it's the way his terms and fagments of his concepts are bandied about by armchair shrinks. It's

2003-10-27T13:15:00.000-05:00

The Mystery Of TwoSleep felt so good last night. Unfortunately, I left the homework for Intro to Linguistics on my desk. (I'll try to swing by and pick it up to drop into the instructor's mailbox when I go to Professional Writing this evening.) Between Intro to Ling and Dialectology I trudged through the rain to the library. I looked up a few grammarian texts to see what they had to say about

2003-10-26T19:23:00.000-05:00

Summoning Of The MuseIn one sense this weekend has been disasterous. I spent probably over 20 hours working on the paper for my Milton class. Saturday night I thought I had finished it. However, when I saved it to disk and switched computers to print it out, I lost it. At first I thought I had lost the whole thing. Instead, after much panic, I managed to restore some of the lost document. However

2003-10-23T12:24:00.000-04:00

Okay I'll Admit That I Really Don't Understand Just one class today; Milton & His Time is cancelled since we will be meeting Sunday to present our papers. Which, btw, I still haven't completed. I wanted to do something simple, like expand an already existing piee I'd written for the class. I had been thinking of my journal entry comparing Lucan's Lycidas with Milton's poem of the same name. The

2003-10-22T12:50:00.000-04:00

Killing an ArabAfter Intro to Linguistics I went to the library to reread the sections I was to lead the discussion of in my Dialectology class. The presentation took a lot less time than I thought it would. I deviated from the linear delineation of the book; linking together the concept of deficient-difference controversy with the section on standardized testing and linking the concept of "

2003-10-21T12:07:00.000-04:00

New SlangIn Lit Crit we went over Freudian literary criticism. Interesting stuff, but nothing startlling new from the discussion. I am still struck by how it seems that all of Freud's followers disagreed on exactly what elements of psychoanalysis were pertinent. Then again, in the scheme of the other forms of literary analysis it isn't different at all. Still, Freud's obession with the penis is

2003-10-20T19:52:00.000-04:00

Alright Hear ThisMy Writing in Professions instructor had a minor stroke last week. He told us how right after the stroke he had problems talkings. He could think in sentences in his brain, but when he went to talk it all came out garbled- and he was aware of this, but couldn't correct it. He joked that if he started speaking in another language to let him know. Then he told us how when he

2003-10-20T13:20:00.000-04:00

Dark Center Of The UniverseI missed Intro to Linguistics this morning. Not good. I crammed prior to my Dialectology class to finish reading the chapter sections I was suppose to present today. i saw was because I ended up not doing it today. The professor had wanted to finish up two sections from the previous chapter at the start of class. Instead we ended up discussing one chart for nearly the

2003-10-17T13:14:00.000-04:00

Reconsider EverythingI finished my paper on Theodore Roethke's "Dolor." I came in just over 1,000 words. Man, I felt stressed trying to get it finished but now I am so relieved that it's over. In an homage to Wallace Stevens I titled the poem " 3 Ways to Look At a Poem: Using New Criticism, Deconstructionism, and Reader-Response to criticize Roethke’s poem 'Dolor'." Monday I will lead my

2003-10-16T12:37:00.000-04:00

Jesus Just Left ChicagoThis morning was my Literary Criticism test. I laid out of work yesterday to get with some fellow students in the library to study the definitions. Our instructor gave us 40 terms to study. He said that there would be 25 on the test and that we would only have to define 20 of those. Four of us spent between 4 and just after 8pm working on defining the terms. At the last

2003-10-15T10:34:00.000-04:00

Set The World Afire After linguistics I wanted to stop by the library to do some research for my Literary Criticism test tomorrow. However, as I was walking up the stairs I was stopped by one of the librarians. A fire alarm was set off up on the fourth floor in one of the mechanical rooms. I sat and waited out front until the police and fire departments cleared everyone to re-enter. Now as I

2003-10-14T14:21:00.000-04:00

Last Hour Of The Last Day Of WorkI cannot believe I made this mistake. I thought Monday was Fall break and that I would be back in class today. However, yesterday was Columbus day. Today was the conclussion of Fall Break. That means that there was no school today. Usually, Fall break has been the Friday near my birthday at the end of the month. Nonetheless I spent the day doing homework. I

2003-10-10T13:22:00.000-04:00

The Sound Waves Reversing Today was great. I was able to sleep in since my Intro to Linguistics class was cancelled. The professor was going to Pennsylvania to attend some linguistics conference. I also chatted online with my friend Rich about his move back to the area from Mn. Dialectology was good today. The linguist from NY who is working in the area on Appalachian English (AE) gave a talk

2003-10-09T11:35:00.000-04:00

I Get The MessageI fell asleep last night reading A Reader's Guide to contemporary Theory. I had left my satchel out in my car and was too tired to go out so I could take notes on the index cards for my presentation. Instead I convinced myself that I would just read the section on reader-response theory and then I would add in some index cards in the morning before leaving for school. Of course

2003-10-08T13:20:00.000-04:00

NaptimeI am exhausted. Last night was another night that I spent working a double shift instead of going home and enjoying a good night's sleep. I managed to post to my Intro to Linguistics bulletin board this morning at 6am. Actually, I replied to 3 posts. Not that what I had to say was especially brialliant. Pleanty of students in the class are merely making their quota by asking questions

2003-10-06T22:13:00.000-04:00

Don't Panic Today has been crazy. I was up until 3 am last night trying to print out my work for the take home test from Introduction to Linguistics. There were 4 questions of which 2 I had to answer plus a bonus question. Over the weekend I had worked all 4 questions in order to select the two I felt most confident in. I had put off the bonus until late last night by mistake. I was suppose to

2003-10-03T10:35:00.000-04:00

The Frayed Ends Of SanityWhat a busy day I am having! I still have to rush to work to pick up my paycheck. Then I'll have to cash that and race to Sevierville to get my hair cut. Ugh! So much to do. I think I'll try to get my paycheck done instead of opening the English computer lab early. It was freezing cold this morning. Today was the midterm for Introduction to Linguistics. I received an

2003-10-02T13:34:00.000-04:00

Theme For An Ultimate And Inevitable VictoryI spent the gap between classes today writing my journal entry for Milton. I had planned to recycle the summary I wrote for book II when I took British Authors. However, as luck would have it, it seems that directory of my Web site is completely missing today. So, instead of talking about the similarities between Sata, Sin, and Death with Loki, Hel,

2003-09-30T16:02:00.000-04:00

Can't Get There From HereThe computers at the library are very limited in what they can do. In fact, they appear to be set up to discourage anything beyond browsing the web. That's not a problem for most students I bet. However, this afternoon I wanted to be able to make a few notes while I was here and print them out. (Normally one can only print out Web pages here.) Frustrated I stumbled on a

2003-09-30T11:59:00.000-04:00

Nihilist Assault GroupI don't consider myself a brainiac. Sure, I like to read and discuss ideas. But that doesn't mean that I can pick up any ol' esoteric metaphysics text and race through it in one reading. Not, mind you, that I don't enjoy reading esoteric metaphysical texts. However, my Literary Criticism class is kicking my ass. I am so far behind in what we are suppose to be reading. It

2003-09-29T11:03:00.000-04:00

Fool Get A ClueBefore my Intro to linguistics class I had to listen to the girl I detest from my summer Spanish class. She's just so damn snotty. She was droning on about censored books. Apparently that is some hobbie of hers. She said she collects lists of banned books. When another student mentioned a few books, including Moby Dick, this girl questioned the other student's source. When this

2003-09-25T15:56:00.000-04:00

The Bravery Of Being Out Of RangeI meant to post this beore, but I don't thinkI ever got around to it. Last week in my Dialectology class I walked in ona discussion amongst the three graduate students. Two of the three were taking a philosophy class covering animal rights. The two who were taking the class talked about how the professor was militant about animal cruelty and the topic turned to

2003-09-24T14:01:00.000-04:00

VanishingDavid Denby talks about the chairs when he was first at Columbia and then when he went back again in his Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Indestructible Writers of the Western World. There hasn't been much change in the seating conditions here. Just as I was leaving the first time the English department incorporated long tables with cushioned chairs that could

2003-09-23T16:40:00.000-04:00

lunch Break: Peak Hour I walked over to the student center to pick up some lunch. After grabbing a chicken sandwich I found a booth to sit in. I pulled out my Riverside Milton and read while eating. A classmate from my Milton class was eating nearby and, after we said hello, she asked to join me. Of course I agreed. Though in truth I was a bit tentative. I really wanted to get some reading done

2003-09-23T11:40:00.000-04:00

Stabbing A StarWhen I took World Civ last Fall it toook a while for me to warm up to the professor. However, by the end of the course I came to appreciate him. He was hard on the area and on religious people. Well, at least biblical literalists. After my Lit Crit class I ended up in what amounted to an unexpected defense of the instructor. Yes, he is very harsh on students. However, I think

2003-09-22T18:08:00.000-04:00

Thousand WordsI stopped by after CWL to chat with the philosophy professor I had the correspondence with last week. I tried to stop by earlier today, but his office hours are in the afternoon and are during my CWL. So, after CWL I rushed over to his office. His door was closed and he was talking to a student (I think a GA for one of his classes). When I knocked he told me to come in. I

2003-09-22T11:02:00.000-04:00

Healing In The Water I went to sleep last night to the sound of crickets and awoke to the gentle sound of drizzling rain. Very nice. In fact, my whole weekend was nice. I didn't do any studying. Which was a luxury I think I could afford. (BTW, no journal entry for my Milton class this week.) I did some review last night and this morning for a quiz in my Intro to Linquistics class. There were 4

2003-09-19T13:55:00.000-04:00

Good Mourning/Black Friday Things have been nice today. I'm feeling good and it's a beautiful day. I stopped by the office of the philospher instructor I had corresponded with. Unfortunately, he was in class. I'll try to stop back by again Monday. While in the building I did briefly talk with the philosophy instructor I had last Spring. He inquiered how I was doing and I asked about how he liked

2003-09-18T11:46:00.000-04:00

Speak My LanguageI sent an email to a philosophy instructor here at my university that had taught a philosophy of language class a few semesters back. I emailed him:I am an English student at ETSU with an emphasis in Linguistics. Can you tell me the schedule of rotation for the philosphy of language class which you instruct? Also, would it be possible to receive a copy of the syllabus used

2003-09-18T11:25:00.000-04:00

Gold Star for Robot Boy I did my presentation today. Before class started I took a gamble and stopped by my instructor's office. I started out by asking him about how New Critics would view haikus. We talked some about how a very close reading would have to be performed in order to discover the requred tensions that New Critics look for in literature. He suggested that a New Critic would talk

2003-09-17T14:26:00.000-04:00

Starry ConfigurationsHe picks up Gideons Bible -- open at page one --Yesterday (and the day before) the Gideons were on campus handing out bibles. While some might protest this, I think it is good. They aren't militant. They are nicely dressed and politely offer a small book to students walking by them in front of the library. The book, if I recall correctly, I didn't take one this week from them

2003-09-16T13:50:00.000-04:00

Not Yet My New Criticism presentation has been postponed until Thursday. It's only Tuesday and I feel exhausted. I spent some time between classes researching Frost's "The Road Not Taken" in the library. I checked out a lap top, connected it to the schools network in one of the study rooms, and worked on the form of my presentation and looked at various criticisms of Frost. I'm sure I am taking

2003-09-15T18:04:00.000-04:00

Put Your Finger in the Socket The English Computer lab was surprisingly warm today. Definately above the sub-artic conditions that we have been enduring in class. Also, the insructor was out and looks to be out for the rest of the week. That means the resume I had to have finished by tonight will be put off until next Monday. Also, the Web site for CLW has been postponed from Friday until

2003-09-15T11:08:00.000-04:00

Empty Spaces Finally my University web space has been restored. I used it last night to upload some scanned text from a linguistics reference book. Besides all the text I didn't want to type, I also had to worry about IPA fonts not loading correctly since most of the students were unlikely to have suitable fonts. However, I absent mindedly forgot to save the work I had been doing on my web page

2003-09-12T14:44:00.000-04:00

Long Cold Winter I started working in the lab today. The department secretary was out so I didn't meet her. Instead the instructor gave me his keys to go open the lab (I ran them back down to return them to him). The lab was freezing cold, but I did manage to get a few things done. First, I created a new blog (here) for my Intro to Linguistics class. I posted (with the new free postdate feature

2003-09-12T10:42:00.000-04:00

The Improbable Solution Ugh! I am so tired today. I worked a double shift last night. And though I managed about 6 hours of sleep I am still exhausted. Plus, I think I pulled a muscle in my back from sleeping in a weird position on the recliner. I went home between work and school. I typed up my Intro to Linguistics homework and then posted a response to the bulletin board. It was a strange

2003-09-11T11:47:00.000-04:00

Lost VaguenessI've been stressing about the first presentation for my Literary Criticism class. It's a New Criticism analysis of a poem or a song. I choose "The Road Not taken" by Robert Frost. I choose this because a few days after the assigment was given I ran across a writer using the poem in a didactic way contrary to what a close reading of the poem would reveal. Anyways, enough

2003-09-10T14:01:00.000-04:00

Rise AboveMy Linguistic classes were easy today. In Intro we did some analysis of various languages. I'll try to include them here tonight. I approached my computer,writing, & literature instructor prior to class to volunteer to work in the lab so that it can be open before class. This is a benefit to me as much as to other students. Besides access to computers (Internet, word processing, and

2003-09-09T11:29:00.000-04:00

Mouth Full of Exhaust Thursday I am doing a 5 minute presentation in my Literary Criticism class. I have to do a New Criticism analysis of a poem. I've selected "The Road Less Taken" by Robert Frost. I've been sweating this for the past week. Some of the books I picked up over the weekend were aimed towards making this easier. The primary text we are reading in class is very dense and I was

2003-09-08T10:58:00.000-04:00

One That Got Away Over the weekend I bought some books. Roughly, all told, one hundred dollars worth of books. Most of them were either literary criticism or linguistic books. I bought a novel by Umberto Eco as well as his dialogue and a book on semiotic theory by him. I also picked up Appalachian Speech. This curious little book was recommended to me by my Dialectology professor. He had

2003-09-08T10:40:00.000-04:00

Message In A Bottle I tried to post Friday. However, something must have been up with blogger because instead of posting the entry to my blogger I was then signed into someone else's account. Freaky. And to make matters worse, Friday's post had some stuff from earlier in the week. I'll try to be brief and might add the longer entry to my other Blog - not just due to length, but also because it

2003-09-02T08:53:00.000-04:00

A Better Future I thought Friday that my student Web page was unaccessable due to the server temporarily being down. Apparently that isn't the case. As part of a plan to give all students Web pages they seem to have deleted all the previously existing Web pages in order to make the new ones. I thought it was interesting that "Instead of asking students to request a student web space, they are

2003-08-29T13:18:00.000-04:00

God Save The QueenNo post yesterday. Tuesday night I dropped my British Novel class and added the Writing in Profession class. Yesterday I spent the time reading through various biographies of Milton. There was a semi-optional writing assignment for my Milton class, a journal entry :"Pick out a striking passage from one of the early lives. What does it tell you about Milton's personality at that

2003-08-27T13:05:00.000-04:00

The Crying of Lot G Yesterday I thought I'd speak with my advisor about switching around British Novels for Computers, Literature, & Writing. Between classes I walked up to the 4th floor to see what his office hours might be this semster. I was surprised to see his name tag off the door and the office appear to be empty. I walked down to the first floor to check the building roster, thinking he

2003-08-26T11:42:00.000-04:00

Please Wake Me Up I didn't sleep well last night so I woke up incredibly groggy. I had to leave the house early and scramble to get to class on time. I was a couple of minutes late. Yesterday I learned that ETSU offers some sort of certificate of concentration in technical writing. They issue it to people that have 9 hours of technical writing or writing with computers. My Computers, Writing,

2003-08-25T11:12:00.000-04:00

2 + 2 = 5.School has started again. My first class today was Intro to Linguistics. It is nice to be back. Dr Gross didn't hand out a syllabus for the class. This semester we will be doing our online stuff, such as reading the syllabus, off of blackboard rather than Dr Gross's web space on the ETSU server. After going over some basic course fundamentals (how grades will be weighted, working in

2003-08-12T01:35:00.000-04:00

So Long Sweet Summer Summer terms are now over. Although I didn't post at all over the summer I did take several classes; Grammar & Usage and Spanish in Term One and History of the South Pacific and Spanish in Term Two. For those keeping score, that means I completed the BA foriegn language requirements. My grades were rather good. I received an A for Grammar & Usage, a C for the first term

2003-05-05T12:13:00.000-04:00

I Can't Wait to Get off Work This semester I wasn't, as should be obvious, able to post nearly as often as I would have liked. All I can say now that the semester is over is that I enjoyed the work and learned a lot from my classes. Well, most of my classes at least. Spanish was not too informative for me. Only half of my grades are in as of this morning. So far my grades are an A in History of

2003-02-27T23:49:00.000-05:00

40 days and 40 nights It's been less than a month since the last post. However, it seems like it has been much longer. I scored a C on my Spanish and Problem Stats tests. I scored an A on my first History of English test, which really surprised me. Earlier this week, Tuesday, I took the first test in my Poetry class.... I think I bombed it. The second part of the test was to write a coherent

2003-02-04T20:46:00.000-05:00

A House Is Not A Motel In my poetry class we have to write a couple of papers. This first paper is due on the 17th of February and we were given the poem Monday in class. The poem was distributed as a photocopy of the poem. This included the title of the poem but lacked the author. The instructor commented that he intended to leave out the author because he didn't want us to know who it was. Well

2003-02-04T00:18:00.000-05:00

Mechanisms In The Forever LoopI've been thinking a lot about the philosphic theory of determinism ever since encountering it last semester. It seems to me that this is what Isaac Asimov had in mind in his Foundation series. Simply put, if all the universe is an effect of some cause, that with a powerfull enough computer one should be able to predict the future. People, discounting that the soul