So, yeah, lack of updates are mostly due to a visit to the doc who put me on a cocktail of psych meds. For the past two weeks I haven't even been sure what day it was, or time, everything's just sort of blurred together. It'd be alright if finals weren't around the corner, I've missed a lot of class due to the disorientation.

This weekend things seemed to be improving; the med's are basically fucking with my brain chemistry, so my sleep patterns and ability to focus have been comprimised pretty badly. But the side effects seemed to be lessening, but some nights, like tonight, it feels like they're back full force--can't sleep, can't sit still, can't focus, headaches, no appetite. I wish it would just make up its mind, as I can't afford to miss anymore class =/

Technology is scary; I swear this phone has more features than my laptop. -.-

This is both hilarious and very, very depressing--and to think, she had access to a better education than most Americans.

So our prof promised us ages ago we'd get to tackle graphing (RK) sentences from both Palin and Obama sometime in the future. Today, we started with Palin. She gave us two sentences, and the first of them was actually quite easy compared to the other. The sentences were not changed or edited in the least; they were both taken verbatim from official sources.

Exhibit A: Where art thou "where"?

"It is very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspade of the United States of America, where--where do they go?"

If that made absolutely no sense to you, take my word for it: it's a grammatical nightmare. The baseline is small and wimpy, yet has enough subordinate clauses/prepositional phrases hanging off of it to drown it. It's a bloody subordinate submarine of DOOM.

I'm pretty sure she intended for "even" to modify "consider" but the placement has it (gramatically) modifying "national" (or "national security" or "national security issues"). I should not have to guess which one of four a modifier is modifying, unless the author's a five-year-old (though their sentences tend to cut right to the point), much less that of someone running for leader of our country.

Consider the baseline, it's probably the simpliest, most straight-forward part of the entire blub: It | is \ important. Subject, verb, subject compliment. Very important, okay. What's very important? Well that's the question, isn't it. I'm still not entirely sure. The most frustrating part of this entire exercise was the mysterious "where" at the end: "...America, where--where do they go?" The bold "where" is being used adverbially (they do go, go where? exactly, okay). What's mystifing is that it's preceded by another "where" of an entirely different clause she never even finished. So we actually have no where to put tgat first "where"! Even our prof, who is a fucking genius at this, threw her hands up in frustration; hence the life-preserver.

Conclusion: What Palin was not-so-obviously trying to say, it appears, is that when considering national security issues, it is very important to take tabs on Russians invading US airspace on Putin's command, or something of that sort. I think?

Exhibit B: I, families!

The next sentence we'll finish graphing on Thursday (we ran out of class time, it was that much of a monster), but you can see the headache it'll give me just by reading it:

"I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people."

- Sarah Palin

I swear to god, that's verbatim.




This is just the beginning. Also, all of that is guesswork, because really, the entire graph for this one is up for debate because it makes that little sense grammatically. Key things to notice:

• Like the first example, the baseline of this sentence is extremely weak; having a weak baseline with so many prepositional phrases/subordinate clauses is like trying to squeeze an African elephant into a tiny, wooden canoe. You're going to sink the damn boat.
• There is no verb to put on the baseline of the second clause ("...and I, as his V. P., families..." ??!?!!!)
• "families" has absolutely no place on the graph, anywhere; cue another life-preserver
• random indepent clause seems to have somehow embedded itself in the middle "we are ... Jan. 20"
• "that will be our top priority is to defend", indeed

That's just off the top of my head after reading it over once. Headache, ow.

IN OTHER NEWS:

I gots a pretty futon! It was only $75, and while we were there, the lady gave us a kitchen table for free! :D Yay! And you're all invited to a mini-house-warming as soon as me and Dan have the TV/futon/food stuffed into the place (hopefully this weekend, or next!) to come eat pie and watch movies (on the squishy futon!) or watch me squash Dan on his Wii with Link and his mighty sword of DOOM.

 

this internet nonsense is way too bloody distracting; where the hell did my evening go?

So, Coraline was fucking ace. It was also a lot scarier than I expected, even though it wasn't that dark (though apparently they've had kids run crying from the theatre at points, or so one of the ushers passed along). Then Dan had to go and ramble on about the book, on how and why the book was more terrifying (like, really?) than the movie. Apparently it's something I need to read (or at least add to the ever-expanding list).

It's kinda fun going to movies with no idea of the premise, only that it's going to be fucking swell, and nothing else.

Seriously, though--button eyes? No kids having watched that movie will ever be able to look at a button the same way. This could mean terrible things for the button industry.

Although, weird/dark/highly imaginative movies are always a worrisome experience for me, for as much as I love them, when I watch them right before I crash (or think about them so much that they're on the mind when I do), I have the weirdest fucking dreams. I wouldn't call them nightmares, per say; I don't thrash around or wake up in cold sweat, or anything. In fact, I just tend to tell most people I don't remember my dreams, because otherwise I would have to try and explain them, which I don't think I can do. Or even want to. They're not creepy in the creepy way (see? no sense!), or heart-stopping in any way (especially in the retelling), but they certainly aren't just--well, what I'd consider just a normal dream. I tried the 'write it down as soon as you wake up' thing, and I always end up staring at the paper thinking, how the hell do I put that into words? I could draw it, maybe, but I usually just write down several isolated adjectives, then resume the comatose state.

Maybe my mind sees shit in too much detail and gets carried away, or something. Whatever it is, I usually wake up with a headache afterwards and feeling though as I've hardly slept at all. Which sucks, because I have to work tomorrow :(

p.s. RAVE DID YOU FINISH IT YET, DAMMIT, JOY WANTS IT BACK!

How fucking scary is this shit.

( I CAN SEE YOU )

Rosie and I have decided that, in addition to our Scottish Castle, when I become the millionaire we both know I will be, we're also buying a satellite, because technology is way cool in the scariest fucking ways.

OH GOD FACEBOOK IS SPAMMING MY INBOX.

(no, the paper's still not done. hence the facebookage. and this post.)

One day I'll learn that taking the day off from class to finish a paper doesn't actually result in getting said paper done, but surfing the internet, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, running errands, and just about anything else I can find to do to put it off some more.

Good news is, we got the apartment. Dan put the deposit down about two hours ago. Now we just have to figure out how to come up with the thousand he "owes" his old apartment complex for being short three days notice. Fucking bollocks.

Btw, I just realised that, while awesome and spectacular, Stardust is a horribly depressing movie =/

So I just realised that I have a paper due Wednesday that normally would take at least three days of solid work to get finished. Apparently I'm so good at bullshitting and procrastination that I make my own brain forget I actually have responsibilities to take care of, however much I tend to put them off. S'a good thing I work well under pressure.

I'm gonna go watch Stardust until I pass out.

Then we stood about in the cold before investigating Dan's apartment, which is cleaner than most male-abodes, I have to say. His camera was super swanky so we decided on an improv, late-night model shoot that had his lower neighbors banging on his floor in irritation.

My night was effectively ruined when I remembered I have work in the morning. Fuck, fuck, fuck, it's 3am already. AHHH.

So I actually had an awesome Valentine's Day. Who knew?

I also ate a duck and a lamb in a very, very shiny restaurant; here's really grainy, bad-lit proof of such:

Yes, I wore that shirt to show off my tits.

Also, there's a canoe in my garage that wasn't there before. It's large and metal and looks like it's killed at least four people.

So, it's Darwin's 200th Birthday. We had a big event at work to celebrate. Someone apparently invited the creationists along...

...complete with EXPLOSIVE AMOUNTS OF PUNCTUATION!!!! Oh, and is there more.

I asked one guy if he was cold, and he said, 'No, miss, for I've the HOLY FIRE OF JESUS INSIDE OF ME!'

I wonder if he'd appreciate that I keep my Bible page saved with a Lucy's Legacy bookmark.

GUESS WHO'S PLAYING HOOKY TODAY.

Oyeah. Yay for sleeping in.

I just finished and submitted my application to UW to finish up my Creative Writing/Film/Japanese degree. Read: I just spent the last four weeks ripping my hair out, shouting at random family members demanding their tax information, generally having nervous breakdowns for breakfast, lunch and dinner, writing, re-writing, completely trashing and burning the old draft and re-writing once again, a five-page Personal Statement about how awesome and talented I am and why they should chose me over the thousands and thousands of other illiterate robots trying to get a spot in their university.

And, having gone through all of that nonsense, I won't know that I've been accepted (or denied) until the end of the summer. Those universities just love to lay on the suspense. And even now, I'm thinking, oh my god, what if I forgot a comma? What if I put in too many commas? I'm supposed to be an English major, for crying out loud, and you know they'd minus points if I can't even keep my verb particles in order. I'll get my application back with red marks in the margins screaming 'MISPLACED MODIFIER! OUT OF PARALLEL! BE-VERBS CAN'T TAKE DIRECT OBJECTS!'

I'm going to go drown myself in the shower for a while.

So we're talking about Transcendentalists in American Lit--anyone who's taken more than basic English in college has had a similar class in some form, but how much students actually retain... I'm sure most 4-yr students (an graduated adults) would recognise the name Emerson or Whitman (or, hopefully, both) and possibly even Thoreau. If they fully digest the message, though, I sincerely doubt. So here's my attempt at a rough summary, focusing on the major link between the three--their views on Nature.

( transcendental ranting )

... or so read my paper, which the professor flaunted about endlessly. My real thoughts? Emerson was a fucking pimp, Whitman was a man-whore, and Thoreau was an egotistical maniac who seriously needed to get laid. Sure, they're all literary masters, but you can't be a master and entirely sane, I don't care what anyone says.

Rosie loves to point out the errors in my ways; fair enough, though, as she seems to be the only one who can find any. As far as the rest of you are concerned, I'm the epitome of perfection. Just deal with it.

I think I'm going to spend today taking pictures of various types of pavement, then adhere high-quality prints to canvases and sell them for thousands of dollars. If Carl Andre can sell a pile of bricks for a million, I can sell pavement art and make a fortune, you just watch.

Also, apparently, "Dungbombs" is not only one word, but also capitalised. Well, sue me, you evil slag.

Apparently, my body has decided to celebrate it's first day back to class since CFS started kicking it's ass with a good, old-fashioned, brain-stuck-in-your-nasal-passages flu. The kind of flu you aren't supposed to go out in public in, much less sit in a tight box with no air to breath with forty other students who will be rotating from tight box to tight box all day with other students to swiftly spread the disease. But, as you may well know, if you miss the first three or so days of class, flu or no flu, good luck keeping that class. Especially when all of my classes are English classes, and Seattle Central canceled over half of their English classes, so all of the students needing anything other than the basic 100/200 composition have squeezed into the remainder and left us with unhappy, tight boxes of students.

They kept my poetry class (which I am completely hopeless at, but it's required for the degree, so I must suffer with my incompetence) and my contemporary world lit class, which is good, because both I need and want to some degree. It means lots of reading and writing and no final exams, which is my perfect cup of tea. But then there's this thing with me since my freshman year, Murphy and his Laws or something, making it completely impossible for me to ever fit a Shakespeare class into my schedule without leaving out something else important. So this year, I thought, hey, Shakespeare at 9am, look at that! Three classes in a row nice and early, leaves the whole day for sleeping/eating/reading!

But, of course, they went and canceled the Shakespeare class.

I mean, come on, he's only Shakespeare. Why wouldn't I rather take Af. American Lit (which has two Morrison and two Baldwin novels, check out that variety!). To quote a girl (a black girl, even) in my class this morning, it'll be a cold day in Hell when we finally get a black history-oriented class that features happy literature. Maybe, just maybe, one day we'll let people know that, hey, it's not all that bad being a black person in this country. They have fun, too, believe it or not! The reason the majority of the class had enrolled: "They canceled everything else, and I had to take something in English."

Meanwhile, I can only describe my poetry professor as such: a blonde surfer-hippy. Possibly gay, but the jury's still out on that one. That was the first and lasting impression, anyway, and he even talks cool; he asked each of us random questions in turn while taking roll, like, 'Hey, how was your day? Go anywhere cool this summer? You happy to be here? That's cool, me too!' He's a bit on the get-sidetracked-by-nonsense-and-ramble about it side, which is reassuring because I tend to be like that... well, all of the time.

He spent the first five minutes of class being late, and the next five minutes investigating the bottle of spray adhesive someone left on his desk with interest, whispering things to us like, 'It says, "No ozone diminishers." Well, that's cool. "Harmful if swallowed, keep out of reach of children." Hm. What do you think? Want to try it out?' Wink.

I take it back; I don't want to take contemporary lit. The books are terrible, I can smell the terrible inside of them, and the teacher is an idiot. My fucking kingdom for a literate professor. I want to learn shit, dammit.