|
additional linkage
my photos:
may 2003
march 2003
jan/feb 2003
spring
2002
winter
2001
fall
2001
burgess falls
summer
2001
summer 2000
formal
2000
summer 1999
memphis
1999
formal
1999
people:
chris
heather
chris
aaron
alex
malachi
danyel
susannette
kathy
matt
lucas
tyler
wayne
clark
anna
matt
johnny
chris
jeff
jill
jen
stephanie
matt
will
matthew
julia
jon
kurt
anna
matt
derek
kristin
niquie
jared
jenn
marc
andrew
josh
bean
patrick
christian
mitch
quinton
jenny
elijah
liz
see also
news and periodicals:
new york times
salon
prague post
le monde
drudge report
the nation
the atlantic
christian science monitor
national geographic
int'l herald tribune
fun:
the onion
something positive
strongbad
emotion eric
surrealist
oneword
nationstates
blogshares
reference:
google
dictionary.com
babelfish
britannica
dictionnaire
cia world
factbook
everything2
findagrave
phrase&fable
etymonline
math world
urban legends
technorati
learn languages:
spanish
persian
japanese
movies:
imdb
ebert
rotten tomatoes
cinemascore
music:
rtl2
radio afghanistan
india fm
french lyrics
around tech:
main
honors
library
upcoming concerts
herald citizen
putnam pit
besancon:
local events and movies
la besace
bannik
kgb
ufc
fac des lettres
cla
l'est republicain
me:
This is my blogchalk:
United States, Tennessee, Cookeville, tntech, English, French, kait, Female, 21-25.
blogroll me!
factoids
resume
current reading list
work stuff
online files
send e-mail
aim: the kaitron
|
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
16:12 - so i turned in my last undergraduate paper today. well, there's still a take-home exam in french. and those pesky honors exit essays. but still. kinda cool, eh?
and it's official. i'm not walking. but i'll prob'ly go to graduation and take pictures... may 10 if anyone wants to go spectate with me. spectate, by the way, is another example of back-formation. i checked.
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
14:21 - i didn't notice any earthquake this morning... did you? it was perceivable here... that, or an awful lot of people are just claiming to have been wakened for the sake of feeling like part of the story. or are trying to get pity for having still been awake and studying... i lived next door to a fault line in berkeley one summer, but we never got hit, so i just missed my first earthquake. grr... i always sleep through all the excitement.
Sunday, April 27, 2003
17:00 - larisa and kelly, two of my pals from last year in bzak, have been leaving hilarious condensed classic novels as their aim away messages... i finally got around to asking larisa for their source, et voilà -- there's also a nifty link from there for the book-a-minute sci-fi and fantasy. anyway, i thought i'd share my favorite:
The Collected Work of Jane Austen, by Jane Austen
Ultra-Condensed by Christina Carlson and Peter da Silva
Female Lead: I secretly love Male Lead. He must never know.
Male Lead: I secretly love Female Lead. She must never know.
(They find out.)
THE END"
lovely, eh? i have a gruesome love-hate relationship with jane austen... i really have read most of her complete works by now, i suppose. her novels are much like issues of cosmo -- i mock, deride, accurately predict the complete contents by the end of the fifth page... but i automatically pick them up if they're lying about on the coffee table. i believe the technical term is "guilty pleasure"...
but yeah, so. jane austen is responsible for the smarmy, english-accented voice in my head that tells me about things like "propriety." i hate her, really i do.
16:40 - interesting. i just looked up the word "babysitting" to see if it had a necessary hyphen or not. turns out, according to the definition's accompanying note, that babysit is a rare example of one of the two major types of linguistic back-formation. the word babysitter goes back to 1937, whereas babysit is first recorded in 1947... thus, unlike getting diver from the verb dive, as usually happens, the agent noun preceded the verb.
but the other type of back-formation that the note explains, the one whereby a misunderstanding led the singular-plural middle english pease to become pea and pease, sounds far more fun. how long until we can start referring to an individual non-deer animal with antlers as a moo?
16:25 - idle curiosity just led me to calculate the minimum number of keystrokes this helpdesk shift requires. three hours. including logins, i could technically get away with 128 keystrokes. $15.45 for 128 keystrokes and a little babysitting. i suddenly feel very well-paid.
16:16 - the samosas came through after all! alex brought some by the lab for me just before closing time, and good thing too since they were all gone when dad and i went over to get some dinner. which was nothing to be complained about anyhow -- we got the other indian food that was for sale. 42nd street was all that a broadway musical ought to be -- flashy, toe-tapping, good music and great dance numbers, plotline straight out of the classic 40s-style movie musicals. perhaps i'll post a full review when i write it... and then there was a whirlwind visit to home... but it was nice to stop by; at least i got to go walking in the woods with mom this morning, and they even got me a mini-birthday cake, perfect for three people. while i guess it was a lot of driving and trouble for dad, i'm almost glad i neglected to go to enough community plays to generate the required number of reviews...
so now we're hitting what was in the old days known as "dead week"... i'm not sure when, but at some point it was officially renamed "projects week," which is, in my not so humble opinion, a vast devolution. it shows. today was the first time i've really been late for this helpdesk shift -- 2-5 p.m. in matthews-daniels hall. and it was only five minutes. but there were people waiting outside. usually, i can go most of the shift without seeing another human being.
finals loom. ugh.
Saturday, April 26, 2003
15:41 - mildly amusing discovery: a recent discussion with a friend about our "early literary experiences" made me a little nostalgic for mr. popper's penguins, which was my favorite for much of that short period between learning to read and discovering a wrinkle in time. it's the gripping tale of a housepainter who dreams of south pole exploration, an explorer who answers his fanmail, and the penguins who quickly take over the painter's home. anyway, on a whim, today i ran by amazon to see if it's still in print, to see what the current edition looks like... and reading the sample pages for the first time in probably ten or fifteen years, i suddenly knew why the slightly bizarre color scheme in my dorm room last year -- two walls pale green and two pale orange -- always seemed to me more familiar, more friendly, more trendy, and more likely to belong in a kitchen than most of my hallmates found it. i quote:
"He was a dreamer. Even when he was busiest smoothing down the paste on the wallpaper, or painting the outside of other people's houses, he would forget what he was doing. Once he had painted three sides of a kitchen green, and the other side yellow. The housewife, instead of being angry and making him do it over, had liked it so well that she had made him leave it that way. And all the other housewives, when they saw it, admired it too, so that pretty soon everybody in Stillwater had two-colored kitchens."
definitely strange to uncover the fact that junk like this is hanging out in my unconscious brain...
13:46 -
and while i'm posting pictures of every odd random craving that hits my mind... here's some gyoza.
the ultimate yummy appetizer if you're out for sushi. mmmmm... remind me never to blog while mentally still at lunch.
13:36 - oh, and for those who don't know what i'm going so gaga over... look, it's samosas! aren't they lovely?
i like the google image search. and as for the insides, dictionary.com tells us that a samosa is "a small fried turnover of indian origin that is filled with seasoned vegetables or meat." yummy.
13:27 - mmm... thai curry for lunch. so maybe it's not samosas. or even very spicy. but sooooo good... by the way, did i mention i'm a curry addict? i have a feeling i'm going to be using my helpdesk breaks today to go overeat; i know they have baklava, and the samosas have to be hiding somewhere!!
Friday, April 25, 2003
13:53 - since the asg calendar of events is running a tad behind these days and since i don't have much to say today, i'll give you my very own personal calendar of events for this weekend...
tonight: there's a daria marathon in the honors lounge, 7-9 p.m. while i like the show, i wasn't going to go until i found out that it's being hosted by the incredible anna e., who occasionally deigns to chill with us lounge-rat geeks when she has to take an afternoon off school due to excessive brainwashing.
tomorrow: WOW! it's the windows on the world fest in the multipurpose room from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. i have to work the french booth from 11:30 to 1, when i go helpdesking. i really hope the indian association's selling food again... last time i went, two years ago, they had absolutely incredible samosas. it's good stuff all around, though. i'm prejudiced, but highly recommended.
then saturday night, my dad is being terribly wonderful and taking me to tpac to see 42nd street because i need to have three theatre reviews this semester and have thus far only seen two plays. (including the current production of shakespeare's r&j -- dave snuck me in with his shakespeare class to see the last dress rehearsal. it's pretty cool, go see it! i'll prob'ly end up paying to re-watch it sometime this week...) but yeah, so going to tpac will be like good old times... when i was in high school, we used to get season tickets in the rafter seats for the broadway series. i miss that, it's too bad my schedule's too erratic these days.
then i stop by for an overnight at home, quality time with mom, and that leaves sunday afternoon and evening for homework.
but anyway. must go home before it starts raining. happy weekend!
Thursday, April 24, 2003
19:20 - i think i've found a place to live this summer... gabe's going home, but he's apparently found a fantastic house where he wants to live in the fall and where he'd like someone to save his spot. that leaves the employment...
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
14:52 - 
before charging into a room demanding tea and crumpets, you should always know what a crumpet looks like. courtesy the cook's thesaurus. yeah, we're geeks here.
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
17:37 - 
my dad sent me that this morning. i just wonder... can i get them to announce me as a freedom major at graduation? that'd be almost worth the trouble of walking the line.
Monday, April 21, 2003
16:45 - now seeking: summer lodging and employment in the cookevegas area. please drop me a line if you need a roommate from june to august. or an employee.
Sunday, April 20, 2003
14:24 - 
aha! they arrived after all! see? once upon a time, i was cute!
14:19 - curses... mom mentioned having scanned some old easter photos, and i was going to post a few of the less embarassing ones if such creatures existed... but yahoo is being slow, or someplace on the internet is being slow, and they aren't here yet. and the air conditioning in here is too cold to stick around indefinitely, so my schmaltzy nostalgia shall have to go on unillustrated. alas.
when i was somewhat shorter and less cynical, easter was pretty durn special. it was one of the few times a year we tended to pack up and head for illinois to see all mom's family... there were exceptional years, like the time dad's parents came down from maine and i had the chickenpox, but i mostly to associate the holiday with going north. i have lots of little scattered memory clips -- going to the special church service on sunday morning, sitting around the kitchen table as everyone chattered and slowly sneakily picking out all the coveted black jelly beans from the bowl of them, the easter dinners that always included grandma's german-style noodles because i loved them, things like that... but the centerpiece was always the egg-hunt for my cousins and me.
i can't imagine that very many families do anything nearly as elaborate. my grandma's house was always magic anyhow; inside it was filled with intriguing trinkets, and outside was the country, completely different from my suburban neighborhood -- the barn, woods, a river with a cabin for camping, even an old-style wash-house that also contained a few of mom's and her sisters' old toys and a fantastic dress-up collection. litter the entire area, inside and out, with chocolate and other candy and real hard-boiled eggs... and well, perhaps you can imagine. special prize eggs could be traded for toys, everyone ended up with as much candy as at halloween... and everything was really hidden -- none of this "strew a few of the horrid pastel candy-coated marshmallow eggs in the grass." months later, you might discover a long-lost piece of candy in a water-pipe or on a tree branch...
but yeah. so i have a fantastic family who did an incredible job at keeping childhood charmed... must be lucky, eh?
Saturday, April 19, 2003
19:02 - currently coughing to the point of social embarrassment due to allergies + pale-skinned sunburn magnet = spend the day outdoors, basking sleeping studying in the grass and sun?
yes, we're logical here. but it was bloody gorgeous outside when i woke up this morning, and i am weak-willed when faced with a pretty blue sky.
and bright, bright sun goes well with l'étranger. thus it was a necessary step to further my comprehension.
actually, aside from the odd patches where i missed with the sunscreen (ever have a sunburned armpit?), i feel better. so perhaps the allergens are zoo-internal. they might even have names like dante and calpurnia. but i can't remember having had to chase them from my room any more than usual lately, so i can't imagine why fur would be making me sick now...
ok, heading away from computer-land again. air conditioning gives me goosebumps. happy easter.
Thursday, April 17, 2003
17:50 - tomorrow's good friday. thus all computer labs here at tntech are closed. i don't have to work helpdesk this evening. i don't have to work helpdesk all weekend.
intellectually, i realize that this means i'm losing about $60. not including the additional cost of keeping myself entertained while not working.
forget intellectual. i'm ecstatic. despite the intention to use much of this recovered time studying, i plan at least one saturday morning of getting up ridiculously late, drinking gallons of coffee, and watching foreign films in my pajamas without worrying about being late to work. yeah, it's easy to make me happy.
anyways, have a great weekend everyone!
17:01 - schwa - 1582, from Ger. Schwa, ult. from Heb. shewa "a neutral vowel quality," lit. "emptiness."
- etymonlinedon't ask, but i somehow got entangled in a conversation about what a strange word schwa is. and so now we know why. i wasn't expecting quite such a pedigree...
14:35 -
why do i feel certain that husband would be able to interpret this and laugh at me?
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
19:58 - we're currently reading l'étranger by camus in french lit. i've read it before, probably seven or eight years ago, in english translation. odd how memory works... my mental image of the book's setting was already too-bright, washed out by the sun... yet i was surprised to find out that it takes place in algeria. where in france was i putting it?!? did i really have so little concept of algeria that i just mentally moved the story, ignoring any and all subtexts dealing with imperialism, foreignness, etc.? i suppose so. now i find myself grimacing at the references to the "arab" -- most of the folks i know from that part of the world are pretty fast to point out the difference between arabe and maghrebin. actually, honestly, i don't remember any awareness of algeria at all until last year... the first time i was ever confronted with it was on that first train to bzak; i was in a nearly empty car with a couple teenagers... apparently, my desperation to look inconspicuous combined with the unwieldy amounts of luggage made me an irresistable conversational partner. they started throwing questions at me, joking around, quoting eminem lyrics for my edification, poking fun at my french, demanding to know which one i thought the more handsome, generally entertaining the heck out of me until their stop in dôle... anyway, one was wearing a bright green jersey for algerian soccer, bringing up the topic... i remember having to admit my basic ignorance about both world cup football and about what turned out to be their home nation. strange how fast connotations change... a year reading french newspapers, having a favorite neighbor of algerian origin, talking about the end of french imperialism in classes... and all of a sudden, algeria means... quite a bit. and now it absolutely blows my mind that it didn't even register before.
and i have to wonder: how much of the world is still outside my mental map?
Monday, April 14, 2003
07:08 - oh, and i studied outdoors for a few hours yesterday before helpdesk... and somehow managed to end up w/half a mild farmer's sunburn. yeah. one arm below sleeve-level, one side of my neck, and a little bit on one calf below capri-level. terribly cute... well, ok, so i look like a freak. or at the kindest, rather asymmetrical...
06:42 - coffee prohibition is over! i am hyper! whee!
Sunday, April 13, 2003
16:25 - let's see. friday night, despite the fact that we're all still in various stages of plague-fighting and might've done better to throw a quarantine instead, the zoo threw a going-away party for a justin i barely knew... i not only got to meet the guest of honor before his departure, i had the pleasure of teaming up with him for a knock-down drag-out match of trivial pursuit against dave the video guy and anna h. good times, and the house actually ended up cleaner than it was before we started emergency-scrubbing to get it into guest-having condition. then last night, apartments 1-2-3 had their last party as apartments 1-2-3 -- jen and liz are moving out of apartment 2 at the end of the month. excellent that the weather cleared up for that, as parties spread across three apartments tend to involve much more oudoor mingling. but anyway, all told, i'm rather indecorously pleased with myself -- made it through with no coffee, never got drunk, and barely slept any less than normal!
~five hours to the end of my coffee-less week. i have an odd premonition we might end up at waho tonight...
Saturday, April 12, 2003
16:03 - the current grad school situation: uc davis needs to know if i'm coming by tuesday. columbia will get back to me on whether i'm admitted by the end of the week. in the meantime, i'm not positive purdue is offering financial support -- but i'm fairly sure -- and no word yet from hawaii. what do i do?!?
15:20 - this is my sixth day without coffee. someone asked me last night how long it'd been since i'd tried a similar exercise in coffee abstinence... and i had to hang my head in shame, unable to remember. actually, now that i've slept and ruminated, i'm guessing summer-before-last, just before france, where i became an instant café bum and quickly learned that i could take the 7:30 bus, hit the fac des lettres at 7:55, grab a .40 euro café au lait from the instant machine, and make it to my 8:00 class long before the prof even thought about showing up. anyway, i'm better enough now to drink it... but durnit, if i've made it this far, i'm going for a week...
14:42 - thursday: sweater, winter coat, hat. it even snowed a bit.
today: t-shirt. and it's still hot.
i just don't get it.
Thursday, April 10, 2003
18:03 - a rather significant slice of my crowd is off to the southern regional honors conference in greensboro, nc, today. and as i have never been to an honors conference at which anyone spent much time actually conferencing, i have to wonder: what's there to do in greensboro, nc, but stalk orson scott card? in fact, i interrogated several people about this prior to their departure and received no satisfactory answers... this worries me ever so slightly; after all, what if they get stunningly bored and take my inquiry as a suggestion? are there laws against inciting a stalking campaign? if so, will they at least have the decency to get a signed copy of ender's game for my jail cell? anyway, for now, i'm being stubborn and not going to google to find out about the city's fantastic tourist attractions, as i don't want to ruin the surprise and wonder of their tales when they return...
17:19 - nnooo!! alex reports that the international house of pancakes is now serving freedom toast... what's this world coming to?!? when just a couple weeks ago, i took such pride in ordering the "vive la french toast" there. despite being neither particularly hungry nor particularly fond of french toast. however, the ihop webpage is currently advertising "stuffed french toast," so perhaps it's a merely local phenomenon. oh well, we're mostly waho-ites anyhow, and it's not st. patrick's day, so perhaps this pseudo-boycott will last a bit longer than the last one...
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
13:59 - for those of you who didn't believe me when i told you i have the plague: for only minimal poking and prodding, the infirmary has cough syrup that's both cheaper and better-tasting than the cheapest stuff at wal-mart! if only i'd known sooner! alas, it's still not quite the codeine-containing stuff you get in france...
Tuesday, April 08, 2003
17:23 - on the upside... all the not-in-a-computer-way hacking seems to be serendipitously reducing my caffeine addiction. coffee -> further irritation of already sore throat -> drastic cuts in coffee drinking. hot tea intake's gone soaring off the charts, but if you have any idea of my usual daily java usage... plus being sick-ish means i'm already tired and cranky, so the withdrawl symptoms are camouflaged. my aren't we feeling pollyannaish today...
09:53 - always a bad sign when you wake up in the morning and physically can't open your eyes...
while there are many things a hot shower and a large dose of cough syrup won't fix, i'm awfully glad for them just now.
Monday, April 07, 2003
16:29 - how many places can you find groups of people willing to concede that sending fish via the u.s. postal service is not only a good way to convince others that you lack sanity but also a rather devious method of sabotaging an army?
methinks i'm going to miss my friends next year...
now back to coughing and hacking and really just wishing i could go back to bed...
Sunday, April 06, 2003
17:09 - last year in france, i saw a film -- in english, the title's what time is it there?, although for me it'll always be et là-bas, quelle heure est-il? and in the original mandarin it has yet another title... anyway, international nomenclature aside... there was something oddly fascinating about it. by every right, it should be the world's most boring movie: barely a shred of a plot -- and i had trouble making sense of what there was, no background music, composed of long, static shots, and hardly even any dialogue. yet i spent most of two hours riveted to the screen, and certain images stuck in my head and simply refused to go away. i declared myself confused.
so this weekend, i find the river, by the same director -- tsai ming-liang, on the new release shelf at my fave video shop. i see, i rent. last night while all the roommates were out, i watched. and ended up with a very similar impression... i suppose it's like visiting an art gallery; each shot leaves time to delve in and look around, and they're almost all gorgeously set up with multiple layers of depth and lighting. throw in a sad-funny mood and a dysfunctional family whose members barely seem to notice each other... i'm not sure that real people ever spend so much time not talking to one another, but it's tempting to label the big silences full of traffic noise as "eloquent"...
i still don't quite understand why i'm drawn to this stuff, but if i see another film by tsai, i'll prob'ly rent it with equal urgency. i'd have a hard time recommending either of the ones i've seen, though...
Saturday, April 05, 2003
13:11 -
Friday, April 04, 2003
14:56 - continuing my fascination with old food...
i'm in a bit of shock. srah mentioned the fact that it's odd that the color "orange" isn't named "carrot", since carrots were prob'ly around long before oranges migrated their way up from spain to both france and england. i agreed. i googled. and found that back in the day, the carrots that made it to europe weren't orange. they were mostly purple or yellow. i quote: Both yellow and purple varieties were grown in Europe until the 17th century. Orange roots, containing the pigment carotene, were not noted until the 17th century in Holland. The noble carrot has long been known as an orange vegetable. However, this only came about in the 16th century, thanks to patriotic Dutch growers who bred the vegetable to grow in the colours of the House of Orange.
this is upsetting, much like green ketchup.
also interesting and found at that website, though: adding to the contribution index for afghanistan, carrots originated in that neck of the woods 5000ish years ago.
all hail the mighty carrot.
13:44 - i have germs. please take necessary precautions.
Thursday, April 03, 2003
20:02 - drawing makes me severely uncomfortable.
it's an incompetency thing. i don't draw well; i took band instead of art all through middle and high school so i have no techniques to fall back on, and i'm most certainly not a natural... but i always forget about it until i have to draw again...
thus, unthinkingly, i managed to volunteer myself as costume designer, one of the most drawing-intensive positions in our "design a production of angels in america" project for theatre class. it's not so bad -- we only have to put together details for one scene, which in our case means three costumes: a 17th century fashionable londonite ghost, a 13th century yorkshire squire ghost, and a gay man dying of aids in 1986-style pajamas... does anyone out there remember if pajamas looked any different going-on-twenty years ago?
anyway, after living through the uncomfortableness, i've got sketches now. and i must admit to being unduly proud of them. i used the mode in costume, as per susannette's recommendation, to ogle the snazzy-looking historical duds and managed to freehand copy something at least mildly resembling them... perhaps i'll do some scanning if i get too close to clement hall... now on to the full-color renderings, which means acquisition of colored pencils and nice paper is immediately necessary... anyone have any helpful advice?
18:57 - "outside, kurds were salivating at me and calling me björk."
despite its lack of perverseness, that one wins my vote for favorite sentence produced by the recent madlibbing mania. delightfully absurd.
we had a real, live, published book of them this week. i decided that i prefer the homemade, written-on-a-waffle-house-napkin variety, even though they're more work. i suppose it's all a question of marketing -- and we're a tad outside the target age range for the prefabricated ones...
do madlibs keep most small groups of 20-somethings happy for hours and hours? or is it just because we don't have cable?
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
15:31 - yesterday's arlo & janis initially upset me: 
after all, this is the sort of tradition that one should know about after having spent a year in a nation. and, um, i didn't!
however, consultation with fellow former exchange student larisa and a calendar solved it all. because last year, easter sunday was march 31. and larisa and i are quite sure that on easter sunday last year we were tipsily weaving our way around the munich beer gardens because all the museums were closed. meaning that the next day we were safely on the train to neuschwanstein. and thus most assuredly not in france.
my powers of observation are not so weak that i managed to schlump through an entire day without noticing paper fish taped to people's backs!
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
09:42 - muahahahaha....
(via neil gaiman, who also recently posted a brilliant strategy for deciding where to go to school... t-2 wks, and if worst comes to worst i think i'll copy-cat his daughter...)
addendum (april 2, 3 p.m.): kathy, a.k.a. "sirene, temptress of the night" has beaten me... can you topple her 9.3 battle rating?
09:10 - i was walking to school this morning when a portly green and mauve polka-dotted monster came up behind me and quietly extricated my french homework from my backpack, then from the plastic file folder where i'd lovingly stored all my commentaires on baudelaire. i caught him just as he was spitting out the last shreds because they tasted a bit too strongly of erasable ink... it has a chemical undertaste like diet soda, i s'pose. i punched him pretty hard, but too late, alas.
days like april fools day, i get a tad nostalgic for way back when everyone else was automatically assumed to be fellow believers in big fat green and mauve polka-dotted monsters.
archives
|
