As a male I probably spend more time than the average person in men's bathrooms. (According to 2008 world demographic data the average person is about 50.5% male and 49.5% female, and I most likely spend more time in men's bathrooms than a hermaphrodite that is just slightly more male than female. Also, I am a bit creeped out by men's bathrooms, so I will admit that I put toilet paper over the seat before I sit down, if there aren't any paper covers to use.) Typically, bathroom stalls don't make for wholesome reading, but I will admit that occasionally I get bored (there's really not much else to do) and will read what's on the walls of the stall. Once in a blue moon the stall walls actually have something funny/interesting. Often there are long drawn out strings of bathroom conversations between immature idiots. Recently I saw the following written in two different handwritings (I think it's pretty clear what was written by each person).
FECES <- mouse babies?
I have no idea what this means, but it made me laugh. Given the extra time on my hands, I thought about it and I think that maybe the second writer was thinking that "feces" is an amalgamation of the fake plural "meese" for mice and the word "fetus". I probably gave it too much thought, but it made me laugh nonetheless. I bet it's weird when people laugh from bathroom stalls....
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
bizarre
[NOTE: This has nothing to do with programming, just skim over the first paragraph if you must.]
I subscribe to the MaplePrimes blog RSS feed. They have occasional blog entries about the Maple programming language. It's a programming language that is very well suited for certain mathematical problems, and I use it a lot. Today I was looking through my RSS subscriptions and I found a tribute to Pi day on the MaplePrimes blog. The tribute wasn't all that interesting, just a pie chart of the relative frequencies of the digits 0-9 in the first 200 decimal places of Pi. The interesting part was the comments on the Blog because it has stuff about how to differently write aspects of his program. In any case it brought on a short conversation about the Greek language. Then I came across this bizarre quote in one of the comments:
I can't really figure out if it is a joke or not. It's really not funny, so I think he was actually being serious. I really don't know exactly where to start because almost every sentence is all wrong, slightly wrong, or just bizarre. I guess I can accept that it's not necessarily *too* wrong to say that the Greek alphabet is the foundation of our written and spoken language, but the *alphabet* is the foundation of math. What's that even mean?? I really dislike his use of embedding; it's not very mathematically accurate. But what's really weird is, "Christ is pi"?? and "iota is the Holy Spirit"?? I have no idea how iota represents the idea of penetrating the hearts of all men. In any case, what a weird comment...
I subscribe to the MaplePrimes blog RSS feed. They have occasional blog entries about the Maple programming language. It's a programming language that is very well suited for certain mathematical problems, and I use it a lot. Today I was looking through my RSS subscriptions and I found a tribute to Pi day on the MaplePrimes blog. The tribute wasn't all that interesting, just a pie chart of the relative frequencies of the digits 0-9 in the first 200 decimal places of Pi. The interesting part was the comments on the Blog because it has stuff about how to differently write aspects of his program. In any case it brought on a short conversation about the Greek language. Then I came across this bizarre quote in one of the comments:
The Greek alphabet is the foundation of our written and spoken language. And it is the foundation of our mathematical system. And God embedded His Word through the Greek alphabet system. For in them we can understand who God is. For in the beginning, God was alpha, for He was the Maker. And Christ is pi, for He is the narrow Gate. And iota is the Holy Spirit for He penetrates the hearts of all men. And omega is the consolidation of the three, for omega is the end and the completion of all things.
I can't really figure out if it is a joke or not. It's really not funny, so I think he was actually being serious. I really don't know exactly where to start because almost every sentence is all wrong, slightly wrong, or just bizarre. I guess I can accept that it's not necessarily *too* wrong to say that the Greek alphabet is the foundation of our written and spoken language, but the *alphabet* is the foundation of math. What's that even mean?? I really dislike his use of embedding; it's not very mathematically accurate. But what's really weird is, "Christ is pi"?? and "iota is the Holy Spirit"?? I have no idea how iota represents the idea of penetrating the hearts of all men. In any case, what a weird comment...
Thursday, February 19, 2009
grammar
I find grammar very interesting as a subject. That is, I find rules about language and the reasons of their existence very interesting (if there is a discoverable reason). In late high school, I taught myself a lot about grammar. i.e. on the ACT the English section was my second highest score (second of course to math). Then in college I took several semesters of Greek which surprisingly made me understand grammatical concepts a LOT better. Since then I think I've forgotten a lot of things about grammar, but I still feel inclined to write an entry about my feelings on grammar.
I should start by saying that I really don't consider myself in any way to be a grammar nazi. My grammar is categorized into two basic groups. The first is "correct" speech. Of course this is what is prescriptively considered correct. The second is understood speech. This is what people actually understand without giving you strange looks while their language engine parses your sentence. So I guess it's fair to say that I view grammar as an interesting theoretical subject (or at least very loosely applied). With this in mind, I'm going to share some grammatical rules that I completely ignore, some where I'm wishy-washy, and some that I try to stick to religiously. I have various reasons for ignoring rules. Foremost, I want people to understand me. If speaking grammatically means that people don't understand my words then grammar has completely failed in its purpose. Also, I don't want to sound like I think I'm better or smarter or something like that. Apparently, knowledge intimidates, and I have no desire to intimidate. So I keep a very close watch over what I do and don't say and which rules I do and don't keep. But there's also a part of me that really wants to speak correctly, so almost any rule that I can keep while almost no one notices I would happily keep. So without further ado...
Stuff I ignore
1. Like the majority of the English speaking population, I whole-heartedly ignore the rule that one must never end a sentence with a preposition. I even have a strong distaste for the way the rule is usually stated. The idea is not really that there should never be a preposition at the end of the sentence. The idea is really that every preposition should have an object (preferably immediately following the preposition). For example, I wouldn't be surprised if most people who know the rule as stated wouldn't realize that, "Who'd you give that to, yesterday?" still breaks the rule? In any case, this rule when applied to real life can really be a detriment to spoken language. When I started actually understanding this rule well, I remember I spent a few months trying to always use prepositions properly. I had a lot of experiences like the following:
Me: "To whom did you give the book about which you were speaking?"
Them: "Wha?",
Me: "Who'd you give that book you were talking about to?",
Them: "ohh, I gave it to Joe."
So, needless to say, I gave that up. Since then I've come across the concept of "phrasal verbs". In this regard, these have been my grammatical salvation. A really basic way to explain these is that many prepositions used together with many verbs act very similar to adverbs and completely change the meaning of the verb. In this case, I just consider the preposition to be an adverb instead and my grammar parser is happy again.
2. A rule that I completely ignore is not splitting the infinitive. Basically when you have an infinitive: to go, to eat, to walk, etc (verbs with the word to), you are not supposed to put the word "not" in between the words. So the sentence,
"I should tell him to not go to the park."
is incorrect while the sentence,
"I should tell him not to go to the park."
is the correct form. Now usually there isn't really a difference, and there are times with it actually sounds better to not split the infinity. But other times it sounds SO much better to split the infinitive, and other other times it even feels that they have slightly different meanings.
3. This last two may be be somewhat hard to explain. First, when you are writing about a general person, you are supposed to use the word "one" as a pronoun. Like in the following sentence:
"When one is writing about a general person, one is supposed to use the word 'one' as a pronoun."
As you may have gathered, I straight up ignore that one. It sounds so odd and antiquated when one repeatedly uses the pronoun "one". Interestingly enough the French have an official personal pronoun "on" which acts similarly, but the French often use it instead of "nous" (we). It's kind of the opposite of what English speakers do. I guess language speakers just don't like to keep rules.
On a similar note, we have the pronoun "they". In colloquial speech we have this AMAZING ability to use it when we don't want to specify the sex of an unknown person. For example we can say sentences like,
"I saw someone at the store and they were buying apples."
This makes the blood of grammar nazis boil, but I find it fabulous!
4. One more very specific thing that I ignore is the word "swum". I still remember in 5th grade or so when I learned that the past participle of swim is swum. (I have swum.) Back then I thought it sounded ridiculous and today I still feel the same way. So I refuse to use the word swum. Although, I guess technically I usually don't actually break the rule. I just find some way to bend the sentence in such a way that I wouldn't use the past participle. For example, instead of saying, "I have swum with manatees," I'd say something like, "I remember swimming with manatees" or "When I was in Florida last I swam with manatees." On the other hand, maybe that's why I'm just generally not a big fan of swimming; deep down inside I know that if I swim too much I'll have to use the past participle of swim.
Somewhere in between
1. Imagine you're name is "Joe". You get a phone call and the caller says, "Is Joe there?" Of course, everyone knows you are supposed to say, "This is he." But very few people do. I'm usually one of those people who doesn't. The reason I disregard this rule is because I think it's silly. Now I understand that English has a Latin based grammar and so it's wrong because we are using a verb of being and you're supposed to use a nominative (He rather than me or him), but I have beef with the basic concept that English should have a Latin based grammar or even that that should imply that one is supposed to say "This is he." For example, let's look again at French. As opposed to English, French actually is a romance language (evolved from Latin). So it would actually make sense for French to have a Latin-based grammar, but even in French it is proper to say, "c'est moi" (It's/That's me) when someone asks for John. Now if French, with l'Academie Francaise as the super prescriptivist group can say, "That's me" then in English, where we have very little real etymological reason to be Latin based, it should be ok to say, "That's me." That being said, I still occasionally say, "This is he," simply because I know it's right and at times my grammar engine wins the few millisecond mental battle.
2. Next on the docket we have special plurals. That is, plurals from other languages that somehow kept their native plural. A lot of math words keep their original form (at least among mathematicians) like: maxima, extrema, matrices, bases (plural of basis), indices, etc. With all these math words, I use the "proper" plural forms. This is basically because everyone around me does too and so it's acceptable and even expectable. On the other hand there are plenty of loan words where I don't use the "proper" plural. Like stadium. I think I've said "stadia" maybe once or twice in my life. I think I dislike this one because it is so inconsistent.
3. Finally, to the anguish of my brother I'm sure, when someone asks me, "How are you?", I rarely ever say, "I am well." Honestly, I rarely ever say, "I'm good," but I don't care in any way when people say, "I am good." I think typically use some other word like "fine" or something, which may be equally as bad. It's just that this way I don't sound like I'm better and I don't want to cringe inside while saying, "I'm good."
Stuff I don't ignore
1. Finally there are a few rules that I try to follow religiously. These are rules that a lot of people don't follow, but even if I do they will both understand me and not even notice that I spoke differently. First is adverb/adjective agreement. I realize that there are plenty of words that can be used as both adverbs and adjectives, I just don't know which so I pick words that are easily distinguishable. For example, is it ok to say:
"He runs fast."?
I can never remember if words like fast can be used as adverbs. And if it can be, is that only because people have abused adjective/adverb agreement for so long? In any case, I would stick to either, "He runs quickly", or "He's fast". The beauty of this is that if someone were to say, "He talks weird", I doubt they'd notice if I said, "He talks strangely" instead. On a similar note, I can't stand Apple's old slogan, "Think different", even though they claim they are using it as a fanciful category. (I doubt many people see "Think different" and think to themselves, "ohh they are using 'different' as a category, like 'think yellow' or 'think change'...hogwash, they see it and think, "I'm supposed to think in a different way." i.e. "Think differently.")
2. I also try to always use the subjunctive correctly. Sentences like:
"I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener."
The only problem here is that I get confused as to how I'm supposed to write mathematics. There is a common mathematical tool called, "proof by contradiction". Basically you want to prove that x is an integer, or something like that, so you assume that it is not an integer and then arrive at an impossibility (a contradiciton). When I'm proving something by contradiction, should I use the subjunctive? Since I know that x is not real, should I say, "Assume x were real."? I've not come to a formal stance on this and I think it's probably very dependent on the structure, but it still bothers me when I'm writing proofs.
3. Finally, there's not much to say about it, but I try to always use fewer and less correctly. This is also something that most people wouldn't notice.
I should start by saying that I really don't consider myself in any way to be a grammar nazi. My grammar is categorized into two basic groups. The first is "correct" speech. Of course this is what is prescriptively considered correct. The second is understood speech. This is what people actually understand without giving you strange looks while their language engine parses your sentence. So I guess it's fair to say that I view grammar as an interesting theoretical subject (or at least very loosely applied). With this in mind, I'm going to share some grammatical rules that I completely ignore, some where I'm wishy-washy, and some that I try to stick to religiously. I have various reasons for ignoring rules. Foremost, I want people to understand me. If speaking grammatically means that people don't understand my words then grammar has completely failed in its purpose. Also, I don't want to sound like I think I'm better or smarter or something like that. Apparently, knowledge intimidates, and I have no desire to intimidate. So I keep a very close watch over what I do and don't say and which rules I do and don't keep. But there's also a part of me that really wants to speak correctly, so almost any rule that I can keep while almost no one notices I would happily keep. So without further ado...
Stuff I ignore
1. Like the majority of the English speaking population, I whole-heartedly ignore the rule that one must never end a sentence with a preposition. I even have a strong distaste for the way the rule is usually stated. The idea is not really that there should never be a preposition at the end of the sentence. The idea is really that every preposition should have an object (preferably immediately following the preposition). For example, I wouldn't be surprised if most people who know the rule as stated wouldn't realize that, "Who'd you give that to, yesterday?" still breaks the rule? In any case, this rule when applied to real life can really be a detriment to spoken language. When I started actually understanding this rule well, I remember I spent a few months trying to always use prepositions properly. I had a lot of experiences like the following:
Me: "To whom did you give the book about which you were speaking?"
Them: "Wha?",
Me: "Who'd you give that book you were talking about to?",
Them: "ohh, I gave it to Joe."
So, needless to say, I gave that up. Since then I've come across the concept of "phrasal verbs". In this regard, these have been my grammatical salvation. A really basic way to explain these is that many prepositions used together with many verbs act very similar to adverbs and completely change the meaning of the verb. In this case, I just consider the preposition to be an adverb instead and my grammar parser is happy again.
2. A rule that I completely ignore is not splitting the infinitive. Basically when you have an infinitive: to go, to eat, to walk, etc (verbs with the word to), you are not supposed to put the word "not" in between the words. So the sentence,
"I should tell him to not go to the park."
is incorrect while the sentence,
"I should tell him not to go to the park."
is the correct form. Now usually there isn't really a difference, and there are times with it actually sounds better to not split the infinity. But other times it sounds SO much better to split the infinitive, and other other times it even feels that they have slightly different meanings.
3. This last two may be be somewhat hard to explain. First, when you are writing about a general person, you are supposed to use the word "one" as a pronoun. Like in the following sentence:
"When one is writing about a general person, one is supposed to use the word 'one' as a pronoun."
As you may have gathered, I straight up ignore that one. It sounds so odd and antiquated when one repeatedly uses the pronoun "one". Interestingly enough the French have an official personal pronoun "on" which acts similarly, but the French often use it instead of "nous" (we). It's kind of the opposite of what English speakers do. I guess language speakers just don't like to keep rules.
On a similar note, we have the pronoun "they". In colloquial speech we have this AMAZING ability to use it when we don't want to specify the sex of an unknown person. For example we can say sentences like,
"I saw someone at the store and they were buying apples."
This makes the blood of grammar nazis boil, but I find it fabulous!
4. One more very specific thing that I ignore is the word "swum". I still remember in 5th grade or so when I learned that the past participle of swim is swum. (I have swum.) Back then I thought it sounded ridiculous and today I still feel the same way. So I refuse to use the word swum. Although, I guess technically I usually don't actually break the rule. I just find some way to bend the sentence in such a way that I wouldn't use the past participle. For example, instead of saying, "I have swum with manatees," I'd say something like, "I remember swimming with manatees" or "When I was in Florida last I swam with manatees." On the other hand, maybe that's why I'm just generally not a big fan of swimming; deep down inside I know that if I swim too much I'll have to use the past participle of swim.
Somewhere in between
1. Imagine you're name is "Joe". You get a phone call and the caller says, "Is Joe there?" Of course, everyone knows you are supposed to say, "This is he." But very few people do. I'm usually one of those people who doesn't. The reason I disregard this rule is because I think it's silly. Now I understand that English has a Latin based grammar and so it's wrong because we are using a verb of being and you're supposed to use a nominative (He rather than me or him), but I have beef with the basic concept that English should have a Latin based grammar or even that that should imply that one is supposed to say "This is he." For example, let's look again at French. As opposed to English, French actually is a romance language (evolved from Latin). So it would actually make sense for French to have a Latin-based grammar, but even in French it is proper to say, "c'est moi" (It's/That's me) when someone asks for John. Now if French, with l'Academie Francaise as the super prescriptivist group can say, "That's me" then in English, where we have very little real etymological reason to be Latin based, it should be ok to say, "That's me." That being said, I still occasionally say, "This is he," simply because I know it's right and at times my grammar engine wins the few millisecond mental battle.
2. Next on the docket we have special plurals. That is, plurals from other languages that somehow kept their native plural. A lot of math words keep their original form (at least among mathematicians) like: maxima, extrema, matrices, bases (plural of basis), indices, etc. With all these math words, I use the "proper" plural forms. This is basically because everyone around me does too and so it's acceptable and even expectable. On the other hand there are plenty of loan words where I don't use the "proper" plural. Like stadium. I think I've said "stadia" maybe once or twice in my life. I think I dislike this one because it is so inconsistent.
3. Finally, to the anguish of my brother I'm sure, when someone asks me, "How are you?", I rarely ever say, "I am well." Honestly, I rarely ever say, "I'm good," but I don't care in any way when people say, "I am good." I think typically use some other word like "fine" or something, which may be equally as bad. It's just that this way I don't sound like I'm better and I don't want to cringe inside while saying, "I'm good."
Stuff I don't ignore
1. Finally there are a few rules that I try to follow religiously. These are rules that a lot of people don't follow, but even if I do they will both understand me and not even notice that I spoke differently. First is adverb/adjective agreement. I realize that there are plenty of words that can be used as both adverbs and adjectives, I just don't know which so I pick words that are easily distinguishable. For example, is it ok to say:
"He runs fast."?
I can never remember if words like fast can be used as adverbs. And if it can be, is that only because people have abused adjective/adverb agreement for so long? In any case, I would stick to either, "He runs quickly", or "He's fast". The beauty of this is that if someone were to say, "He talks weird", I doubt they'd notice if I said, "He talks strangely" instead. On a similar note, I can't stand Apple's old slogan, "Think different", even though they claim they are using it as a fanciful category. (I doubt many people see "Think different" and think to themselves, "ohh they are using 'different' as a category, like 'think yellow' or 'think change'...hogwash, they see it and think, "I'm supposed to think in a different way." i.e. "Think differently.")
2. I also try to always use the subjunctive correctly. Sentences like:
"I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener."
The only problem here is that I get confused as to how I'm supposed to write mathematics. There is a common mathematical tool called, "proof by contradiction". Basically you want to prove that x is an integer, or something like that, so you assume that it is not an integer and then arrive at an impossibility (a contradiciton). When I'm proving something by contradiction, should I use the subjunctive? Since I know that x is not real, should I say, "Assume x were real."? I've not come to a formal stance on this and I think it's probably very dependent on the structure, but it still bothers me when I'm writing proofs.
3. Finally, there's not much to say about it, but I try to always use fewer and less correctly. This is also something that most people wouldn't notice.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Another Set of Dreams
Seems that all I do interesting lately is have weird dreams. So I figured I'd share the dreams of my last two nights, well at least the parts that I can remember.
I really remember very little about this first dream cuz it was two days ago. So the first one I was at a swimm'n hole with my sister. When we got out of the water she screamed and said, "There's a humongous frog!!". And sure enough next to the swimm'n hole there was a mud hole and there was a humongous frog playing in the mud. The frog, when sitting, was about 2 ft tall and he had a really long neck. Anyway, when he saw me he came straight for me. He chased me a few times around the mud hole and finally he took a big jump at me and it startled me awake. Yes I did shake awake.
On to last night. My dad had started a new business. I think it was a car repair business. In any case he'd figured out a new ingenious way to life cars for repair. He showed me on his new business vehicle (which was a ghostbusters station wagon!!). First you would take several rolls of paper towels and attach them to the frame of the car. Then you'd put the rolls on a metal bar (that is the bar goes through the tubes for the rolls.) Then you'd roll up the paper towel rolls and the car would of course lift. His secret: the paper towels were extra-ply. So he took up shop in a large several story house boat. I also remember that children would come to his business for school field trips and he specifically showed me a bowl that he had in the bathroom in case the toilet stopped working...I'm not sure exactly how it was used, but ohh well. So then a friend and I went on the upper floors of his boat house to find his weed cellar (yes marijuana). The weed cellar had gotten into disrepair, but we could see the weed inside through the windows. So we decided to break the door open. When we did lots of rats started coming out. We had to smash the rats as the exited. But some of the rats had been mutated by the weed and they were growing weed on their backs, so we kept those rats after smashing them. But then one particular rat that I tried to smash had somehow been bitten by a radio active spider so when I lifted my foot back up he'd managed to attach his webbing to the bottom of my boot. He started climbing up his web toward my foot. Again I started awake shaking my foot in bed trying to get the rat off, until I realized that it was all a dream.
Does it mean something that I keep getting startled out of my sleep when being attacked by freak of nature animals? I don't know, but I do know that I seem to have weird dreams. Actually I remember another dream I had that I was surrounded by foot long ants. They didn't attack me or anything, but I remember the whole time wondering how much weight they could carry.
I really remember very little about this first dream cuz it was two days ago. So the first one I was at a swimm'n hole with my sister. When we got out of the water she screamed and said, "There's a humongous frog!!". And sure enough next to the swimm'n hole there was a mud hole and there was a humongous frog playing in the mud. The frog, when sitting, was about 2 ft tall and he had a really long neck. Anyway, when he saw me he came straight for me. He chased me a few times around the mud hole and finally he took a big jump at me and it startled me awake. Yes I did shake awake.
On to last night. My dad had started a new business. I think it was a car repair business. In any case he'd figured out a new ingenious way to life cars for repair. He showed me on his new business vehicle (which was a ghostbusters station wagon!!). First you would take several rolls of paper towels and attach them to the frame of the car. Then you'd put the rolls on a metal bar (that is the bar goes through the tubes for the rolls.) Then you'd roll up the paper towel rolls and the car would of course lift. His secret: the paper towels were extra-ply. So he took up shop in a large several story house boat. I also remember that children would come to his business for school field trips and he specifically showed me a bowl that he had in the bathroom in case the toilet stopped working...I'm not sure exactly how it was used, but ohh well. So then a friend and I went on the upper floors of his boat house to find his weed cellar (yes marijuana). The weed cellar had gotten into disrepair, but we could see the weed inside through the windows. So we decided to break the door open. When we did lots of rats started coming out. We had to smash the rats as the exited. But some of the rats had been mutated by the weed and they were growing weed on their backs, so we kept those rats after smashing them. But then one particular rat that I tried to smash had somehow been bitten by a radio active spider so when I lifted my foot back up he'd managed to attach his webbing to the bottom of my boot. He started climbing up his web toward my foot. Again I started awake shaking my foot in bed trying to get the rat off, until I realized that it was all a dream.
Does it mean something that I keep getting startled out of my sleep when being attacked by freak of nature animals? I don't know, but I do know that I seem to have weird dreams. Actually I remember another dream I had that I was surrounded by foot long ants. They didn't attack me or anything, but I remember the whole time wondering how much weight they could carry.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Harry Audio Potter
Out of curiousity I downloaded the first Harry Potter audiobook in French. I like it only for the fact that it's in French, but otherwise it is very disappointing. The dude's main reading voice is of course just fine. No problems nothing. The problem is his portrayal of many of the characters.
First of all there's Hagrid. He makes Hagrid sound like a complete and total imbecile. Now I'm not saying that Hagrid is supposed to be smart or anything, but he shouldn't take 20 seconds to spit out a few words. And furthermore he makes Hagrid talk something like, "Hagrid like carrot." (although that exactly is not necessarily possible in spoken french, it's of the same character as the way the reader reads Hagrid.) So in any case it makes it annoying to listen to him read Hagrid's parts.
The next voice is Mr Dursley. This one is not so bad as Hagrid's voice, but it is still less than satisfying. First of all, Mr. Dursley is ALWAYS irate, and always basically yelling. Now I can understand him not being happy when talking to Harry, but it does get kind of annoying. Secondly, he sounds more constipated than angry, so that pretty much makes it worse.
The last one I'm going to mention for now is Ron. It took about 20 pages for me to realize this but...HE GAVE RON A LISP!!! What the heck?!? 'Nuff said.
In any case, I'm a bit over a third the way through and I'll post again if I have something else to say about the audiobook.
First of all there's Hagrid. He makes Hagrid sound like a complete and total imbecile. Now I'm not saying that Hagrid is supposed to be smart or anything, but he shouldn't take 20 seconds to spit out a few words. And furthermore he makes Hagrid talk something like, "Hagrid like carrot." (although that exactly is not necessarily possible in spoken french, it's of the same character as the way the reader reads Hagrid.) So in any case it makes it annoying to listen to him read Hagrid's parts.
The next voice is Mr Dursley. This one is not so bad as Hagrid's voice, but it is still less than satisfying. First of all, Mr. Dursley is ALWAYS irate, and always basically yelling. Now I can understand him not being happy when talking to Harry, but it does get kind of annoying. Secondly, he sounds more constipated than angry, so that pretty much makes it worse.
The last one I'm going to mention for now is Ron. It took about 20 pages for me to realize this but...HE GAVE RON A LISP!!! What the heck?!? 'Nuff said.
In any case, I'm a bit over a third the way through and I'll post again if I have something else to say about the audiobook.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
nighttime
So last night I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. When I went back to bed, I laid on my left side. Turns out there was a pimple on my left hip and it hurt, so I had to roll over to the other side. Stupid pimple, I wanted to sleep on my left side.
In an open set containing that time period as a compact subset I had an interesting dream. Presumably, it was influenced by the fact that I'd listened to the first chapter of Harry Potter in French before going to bed. There was a land where everyone had magical abilities. Everyone had one ability that they could do exceptionally well. I think it was called their character ability or something like that. Everyone had magical abilities, but this "character ability" was a spell or activity that the person in question had an extra special nack at.
So in the course of growing up everyone would eventually figure out their character ability when something drastic would happen that would require them to use it. After having discovered their character ability a tattoo would form on the person's forearm representing their character ability. Typically, it was also representative of the character of the person. Like a very compassionate (and tall and elfish) friend of mine (who is not a real person) had healing as his/her character ability.
There was one person in particular who was special (not sure at this point if I played that character in the dream or not). This person's father had died saving his life (haha, different from HP because only one parent had died and the specialness was gotten from the father instead of a kinda mix of mother and Voldemort). In this process at least the father's ability was somehow transferred to the child. Now, I say "at least" because there was some question as to how many "character abilities" this person was endowed with. The tattoo wasn't stuck to a certain form like those of other people. It was constantly changing and shifting throughout the day. Somehow his mother knew exactly how many character abilities this person had, but wouldn't say. All I know is that it was somewhere between 3 and 22. Also there was some question as the the efficacy of deciding that the ability defined the man. This main character for example was plagued by the fact that "flaming axes" was one of his abilities (sounds stupid I know), which apparently is typically that of someone evil.
I really don't remember much more about it, except that at one point he was trying to catch a plane. He was running out of time so he used his "slow down time" ability. That wasn't working well enough, so he used his "speed me up" ability. And then he had to levitate over an avalanche, inside a mall. (I guess that means he has at least 4 abilities.) I really don't remember if he caught the plane.
In an open set containing that time period as a compact subset I had an interesting dream. Presumably, it was influenced by the fact that I'd listened to the first chapter of Harry Potter in French before going to bed. There was a land where everyone had magical abilities. Everyone had one ability that they could do exceptionally well. I think it was called their character ability or something like that. Everyone had magical abilities, but this "character ability" was a spell or activity that the person in question had an extra special nack at.
So in the course of growing up everyone would eventually figure out their character ability when something drastic would happen that would require them to use it. After having discovered their character ability a tattoo would form on the person's forearm representing their character ability. Typically, it was also representative of the character of the person. Like a very compassionate (and tall and elfish) friend of mine (who is not a real person) had healing as his/her character ability.
There was one person in particular who was special (not sure at this point if I played that character in the dream or not). This person's father had died saving his life (haha, different from HP because only one parent had died and the specialness was gotten from the father instead of a kinda mix of mother and Voldemort). In this process at least the father's ability was somehow transferred to the child. Now, I say "at least" because there was some question as to how many "character abilities" this person was endowed with. The tattoo wasn't stuck to a certain form like those of other people. It was constantly changing and shifting throughout the day. Somehow his mother knew exactly how many character abilities this person had, but wouldn't say. All I know is that it was somewhere between 3 and 22. Also there was some question as the the efficacy of deciding that the ability defined the man. This main character for example was plagued by the fact that "flaming axes" was one of his abilities (sounds stupid I know), which apparently is typically that of someone evil.
I really don't remember much more about it, except that at one point he was trying to catch a plane. He was running out of time so he used his "slow down time" ability. That wasn't working well enough, so he used his "speed me up" ability. And then he had to levitate over an avalanche, inside a mall. (I guess that means he has at least 4 abilities.) I really don't remember if he caught the plane.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Happy Flipping Holidays
I should start by saying that I really don't care how you wish happiness upon me between Thanksgiving and January 10. Hanukkah, Quanza, Kwanzaa, Halloween (ok, so that one would get you a funny look at the least) or Christmas; it doesn't affect the quality of my holiday whether you choose something I "celebrate" or not.
In the last few years there's been extensive talk of a "war on Christmas". Specifically, the idea is that the use of the phrase "Happy Holidays" means that you hate xmas (and xmas is NOT x'ing Christ out of Christmas either; x = χριστος = greek for christ). Of course, talking heads like Bill O'Reilly have been blabbing about it, for a while now. Recently I've noticed friends on AIM with status messages deriding the phrase "Happy Holidays". I think I also recently heard the head elder at my home church talking about the "war on Christmas." This idea is weird to me. I, of course, grew up in the backwoods of TN. Of course, there was only Christianity back there as far as I knew and December only contained Christmas (none of those holidays from other religions). Nonetheless I wasn't taught to hate "Happy Holidays". I always grew up believing that Happy Holidays means "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year; I'm just too lazy to say both of them." I actually do remember asking my mom what "Happy Holidays" means and her telling me that precisely (well the idea was the same). I've asked several of my friends (we'll say they represent millions of people) and they ALL said that until recently they just thought of "Happy Holidays" as "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year". It wasn't until the last couple years that I (we) found that it suddenly means all that stuff plus, "ohh and I hate Christmas".
It seems those near to me have started to be swayed to the dark side as well. Over Christmas break when I was in FL, I found that even my dad and step-mom had gotten on the anti-Happy Holidays bandwagon. Now they're typically dyed in the wool liberals, but somehow they didn't get the memo that liberals are fine with the phrase "Happy Holidays". Well, that or they are free thinkers :), which is cool. In any case my dad suddenly got angry at the idea that we should say "Happy Holidays". Out of nowhere he said that people should just get over it if someone says "Merry Christmas" to them. I personally think it's just a stupid issue all together, even though I most likely wouldn't wish a Jew/Muslim/other a Merry Christmas (although I did recently ask a non-Christmas celebrating Christian how her Christmas was and she said she doesn't celebrate Christmas, although she went to Kentucky with a bunch of other people to NOT celebrate Christmas...whatever that means.) So I told him it really didn't bother me. Then he moved on to the other/related hot button issue. "And I think that people should be ok with the 10 commandments. I mean anyway, they are laws in America nonetheless."
This was interesting, because Aneta, Stefan and I were all there and we all see this issue pretty much eye to eye. So we basically all said, that there are really only two commandments that I would say are American laws: Don't kill, Don't steal. There's an argument that: don't commit adultery and don't lie are laws. The former really isn't enforced and the latter is only a law in very special cases. So I'd give it 20% are laws and at most 30%, which really isn't a good average to say that our laws are based on them.
It seems that this "Happy Holidays" has been given a different meaning over time, maybe by the pro-"Merry Christmas" crowd, maybe by the pro-"Include Everybody" crowd. In any case, it just seems silly to me to care. On the other hand, it really seems that people are stretching reality when it comes to the ten commandments. Don't get me wrong; I like to think that I'm a commandment keeping Christian and all. Just don't quite see why I should try to change history to support my views. Anyway, I'm done writing and I hope your holidays were unhappy.
In the last few years there's been extensive talk of a "war on Christmas". Specifically, the idea is that the use of the phrase "Happy Holidays" means that you hate xmas (and xmas is NOT x'ing Christ out of Christmas either; x = χριστος = greek for christ). Of course, talking heads like Bill O'Reilly have been blabbing about it, for a while now. Recently I've noticed friends on AIM with status messages deriding the phrase "Happy Holidays". I think I also recently heard the head elder at my home church talking about the "war on Christmas." This idea is weird to me. I, of course, grew up in the backwoods of TN. Of course, there was only Christianity back there as far as I knew and December only contained Christmas (none of those holidays from other religions). Nonetheless I wasn't taught to hate "Happy Holidays". I always grew up believing that Happy Holidays means "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year; I'm just too lazy to say both of them." I actually do remember asking my mom what "Happy Holidays" means and her telling me that precisely (well the idea was the same). I've asked several of my friends (we'll say they represent millions of people) and they ALL said that until recently they just thought of "Happy Holidays" as "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year". It wasn't until the last couple years that I (we) found that it suddenly means all that stuff plus, "ohh and I hate Christmas".
It seems those near to me have started to be swayed to the dark side as well. Over Christmas break when I was in FL, I found that even my dad and step-mom had gotten on the anti-Happy Holidays bandwagon. Now they're typically dyed in the wool liberals, but somehow they didn't get the memo that liberals are fine with the phrase "Happy Holidays". Well, that or they are free thinkers :), which is cool. In any case my dad suddenly got angry at the idea that we should say "Happy Holidays". Out of nowhere he said that people should just get over it if someone says "Merry Christmas" to them. I personally think it's just a stupid issue all together, even though I most likely wouldn't wish a Jew/Muslim/other a Merry Christmas (although I did recently ask a non-Christmas celebrating Christian how her Christmas was and she said she doesn't celebrate Christmas, although she went to Kentucky with a bunch of other people to NOT celebrate Christmas...whatever that means.) So I told him it really didn't bother me. Then he moved on to the other/related hot button issue. "And I think that people should be ok with the 10 commandments. I mean anyway, they are laws in America nonetheless."
This was interesting, because Aneta, Stefan and I were all there and we all see this issue pretty much eye to eye. So we basically all said, that there are really only two commandments that I would say are American laws: Don't kill, Don't steal. There's an argument that: don't commit adultery and don't lie are laws. The former really isn't enforced and the latter is only a law in very special cases. So I'd give it 20% are laws and at most 30%, which really isn't a good average to say that our laws are based on them.
It seems that this "Happy Holidays" has been given a different meaning over time, maybe by the pro-"Merry Christmas" crowd, maybe by the pro-"Include Everybody" crowd. In any case, it just seems silly to me to care. On the other hand, it really seems that people are stretching reality when it comes to the ten commandments. Don't get me wrong; I like to think that I'm a commandment keeping Christian and all. Just don't quite see why I should try to change history to support my views. Anyway, I'm done writing and I hope your holidays were unhappy.
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