TOADY
Taking place right now is an event to which I have an invitation. However, I’m sitting on my folded-out couch under a duvet with my unopened linguistics textbook mentally emotionally preparing for my exam tomorrow.
One Tuesday night relatively recently, I sent the following text to a special friend:
Is it bad if I can’t eat without having a glass of wine?
(I’d just baked a cake and drank even more wine than I ate raw mixture.) It was followed up with a call from said friend begging me to join him at a bar, where his fling was having his moving-to-Australia-and-never-coming-back party. So I joined him. I mean, who wouldn’t, right?
Several amusing things happened which I will note in passing for my own bitter amusement:
- The chap who was leaving insisted on pashing my friend who made frightened eyes at me (I was behind the pasher and this in the pashee’s line of sight) and then began to flail wildly while managing to convey to the pasher that he was just hugging him eagerly.
- Friend was desperate for some hash browns so we went to McDonald’s where he said to me I CAN’T TALK YOU HAVE TO BUY THEM! I went to the counter behind which someone I often see in dreams was standing and said IS IT TOO EARLY FOR HASH BROWNS being very aware that I was talking inappropriately loudly but having no ability to dampen my voxvolume. I spilled a pile of very small change on the counter and they said no breakfast closed fourteen hours ago. Friend mumbled filetofish and I said WHAT and he replied FILETOFISH. I said CAN I PLEASE HAVE ONE OF THEM (pointing to the bit on the sign above the counter where it had a small picture of a Filet O’Fish). They seemed to understand what I wanted. I quietly sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ while they made it and then we left.
- Ourside McDonald’s appeared a shopping trolley. Naturally, friend climbed into it. I pushed him along while he et his Filer O’Fish. He insisted on swapping roles which we then did.
- In the trolley he had the bright idea to visit Wellington’s glor-ious sauna Checkmate. I thought that would be all larky so we went there by trolley. We entered and at the, er, box office there was a man with a TREMENDOUS moustache. Think:
only less Dutch and more leather. Friend asks him HOW MUCHOS and he replies TWENTY EACH. It is at this point that I begin experiencing severe doubts as to the wisdom of this escapade - as friend was relying on me for the money. I said HOW MANY PEOPLES R IN THER and the handlebar said one. And he’s just leaving. We edged towards the door and escaped back onto the street. - After this we ran down an alley and took a photo of ourselves. At my concern of who might be down this dark barricaded-off alley, friend replied DON’T WORRY WE BOTH KNOW HOW TO GET RID OF RAPISTS. GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT AND TAKE THEIR CREDIT CARDS.
- Finally going home, friend abruptly jumped into a thorny bush. Repeatedly.
- After I managed to rescue him from his impulsivity, we continued walking up through the streets of Mount Victoria when he decided (without articulating his intentions) to take some envelopes out of people’s mailboxes. I thought he was going to swap them around and bamboozle their owners, but - no - he collected them and then started opening them. I tried to make him stop but WHO AM I TO BLOW AGAINST THE WIND?!
So I think I can finish digressing. Only the last point will be relevant here. One of the stolen envelopes had the Spanish ambassador’s seal on it. It was an invitation to <!— /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”“; margin-top:0mm; margin-right:0mm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0mm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} —> la recepción de los Reyes de España at the Hotel Intercontinental this afternoon. And I’m not there. And I’ve spent this whole post trying to articulate why and I still can’t. WHY AM I NOT WITH THE SPANSH QUEEN?! SHE’S FREAKING FABOO!
Still I sit and pretend to study for my exam tomorrow which I am poised to fail …
Lecteur or Lectured?
Having left my last day of class unattended on Friday, I’ve proceded to live a life of complete fabulosity.
I stayed in bed (in the sun, no less) all day with these things three:
- E.M. Forster
- leftover mulled wine
- Dean Martin
Surely the best combination. EVER. I punctuated Howard’s End with trimming my nails (yes, all twenty) - with the wine and Dino still, but also with the addition of my Raybans and a window open onto the sunny street. All of this, needless to say, in my skimpy new MacPherson Men’s hot pink trunks.
Freedom!
Giovanni Bellini. Portrait of Doge Loredano.
On my wall …
Another impulse drunk buy off trademe.
Still, pleased (quite a fan of Bellini).
I bid on these on trademe when I was drunk.
And won.
They look even better on - très cute.
If you can’t tell, they’re grey loaferoids with maroon trim around the tongue. You might just see me in these on the town!
Got milk?
Tomorrow I’m going to Moore Wilson’s and getting a LOT of milk.
I’m going to make feta and paneer.
I’m also going to get a litre of double cream and make it into … fresh butter!!
Those desirous of a heart attack need only apply.
For dinner, I’m going to recreate the DELECTABLE Lebanese spinach pastries they make at Phoenician Felafel down by Deluxe/The Embassy. Olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, smoked Maldon sea salt, freshly-cracked black pepper and spinach leaves encased in fresh Middle-Eastern pastry … Really, you’re welcome to stop by. Going to bake this too.
Will keep you posted …
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This is quiiite interesting. I get pissed off when people moan about split infinitives etc. - when a language has multiple ways of expressing something intelligibly it has more possibilities for beauty than it would otherwise. Ambiguity makes me hard.
At this point, arguments in LING 211 last year about “Spanish American history teacher” spring to mind…
or:
or:
?
You be the judge.
Anyway, it brings up an ongoing problem in my life - I love language but I don’t want to prescribe how it should be used based on my own preferences. I do, however, value the incredible shades of meaning each language offers - so I can’t help but wince when variation and ambiguity are removed from languages. Which I why I don’t like expressions like “wellness” which I see as redundant and a bit perverted - but at the same time having no problem with double negatives (of which my syntax lecturer invariably manages to give examples relating to crime … “I didn’t do nothin’”, “I don’t know nothin’ about no killin’” [so-called African-American Vernacular English isn’t just spoken by murderers. Oh, wait, it is, because all blacks are criminals.]). Sorry about that horribly-nested sentence.
So I suppose I can say that I don’t value correctness - what dictionaries and grammar/usage guides prescribe - but I do value expressiveness - the degree, range and qualities of meaning (or lack thereof) that can be conveyed by language. I don’t like foods being called “healthy” when they’re (subjectively - though that’s irrelevant in a post about linguistic prescriptivism, maybe another day when I write about public health or eating disorders) considered to be healthful. But I’m not going to write to the Listener and ask “what’s happened to the Queen’s English?” over it. If anything, language’s most valuable quality is that it is dynamic. I don’t want to be conservative about it, but I don’t want to be progressive. Any attempt in either direction is futile (yes, I’m talking to you, Académie française); language evolves and not in any Lamarckian way - we are the substrate upon which this evolution acts, not the things that evolve.
Keep on speaking,
A
A man’s library is a sort of harem.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Conduct of Life. 1860
IT IS A grave day when something in which you have trusted for your whole life is revealed for the sham it is. That day is hammer in the nail of the Enlightenment’s coffin, the triumph of postmodernism, W.H. Auden’s ‘Stop all the clocks’ - though trite - ringing true.
And today, for me, is that day. After dragging myself out of my hangover and bed, I managed to make it up the hill through the distressingly wet rain to the university library. With a syntax assignment due tomorrow, it’s not the first time I’ve been there looking for grammars of obscure languages over the last few days.
I spent all of Wednesday there, unable to find a single language for which there was a grammar accounting for ordering of elements inside the noun phrase. (Ignore the specifics and bear with me.) I then went to band practice which lacked a key member thanks to prolonged sickness so ginned up and won a game of Risk. Possibly for the first time in my life.
I returned to the library on Thursday, almost had all the information I needed (on Basque) but discovered the world offers no evidence of where numerals go with respect to adjectives (in Basque). Despairing, I headed off to work. That night I even tried to find information on the internet, the last bastion of hope for me finishing the assignment. No dice, somehow.
Friday I worked. Then danced.
Saturday I felt sick. Then danced. Then got stuck on facebook.
So today, being Sunday, I realised it’s my last chance not to fail the paper in question. I, as I mentioned, got up the wet hill with most of its moisture precipitating onto your humble narrator. About an hour before the library was scheduled to shut, I at last found what I needed. A grammar of Danish which was neither too Chomskyan and inutile nor too simplistic, geared towards those learning the language. I got all the data I needed about this arbitrarily-chosen language. Realising then that I had only fifteen minutes to go before the library shut, I frantically consulted Greenberg to find another SVO language with which to compare Danish. I found a contender in the library catalogue and, praise be, Bukiyip had the perfect book on its divine grammar.
I had just headed back to my desk to type up nonsense sentences to offer Liz Pearce as examples when a library official told me that the library was closing through the noise emanating from her iPod, headphones firmly lodged in her ears. I asked her if the Issues desk was still open and she looked as though I’d asked her for her number. She responded, “Uggggh I don’t know that kind of information”. At any rate, I packed up my things and hastened downstairs to find all the lights off at the main desk. Having the utmost respect for libraries prevented me from simply walking out with its grammars, so I asked if I could just leave my name and ID card with them and return in the morning to issue the books properly. I was screeched at by someone who was apparently being waited upon by a mysterious entity called “Taxis” which was repeatedly invoked as though it were a divine power. Angrily they insisted on putting the books behind the shelf for me to pick up within twenty-four hours. Downcast, I trudged outside, the rain curdling my hair product.
Some harem.
This is me and this is my bread.
Consider this ma vie en pan - you’re welcome to join the journey.
