Just found this tucked away in my email archive

This is a response to an email I received from a USC student who was interested in applying to study abroad at Kent in 2006. I just stumbled across it and figured I'd share. Enjoy.

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Dear kristen,
I am an anthropology major here at USC. I am thinking about studying at the University of Kent for my study abroad. I found your name listed on the study abroad office’s virtual advising network. I was hoping to ask you some questions about your time in England.
Did you enjoy studying in Canterbury? What was the university like? Was it easy for you to find your way around campus? What were the classes like? Was it expensive to study at the University of Kent? Did you live in a dorm? How did you find the people there? Were they friendly? What did you like to do on and off campus? How was the weather in Canterbury? Would you ever like to go back there again one day?
I would really like to know what you thought about the University of Kent and England. It will help me to make up my mind. Thank you so much for your time.
A----

show details 6/30/06

Hey A----,

You may want to take a deep breath and make a sandwich before you start reading--i tend to be a bit verbose in my praises of Kent. My year there was hands-down the best year of my life thus far, and I'd recommend it to anyone with enough guts to get on the plane. That said, i'm also aware that studying abroad is not for everyone, and some people have a seriously lousy, homesick, put-upon, offended time in the UK. It really depends on how you approach it.

Let me first cover my ass by stating clearly and directly that people are going to dislike you for being American. I've had many friends study abroad and come home screaming and yelling that they didn't make a single friend abroad because the moment they opened their mouth they alienated people with their accent. Nobody, in any country, likes Americans these days, so travel with that in mind. (Its not just the Bush administration's fault, though they've certainly helped. Americans have a penchant for being loud, bossy, impatient, rude, and ignorant in foreign countries, and if you pair that with our reputation for having money and power you'll breed a resentment streak a continent wide.) The easiest way to avoid the evil eye from your classmates is to say "i didn't vote for Bush." (even if you did--if you want to make any friends, do not associate yourself with the Republican party, support for the Iraqi war, or Christianity).

On with the answers to your questions:

I Loved Canterbury. The town is adorable--its an ancient walled, moated city with cobbled streets and more historic buildings than you can shake a stick at. Your Kent student ID card will get you into the cathedral for free at any time, and its always worth a wander. (Tourists have to pay anywhere from 8-13 pounds for admission and tours except during services) Its also crisscrossed with parks and paths that are so pretty you can't avoid picnicking in them. The town is always packed with tourists and shoppers, particularly around Christmas. C-town's proximity to Dover allows it to be a very inexpensive field trip destination for French and German school groups, so you'll do well to avoid large groups of children with giant backpacks. (There are hourly ferries from the Port of Dover to Calais, France, and foot passage costs 7 to 11 pounds. Always good for a booze cruise--beer and wine are much cheaper in France! And its only a 20-minute train ride there from central Canterbury.)

Canterbury has more bars and restaurants within its city limits than there are days in the year. Most of them are far out of the average uni student's budget, but there are a few that are worth your while. I recommend the Old Buttermarket (in the square across from the entrance to the cathedral) and the Cherry Tree (on a side road off the high street--its just a little ways down from Methven's bookstore on the right. the canterbury whole foods store is visible at the end.) Cherry tree has happy hour every day from 5-8--most pints are 2 quid! (best deal you'll find off campus.) It is also a haven for overpriced designer shops and boutiques (hence the Christmas shoppers) so if you want to shop, be sure to save up for a couple of years.

Erm...where was i. Canterbury's night life is so small its laughable. All bars close at 11pm, and the city's 4 private clubs stay open until 2am but have a cover. What most uni kids do is drink at the bars until closing, then stumble home and keep it going there until the neighbors call the police. So if you like the club scene you're going to be disappointed.

All university buildings are hideous at Kent. I think its actually a requirement written into the school's charter. The ugliest buildings by far are Eliot and Rutherford colleges (they're mirror images of each other), though Darwin runs a close second, and wins the "most contorted and difficult to navigate" award. The campus is layed out very simply and in a linear fashion, but the academic buildings resemble Escher drawings when it comes to getting around them. Eliot and Rutherford in particular are famous for having floors halfway between other floors, stairways that lead to nowhere, hallways interrupted by courtyards, and no semblance of a coherent room numbering system. The only times i've gone into Keynes college were to go to the bar on the main floor so i haven't really looked around the rest of it.

The university is by itself at the top of a big hill--it is a good mile's walk to town, so there's no non-university buildings around. The view from the library is stunning! The campus is very self-contained--you actually don't have to go to town ever if you don't want to (though where's the fun in that?). The school has 2 restaurants, 9 bars, a nightclub, 2 small grocery stores, a theater (for touring shows and movies), playing fields, and religious centers for students (the catholic student center has its own bar). Sports are not a big deal--most are just intramurals and never compete outside of town. The biggest student gatherings are at the Venue (the nightclub) on weekends and Pound-A-Pint night at Woody's bar in Parkwood.

Concerning housing...this is where it gets confusing. Kent offers two styles of housing: catered and self-catered. (i.e. we feed you or you feed you.) Catered housing is dorm-style in one of the four colleges, or self-contained school units. Darwin, Rutherford, Eliot, and Keynes colleges are massive, ugly buildings that contain classrooms, bedrooms, department offices, restaurants, ballrooms, bars, courtyards, theaters, lecture halls, lounges, shops, and game rooms. I've actually known students to not leave their college for weeks on end. Anyway, in these situations, you generally live on a hall in a small bedroom by yourself and share a potty and a shower with 5-6 other people. You have a sink in your bedroom. The residence hallways have doors at each end to block out some of the noise from the rest of the building--not that it matters 'cos they're party central 24/7. Residence in the colleges includes breakfast and lunch every day in the central ballroom, though breakfast is very early in the morning and the food is...urgh. can we say rubbery eggs?

The other housing option is self-catered, which is what I did. Self-catered accommodation is in a large community of townhouses about a half mile from the center of campus. (its a pleasant 10 minute walk down a very nice, well-lit path. the only time it sucks is when the paths get icy.) The area is called Parkwood, and the townhouses have 5 or 6 bedrooms and are arranged into courts of anywhere from 10 to 20 houses. Everyone gets their own bedroom (the idea of shared accommodation is rather foreign to the English) and the 5 bedroom houses have a full kitchen, powder room downstairs, and potty, shower, and sink upstairs. The six bedroom houses have a really big kitchen and dining room, potty and shower downstairs and up, and sinks in each bedroom. (I lived in a 5 br--it was a bit tight but nice.) the residents are responsible for keeping their bedrooms clean, though housekeeping comes through weekly to mop the common areas, clean toilets, and replace tp. The stoves are gas, which rocks, but the ovens are gas too, which sucks. just so you know.

There's a third option available now, which is a couple of big multi-storey buildings just on the edge of Parkwood which have suites, but i really don't know anything about them because they were being built while i was there. More info can be found at www.kent.ac.uk/hospitality.

Near the center of Parkwood is a complex which houses a grocery store, a laundromat, a housing desk (staffed with nice people who'll sell you laundry tokens when the dispenser breaks) and Woody's bar--the best (and cheapest) bar on campus.

Keep in mind that at Kent, as with most British schools, university accommodation is offered to freshers (first years) and erasmus students only. Second years and beyond live in houses all over town, though many are in a large community of townhouses about a mile off campus.

You are likely to find that all of your neighbors are really, really immature--even compared to American freshmen. There are reasons for this, most notably the fact that many Kent students have spent their entire youth education in same-sex schools. While this is not necessarily the case outside of the Southeast, be aware that Kent is a snotty rich kid uni and many of them went to very expensive grammar schools. Hence a lot of people will act like they've never seen someone of the opposite sex before and get really stupid. Disease transfer is rampant throughout the first semester. Be Careful.

Classes. Ah, class. The least significant part of my study abroad experience.

Each department behaves differently, and as I majored in theatre i doubt what I have to say will bear any relation to your experience. But across the board there are certain tendencies--a full courseload is 120 hours over three trimesters. Most classes will be worth either 15 or 30 hours, though i've heard that varies when you get into the sciences. The first two trimesters are spent in class, and the third is for exams. The theatre department did not offer any classes below 30 hours, so it meant that i had 2 classes (modules) each term. yeah. 2. But i had at least 4 class meetings (classes) a week as each module had both a lecture and a seminar. The seminars were the best part, hands-down, as you really get to discuss the course material with your teacher and a small group of classmates and debate or even bicker about how you feel about it. ALWAYS BE PREPARED FOR YOUR SEMINARS.

My grades in the lecture/seminar classes came from one or two short papers (2500 words), one dissertation (5,000 words), one presentation (at least half an hour including questions and discussion--you basically teach a class on your subject matter and lead the seminar), and participation/attendance. Note i did not include exams in that. The theatre department did not have exams. I actually had 6 entire weeks free to fiddle around and have a good time. This is, unfortunately, not the case for other departments.

My classes second semester were weirder--whereas first semester each lecture was one hour and each seminar two hours, second semester i had one class that met two hours on monday without the professor to prepare a performance and seminar for tuesday. The tuesday class was 5 hours long and included presentation, lecture, seminar, performance, discussion thereof, and often a film of the next week's play. (it was Modern European Theatre 2: Beyond Naturalism. DO NOT TAKE THIS COURSE.) The other class that term was a 4-hour acting class, but it was fun.

The classes have less, but harder work than American classes. you are on your own for a lot of it--not only acquiring texts from the library and reading them, but for finding research materials and preparing your presentations. Nothing is spoon-fed to you, and grading is tough. Moreover, every paper and exam is graded twice--both by your professor and an external grading board, which checks for plagiarism and cheating. Nobody earns a grade above an 80--they don't believe in perfection, or anything near it. But a 70 is an excellent grade.

A professor can make or break a class--i had two excellent professors, one sucky professor, and one bitch who artificially lowered my grade because she didn't like Americans. There's no excusing that. The sucky professor knew his stuff but he wasn't nice and tore everyone apart for their commentary, even when the student was right. Oh well. I learned a lot, i did a lot of research and a Whole lotta writing, but i didn't really care about the classroom. I made b's (known in the UK as a 2.1 or a 2.2--might i suggest you google the UK grading system? its a nightmare.) but they transferred back to USC as "pass" and did not affect my gpa.

The easiest and best way to meet people is to go to the campus bars. England is a drinking culture, so if you don't drink for whatever reason, people are going to think you're weird. They drink, but second years and up drink responsibly--it looks bad to get plastered too. Alcohol is not put on a pedestal in the UK--its consumption is permitted and encouraged among college students--so people are less inclined to abuse it the way we do here. My favorite drink at Woodys was the Snakebite--it is half cheap lager, half cheap cider, with a shot of blackcurrant syrup thrown in. Very pink, but yummy (though a lot of people hate it. just try it once!)
Without alcohol, most people are not particularly willing to talk to strangers. It is up to you to strike up the conversation, though once you do, chances are they'll be more than ready to talk to you for days. I made a lot of friends just by being genial and southern--it surprised a lot of my friends to see the number of folks who would wave and say hi to me every time i walked to class. Don't act like you're afraid of the locals--they can smell fear. Just be chill--don't apologise for being American, but don't gloat about it either. The last thing anyone wants to hear is "well its better in 'Merica 'cos..." If they see that you're willing to accept their culture for what it is, they'll be more likely to accept you.

Native Kentish folk tend to be more friendly and open than Londoners, who are trained from early childhood to expect anyone who strikes up a conversation with them to be a mugger or sex offender. Bar talk again is easiest.

I actually saved money when i went to Kent--the housing is cheaper! USC has an arrangement with UKC in which you pay tuition to USC (if you're in-state it means you can keep your life scholarship) and housing to Kent, and their exchangers do the same. When i was there the pound was worth $1.93- 2.00, so the cost of living was massive, but i budgeted carefully and came back broke, but not in debt. (I earned about $6,000 the summer before so i had that, LIFE, and my stafford loan to support me.) A few tips for not going broke:

don't buy textbooks if possible--check them out of the library
don't take the bus into town--its a very nice walk
shop at Tesco instead of Marks and Spencer (groceries)
pick a day or two for drinking each week
take out cash once a week and try not to use your debit
if you shop for clothes or other stuff, shop outside of Canterbury.
buy electronics in america!

Oh, random side note--there is a path that leads from Parkwood all the way to Whitstable (six miles--whitstable is on the water) its a BEAUTIFUL walk and was one of my favorite things to do on slow days with friends.
Canterbury is a 1-hour train ride from London (2 hour by coach (bus) but half the price). I dated a guy who's family lived in London, and got to spend three weeks with them over spring break (christmas and spring breaks are both a month). It really is a cool city to visit, though not really a great place to live. too crowded for my tastes.

Weather. umm. If you get seasonal depression, might i suggest the south of France? England is routinely gray. You get the odd pretty day in spring and summer, but don't expect anything besides gray, dismal, rainy weather. On the plus side, though, it doesn't get insanely hot or cold, and we got a foot of snow three times, to everyone's enjoyment!

Would i go back? I've been trying to get back there for a year now, but scheduling and finances are rather prohibitive. I dream of Canterbury still--i didn't want to come home. I still don't want to be home. One year there and i'm trying to become a citizen. The biggest draw is the people--they're typically very liberal, very chill, and very secular. I like that in a culture, though USC students have gone over there and wanted nothing more to come home for those exact three reasons. They have no patience for prejudice against anybody (in response to American congressional debate over homosexual marriage, Ireland went and formally legalized it) and they can respect diversity among people and cultures without cramming it down your throat, and their government is forced by the people to use funding responsibly and reasonably.

I helped a girl get over to Kent for this past semester--she hated everything about it. She didn't make any friends because she refused to go to bars, studied too much, and convinced herself it was her calling in life to witness the Bible to the crazy heathens of the UK. Most people rejected her solidly, and told her why. After three months of this policy her dad finally told her to loosen up and try doing as the romans do. Not only did she start to have fun, but people started to want to be around her. By the time it was time to come home, she didn't want to either.

Okay, sorry, i know this is long. take it in stages. There's a lot of worthwhile information cloaked in opinion--i can't write any other way.

Hope this has been useful! Let me know if/when you have any other questions or would like to see photographs. I have about 1,000 of canterbury, my social life, london, Paris, Barcelona, and campus.

Regards,
Kristen

Quotation mark "abuse"

What is with the anti-freedom camp these days that makes them feel it is appropriate to put quotation marks around every word they find objectionable? "Gay" is the new homosexual. "Rights" is the new...rights? These numbnuts are so intent on claiming that other legal Americans don't deserve equal protection under the law that they will suggest that the word right may be used ironically. That's not funny. It's weird. I've actually seen the sentence ""gays" believe they "deserve" the "right" to same-sex "marriage"" on an official statement, along with "it is not "bullying" for my child to encourage your "gay" child to seek the path of righteousness."

I think your "grammar" is "gross".

It is also amusing that they've named their movement "pro-family" which is another can of douche. How can someone who is pro-family impede others in their attempts to have...a family? I'm pretty sure the "gays" are the "pro-family" side of this debate, and you, friends, are in the "anti-equality" trench. Or how about "pro-theocracy" if you've gotta be pro-something? Too much of a mouthful? Pro-hate? Pro-bigotry? Pro-white-wealthy-fundie-closeted-men-and-subjugated-sexually-repressed-women?

This is just another "grievous abuse of language" to go along with their gun-waving pro-life, union-busting pro-democracy, and consenting to job, service, and benefit losses while paying more in taxes so the aristocracy can maintain their tax cuts pro-liberty catch phrases. Think, please, before you give yourself a misnomer.

An Open Tutorial for Letter-Writers

I would like to offer a few words of advice to people who work for banks, utility companies, tax offices, and other groups that regularly send out bills, statements, invoices, and other letters.

There are 3 titles in the English language for women who are neither doctors, members of the clergy, nor royalty. They are Mrs. (mis-sus), Ms. (miz), and Miss (miss). They have three distinct pronunciations and three distinct uses.

Mrs. is used to address women who are married or widowed and use their spouse's last name. It indicates that a woman has chosen to drop or move the surname of her birth from her legal name.

Miss is used to address girls who are not only not married, but are under the age of 16. In years past it was also used in regard to spinsters, but over the past century this has become rude. Unless specifically requested or signed by the woman in question, Miss is a diminutive term for children or women who are significantly younger than you.

Ms. is used to address women you don't know, or whose marital status and age are irrelevant to the content of your letter. All it indicates is that you acknowledge (or believe) the recipient is female.

Many single women of voting age in English-speaking countries do not appreciate being called Miss. They may tolerate it from the elderly or members of their church or family, but it is not appropriate or acceptable to refer to anyone as a Miss in a business-related letter.

Why, you ask? Why would a woman be offended if you pointed out she was single and young in her electric bill? Let's think a moment. It is currently the year 2010. Only in the past 150 years of recorded history (there's quite a bit more than that on file) have any women had the right to handle their own property and finances. Before that women's land, investments, and even wages were automatically transferred to her husband upon their marriage. Before That, women didn't have the right to own any property or receive any wages, and all finances regarding her went straight from her father to her husband upon their marriage. Denying ownership and stewardship to women been a huge component of our legal subordination for thousands of years.

As of now, in all matters relating to business, unless a mortgage payer has decided to guarantee her repayments against the value of a relative's fiscal holdings, she is dealt with not as a wife or daughter but as a customer. Her age and marital status are utterly irrelevant. She does not need any guarantee or permission from a man to borrow, loan, buy, or earn anything.

That said, any woman you meet can tell you stories about dealing with men who ignore or dislike that. Several times I have been told by a workman that he'll only discuss repairs and matters of payment with the "man of the house." I've even replied to this with "I am the responsible party, you can talk to me." and been told no, have him call. (On one memorable occasion, I was living in a university residence and was told this by an on-campus maintenance guy.) Some of these terse conversations have actually ended with the grunt excusing himself with the phrase, "you just give this invoice to your daddy, Miss." or "just let your husband know, ma'am."

Miss is a condescending and insulting term. It suggests you think that a woman is not as wise, experienced, or capable as you. If you're 90, fair enough. You can even get away with calling a 30-year old bachelor 'little master.' But for the rest of us, save it for children. Mrs. is just as bad with strangers--you don't know me. You don't know anything about me.

The fact that a woman has a different name from the man or woman she lives with says nothing about her relationship to him or her. They could be married. They could be room-mates. They could be siblings. They could be lesbians. She could be married to someone else. She could be 80. She could be your mom. As long as she doesn't default on her payments, her age and who she's bonking don't mean a thing to your business relationship.

Gas company, electric company, water company, bank... I wrote Ms. on your forms. But ALL OF YOU BACKWARD, PATERNALISTIC, 19TH CENTURY YAHOOS WITH GERIATRIC CORPORATE POLICIES have sent bills and statements to someone named MISS G. If I wanted to be called MISS, I would have told you I was called MISS. But I didn't. Because I'm not. Because I find it demeaning. I told you the exact opposite. I've SENT YOU LETTERS informing you that I am not MISS. And still you insist. Why? You don't need to know my age or marital status. Why do you give a shit? You don't call Ben 'Master' or 'Son'--why do you think it's okay to talk the fuck down to me?

MS is the girl equivalent of MR. It means you are someone. Just someone. Not a member of a partnership, not a kid, not an old person, not a dependent, not anyone you should treat differently from anyone else. I insist upon calling every woman I contact Ms unless she prefers a different honorific. If she wants to be called Mrs. I'm not going to stop her. If she wants to be called Miss I may look at her funny but that's her right. My grandma still likes to be called Mrs. Kenneth G, and while I find that disgustingly offensive, it makes her happy. So great.

I just want to be addressed as a face-value person. Men are lucky--they're called Mr. Surname from the day they're born. I was born and always will be Ms.Me. Leave it at that.

Sometimes a lawnmower is just a lawnmower

I find people who use brand names to refer to generic products, such as Hoover instead of vacuum cleaner or Crosby in place of cable clip, annoying. I don't really know why, but I'd imagine it is in some way related to my hatred for all forms of advertising. I'd much rather not have specific manufacturers referred to as though they are the primary or best example of a particular type of product. Kleenex is not the best brand of facial tissue, but when you ask your neighbor to pick up a box of them at the grocery store while they're out, you can bet that they will bring back a box of the established brand. Even if by "Kleenex" you meant Puffs.

Interestingly, I've had this low-level loathing as long as I can rememeber. I distinctly recall feeling it during a vocabulary lesson in the second grade. On Mondays Mrs. Popp would get one of those giant lined sheets of paper and clip it to the chalkboard with industrial-strength magnets and ask us to come up with at least 20 words at least 5 letters long that started with the same letter. The trick was we would have to come up with words who's second letters were all different--if we already had "apple" on the board, "aperture" would be rejected. We would try, most weeks, to get through most of the alphabet. When we came across letter pairings that didn't really work in English, for example xk, cd, sr, or mf, we would stop and talk about it (and usually giggle and try to pronounce the impossible syllables.) The week I recall so vividly was O week. We got to OX, and I knew it. The best word was Oxygen. I knew what it was, I knew how to spell it, and I even knew that through some sort of voodoo trees made it. I held a lungful of the stuff and waved my hand around like a lunatic trying to get my teacher's attention--partly because I thought it was a good word, but mostly because I wanted to remind her of how smart I was (just like I did every vocabulary day).

But alas. She picked Laura, who's hand was also in the air and who's reputation for being an imbecile was well known. Her suggestion for the vocabulary board? "Oxycute."

For readers who may not remember early-90's American tv ads, "Oxycute 'em" was (and may still be, I don't know) the catch phrase for Oxy astringent pads' marketing campaign, and a reminder that you should use their product to help clear up acne.

Mrs. Popp looked befuddled. "I'm sorry, I don't think that's a word."

"No, Oxycute. Like on TV. It means "get rid of zits." replied Laura. The heavy, already-pubescent 9 year old had a smattering of them near her temples to go along with her kids' shampoo-immune hair grease. Had I been older than 7 at the time I might have understood and sympathized that she was a clear victim of poverty in the American South. Like all of us she drank hormone-laced milk which screwed up her pituitary gland, but she also carried junk food lunches--chips, candy, coca-cola, cookies and string cheese--every day, a trend that at the time didn't send up as many red flags in teachers' minds as it should have. Her health and maturity were not being attended to, most of her words and phrases came from TV, she was kind-of dirty, she packed her own lunch of absolute garbage--she was a neglected child. Now I feel bad for her upbringing and hope she's doing something with her life that she feels proud of. At the time I thought she was stupid.

My mouth shot off, before I could stop it. "That's a nonsense word from a commercial. It's not real." Her glance was daggers, but quite a few of the other children laughed.

Mrs. Popp tried to salvage what she could of the situation. "I don't know the term, I'm sorry, but you said it means 'to get rid of zits'? Like, pimples?" We all laughed again at the word 'pimple.'

"Yeah, y'know, like Oxy pads." retorted Laura, determined to save face if she could.

"I think that's a proper noun." said Mrs. Popp, not unkindly. "Remember, our vocabulary words can be people, places, and things, but not specific people, places, and things. Anyone else?" My arm flew into the air again. The god-like second grade teacher's eyes appraised me briefly. "No, Kristen, you spoke out of turn. Who else?"

I was appalled. My perfect word was rejected because I was too much of an arrogant little shit to keep from hurting the dirty girl's feelings. I hated Laura. I hated Oxy acne-control products. I vowed I would never buy them, even if I got pimples worse than Laura's. (As it stands, I never have bought Oxy products, and my skin is far worse than Laura's, so I guess I stuck to my guns.)

After a lot of hints and effort on Mrs. Popp's part Vincent finally came up with "oxen" and it was entered onto the big word list in neat second-grade teacher handwriting. I tried to point out that "oxen" was shorter than 5 letters, but she addressed my claim without acknowledging my raised hand. "I know it's not 5 letters, but there's not that many words that start with OX so I think it's fine. In any case, it'll make the quiz on Friday a little easier! Is that what you three were going to say?" I lowered my hand, along with the other pedants, and nodded, defeated.

To this day brand names and marketing-generated words make me uncomfortable. I despise hearing product-specific words in conversation or the workplace. It cheapens conversation to hear trademarked words ("Hey, are you heading to Walgreens?") where generic ones ("I'm going to whatever drugstore I can find.") would suffice. It even puts me off my ease to refer to products and places by their market name, even if they're precisely what I'm buying or where I'm going. I could never work in fast food. ("Medium black coffee, please." "Do you mean a Grande Americano?" "No, I mean a medium black coffee. See the big metal thing with the brown liquid dripping out of it? That.") Like the way "Rockefeller Center Observation Deck" has the hip name, "Top of the Rock." I think that sounds marketing-y. I've been up there twice in a month (damn foreigners) and still think it sounds too stupid to say aloud. (I also strove tirelessly but to no avail to convince a friend that the tv program title "30 Rock" refers to the thirtieth floor, not the entire building, so no, we did not visit it.) Thankfully I rarely enter establishments that ask whether I'd like to "Super Size" my purchase, and I haven't purchased a McAnything since I was about 5. (It really does annoy food chain employees when you refuse to order anything by name. "Can I get your two-layered hamburger, please?" "My what?" "The one with two slabs of meat interspersed among three pieces of bread." "A Double Whopper?" "I guess that works too." Eventually I got so frustrated with the process that I gave up fast food, and a few years later, meat.) I just think, unless you've invented an entirely new product, or discovered an entirely new species, giving something a new name is tacky. It sounds stupid. I feel awkward when I say it, and I get annoyed and embarrassed when people correct me with their corporate-endorsed term. ("Can I take your order?" "Yes, can I get your mango-pineapple please?" "Which one--the Mango A-Go-Go or the Mango Mantra?" "the...mango...a...go-go..." damn people humiliate you with stupid words and charge an arm and a leg? I won't be going back.)

On a related note, I hate the word "nugget."

recent quotations

"Whenever I see tired-looking people in scrubs coming home at weird hours, I get this urge to go over and shake their hand and say 'thank you for keeping crazy hours to save people's lives.'"
-Rachel

"Well, isn't that Karma?--you'll either get stepped on or rained on."
-Me

"Everyone's a little bit Puerto Rican--if you're from there, your parents or grandparents, your friends--even if you're not connected to it at all."
-NY official on news

pout, grin, laugh, scream

I was tootling around in the local organic home store, Blue House, today, and came across numerous things that I want but, sadly, even if I could afford them, would be completely useless to me. The Taney is a wonderful home for what it is, but it has its limitations.

Namely, I don't have a stove. Therefore all the nifty tea kettles and cookware they have is completely useless to me. I'm also strictly forbidden from using my electric kettle on the ship, so I can't even use their nifty teabag teapots that i find so adorable. seriously, i live in a place that is highly opposed to the idea of me feeding myself--and for good reason. the wiring around here is historic. anything that draws enough electricity to boil water in three minutes or less is probably a hazard.

Something else I come up short on is windows. I have a 9" porthole, and though it is a very nice porthole, I don't believe the curator of the museum would be very happy with me if i installed a window box below it. Which means, sadly, that all the seeds, planters, and biodegradable flowerpots they sell are not intended for people like me.

I'm also a bit shortchanged when it comes to tables, dressers, and other furniture that appreciate decorative accents. No matter how many doilies you put on them, gunmetal gray cabinets will never look cozy. And vases? recall what I mentioned about portholes and imagine how happy fresh flowers would be in my floating cellar. (And while I suppose filling them with dried flowers is always an option, I really don't have enough cobwebs in my room to pull off the full Miss Havisham look.)

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I had a delightful epiphany today--I have decided that my sister's as-yet-unscheduled wedding must be officiated by a woman with a delightful Scottish lilt--something in the vein of NPR's Fiona Ritchie.

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I happened across this album cover in the record store and nearly did a spit-take. I've never heard of this performer or his music, but sheez. (please note, incidental readers--this is not a joke or an insult directed toward the cover's subject, but is rather a reference to the musician's eerie resemblance to a friend. Eerie.) Sarah, you must see this.

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Another shortcoming of living in a museum is the frequent reminders of which tourist demographic is most likely to visit them--families with young children. A note of advice, parents of toddlers: Children Have No Need to Tour Historic Ships, Watch Movies or Plays, Visit Theme Parks, or Experience Fine Dining Until They Are At Least Ten (10) Years Of Age. Prior to that, you're just wasting your money. And pissing people off. Of Course she's throwing a tantrum. She's 3--its dark, cramped, smelly, confusing, and boring in here! Don't make your child bear with it--learn from it. They don't cry when they're happy.

labels

this evening I have spent an inordinate amount of time labeling my blog posts. In so doing, I have proven to myself that I'm a fairly predictable person with very little to say. Regardless, the blog is now fairly well compartmentalized. The only labels I have refrained from adding are "the Man, Man", "why people are stupid" and "existentialism" as these three themes recur with such frequency it would be a waste of a category. Labeling each post "why people are stupid" is akin to going through the dictionary and labeling entries "word."

Department of Redundancy Department

I like words. I like phrases. I even like colloquialisms, to an extent. What makes this noteworthy is that in my youth I was a mediocre English student at best. I didn't have the attention span to focus on past participles, and I couldn't distract my eyes from all the nice looking boys in my class to learn about verb tenses. By the time high school rolled around I was too busy giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome on ICQ to care about the etymologies of the words I was carelessly bastardizing in my online chatter. Then I went to college and majored in carpentry. Somehow, though, against all odds (and I hasten to add, against my will) I've become a grammar fanatic. I've always enjoyed reading, but I've actually reached a point at which I judge people according to their writing styles and abilities. There are a number of news columns that I read on a regular basis simply because I like the way they sound. There are a number of people I avoid simply because their personal dictionaries are about two pages long. I refuse to look at the lower two thirds of YouTube pages because the comments section literally makes me queasy.

Imagine my delight, then, when my new housemate used the phrases "hot water heater," "ATM machine," and "pharmacy store" all in one tirade. To be fair, she's an elderly shut-in who takes pride in her lack of education, but I can't help but find her mode of speech irksome. It is her diction, not her personality, that encourages me to avoid her.

The fun thing is, when nouns get the redundancy treatment, they become something new. An Automatic Teller Machine Machine may actually be some little contraption for servicing ATMs--perhaps a combination money-slot cleaner/depository hinge greaser. A better name for a hot water heater is "vaporizer"--that is, a unit that super-heats preheated water into a searing gas. If you're headed to the pharmacy store to buy a pharmacy, I believe you'll find that listed as a "franchise licensor."

I admit, I've been guilty of a little redundancy this past week. I couldn't help but say "jib sail" even though the word is just "jib." We already know it's a sail. I'm trying to break the inclination before it becomes a habit, though. Some people strive to be more fit, more outgoing, more green...I'm making it my goal to reduce my redundancy factor.

In other news, I've completely forgotten how to use a tape deck. Does the "Side A" label face me or the back of the machine? Why are some upside-down? How can it really be that readily recordable? Why can't I plug it into my iPod?!

Motivated Self-Starter

I've been on the job hunt lately, and one phrase I keep coming across in postings, written by potential employers and low-paid secretaries alike, is "seeking an energetic and motivated self-starter for immediate hire."

This has gotten me wondering...what on earth is a self-starter? Do all these people really just want to rent a lawnmower?

I can has pardon me?

Has anyone not encountered the “I can has cheeseburger” website? Home to those lovely people who paste captions on their cats? I assumed, wrongly, that the interesting phonetic spelling and garbled grammar of the captions was a joke of some kind--perhaps a suggestion of how a cat might approach the English language. It was only later when I began reading photo comments that I realized this has escalated into a much larger phenomenon. Readers post paragraphs of this free-written drivel, comprehensible only if you sound it out like a first grader. It is no longer a joke or even a code for finding other like-minded web surfers--it is a full written dialect, in the vein of French Creole or Gullah, but without the regional, cultural, or lingual backing to categorize it as much more than a fleeting pidgin. This is not the truncated text message speech so readily popularized by 125-character limits and inattentive keystrokes, but rather a popular rejection of the constraints of standardized spelling and grammatical form. It is likely a natural derivation of English--much as French and Italian wandered off from standardized Latin--but it has emerged and evolved far more rapidly than previous dialects on account of its birthplace--potentially millions of people recognize it as a legitimate means of communicating online.

"Yes," says my reader. "You've not said anything I haven't read or thought before. I'm rapidly losing interest."

The reason it occurred to me that this may be an issue warranting some concern is it dawned on me just how much of my communicating I do online. The majority of my friends live in jarringly different time zones from me--from KST clear on through GMT, the rotation of this planet makes it very inconvenient for me to keep in touch with the people I care about. But the trusty Internet has come to my aid. I am in daily contact with friends across--or even straight through?--the world, without stamp, surcharge, or the hours of waiting endured by lonely World War girlfriends as the lines were slowly connected by hand, region by region, across the globe until their loved ones' voices trickled back to them like the last, dying ripple of an echo.

erm. I lost my place.

My point is, my intense exposure to internet-based linguistic variation has certainly impacted my relationship with my language, from casual exchanges with friends to the very format of my thoughts. And I'm not alone. Millions of people spend at least a few hours a day glued to their computers, interacting with humans and robots alike in an endless quest for information and entertainment. And this truly bizarre interpretation of an established language, made available to them, has ballooned into usage well beyond the niche group of photo caption writers who birthed it--in under two years. African American Vernacular English (AAVE), on the other hand, has been developing for centuries, providing linguists with endless glee as they discover root pronunciations and grammatical characteristics in it from all over the world and all over the timeline. Millions of people communicate effectively using this dialect all over the world, whether or not their parents use it and even if they're not a member of an AAVE-speaking community. As media technology has facilitated the introduction of AAVE to people outside its cultural community, and vice versa, the dialect has adapted and its influence has expanded, particularly since the 1960's. In the 50-some-odd years since the federal repeal of segregation law, to varying extents this dialect has become common in around half of American households.

Now, though, out of the blue and without much cultural influence, a group of--apparently--kids have coined a dialect for the purpose of anthropomorphizing cats, and in less than two years millions of educated humans around the world have taken to writing, speaking, and even thinking "Lolcats-ese."

I'm wondering, then--what does it take to make a dialect legitimate? How long will pre-teens have to practice this forced colloquialism until "i wuz en ur compootur, fixin your memorys" becomes your office's standard tech support memo? How long before grandmothers, smiling warmly as their families kick snow off their boots, hold up a dish and announce "o hi, ah made u a pie but i eated it."? The Oracle says an ongoing project exists to translate the christian scripture into Lolcats--are these the tireless monks of our age, the scholars whose pens scratch into the night over smug little treatises on the value of coherent theology? Is Lolcats-ese the common tongue of the future?

It is easy to learn and use--past tenses of all verbs are the infinitive plus "-ed," plural nouns are all the root noun plus "s." All spellings are the phonetic equivalent of a shot in the dark and need not remain consistent within a sentence. Zs and Ss, Cs and Ks, and most vowel sounds are interchangeable, and punctuation is creative at best. The easiest way to use Lolcats-ese orally is to pretend you're a recent immigrant from Eastern Europe, which could be a helpful stepping stone for actual immigrants. All in all, its a far simpler, far more forgiving variation of my native tongue that could see expanded use in the near future. I don't know if this is a good idea, how long it could be expected to last in its original incarnation, if more books would eventually be translated, or really anything about it (as i'm not a linguist and i'm hesitant to use any lingual form that could hinder my job opportunities) but the questions arise--is it likely we will see more and faster language decay as the internet increases in popularity? will we be able to keep up with the kids' ever evolving jive? how much meaning is lost in translation? how much difficulty will speakers of these new colloquial tongues have in school, college, and their careers? are we witnessing the conception of a universal language? How can that ruin life as we know it?

on blogging

The tone a blogger adopts for writing often is interpreted by readers as an indication of how the blogger is doing. Interestingly, though, i don't think i'm alone in that I'm generally only inclined to write when i've been feeling negative and screwed over by the Man, man. Blogging is a means of letting off steam in a less harmful way than throwing a fit or breaking things. So based on tone and subject matter, this may appear to the casual observer to be the blog of a fairly grumpy, put-upon, and socially intolerant atheistic liberal.

Ben, before you comment--it so happens that for a good chunk of the day I am not grumpy, nor do i feel put upon. a lot of the time i'm quite complacent. Indeed, i'm the kind of person that could screw up a sociopath's road to sanity as i, when nobody else is around, might as well not exist. I read, do some cleaning, work out a bit, occupy my mind with crossword puzzles, and for the most part ride around in autopilot until someone shows up to engage my attention. Only then do i become the opinionated, anti-religious, slightly sadistic tirade generator you've all come to know and be slightly annoyed by. When nobody else is around, i'm as happy as a clam.

Then again, i'm not alone all that much, and when I am i often seek out company.
...
Okay fine, this blog is a pretty accurate representation of exactly who i am most of the time. Happy?

wikisurf

last night I started digging through the archives of the webcomic XKCD in Firefox, one tab on the comic, one tab on Wikipedia, and every time i didn't get a joke, i looked up the reference. as of now, i'm 120 comics in and i've looked up about 15 science, math, and computing terms, people, and processes and have a vague notion of what they are. I'm fairly certain my notion will remain vague, too--i don't think i'm going to to enroll in grad school just to get a few jokes.

grapefruits, heatwaves, and giant flying things

Call out the Department of Redundancy Department. I've got dictional bone to pick with the citrus-growing industry in the shape of a big, round, yellow ball. Yes, the grapefruit. I love 'em--i peel them and eat 'em like oranges, and i noticed this afternoon that their oil has light anesthetic properties. (i carelessly licked it off my hand and discovered that my tongue went numb shortly afterward. fun!) They're tangy and sweet and ever so tasty, yet they share their name...with grapes. In case nobody else noticed...grapes are a fruit too. Yes they grow on vines and have a soft peel and are often purple or green, but that doesn't make them gourds. And if you go to a vineyard you'll occasionally hear the distinction between "fruit-grapes" and "wine-grapes" (no profitable Napa vineyard grows Concords, for instance). So a grape is a grape, a fruit-grape is a grape, but a grape-fruit is a massive, yellow citrus that grows on trees in coastal areas.

I discovered, thanks to trusty old Wikipedia, that grapefruits got their name from the formation in which they grow--apparently some dolt thought they looked like big, yellow clusters of grapes. (later that day, the same explorer looked up and said "wow, those fruits are really orange. Aha!") Other societies call them Shaddocks or Shattucks, which, interestingly, is the name of the main drag in my town. It makes me quite smug to know that i've walked down Grapefruit street. Just like I've vacationed in a town named Blackcurrant (Cassis.) What's wrong with Shattuck? or Pamplemousse? (c'mon, pamplemousse is funny.) Or Yellow? I'd be fine with calling a grapefruit a Yellow. Actually, since grapefruits can come in pink, maybe lemons should get that name. In any case. I refuse to recognize "grapefruit" as a legitimate name for a plant.

I'm really fine with pineapples, in case you were wondering--they're a pine cone-shaped fruit, and humans have an ages-old tendency to refer to apples as though they're the original fruit and name other foods as they relate to them. Whether its pommes de terre, crabapples, road apples, or that insufferable adage about doctors, we just like to put things in terms of apples.

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So it got up to 93°F (33°C) in the shop today, low humidity, with a light breeze. Compared to home it was a friggin blizzard but somehow California has made me into a complete wimp when it comes to temperature. I was complainin' and dreaming of a cold beer right along with my cold-climate co-workers.

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I smacked this bug today--it looked like a flying daddy long-legs except it was red with a stinger. I didn't really get to examine it before it was skeeter purée but it looked vicious.

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I don't approve of the CRV--the California Redemption Value deposit added on to cans and bottles. First off, if you actually do return the bottles and cans, you don't get the full value of your deposit back. They only accept recyclables by the pound, and then the returns are trifling. Second, its not like we're going to take them to the recycling center by ourselves--the city collects them for you to try and prevent huge back-ups over there, but they do not pay you back for the deposits you've made. I've been to the recycling center in this area and its ridiculous trying to get in, get weighed, drop off the materials, and get your money. Takes hours, the lines are atrocious, you get harassed by tramps, and the people who work there look so disgruntled you want to hug them. Why charge people extra for cans when you don't want them to try to redeem their deposit? that's less like a recycling incentive and more like...theft.
MEANWHILE, the city never even gets the chance to collect your recyclables in the first place to take them to the center--the junkies do it first, in the middle of the night, making as much noise as possible in the process. Basically, we're paying a fairly sizable chunk of change on every purchase in order to be disturbed at 4 am by clinking and shouting coming from our own curbs. How perfectly preposterous.

U-Haul

oh good grief. I happened across a bit of litter on the street today which turned out to be a cardboard box from U-Haul. On it was printed "Medium-Sized Box. Perfect for packing: small appliances, toys, kitchen wares, office supplies."

WOW. Thanks U-Haul. I Never would have figured out how to use the box without your help!
Its just another addition to the list of products "so idiot proof they're insulting." It started with "attention: hot coffee" and "this bag is not a toy and should not be given to children under the age of 3 or used as a crib lining." Base statements that anyone old enough to supervise a child under 3 should not have to be told. But this is slightly different--rather than printing how Not to use a product so as to cover one's ass against lawsuits, companies are printing suggestions for how to use their products--products such as boxes, breakfast cereal, modeling clay, zip-top bags, and shoes . (if you're lucky, you might find directions as to how to use all 5 together!)

You know how your mom used to say "if you can't find something nice to say, don't say anything?" I've got a new one for marketing departments: "If you can't find something WORTHWHILE to say in regard to your product, leave the packaging blank." Statements such as "Try our cereal with cold milk, or pack it in a zip-top baggie for a tasty snack!" and "great for punching 3 holes in lined, unlined, and construction papers!" are NOT WORTH SAYING. If your packaging looks too dull for you, maybe its an indication that your product is fairly mundane. Don't try to spice up tupperware by exclaiming about its multiple storage uses. Please refrain from suggesting that I use potting soil for growing plants. And come ON, even a toddler knows that envelopes can be used to mail business letters, greeting cards, thank-you notes and More!

I recognize that all companies feel the need to promote their products. But guess what. Bleach has always killed mildew. An armload-sized box has always held about an armload-worth of stuff, and terrycloth has always absorbed water. Stating these things directly on your products is not going to encourage people to buy them over the competitor's version. Perhaps, rather than paying a marketing department to develop catchy things to write on your packaging, you should just make sure your products do what the customer already expects them to do. That'll encourage sales much more than suggesting your customer use the product the way he was already intending to. Believe it or not, we're not all idiots bumping into one another out here in the consumer base.

Now Big cardboard boxes--those are airplanes.

home economics

It just occurred to me that middle school Home Ec taught me nothing about household budgeting. Why the name?

When I walk down the street, I often wonder what passers-by think of when they give me the once-over. I bet its not "there's a girl who folds her underwear."

My intern project, which was to create a 22' high x 6' wide bookcase that appeared to have no visible means of support (just rows of floating books) was canceled due to a miscommunication between the director and the designer. I kinda wish they'd told me before I hacked into those Bibles.

ig·nor·ance

The conscious choice to ignore or refuse truth. see Faith.

ROTFLOL

It occurred to me today, after babbling at someone about the hyper-education of the subordinate classes until his ears started to bleed, that the American general masses have gone from being overwhelmingly illiterate to taking literacy completely for granted in the space of about 150 years. (give or take--some middle class families may be able to claim their ancestors could read from the day they made their first cave drawings, but i'm pretty sure my grandparents' grandparents were lucky if they could scratch their names in the dust.) Throughout the backlog of human history the ability to read was a skill reserved for monks and the wealthy elite. It was a huge dividing factor between the empowered and the disenfranchised castes (other divisions being footwear, suntans, and the right to not grovel.) It has only been within the past few generations that anyone thought public education might be a fun idea, and only very recently (in terms of the history of modern homo sapiens) that women and minorities have gotten the opportunity as well.
And now, in spite of the novelty of these things called words, we've already gotten lazy with them. It started simply, with little acronyms such as "TTFN" and "RSVP" jotted at the ends of friendly letters and informal invitations. Sentence truncation remained infrequent, really, until the 1930's, when the Great Depression settled in. Roosevelt's numerous attempts at tackling industrial health and safety, agricultural production, unemployment, trade, social security, and sustainable energy sources after the 1929 financial collapse led to the mind-bending alphabet soup that dominates the pages of US history textbooks today. From the AAA, NIRA, TVA, and PWA all the way down to the WPA, CWA, and the CCC that hired shoeless farm boys to plant trees in the forest, FDR's nation-rebuilding projects initiated what would soon become a trend of commerical, industrial, and political initialism throughout the twentieth century. From the first broadcast of CBS news, the first sheet of MDF, the first use of SWF ISO SBM in a personal ad, to the swearing in of W, we just can't seem to be arsed anymore to make use of whole words.
The development of text messaging, however, has taken what was once merely a mild grammatical confusion into a whole new dictionary of conjoined consonants. what began innocently enough in replacing "that's funny" with "LOL" has spurned communicative code that would leave Sam Morse scratching his head. Entire paragraphs are now reduced to meaningless jumbles of letters, all punctuated with multiple exclamation points and parentheses-based facial expressions. Written communication as we know it has been reduced to the typing of pithy phrases using as few characters as possible. Maybe its just me, but i feel linguistic development has taken a step back in this regard. Indeed, perhaps several steps back. The text conversation "RUOK?" "SSDD." "OIC." has the same depth of meaning as the exchange "Grunt?" "Snort." "Humph." (as communicated by our pre-cave-dwelling ancestors the month before Urg really worked out fire.) There's only so many phrases you can spit out using sentence acronyms before your friend has to turn off the caps lock to ask "huh?" so perhaps it is an attempt to simplify mundane conversation topics down to nothing so as to leave space in the text block to actually type out more worthwhile, personal, or at the very least situation-specific information. But if we're using acronyms to take the place of social niceties and small talk...doesn't that defeat their purpose? Might as well omit them altogether. I've never gotten the hang of writing in text-message speak and don't think i want to. If something's not worth saying fully, its probably not worth saying at all.

...perhaps, given the average word count of my blog entries and the actual amount of substance I tend to mix into them, i should rethink this stance.

on heavy metal...

I've never understood why the word "metal" signifies a type of screechy, screamy, incomprehensible noise that some people refer to as "music." metal is only loud when you cut it. true, welding produces bright light and grinding throws sparks everywhere, so perhaps some of the onstage pyrotechnics used in metal concerts would be reminiscent of this, but i don't think that's what the gist is. as a welder, it is my principal responsibility to make structures that are sound and safe to be on and around. i grind down sharp edges and everyone knows not to touch a weld until it has cooled.

more to the point, "heavy" metal is just that. it weighs a lot. thick steel plating, iron pigs, and lead sinkers are...heavy. Aluminium, conversely, is not, and makes for light, sturdy ladders and trusswork.

If the name "metal" is in reference to the painful noise, heat, and sparks given off when one cuts steel box with an abrasive saw...that's hardly a good association to make with a sound that you'd like for people to listen to. Indeed, OSHA requires we wear eye and ear protection when we make those sorts of noises.

There's nothing offensive, edgy, or spectacular about metal. I don't get it. Maybe I'm just trapped in the mundane.

Frankenstein

Well, it was a long and arduous task, but my battle with Mary Shelley's life-defining work has come to a close. It was quite possibly the most overwritten book I have ever had the misfortune to borrow, recorded onto nine impeccably-maintained cds. Had it been my burden to endure this monster in its written form never would I have gotten past the first page. Yet with the same fervor with which the titular character was espoused so did I perservere to pursue this hideous wretch of a literary endeavor to its acrid end. The redundancy with which I was met on every track of this wretch was infinitely intolerable and i met with this calamity repeatedly and over again. I met each repetition with sadness and despondency, but as it grew into anger time and again i found it quelled by the slightest intimation of a potential development, only to be delayed in discovering it by the repetitions of still more declarations of intent and lamentations on the infinite desolation and accursed soul of the speaker.
The author herself would have benefitted greatly from the acquisition of a tube of wite-out and the purchase of a thesaurus. Indeed, entire verbose and i'm sure laboriously created chapters could have been omitted to the benefit of the story and its listener. Months worth of story and thousands of fevered hours spent in illness and insanity on the part of the speaker could have been left on the table and the agony of the scientist and his creation would not have been overlooked. Pages of exclamations upon Elizabeth's cherished beauty and caricature-like flatness and simplicity of goodness could have been omitted--indeed, she needn't have spoken or been referred to at all--and the horror of her demise could have driven Victor to his fervent desire for revenge. The entire narrative could have been reduced to a four-page short story and the tale would not have gone unappreciated. But in the style of those authors paid by the word did Shelley produce her action-bereft, character-undeveloped, overstated, overdeclaimed, overdwelt-upon piece of fiction, and only the gentle touch of hollywood's scalpel could reclaim this harrowing tale from an eternity of obscurity and isolation.
Oh Mary. Your marriage to a self-absorbed, condescending, chauvanistic upper class twit did you no benefit. His tendency to wax lyrical on the gloom brought by the west wind and his insistence that poetry be viewed as a legitimate career must have caused great damage to your frail, insecure, feminine sensibilities. What began as a harrowing tale befitting fireside disclosure became a heap of meaningless platitudes coupled with redundancy and an increasing number of utterances of words such as those viewed here. Oh that you had edited! Oh that your tale were legible! Oh miserable wretch!

diction

you know what phrase i really distrust seeing on food labels? "and/or." whether its referring to "xanthan and/or guar gums" or "cottonseed and/or sunflower seed oils" i just really wish they would pick one and stick with it. If you run out of sunflower seed oil, buy more. yeesh.