Michael!

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Officially I’ve only been at work for five minutes, and things are already going badly.

ADDENDUM the First:
Okay, so it’s been up and down all day, but (knock on wood) the worst of it seems to be over.

Having lunch from the Flying Fish helped too.

Check out today’s (21 July 2005) Marquee in the Dominion Post. There’s a lovely article on Wayne Rowand, classical guitarist and all around good guy.

a direct english translation of the chinese interpretation of what the script (‘Revenge of the Sith’) was saying

“I was just made by the Presbyterian Church”

(via Language Log)

Avery’s post on BSV (Black Standard Vernacular) got me thinking about speech and accents, which lead me down another path entirely, thinking about poverty, and the things that are associated with it.

Raised in West Virginia, I grew up associating a drawl with poverty. Not everyone who had a drawl was poor, and not every who was poor had a drawl, but still, there was a major association.

And I have stories from my grandmother, how her father came here at 18 speaking no English, but worked to become a fluent speaker. How when she took my aunt to school, the teacher refused to believe that they were from Baltimore, because my aunt didn’t have the local accent. (The one that turns Baltimore into Bawlm’r.)

All of this lead to my impression that speaking well was very important.

Dress had similar associations. Clothes with holes, clothes that were too big or too small, clothes that looked worn and dirty–all those things are associated in my mind with poverty.

So I speak without an accent. And I get upset when I spill something on myself. And I’m embarassed to be seen in worn and ill fitting clothes. Because those things signify poverty, and poverty means you have no power in society.

And so I stare in incredulity at those who choose to dress in ill-fitting clothes. Who wear clothes that are torn and ragged by design. Who wear clothes that look permamently dirty by design.

I can’t understand choosing to look and sound powerless.

The Word of the Day for July 19 is:

verboten \ver-BOH-tun\ adjective
: forbidden; especially : prohibited by dictate

Example sentence:
During the era of prohibition in the United States, when the sale of alcohol was verboten, speakeasies were routinely raided by the authorities and shut down.

For absolutely no reason, this is another of my favorite words.

At dinner this evening I was finally able to put my finger on what bugged me so much about ‘Revenge of the Sith’.

R2D2.

I love R2D2. When ‘Star Wars’ came out, when everyone was drooling over Mark Hammil and Harrison Ford, I had a crush on R2D2.

Yeah, I know. I’m weird. Always have been.

But the point is that they took an established character and then out of nowhere gave him all these bizarre powers he’d never had before–and more importantly–never had later. It made no sense.

They took my favorite character, randomly made giant and unexplained (and unexplainable) changes, and we were supposed to accept it without question.

Bah!

Good grief. I didn’t think that kittens were allowed to be this cute.

If I were Tom I would find myself unable to concentrate in the face of such overwhelming adorableness.

Saw the Fantatic Four today. I liked it–not as much as I liked Batman Begins–but I liked it.

Unfortunately, I realized why people pay extra to go to the movies in the evening. There were a LOT of children. In fact, there were a lot of YOUNG children, including one child, who couldn’t have been more than four or five, who started screaming and yelling about two thirds of the way through the movie. And of course her mother waited for quite some time before removing her from the theater.

Do people not READ ratings any more? This movie is PG-13. It was loud. There were explosions and scary bad people. When I was four I remember the Wicked Queen in Snow White scaring the crap outta me. I can’t see someting like this being LESS scary. Yet the mother seemed irritated at the kid more than concerned as she (finally) took her out of the room.

Jeesh.

But back to the movie: I liked it. It was cute and fun and not annoying. I didn’t even mind how obnoxious Johnny Storm was. (Though if I was his sister I probably would have attempted to kill him long before then.) I’d go see it again if someone else wanted to go, because it was fun. But I don’t think I’d talk Michael into going again all on my own.

I’m curious, did it follow the original story? Is that how they got their super powers in the comics? And couldn’t they put other people in the machine Reed made? Or would it only work for them because they’d gone through the space storm?

Just wondering.

Next movie to see: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But it’ll probably be a couple of weeks. I have no desire to sit through a sold out show. And I may be willing to pay full price and go at night, to avoid the throngs of kids. Maybe.

Okay. You’re right. I admit it. The wicked queen in Snow White STILL scares me.

I laughed out loud listening to the radio this morning (I’m paraphrasing here):

Scott Simon was interviewing a band called Brazilian Girls. One of his first questions was, none of you are Brazilian and only one of you are a girl. Why the name Brazilian Girls?

One guy responded: Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copland were not policemen. None of the Rolling Stones were actual rocks.

Just did another redesign of the front page.

I couldn’t come up with a way to use the full page image and get rid of the boxes–which I’m starting to get tired of. But besides that, I’m pleased with the way it turned out, especially when it’s resized.

It’s a new fiscal year here in West Virginia.

Which means that I’m now making less money that I was last paycheck.

You see insurance changes occur July 1, which means that insurance increases or changes appear on the first paycheck of the month.

It’s at times like this when I wonder why I work at WVU. Yeah, 6 hours of free tuition are fantastic, but thanks to the economy tanking, raises have been near to non-existant since W took office.

Money isn’t everything I know, and Michael has gotten regular raises, but it’s still frustrating. Bills are paid out of checking–the account that my paycheck goes into; Michael’s paycheck goes straight into savings, and the morgtage and car payment come directly from there. All of which means that as prices rise while my pay remains the same, we are more likely to pull money from the savings account to pay bills than we were even a year ago.

It’s frustrating. We aren’t really spending more money than previous years, yet I keep having to dip into money that is supposed to go into savings. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not such a huge thing. We’re still accumulating savings–like I said, Michael is getting raises–but it feels like we’re falling behind.

I know that I shouldn’t complain. We have a home, a car, food to eat, books to read, no credit card debt, and money in savings. All of this is far more than so many people have. Yet still, the feeling of falling behind is unsettling.

The Last Templar (1995) Michael Jecks

This was an interesting book. The mystery was good, the story was good, and I quite liked the historical setting and the history lesson. The writing was, for the most part, very good, with one glaring exception. In this book Michael Jecks switches point of view abruptly and sometimes painfully. I was confused several times when I thought the point of view was one character when it had switched to the point of view of another characters.

Read More about The Last Templar

I know that we go to Newport Aquarium every time we go to Cincinnati, but I really like it.

Only problem this time was that we went on a Friday afternoon. On a stroller day. Future note. Avoid summer Friday afternoons. Mornings early in the week are MUCH better.

Michael again managed to get some really gorgeous pictures at the aquarium.