A little amnesia here, a little where?

You don’t have to actually read this book review because I have thoughtfully condensed it into one sentence for you: Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk was alright. So, feel free to skip the portion of this blog whereby I come to this conclusion, as its only about as interesting as reading the book itself.

Devon Monk’s debut novel had a lot of potential, in my opinion, that unfortunately is never realized. Nowadays, it feels like the urban/paranormal fantasy market has become supersaturated with the same wise-crackin’ kick-ass girl with super powers who fights magic/evil/vampires. And Allie, our heroine, is disappointingly only a slight deviation from this carbon copy. The most interesting aspect of Allie is her relationship with her father, which unfortunately never gets an opportunity to progress due to murder most foul. Now, the Joss Whedon fan in me knew it was coming and yet still rejoiced at this twist, and the emotional turmoil Allie clearly experienced because of it; Devon Monk did a splendid job of not-quite-articulating the complexities of that relationship. However, I wish she had managed to extend a little bit of that brilliance into the rest of the plot and character development.

The magic system at first was refreshingly confined and based of strict and realistic rules. As the story progresses… notsomuch. Allie and Zay’s relationship felt awfully contrived and just sort of inexplicable. But the real crux of the matter lies in Allie’s unique magic-based flaw: part-time amnesia. When I first read the back cover, I thought how neat! This feels like a real drawback, real consequences for supernatural powers. However, Monk missed on the delivery. By the end, I was simply thinking… what’s the point? We go through this adventure with Allie and then she “forgets” it all? Why bother with character development at all if you’re just going to push the reset button?

However, I am going to read the second book in the series. Why? Firstly, I want to see more of Portland, Oregon in this world: never knew it could be that smelly. Secondly, I want to see if the second book can follow up on some of the potential I saw in the first. And lastly, because its summer and I am bored.

Seacrest out.

On the subject of speaking and not speaking

There is someone who I haven’t spoken to in a very long time. Lets call this person ‘Iggy.’ I don’t speak to Iggy. I won’t speak to Iggy. But despite it all, I really really really want to speak with Iggy. Badly.

I’m not going to. I know simply too many thing about Iggy, and too many things about how that conversation would proceed to allow any such conversation to occurr.

I haven’t had cause to go near a gas station these nine months now. But today I cut across a 7-11 and the smells of gasoline, the hot sun and traffic, gravel and blacktop, all of it combined to force such strong sensory memory that I swear I must’ve experienced a mild form of vertigo. Al of it reminded me of summers in Chicago, when Iggy and I would stop at the gas station before road trips to six flags, road trips to upstate New York. The taste of Chicago. The hot stuff air of a car that’s been sitting in the summer sun all day. And then I felt something rather close to despair as I recalled my most recent experiences of a place and of people that had heretofore been my favorite places and people.

And suddenly I am drained of all desire to do any sort of meaningful work today, like it all just got siphoned off. I don’t want to ready anymore about split ergativity within the generative framework. I don’t want to strive to improve myself mentally. I don’t even want to work on LeakyCon.

I want to bolster my self esteem with material possessions. I want to go to a bookstore. I havent been to a real bookstore in ages. And I want to be able to buy an actual book without worrying about how to pay my bills this summer. I want to own more than one pair of jeans, and I want them to actually fit. These are small things, no? I want to fill my aching void of loneliness with the knowlege that I at least do not look like a graduate-school monster that comes out only at the dead of night to stalk and eat your babies and dissertations.

Okay, tad dramatic.

Still, I feel something rather desolate.

Fun word to know

From Quechua:

chullullullu – ( choo- yoo-yoo-yoo) to give off water in various spots.

How often to items (or people) give off water in various spots that an entire word needed to be created in this language?

Just a quick note…. worthy of mordor

Need some spice in your life? Your day to day activities will feel three whole mega neutrinos cooler, adventuresome, and exciting if you conclude each utterance with “worthy of Mordor.”

Think that paper you are writing is boring?

Twitter Before: Writing a paper…. will school never end?

Twitter After: Writing a paper worthy of Mordor… dear god, what will I unleash upong the innocent citizens of Hawaii?

Schoolwork becomes that much more epic (and dangerous) if you follow these simple instructions.

Also, SARAH KANE. Please join twitter. I promise you will like. My username is Katelooby. I know, very imaginative.

Joke

There once was a peasant who had a long-standing obsession with a queen’s breasts. This man knew the penalty to touch her would mean death, yet he revealed his secret desire to the king’s chief doctor. The doctor promised he could arrange for the man to satisfy his desire, but it would cost him one thousand gold coins. Though he didn’t have the money, the man readily agreed to the scheme.

The next day the physician made a batch of itching powder and poured some into the queen’s bodice while she bathed. After she dressed, she began itching and itching and itching. The physician was summoned to the Royal Chambers, and he informed the king and queen that only a special saliva, if applied for several hours, would cure this type of itch. And only one man in the whole of the Kingdom had the correct chemistry – a wizard, living in disguise as peasant.

The king summoned the “wizard”. Meanwhile, the physician slipped him the antidote for the itching powder, which the man put into his mouth, and for the next few hours, the peasant worked passionately on the queen’s breasts. The queen’s itching was eventually relieved, and the man left satisfied and touted as a hero.

When the physician demanded his payment, the now satisfied peasant refused. He knew that the physician could never report what really happened to the king. So the next day, the physician slipped a massive dose of the same itching powder into the king’s loincloth. And the king immediately summoned the wizard.

Ebooks adventures

Since I moved to Hawaii, and packing space became a premium, ebooks have been slowly and surely seducing me. Of course, ebooks will never truly be able to replace the medium that was my first love. Reading off a giant honking, hot, overbright computer screen will make your eyes bleed if you try to snuggle up in bed with your “book.” If you do not have the luxury to buy one of those paper imitating fancy e-readers, then ebooks are decidedly bad for the eyes. Indeed, I think the only reason it is at all feasible is because I read fast. Really fast. Freaky fast. (Its only slighly depressing that even when “relaxing” I am still sitting at my computer, reading.) Nevertheless, it is convenient to always have a great selection at my fingertips, ebooks tend to be cheaper, and with the subsequent purchase of my ipod touch and the downloadation of Stanza (if you are at all interested in ebooks, you’ll wanna check this out) I no longer have to lug my computer around the house when reading a book.

So I’m pretty much sold. Ebooks are cheaper. Easier to acquire. Except, the most frustrating aspect of e-reading, is the lack of any damn software to help catalog, organize, edit, and sync your collection to your device.

Now stop right there.

You’re about to tell me about Calibre.

Well, buddy, I know about Calibre. I’ve tried it out. Twice. I HATE it.

I do understand that, as of right now, its the best software on the market. In fact, its pretty much the ONLY software on the market. But the UI is terribly clunky, editing and retrieving metadata from the web takes longer than it should, the “date” function only includes date added to the library (and why on earth would I care about that? Publication date is what truly matters) and the syncing with device button is just… I don’t have any words to express my frustration here. Not to mention, it doesn’t actually edit the metadata, just sorta appends its own database onto it. It also tends to devour my computer’s memory for inexplicable reasons. Why is it so difficult to find a program, like itunes, that can organize and ebook library??

And then I answer myself, because ebooks are too new. The Kindle is a scant two years old (if that), very few people have an e-reader, there a gajillion different formats all in competition with each other, and basically… I’m thinking the technology is just too new. There’s no standard equivalent of the mp3 for music. Even Stanza, blessed tool that it is, has some awfully odd kinks. It lists authors by alphabetical order of first name, for paboo’s sake. I can’t be angry at the good people who made Calibre; they are definitely trying where nobody else even realizes there’s a market. But the fact of the matter is, until the UI cleans itself up and the management gets streamlined, I just can’t deal. Its a personal choice. Plus, with the funky way ereaders react to displaying metadata, I want to find a way to edit the actual stuff, not just add Calibre preferences on top.

So in my explorations of ebook formats, metadata, readers, and syncing, I’ve come across a few options. I can start exploring MobileRead’s mobi2mobi projects, though that would involve making sure all of my ebooks have mobi format (which I don’t know enough about) plus its all done code style, which sounds like fun to learn… but then again, I am supposed to be spending hours on linguistic research, not on tidying up my ebook library. Also, I’m sure that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to the majority of folks.

On the other hand, maybe I should just give up and use Calibre in the hopes that over time it will improve.

Salient meanings in context

I found this in a linguistics article when researching non-literal language and its processing:

A bus stops and two Italian men get on. They sit down and engage
in an animated conversation. The lady sitting behind them ignores
them at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following:
‘‘Emma come first. Den I come. Den two asses come together. I come once-a-more. Two asses, they come together again. I come again and pee twice. Then I come one lasta time.’’
‘‘You foul-mouthed swine,’’ retorted the lady indignantly. ‘‘In this
country we don’t talk about our sex lives in public!’’
‘‘Hey, coola down lady,’’ said the man. ‘‘Who talkin’ abouta sexa?
I’m a justa tellin’ my frienda how to spella ‘Mississippi.’ ’’

Oh, you nasty linguists.

Pimping my favorite things

Ilona Andrews’ newest book, Magic Strikes, will be released on the 31st and I would be derelict in my self-assumed duty to educate the masses on awesomeness if I didn’t post about it. Because Ilona is probably my favorite new author of the year. Her first two books, Magic Bites and Magic Burns, have been out for sometime now, and despite the unfortunate titles, the series is the best new fiction you are likely to find for the next two years.

Yeah, the cover art is pretty deplorable. But if you wisely choose to ignore the cover and the title, and actually read the books… Let’s put it this way, I defy you to find another series that is as imaginative, witty, and badass.

The Magic series is categorized as urban fantasy, or romantic fantasy… whatever. Sure, there’s magic. And yes, there is flirtation. But it is not these things that leave you drooling for more: its the characters, and rightly so. The fact that its set in a post-apocalyptic Atlanta is pretty much incidental to Kate Daniels, the heroine, who is not only admirable for her moral code and her stress-managment skills, but also for her ability to laugh at herself, and make you laugh right along with her.

When I first picked up the series, I expected nothing more than a rehash of the bad-ass-chick-fights-evil-vampires-with-magic-and-knives trope that Anita Blake and Buffy spearheaded. I essentially expected the all too common fantasy chick lit stuff (girl is continuously seduced by hot vampire/werewolf, and though she wants to maintain her independence she eventually succombs to a couple of paragraphs of badly written sex that makes one wince, and then kills the bad guy by stragically stabbing him both with knives and sarcasm): a fun romp that would be entertaining, but ultimately easily digested and subsequently forgotten. What I got instead was intricate and complex characterization with (thank god!) original plots twists that take you to places you wouldn’t even expect to imagine, all in a fantasically rich world. That Kate Daniels also manages to kick evil ass with magic and knives is just the cherry on top, or rather its the cookie crumble part of oreo ice cream, because I hate cherries, and the way Kate manages to kick ass while still feeling like a real person (she WORKS for a living, dammit) is much more like a satisfying crunch than some gooshy fruit.

The only thing I didn’t like about these books was that they’re too short. Oh and that the main character’s name is Kate – its just disconcerting.

Anyway, read ‘em.

Why I never write about linguistics

It is thoroughly impossible for me to make linguistics sound interesting to anyone who might theoretically read this blog. Most people who manage to find their way to this place are either name Sarah or Karen, and to everyone else I say: I’m sorry. Wait, even to Sarah and Karen I give my apologies. I don’t like to think as I write these stupid things, I just let the words vomit out of my brain without checking to see what the chunky stuff is.

And writing about linguistics requires examining the chunky stuff. I dont like to do that more often than I have to. The chunks are smelly and ill-formed. And considering my two readers will probably have no idea what I am talking about, I figure why bother? It’ll just make me sound snooty.

Nevertheless, linguistic brain vomit is a huge part of my life nowadays, so I think it would be kind of ingenuous if I didn’t mention it even a little.

I think Chomsky has gone off his rocker, and not in the Dumbledore way. I am neither the first nor the most eloquent to express such an opinion, but since I am in the middle of procrastinating for my Government and Binding Theory class, I seriously have to just take a moment to say: wtf, Chomsky. W. T. F?

Now I know you’re a smart fellow. The field of linguistics has much to thank you for. But, and I don’t think I’m being too harsh here, I think you let it go to your head. Then your head inflated. And exploded. And started to rot. And the east coast called it brilliant. All of your arguments are circular, for monkey buddha’s sake! Something is proved because of the evidence, but the evidence follows those parameters because you proved it!

Listen to that Ocham Razer guy, dude.

Prove that you are not just an echo

Mush, mush! Flog this blog back to life!

In May, I will be visiting Boston for my first ever Harry Potter conference. After years of following the fandom, I will be able to actively participate with actual people. I mean, they’re not real if you only email them. And thankfully, this May I will be able to prove that a good chunk of them are not just constructions of my imagination. Nifty!

And now, I’m just going to rattle off sentences that summarize the other things going on: Jimmy joined the army, he leaves on Thursday. I really wish I knew how to play the fiddle. My ass is being kicked five ways to Sunday over psycholinguistics. I apparently like real coconuts, though I still hate fake coconut. Open mic nights aren’t always as lame as I thought, though they are still kinda lame, if only because they alternately make you feel like a talentless idiot or morally superior (that is a direct result of the bad spoken-word poetry). I’ve been generally drinking and smoking too much, and am making a conscious effort to cut back.

I miss looking at fossils. Dollhouse is not as funny as Joss Whedon’s other shows, but since only two episodes have aired, I am reserving final judgement – I still love it. I really enjoy moderately priced wines, and I’m begining to hate beer more and more. I have had some fantastic meals over the past month a half; a result of living with people who actually enjoying cooking and know how to make new and interesting meals. Also, I’ve learned to use chopsticks without my hand cramping up. Its really quite fun. I have supernova 2 now, but don’t often play because none of the cool songs are unlocked yet. Yes, I know, thats circular. They will never get unlocked unless I play, but why bother when I can play Max 2?

I am less confident that I made the right choice this August, and often very much gloomy because of it. Mostly, I’m really tired a lot. I miss reading.

Something wicked

For the first time in much longer than I would like to admit, I went an entire day without a cigarette. It wasn’t actually that hard, and at the same time it was kinda excruciating. I figure that must mean I’m not just giving into anti-smoking peer pressure, but rather doing something  that obviously needs to be done. I still don’t think I will quit, but smoking every day isn’t necessary.

There have been very few adventures of late. For this first time in my life I am extremely focused in my work (all three jobs) and I’ve come to the conclusion that being so focused is really lame. I’m kind of tired of it. And yet, there is very little I can change about that because I literally have nothing better to do. What happened? When did achieving my so-called life dreams get so tedious and insipid?

Oh right, I know exactly what happened.

Why I’m glad I ended up me

I don’t know if its just me, but it seems like many half remembered classmates are just popping out of the woodwork and finding me through that nefarious tool, Facebook. Particularly junior high and high school mates. And frankly, these people are lucky if they are even half remembered, most of them I haven’t the foggiest idea who they are- though if i squint my eyes and turn my head slightly to the right, I can almost imagine that their names look familiar. Maybe?

It makes me feel guilty, because obviously these people remember me (I don’t think there are any strangers out there zealous enough in their desire to know me that they would research my background in order to chummy up with stories of Mr. Key and Ms. Clause. And if there are, well then, I think their hard work has earned them the right to a little stalking. But anway…). Somehow, in some way, I made some kind of lasting impression on these people. That, my memory is simply very sub par.

Anyway, the worst part of finding old classmates is when you realize that they are probably leading a more fulfilling life than you are. Or when they’re obviously healthier and happier (and skinnier) than you are. Thankfully, this hasn’t happened very often to me. Well, I mean, there’s a lot of people who ended up skinnier than me, but in general I am not embarrassed for people to see my profile and know that I live in Hawaii and that I am getting my Masters in Linguistics. Yeah, a few people ended up going to some cooler places than I did for school or other reasons. And yeah, a few people look very happily married and all. But man, I’m pretty glad I’m me. ‘Cause a lot more people went nowhere.

But I’m not only glad because of their misfortunes. I’m glad in general. I guess I’m where I should be.

On the Pleasures of RSS readers

I’ve known about RSS for a long time. In fact, I had several feeds Livebookmarked in Firefox. What I didn’t realize, is how much cooler and superawesome RSS feeds can be when you have a proper reader. Last night, in lieu of drinking at the bars, or enjoying a good soaking by the Hawaiian monsoons, I dicked around on the computer and found dozens of blogs, feeds, words of the day, and pointless time fillers that could all be aggregated into my RSS reader.

I now have even more ways to procrastinate my real work. Speaking of which… generally goin’ pretty well. I’m pretty exhausted by the whirlwind of it all, not to mention moving (by the way, don’t EVER decide to move right during finals. pretty damn dumb). And there is still much to do. But I’ll go do it later.

This is going to be an interesting holiday season. Many good things to look forward to. A depressing amount of work that needs to be done. Yes, I’m losing my motivation even as I type… so I am outta here.

You’re the deadest guy in deadonia

I am no longer bored, but the things that are occupying my time are not very pleasant.

Havent updated, and probably wont for a while

So don’t hold your breath.

Oh wait.

So I am moving, I am stressed, I am busy, and I am bored. Impossible combination, you say? WRONG!

See I could explain it all, but I’m getting stuck-in-the-doorway syndrome. There are many reasons that contribute to current state of mind, so many that in the attempt to write them all down, they are rushing through the door and getting stuck in my brain cause they can’t all fit on paper! Or e- paper.

So I give up. Plus I have to back to reading about ergativity in Māori.