I Should Tell You About My Shoes Collection, Even If You Just Don't Care

The new kitten still doesn't have a name, so we're both calling him "little dude" for the time being. My mom's still set on an Egyptian name, but I think we should call him Mercury, because he's fast, silver, and deadly.

( more kitten pics )

Youtube keeps timing out on me, so here's a link to a video of the kitten playing on my photobucket account. Extra special bonus: My creepy breathing! I was trying not to laugh and failing.

This is the Christmas tree belonging to an innocent Midwestern family. Last night, my secularist cell broke into their home, dragged the tree outside, and set it on fire while the children screamed for Jesus to save it. But he didn't, because there is no Jesus.

Then we stole their presents. I came home with: The Complete Thomas Keller, beautiful set of cookbooks that includes The French Laundry and Bouchon; The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, The Glass Palaceby Amitav Ghosh, The Limits of Language by Mikael Parkvall, which I'm already about 1/4 through; and finally, some soap and lotion from Sephora that makes me smell like dessert.

HEY LOOK WHAT MY MOM BOUGHT AT THE CAT SHOW



( cut for pictures of dorky people holding cats )

So now we're three for three: each time my mom has gone to a cat show, she's gotten a cat. The first two times, she adopted from the shelter afterwards, but she's wanted an Mau for a while and fell in love with this little guy, even though he's a little timid.

I told my stepdad, who is incapable of saying "no," that the next time we go to a cat show he shouldn't pick up his phone.

I totally got spurned today.

I was in the waiting area while my car was getting a check-up, when a woman came in with her two young children. One of them, about four, toddled over and asked, "What's your name?" I told her, and she looked to her Mom, confused somehow by my answer. Her Mom prompted her to tell me her name.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," I said.

The little girl stared for a moment, and then she made that about-to-cry face and ran into her mom's arms and hid.

Was it something I said? D: Is there something wrong with my name? Sure, "Kutsuwamushi, Destroyer of Worlds" is a mouthful for a four-year-old, but it's a perfectly fine name!

I thought that I had my last exam of the semester at 2:00. I headed down to Lakota at about 9:00, thinking that I would have plenty of time to study. I had to memorize a lot of images, and read the chapters corresponding to the lectures I missed, but whatever; Art History is a snap.

I logged onto the website to grab the images I needed and take the online quizzes and saw that the exam was actually scheduled for 10:30. OMFG.

I didn't do so hot on that exam. D: But on the plus side, I found out before I missed it.

I also just threw away my huge end-of-semester to-do list, which felt GREAT. In fact, if it wasn't so cold and wet outside, I would have taken it to the patio and set it on fire.

"Much of the confusion about special relativity is the result of not understanding that the geometry of spacetime is not our familiar Euclidean geometry of space."

NO. MUCH OF THE CONFUSION IS BECAUSE IT'S CONFUSING.

I had mashed potatoes.

My family usually cooks an ordinary, every-day chicken, because turkeys are just too big for three people, especially when you add my mom's tendency to cook five billion side dishes:

Mashed potatoes and gravy
Homemade egg noodles cooked in gravy
Rolls
Green beans
Marinated mushrooms*
Carrot cake--from scratch! oh my god so good

It was delicious. It was the first time I remember the egg noodles, but my mom said it was her grandma's recipe. But the mashed potatoes were, as always my favorite. There's nothing that says that your mom loves you like a big, heaping bowl of fluffy potatoes covered in chicken-drippings gravy. (I told her I had been looking forward to them all day. She asked, "how did you know I would make them?" BECAUSE YOU LOVE ME.) Afterwards, we put up the Christmas tree.

Irritatingly, one of my stepdad's renters called to report that the sewage system had backed up and was flooding the basement. It didn't happen until dinner was over, thank God, but it still made me want to grab the phone and tell them that if it was their fault I was going to come down and kick their asses. It's one thing if it's just bad luck, but a lot of them will flush things like DIAPERS down the toilet because they're STUPID.

I guess my stepdad's Thanksgiving was more disgusting than mine. :(

Now that that's over, I can focus on homework. It would be nice to begin the last stretch feeling a little less overwhelmed.

* These aren't a Thanksgiving food and don't even go well with anything, but it's one of my mom's favorite recipes, and so she makes them for every holiday dinner. She's usually the only one who eats them, which is probably fine with her because it means MORE.

Neil Gaiman On The ‘Obscenity’ Of Manga Collector Christopher Handley’s Trial

Christopher Handley, a manga collector, is being prosecuted because some of the titles in his collections contained scenes of explicit sex involving minors. I have no idea what specific titles these are -- but regardless, w'ere talking about cartoons, not real children.

The above link contains quotes from Neil Gaiman on the subject, as well as some links to other sources.

For the record, I think protesting that the characters in yaoi manga only look young enough to be minors is wrongheaded; it concedes that the law would be right if they actually are that young, which is true of a lot of yaoi manga. I'd bet ten bucks that if Handley has more than five yaoi titles in his collection, at least two involve junior high or high schoolers.

It's also disingenuous to compare it to literature like Lolita, although I think the slippery slope is actually slippery in this case, given that the law is already being applied outside of its original intended scope. It's more accurate to compare it to Twilight, a series not widely regarded as "art"* that is a romance between two teenagers.

* By people who are not crazy.

I have to admit, I am a little disappointed in the latest crop of Barbies. The only ones I sort of like, but probably not enough to buy:

Aine
This one is actually very pretty and not too expensive, and I already have one doll from the Legends of Ireland series who is standing all alone on her own lonely shelf, but I'm not really feeling it.

Empress of the Golden Blossom
Kind of awesome, but not enough to justify the hefty price tag. She looks prettier on the website than she does in the larger photograph in the mail catalog.

Scotland Barbie
I might get this one if I remember to check back when it goes on sale. I don't like her as much as some of the other dolls in the series, but the bagpipe is pretty cute.

France Baarbie
What is wrong with you people.

(Holding out for a Mongolian Princess Barbie, Mattel!)

I can't be the only one that thinks that "the limits of integration" is a creepy phrase. It makes me think of dystopian political fantasies, of lines of dead-eyed calculus students shuffling across a gymnasium floor while someone drones over the loudspeaker, "please wait in an orderly fashion to be evaluated."

Maybe this is why I had a calculus nightmare last night.

Or maybe it was the cats repeatedly pouncing on my head. I can't shake the suspicion that they have sinister motives.

Three Artists that Make Being Behind in Every Class Even More Enjoyable:

美空ひばり Misora Hibari

真赤な太陽
上を向いて歩こう
越前岬

I have sudaki to blame for this: She deviously sent me an enka mixtape a year or two ago, and ever since then she's been my dealer. But she's addicted herself. When she went to Japan, she visited a memorial to the late Misora Hibari, and I bet she cried like a baby.

Misora Hibari is one of the most popular enka singers of all time. If you do a search for Misora Hibari on YouTube, you'll find many gems, including this spectacular performance of the Omatsuri Mambo. (And by spectacular, I mean it is indeed a spectacle.)

ก๊อต จักรพรรณ Got Jakrapun

ลืมไม่ลง
รำวงออกพรรษา
ลูกทุ่งเลือดสุพรรณ


I used to watch this Thai music channel all the time, until something went wrong with either the stream or my internet connection and I could no longer get my daily dose of cheesy Thai music. My favorites were the luk thung music videos. Oh, and the ones with really depressed looking boys texting their girlfriends in the rain.

My best description of the sound of luk thung is: take enka, but add Thailand and sparkles.

As far as I can tell, these three songs are covers of popular luk thung songs by a popular young singer. I really don't know much more, because I comprehend absolutely no Thai, despite my fascination with the way that it sounds. You can read more about Got Jakrapun on his his MySpace page.

A.R. Rahman

Dheeme Dheeme
Main Vari Vari

Bollywood songs are like the sprinkles on top of the cupcake of life.

Last.fm says that A.R. Rahman is my top artist of all time. I knew that when I downloaded that complete A.R. Rahman discography that that would happen. Damn you, A.R. Rahman. If only your soundtracks weren't so fun to listen to, my top artist would be someone serious and respectable.

*check*

Well, maybe not.

I was going to post one more A.R. Rahman song, but my connection has been so crappy lately that I'm seriously thinking about switching services. DSL should not be as slow as dial-up. Seriously, CenturyTel, upload speeds of 3kbps?

Wanda Sykes: "I'm Proud To Be Gay" (HuffPo)

Sykes, who is known for her feisty and blunt style, said the passage of California's Proposition 8 made her feel like she was "attacked."

"Now, I gotta get in their face," she said. "I'm proud to be a woman. I'm proud to be a black woman, and I'm proud to be gay."

I have high hopes. Wanda Sykes getting in their faces could be beautiful. Can you just imagine.

I'm also pretty pleased that Ellen Degeneres has spoken against Prop 8 on her talk show. For a long time, I suspected that they avoided Ellen's homosexuality, but since Prop 8, she's made her position and personal stake in it clear. Sh'e even had a cute monologue the other day involving Portia, in which she said "I'm married to an actress."

Sorry, Idealists: Racism Doesn't End With Our First Black President (Jezebel):

...Gail McDaniel, a Southern woman quoted in the New York Times as stating: “I think there are going to be outbreaks from blacks. From where I’m from, this is going to give them the right to be more aggressive.” In the very same article, another woman "volunteered that she was bothered by the idea of a black man “over me” in the White House." Or maybe they know someone like Greg Griffin, 46, who believes that Obama's victory has "ruined" the country. "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change. If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported."

Fuck y'all. I have my fingers crossed that you burn in the firey hell of Wanda Syke's fury, once she's done with the Prop 8 bigots.

In a recent post, Languagehat describes a talk by a Russian linguist about how, in Russia too, "amateur linguistics" is a problem due to lack of education about the very basic facts of language. I especially enjoyed this example:

He gives an interesting example of a kind of nonsense that is apparently widespread in Russia: some people claim that "not only did Moscow exist before Rome [which is Rim in Russian], but it was by Moscow's command that the Etruscans built the city and named it Mir ['peace,' 'commune,' 'world'] in the spirit of Russian tradition. Since Etruscans read in the reverse direction, it was read as Rim. In this city, built by the Etruscans, for whom Russian was their native language and Etruscan was a kind of soldiers' jargon, Russian was heard for a long time. Only much later, when Latins moved to Rome, did they distort it according to their own phonetics and grammar."

...

The Etruscans spoke Russian. That's so blatantly nuts that it's awesome.

I wonder how much this belief owes to the importance of Rome. I'm reminded of the medieval idea that Russia would contain the "third Rome": The first Rome was not Orthodox, and was therefore heretical and run by sinful popes. The second Rome was Constantinople, which fell. That left Russia as the true center of Christianity. And of course there would be no fourth Rome, because Russia would never be conquered by infidels and it certainly would never deviate from Orthodox teaching.

I also came across and example of so-blatantly-nuts-it's-awesome on my own yesterday. A frequent poster on fanficrants, during round 2,405 of the debate over the proper pluralization of "ninja," claimed that borrowing words from other languages is disrespectful, and that applying the new language's grammar rules is a mockery. (Apparently, "ninjas" is just as racist as mocking Spanish by appending an "o" to every word.)

She apparently didn't realize that she was using the word "ninja" herself.

E-mail error ends up on road sign: When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed. Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".

(Via Language Log.)

Senator Obama:

I have a complaint.

I was led to believe that your half-hour special would contain Bill Clinton singing "Don't You Forget About Me." Instead, it was full of ordinary people talking about boring things like health insurance and the economy. So, basically--about the same as your previous ads, but much, much longer.

I hope there will at least be bad dancing at the rally I'm attending tomorrow.

P.S. I'm weirded out by the whole half-hour political ad thing.

P.P.S. I almost feel sorry for the Republican fans of "Gary Unmarried," which was shoved aside to make way for your lack of singing Bill Clinton. But then, I remember that they're fans of "Gary Unmarried."

Daughter of slave votes for Obama

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.

(If I was 109 years old, I'd vote early, too.)

Meanwhile, the BBC reminds us that West Africa slavery still widespread, including this story of a freed slave winning a settlement against the government of Nigeria:

According to Anti-Slavery International, which helped Ms Mani bring the case, she was finally freed by her master and given her "liberation certificate" in 2005.

A court initially blocked his attempt to prevent her marrying another man, but this was later overruled and Ms Mani was convicted of bigamy and sent to prison for six months.

The man who beat and raped her for years claimed that she was his wife, and the government of Nigeria was apparently more invested in preserving a horrific status quo than in this woman's rights. At least she got a settlement.

That was depressing enough, so here's a funny news report about John McCain's brother, Joe, calling 911 to complain about traffic and swearing at the less-than-receptive operator. I will LOL if this makes it to Leno's "DEALING WITH THE PUBLIC" segment.

Just the other day I accidentally referred to Sarah Palin as “Sailor Palin.” I’m not sure what led to the mistake, but now I can’t get the image of Sarah Palin in a sailor fuku declaring “in the name of Jesus Christ, I will punish you” and launching her “Alaskan drill” attack out of my head.

Help.

Today's links come in two parts, the "Crazy Edition" and the "Less Crazy" edition.

The Crazy Edition

I had a bizarrely rude customer this morning. I'm still pissed off about it. People aren't actively rude to me very often.

Customer: I want the pastry on the top row in the center.
Me: Which flavor?
Customer: The one on the top row in the center.
Me: ... I don't know which one you think is the center. The chocolate?
Customer: NO.
Me: The strawberry cream cheese?
Customer: NO. *GLARES* I WANT THE TOP ONE IN THE CENTER.
Me: Ma'am, you don't have to be rude to me.
Customer: I'll tell you what, I'll just go to the cafeteria.
Me: Please.

I have no idea what the hell her problem was.

Asian Historical Architecture: A Photographic Survey
An awesome page, especially for Korean, Japanese, and Chinese architecture. It contains pages for historical buildings with numerous photographs, background information, and my favorite part: floor plans.

BIBLIOBURRO!

Al-Qaida-linked website backs McCain
I was going to say that this isn't really fair, but then I reconsidered. Forget about the deliberate association of Obama with terrorism--if one of your selling points is your approach to battling terrorism, then it really is relevant that Al Qaeda might want you to win, like they wanted Bush to win in 2004.

World Animal Day at The Big Picture

Crystal Palace
National Geographic photos of an awesome cave in Mexico.

Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation
"In his prepared remarks, Mr. Greenspan said he was in 'a state of shocked disbelief' about the breakdown in the ability of banks to regulate themselves." Poor Greenspan.

Imagine visiting an acquantaince, or someone you have a shallow friendship with. You don't know them very well. You sit down in their living room and see this (NSFW) on their knick-knack shelf, next to a crystal statue of a dolphin, or whatever. What do you think?

(For those who can't click, it's an "anatomically correct"--the furry definition--sculpture of a fox man in a provocative pose.)

Now, I think that we're all a little goofy sometimes and we should just be able to laugh at the absurdity of certain things, including furries, without passing judgement. But for me, buying pornographic statues passes a line from "okay, you're a furry, so what" to "you're weeeeird." Regardless of the price, there's something about putting your taste in porn on display that makes my eyebrow go up. I'd have a similar reaction to someone who had a yaoi manga poster on their wall.

Maybe people who buy this sort of thing don't put it on display. Maybe they keep it in their sock drawer. But that seems almost as weird.

Linkity link link:

ACORN: The McCain Campaign, Looking for a Scapegoat (Jezebel), on the good work that ACORN is doing and the blatantly undemocratic attacks on it; GOP had same voter registration problems as ACORN in 2006 (Firedoglake) on how ACORN has a very high accuracy rate.

Let’s start paying attention to the purges of legitimate voters from the rolls now, plz. Republicans, why are you silent? I’m sure that at least 1/4 of them would vote for you if they weren’t illegally disenfranchised!

Material linking Obama to Bin Laden removed from Sacramento GOP Web site
In fact, it called for torturing Obama. But pointing out that the Republican party’s recent hateful and dangerous tactics--you know, deliberately and falsely associating Obama with terrorism--are in fact hateful and dangerous would be just as bad.

I have in my dirty little hands Toda Grammar and Texts by Murray B. Emeneau. I never saw it on the shelves of my university's library before, probably because it's a big book and was turned sideways in order to fit. Why did I have to find this when I have a paper due on Friday?

Toda is a Dravidian language that is fascinating to me because its phonology is, at least on the surface, very sexy. Look at all of those fricatives and trills. Compare that chart to the Tamil consonants and you can see that Toda has some unique features.

The book that I have in my hands has significant differences from the Wikipedia pages. Part of that is probably because it's outdated--its data was collected before portable recording devices could be used in the field, in the 1930s, and it was written in... I don't know, but the same guy who collected that data wrote it. Another part may be, hey, Wikipedia--I'm particularly interested in that palatalized retroflex trill, which strikes me as pretty implausible.

(Not that I'm an expert. But come on. Really? That wasn't there the last time that I checked the Toda page, IIRC. I'm going to have to look into this when I get home.)

Links for today--

Rachel Maddow: "Sarah Palin is lying to you - enthusiastically and repeatedly"
This post on Jezebel has a fantastic clip from Rachel Maddow's show where she takes on Palin's blatant lying about what's contained in the Troopergate report.

John McCain: Senator, Candidate, Misogynist
John McCain's misogynistic behavior has come up occasionally, but apart from his position on the issues (no to abortion rights, no to equal pay, no to insurance covering birth control), haven't been paid much attention. Here's another post from Jezebel that does a pretty good job of putting all of the incidents in one place.

States’ Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal (NYT)
Hey, with all of the manufactured outrage against ACORN for non-existent voter fraud, we've been distracted from some real voter registration fraud:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

Republicans, mount your horses and defend the democratic process!

Father names baby "Sarah McCain Palin" without his wife's consent
This really doesn't deserve much attention, but I was struck by this part of the father's statement:

“I took one for the cause,” he said. “I can’t give a lot of financial support for the (McCain/Palin) campaign. I do have a sign up in my yard, but I can do very little.”

He took one for the cause? I know I'm not the only one whose eyebrows raised at that. First he ignores his wife's wishes, and then he ignores his baby daughter. He doesn't even seem to recognize her as part of this, as a person who will grow up and be affected by his decision. That's some fantastic advertising.

(I'm sure it's just a coincidence that both of the people whose opinions he thinks are less important than daddy's are both female.)

Wanda Sykes also does an anti-“that’s so gay” PSA

Lost in America: Top math talent
You mean that whether or not their society values their math ability will impact what level of math ability children will develop? Shocking!