Long, Confusing Rant About Grammar

I've noticed in both myself and in others the tendency to write "everyday" when I want to say "every day.” For example, I may write "I waste lots of time jerking off everyday." I do this, and I imagine that other people do this, because of its similarity to the word "someday." But the situations are actually not the same, and it doesn't make sense to analogize the words "someday" and "everyday" to each other. Part of me wants to say that it's just a natural development of our dynamic, living language, and I should accept--nay, embrace--the change. But they way that english speakers think of "someday" and "every day" is very different. In the minds of english speakers "someday" is considered one word, while "every day" is considered two words. How can I claim to know how english speakers conceptualize these words? By the way that they speak them: the cadence at which "someday" is spoken is characteristic of the cadence at which english speakers naturally speak single words (stress on the first syllable, second syllable unstressed), while "every day" is spoken at a cadence characteristic of two words (stress on the first syllable of "every", and stress on "day"). If we thought of "every day" as one word, then we would pronounce it as one word, i.e. with a stress on the first syllable of "every", and all other syllables unstressed, including "day." Furthermore, there would not be a split second pause between "every" and "day"; instead, all syllables would flow together in a seamless fashion. Hence, "everyday" is an incorrect spelling of "every day," not just a new, but still grammatically correct, innovation.

It may seem strange that I feel the need to justify my objection to "everyday," instead of just saying that it is grammatically incorrect and accepting that that statement is enough justification to hate it. But I hate it when people who pride themselves on knowing the rules of grammar say such things. I hate it when people denounce different dialects of speech, different usages of the english language just because they don't conform to what they were taught in some school somewhere. I firmly believe that the rules of language are for the most part arbitrary, and if people want to change them, then who cares? Also, I feel that as long as I understand someone, then they are by definition using the english language correctly, because the whole reason we have a language is to communicate. If clear communication occurs, then the language was used correctly. This is one reason why one sees so many typos on my blog: I feel that as long as people understand me, then my goal was accomplished, and no further work is needed. The only time typos bug me is when they produce some sort of ambiguity, or when they sound unnatural (yeah, typos like that still are quite frequent in my blog. That's more due to laziness than anything else). So this is why I feel that I have an honest criticism of the word "everyday." Even though it does not produce any actual ambiguity, when I read the word "everyday" I read it as though it were one word, when that stress pattern sounding in my mind. It makes me pause for a split-second, because it does not sound like it would in natural speech, and even though I understand what is being written almost immediately, I feel as though I shouldn't. I feel, instinctually, that something different than "every day" is being expressed, even though I know that the meanings are the same. This slight pause and discomfort breaks the flow of the narrative for me, reducing my pleasure and engagement with the experience. I suppose this same argument could be made for all typos: they are outside of what is expected, which brings the readers back to themselves and outside the world of whatever they're reading.

Sigh...perhaps I should make more of an effort to spell words and use punctuation according to the rules laid down my grammarians, not because one spelling is inherently better than another, but just because the agreed upon spelling is more comfortable for readers. We have laid down a standard of how to use the written word because it makes our lives easier. If I want the things I write to be easy to read, I should follow those standards. I just don’t want to become one of those grammar-nazis, who look down on people who don’t write and talk in the way a bunch of white, privileged prigs decided they should. It’s intellectual colonialism, intent of wiping out all traces of any culture other than the dominant one. It makes me sick, because it’s damaging, and also very small-minded. But there are good reasons for a lot of the rules that have been laid down, and, more importantly, there are good reasons for having rules to follow in the first place.

But now that I know this I can use “bad” grammar effectively to suit my needs. If I want to call attention to something I can use a structure that is considered inappropriate, so that folks will pause for a moment. For example, sentences are not supposed to be begun with the word “but” for some reason. I do this all the time, because I think it reflects natural speech just fine: people often begin new thoughts with the word “but,” thoughts that deserve whole new sentences, not just a continuation of a different sentence. If everything else I write is strictly following the rules of grammar, then this sentence should stand out to someone who has a keen eye for such things; and although they will probably end up dwelling on the error, they will also probably read the sentence over again, thus putting greater emphasis on the ideas presented there.

Another trick I could use is to make the “mistake” reflect the meaning is some way, so that the meaning and the mistake are one and the same. Valentine cards do this all the time: one will have a picture of a happy, loving little bumble bee on it, and next to the picture will be the phrase “I think you’re BEE-you-ti-ful.” The mistake is calling attention to the fact that there is a bee on the picture. What bees have to do with love and beauty is anyone’s guess, so I wouldn’t consider this an effective use of what I’m trying to illustrate. In fact, I can think of any examples of what I’m trying to illustrate, because I find such things to be tacky and annoying. But if I did it more subtly? Who knows. Maybe I’ll think of a good use for it later.

And still, with all that, I still feel very little compulsion to go back and correct the typos in this entry.

I'm getting really depressed again. I'm sliding back into addictive behavior. They gave me the key to the lab a few months back so I can come in and work any time of the day or night. At first I had no temptation to use the computers for sexual purposes, but lately I have been, after realizing that I have enough know-how to cover my tracks now, so that I won't get caught. It's horrible. I neglect my work. I spend too much time thinking about sex. I exhaust myself. I think what I need to do is just stop coming in at night when I'm sure of not being interupted. If I come in during the day, then there will be other folks around, or at least there will be the chance that they will show up any minute. I'll get more work done that way, and feel better about myslef.

It's just depression. It never seems to leave for long, no matter what I do. It's very tiresome. Usually I have school-work to distract me, but for the next month that's gone. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm feeling desperate. I don't like it. I have to find a solution that doesn't hurt me in any way. Unfortunately all the drugs that help with depression, both legal and illegal, also have such bad side effects. What am I supposed to do? (that's a rhetorical question: I'm not feeling receptive to advice right now).

I had my old student ID for a very long time, and I always kept it in the same place in my wallet: in the central plastic window, so I could flash it quickly to bus-drivers and such (we don't have to pay the fare if we have a student ID). It was in that little window for about 3 years, during which time the black ink on the picture of my face slowly seeped into it. Now there is a permanant image of me on the window, composed of only the dark parts.

I just got a new ID, with a horrible picture, light all shining off my greasy, vulnerable face. But when I place it in the window, exactly where the old ID used to be, the dark markings of my old image are superimposed on the new one, giving a strange conglomeration of who I was then and who I am now.

I feel a little haunted by it. I wanted to get a new picture, not just because all the ink had leeched out of the old one, but also because the old one looked so serious and morose. It seems I can't escape it, not entirely. But this also comforts me: I don't want to leave myself behind completely. It's good to have a sense of continuity. I can be new and stay the same, without giving up either.

Today was the last day of my General Chemistry 123 lab. I cleaned all my eqipment, all my beakers and pipets and such, scrubed down my lab space, signed the necessary forms, and that was it. I'll never be able to go back to that lab again. After three quarters of going to that lab, seeing those familiar yellow walls, stained counter tops, and antiquated equipment once or twice a week, I'm now done, never to return. Next quarter is Organic Chem, which has it's labs on the 4th floor; anyway I won't even be taking the lab. I'll just be taking the classroom section. The only way I'll get to see those labs again, those simple second floor labs, is if I walk by and look at the windows, where I'll see people much like myself, struggling through the same procedures which I struggled through and triumphed over, so long ago.

Bah. It isn't even really the past yet, and already I'm feeling nostalgia. "-algia" means pain, and "nost-" means a desire to make a homeward journey. I've left my home, the comforting constant of each week for the past nine months, and it hurts, delicately, sublimly. Things will never be the same again.

I have that closing image from the old Carol Burnett show going through my head: an old grey haired woman, slowly pushing her mop across the stage with her bent and patient back. "I'm so glad we had this time together..." croons a melancholy man in 40's style reverie. I shed a little tear: I am so glad we had this time together, and even though I'm looking forward to the adventures of the future, I feel like I've lost something, like I'm lost so many things, which I'll never be able to touch again.

Now, I have never done cocaine in all my life. I don't even know whatever slang words the young kids are using these days to describe it. The closest I've ever come is a tiny bit of crystal methamphetamine about 7 years ago, which made me feel kind of neat, and very horny, for about 20 minutes, then absolutely horrible for about 7 hours. In consequence, I've since avoided all sniffy stimulants.

But last night I dreamed that I bought a small amount of cocaine, just to help me study, and to make me feel good. A friend of mine, a woman I knew during my childhood, and who stays in my subconscious as the analytical voice of reason, was in the dream as well.
"Why are you doing that?" she asked. "How does it help you?"
"Well, it makes me feel beautiful," I answered, confidently.
"It makes you feel beautiful? Does it make everyone feel beautiful?"
"Well...yes."
"Even ugly people?"
"Ummm...yeah."
"So in other words it makes you delusional."

Sometimes I'm amazed at the wisdom of my subconscious :)

Tooth Removal

Yesterday I had a tooth removed. Tooth #1, they called it in their dentist-speak; the one way in the back, on the top, on the right side of my body (from my perspective). It had been hurting me for some time, until I stopped brushing my teeth, which, for reasons that are outside of what the dentists have been taught and therefore are simply delusion on my part, made the hurting stop.

But yesterday morning the pain came back, and with a vengence. After my chemistry midterm I went to the walk-in clinic, just to see when they would be open tomarrow morning, when all of a sudden I was swept into a whirlwind of forms, short lines, and hesitant, yet rapid-fire questions from nervous student dentists. They applied freezing cold q-tips to my teeth, to see how much pain I'm in. "On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does it hurt?" "It's....a 1..no! a 7!... or...a 5...I don't know...." They exchange frustrated glances, they proceed to shove large plastic objects as far back into my throat as possible, and tell me to bite down, cutting the sharp plastic sides of the x-ray sheet into my tender mouth flesh.

I knew this would happen. It happens every time I go to the dentist. So I warned them before we even began: I have a very sensitive gag reflex. Please be gentle and careful. They don't believe me (they never do), and take no gentle care whatsoever at least not until the gagging gets so bad they I actually end up puking into my hand after ripping the large yellow contraption out of my mouth and onto the floor. They spray a numbing agent into my throat, and, before it has any time to take effect, continue their torture. Compounded by the grotestque, cherry flavor from the spray, the gagging sensation becomes worse, but I manage to only spit up a little bit, and keep it in my mouth until they are done, spitting it out into the sink directly afterwards. But when they are finished, and they go off for about 8 mintues to develop the film and discuss their plan of action, I am amazed to find that I can reach my finger all the way to the back of my throat, touching the little dangly thing in the back, without any gagging at all. I play with this, like a kid with a new toy, until they return, informing me that one tooth, tooth #1, needs to come out, and that I should really come back and blah blah blah, conform to their values, do what they say.

Surprisingly, compared to the preliminary examination the actual extraction was very relaxing, actually pleasurable. They were very generous with anesthetics, sufficiently numbing my mouth with a tingly gel before even inserting the needles in. I didn't feel the needles, but I felt my nerves in my mouth being affected, radiating out in waves from the needle insertion, a sensation...of I don't know what. Resignation? As they began to take out the tooth, which again I barely felt, I had to suppress laughter: The man was working so hard, gyrating the pliers in broad circles, moving my head back and forth. It struck me funny somehow. The woman made a running commentary the whole time: "Okay, it's coming out, we're getting movement, you're doing a great job. You too, Xian (the name of the dentist with the pliers). Keep going, almost there. Heh. I feel like I'm announcing a golf game or something." Which almost made me laugh again.

She continued her commentary, and after while I started to feel like I was giving birth. "Here it comes" she said, here eyes glowing, a look of wonder on her face, "it's almost out, we can see the roots. Ok! It's out!" They lifted the tooth out with great pride and showed it to me, and in the back of mind, I thought "My baby, it's out" and laughed a little again.

But losing a tooth is symbolic: old, useless, decayed growth is removed. In dream dictionaries they list it as meaning significant, beneficial change. And I felt like that: it's time to get rid of something old, no longer needed, even harmful. Fitting for my efforts now with sobriety, which seem to be making more progress than before.

I don't know how I feel now though. I'm happy the tooth is gone. Although the healing is still painful, my whole mouth feels much better, and my ear does as well (I believe that the tooth infection was getting into my ear canal somehow, or just irritating it maybe). We'll see if symbolically it works out, but on the physical level I feel very content.

Now I just need to work on all my other teeth. Sigh...more annoying dentists.

I've Got Myself a Plan

Okay, I've been listening to the BBC a little bit lately, specifically Radio 4, and even more specifically their series on memory and how it works. From that I've gathered a few factoids that I've been mulling over.

The first factoid is that the best way to transfer something from your working, short-term memory to your long-term memory, it must be reveiwed and re-enforced at intervals. Their specific advice was that you should review the information one day after you first learn it, then at intervals of 1 week, 1 month, and 4 months after first learning.

The second is that it takes 15,000 hours of study in a particular area of study to become and "expert" on that subject. This seems a little silly to me, because it also depends on how carefully you learn the information, and how you process it, but I do see their point: if you are thorough and thoughtful about how you study, then you will still need to put in 15,000 hours working with something before you have a very solid, thourough knowledge of it.

So here's my plan: I will become an expert in something. If I study something for 5 hours a day for the next ten years, then I'll be good to go. Here's what I'll do: I'll study something new for about an hour and a half each day. I will keep track of what I studied each day in one of those daily planners, and then mark off which days I'll have to review the information to hold to the intervals I listed above. By the time the four month mark comes along, and I begin studying the stuff I first learned 4 months before, I'll be studying about 5 hours a day. If I study something for and hour and half, it should probably take about 45 mintues to review it, wouldn't you say? Because I already know it, so it's less about trying to figure out what is being said, and more about just reminding myself that those ideas exist. Each day I'll be studying 1.5 hours on new stuff, and .75 hours on the stuff from one day ago, on week ago, one month ago, and 4 months ago. Total: 4.5 hours. Close to five hours, and knowing how I get distracted so easily, it will probably take 5 hours anyway.

So now I just have to figure out what to become an expert in : ) Any ideas? I won't actually follow any of your advice, so feel free to advise whatever you want.

I want a cat. I went over the The Amatuer Musician's house the other day, in the Clintonville area of our town, which is a strange mix of hippies, long-time locals (I feel bad calling them "hicks"), and college kids, and I didn't play with his cat there, because he doesn't have a cat, but I did play with the cat that lives with the couple above him, which wanders in to his apartment when he leaves the door open. It was a fiesty cat, all scratching and panicking at every step, and then sleeping, his arms splayed one way, his legs the other, his sensitive stomach stretched long in the sun.

It was fun to play with him. I missed having my own, and still miss having my own. Having an animal brings a sense of livlieness and activity to a home, so that when one is studying, cleaning, or doing whatever, it feels not so much like one is alone, and more like one is in a public place. It's not so much like having company, but more like there is an overall sense of life around one, that one can consciously ignore, but which informs one experience in more subtle ways.

The Talker would always get defensive when someone, on hearing about his lonliness, would suggest that he get a dog. "I don't need a dog" he's say, "I need a boyfriend." And although he didn't express it in so many words, the impression I got was that he felt that getting a dog would be giving up. Or it would be saying that he's so pathetic that he can't get anyone to love him, so he got an animal to love him instead. And of course when I mention to him that I would like to have a cat, he projects that same mindset onto me. But that's not how I feel; I realize that a cat is not a human, and is not a substitute for one. Nor would I want it to be. There's just something about having a cat that makes a home more pleasant. It's like having plants: it brings life into your home, brings it in all around you, in a non-invasive way. It's like having a steady diet of nutritious, healthy food: it makes you feel a bit better, and energizes you. I wouldn't expect food to take the place of human love, and I wouldn't expect a cat too as well.

The best thing about cats, if you ask me, is their sleeping habits. They're like me: they want to sleep all day, and be active all night. When I did have a cat, my beloved Shama, who nows lives with the man I was dating when I got her, my favorite thing to do with her was sleep. I'd come during the day after my classes, and she'd be curled up on our king, sized bed, just out of the path of the sunshine from the large windows facing the street. I'd collapse on the bed myself, as far from her as comfortably possible so as to not disturb her, and curl myself up too, letting the sunshine lull me away to sleep. Being a fitful sleeper, I'd wake up every few hours, and still do to this day. Normally at this point it is rather difficult to get back to sleep. But when I would open my eyes, and see that Shama was still sleeping so peacefully, breathing so rhythmically, so obviously relaxed and content....Well, it was infectious! I'd be back to sleep in no time.

This is in marked contrast to how I feel when I sleep with another human. Their presense is too stimulating. If I wake up, I immediately start thinking about them, and worrying about them; about what they want from me, if they want me to wake up and interact with them, etc. It's really annoying. A cat doesn't want anything from you, or at least very little. They're much more low-maintenance. It's nice.

Can't happen now though: no pets in my building. Someday, though, when I have more money.

I'm sick of science. I want music and literature, and music and literature alone.

I've committed to my degree, and I can't spend my whole life bouncing around, and accomplishing nothing.

Pray for my damned soul!