Confetti
44 Days until I make Aliyah to Israel. 25 Days until the last day of classes. Just a few hours until I’m in NYC and enjoying the company of my family and my standard poodle (I land there tonight). Tuesday I’ll be in NYC mostly for pleasure (but also to acquire some texts I need). Wednesday I’ll be at the Aliyah Agency getting my passport back with the Oleh Chadash Visa attached and then having dinner with my cousins and also meeting up with some friends. Thursday morning I land in Buffalo on the early flight so I can TA at 11:00a and also attend Classical Tibetan in the evening and Anchor Bar late at night…I won’t even touch on next weeks flight schedule until I get through this week (next week I’m going to be in NYC, West Palm Beach, Long Island, West Palm Beach, NYC and Buffalo Again…and maybe a few other stops…I forget…I have to look it up). It’s going to cost me a couple of hundred to offset my carbon emissions this year…but it’s worthwhile, especially since I won’t be on an airplane for another three years come December 27th (though Jeruen and I are planning a trip to India in 2010 after I’m out of the IDF and he’s done with Post-Doc.).
My paper for my independent study is simmering at 13 pages and it’s (thankfully) almost done (just a little bit longer). 17 more pages and I’d have enough for the second of two papers required for a masters degree for most departments here at UB (two thirty pagers and wham, bam you’ve got yourself a hood…woohoo). In all honesty, if I weren’t taking 19 credits I’d do more on it and expand it more (it’s fascinating, I’m looking at the Language Riots in India in 1965 and it’s a deadly ‘comedy’ and could have been avoided entirely)…but I just don’t have the time…it’s taken me the majority of the semester to at least stand on the ball, let alone get ahead of it and I need to make sure I keep up with everything, not just what interests me.
Dr. Jaeger’s class is also currently whooping my ass (it’s Phonetician Boot-camp)…and it’s something I’d love to study…and would do better at…if I weren’t studying it now and at this juncture in my life…though I’ve already done an independent study with her in the IPA and Phonetic Spectrographic Analysis so now that we’re moving into Acoustic Phonetics it certainly won’t be smooth sailing…but it also won’t be completely foreign to me either. Also, I cannot hear tone for the life of me, I am completely tone deaf which is proving difficult (thankfully you don’t have to speak or hear tone to actually understand classical tibetan or to work in it…it’s entirely translation, it’s not used for conversation and it’s tones aren’t so much ‘tones’ as they are aspiration and amplitude anyway).
My supervising instructor (Dr. Wolfgang Wölck) is heading to Brussels for two weeks on the 16th (I hand in my paper to him on the 15t and he assigns a preliminary grade and if I’m satisfied with it we call it a semester). Hopefully he’ll be able to pick me up a copy of Euromosaic (which he works on) from the European Commission…I’d like a hardcopy rather than a *.pdf file and he should be able to snag me a copy, which I’d appreciate.
Books to Israel
I was looking into mailing a few of my books to Israel and I just don’t think that’s going to happen. Some people buy books and never use them…which I find sad…what’s the point of owning reference books if you don’t refer to them? They’re there to be held, to be curled up with over a cup of coffee on the couch while it’s raining (…yes…nerds cuddle and read reference books to each other…don’t act like you’ve never done it…yeah you…you know who I’m talking to…yeah that’s right…you). They’re wonderful friends when you get to know them.
I own a compact edition (hahaha…compact…it weighs 15lbs…) of the OED. It’s one of my prized possessions, next to the signed copy of Dr. Jaeger’s ‘Magnum Opus’ which she signed to me as her ‘backwards son’ – I got a misprint with the book printed upside down – and my signed copy of Wolf’s textbook for my Sociolinguistics course (…yes…I had him sign it…but to be fair…he’s like the Green Lantern or Superman of Sociolinguistics…the Derek Jeter or Sandy Koufax of Language Policy and Planning…the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of Diglosia…anyway, you get the picture).
The Compact OED is printed in micro-print and you need a magnifying glass to see it…and it’s wonderful. I use it daily (and if there isn’t something I have to look up I just start browsing through it randomly in much the same fashion as Nero Wolfe would spin his globe while pondering to himself)…using it like a mirror on the wall or a gazing ball…strolling through the pages and getting lost in the history behind words…where they came from…it’s sort of like looking at their passports, what countries they traveled through before they got to where they are now. It’s 15lbs and going to cost 150.00 to ship…which means it’s probably going to come with me in one of my two duffel bags. Which means one duffle can have another 35lbs and the other another 50lbs…it’s really good that the extent of clothing that’s coming with me are a few cherished pieces and underwear (as part of my grant for NBN I made it very clear that a good chunk of the cash would be spent on clothing…since I’ve been living in Buffalo for the past five and a half years I’ve accumulated dozens of hoodies and sweaters and articles to keep me warm…which means outside of the one pair of shorts I own…I have nothing appropriate for a desert).
I also have quite a few of Ladefoged’s books which I can see coming in handy – especially his titles on Acoustic Phonetics, not to mention Pullam’s (perhaps slightly tongue and cheek) dictionary on phonetic orthography and I had wanted to continue with Classical Tibetan so there’s that book too not forgetting about three other handbooks and another on Translation and Power and another on Translation Ethics.
An odd correlation perhaps, but I feel sort of like Hermione must have as she was wondering what text books she would need to bring with her as she prepared herself…I’m not facing off against Voldemort to be sure…but I’m certainly heading out on a Linguistic adventure and I really don’t want to go “oh I wish I had that textbook…” and then come up short. I’m also forgoing a laptop for a smart phone (for the time being) so CDs aren’t really options (not to mention how prohibitive obtaining a CD copy of the OED is).
…ohh, I also have to bring Triple Zeck with me (it’s a Nero Wolfe Omnibus containing his Zeck Trilogy which happens to be my favorite three books in the series)…my kingdom for a library.
Packing
I need to work a bit more on this paper; get a shower in, and maybe a couple hours of sleep before I have to leave for my 8am class…and to do any of that, means that I really (really) need to pack my bag for the plane (as usual, I’m flying carryon…and by carryon…I mean just my messenger bag – I have clothing left at my parent’s house). I’m going to get on that now…as much as I’m going to be getting done in NYC, I have even more that I’ll have to do on my laptop at home for school.
Confetti
I used to listen to this when I’d get on the subway (Buffalo has one, it goes down main street and is underground half way and above ground halfway) to go teach Kindergarten. I had to wake up at the crack of dawn and catch the first bus from North Campus to South Campus, then take the Subway (read: trolly) to Allen (which is the same station where Vince accidentally had sex with a prostitute while we were seeing each other – no, for real…it was an accident…he didn’t realize the dude was a prostitute) and then I’d walk ten minutes along High Street to get to class before my students did…let me tell you, that was fun in twenty degree weather. One day, I walked in ten minutes late covered in snow (I looked like a snowman) and Malik looked at me and went “Mr. S you’re Late!” and I went “Malik…do you have heating on your bus that picks you up at your door?” and he went “yes” and I went “then you have ten seconds to run…” I miss that class. I remember when I had to explain to Elijah that he couldn’t own a pet lion because he lived in the city.
Anyways, the song goes well with cold weather and the nip of winter on your nose and fireplaces and just a hint of nicotine and the smell of ‘boyfriend’ that comes with a shirt from the laundry basket that you borrowed without the intent to return:
Confetti
Vonda ShepardSkinny little brats
Walking down Avenue A
Dangling their cigarettes
Their Independence Day
Tears like filigrees
Wear them on their sleeves
Nobody’s main squeeze
It’s thirty-five degreesPoetry of ordinary life is what I live for
They just wanna be seen
They just wanna be heardMy words are like Confetti
And you never pick them up
They fall to the ground
I need someone to lift me upSo diaphanous so ephemeral
And all those bad words
They never learned in school
Groovy like my mamma was
In her black turtle neck
She was so high strung
She was so low techPoetry and tattooed dreams
And fourteen caret nose rings
The children of elite
Are trying to be street sayingMy words are like confetti
And you never pick them up
They fall to the ground
I need someone to lift me upMy words are like confetti
And you never pick them up
They fall to the ground
I need someone to lift me up