Helpful hint: remembering your Cyrillic isn't enough to look something up in a Russian dictionary. You also have to remember Cyrillic alphabetical order.

I saw in the newspaper an ad for a gay and lesbian wedding show. This is good, this is progress, especially since it's being advertised in a daily broadsheet.

However, it will be even more progress when same-sex marriages don't get their separate wedding show - when they are marketed to in the excessively-giant annual wedding show just like opposite sex marriages.

I propose that the deadline for this changeover be next June 10, which, if I remember correctly, will be the one-year anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriages. On this date, newspapers stop making a note of what percentage of marriages conducted at city hall have been same-sex, wedding magazines make their language and photography inclusive (and not by doing a special article about same-sex weddings every once in a while), and the wedding shows amalgamate.

This is not an attempt to hide same-sex marriage or sweep it under a rug, but to normalize it. A same-sex wedding needs to be no more and no less noteworthy than an opposite-sex wedding. We need to get to the level where a same-sex wedding is no more worthy of commentary than a woman who happens to have a career, or a successful professional who happens to not be WASP.

I saw FOUR black lab guide dogs on the way home today!

Yesterday I had a discussion about how yesterday was Mardi Gras. Today I saw in the newspaper pictures of crews cleaning up from Mardi Gras. I also noticed in passing an article about the pope doing Ash Wednesday.

And yet it took me until 5 pm today to realize why there seemed to be an inordinate number of people with these mysterious dark spots on their foreheads.

Things they should have in movies:

1. A movie in which every single character wears glasses, for no particular reason.

2. A movie in which the entire soundtrack is covers of well-known songs, sung with commonly misheard lyrics.

3. A movie in which each character speaks a different language, but they all seem to understand each other anyway. Fully subtitled.

I had to wear sunglasses on the way home from the subway! Winter is coming to an end!

In the mail today I got a flyer talking about a new residential property, advertising "No condo fees! No downpayments!" "Hmm," I thought, "whatever kind of new condo could this be?" I perused the flyer further, and found that there are no condo fees and no downpayments because it is a rental property!

I live in a rental building! I don't have condo fees and downpayments! You can't sell me rental property that way! Do your research people! Read the "apartments for rent" sign out front!

I just started reading William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. I know I shouldn't write about books when I haven't finished them yet, but this is MY language. This is the English language if my cerebral synapses had total control over it. I'm welcomed into the novel with Google as a verb. Cleverly placed at the beginning of a sentence to avoid the debate over whether it should be capitalized. The fridge smells of long-chain monomers. I know what that means, but not everyone does. The character drags herself out of bed, sleepless, and goes to her favourite online forum. It's so natural, so real, so much like my life and so something I've never seen in a novel before. "No spoilers" she warns. Would my parents even know what that means?

Then, casually, idly, the most perfect verbing ever. The word could not possibly be more perfect for communicating the concept:

Zaprudered. Once again at the beginning of the sentence, to avoid capitalization issues. Zaprudered.

A sound that only mi cielito has heard escapes my lips.

I don't think the plot even matters any more.

Just finished reading I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company by Brian Hall. It's a novel about Lewis and Clark, where the author used all the existing documents and historical knowledge about them and filled in the gaps himself to make a historical novel. As a historical novel, it was quite well done. It was rich in detail and didn't gloss over the misconceptions or less glamourous aspects of the era. (One of my pet peeves is historical novels that don't even mention the fact that everyone had dysentry and rarely bathed). However, it was very easy to put down. This is probably because it had to conform to known historical facts, which prevented it from having a compelling plot line. This is a good choice on the author's part - he gave the reader some credit by assuming they already knew the story (I didn't already know the story, but that's due to my own ignorance, and I knew I could have found it in 10 seconds on Google) so he focused on the process rather than forcing a phoney Hollywood movie treatment on it to give it a compelling plotline. It was the correct choice, but it did make the book easy to put down.

I was disappointed with the portrayal of Sacagawea. She suffered from "male authors who can't write women" syndrome, and the chapters written from her viewpoint showed a disappointing lack of abstract thought skills. I know she's supposed to be "savage", but I think her intellect, just based on the fact that she's a human being and has the ability to learn bits of other languages, was rather patronizingly underestimated. Her chapters were interesting though, because the author took what was known of her native language and used it to construct her way of thinking. This was extremely interesting from a linguistics perspective, but I doubt he got it right. You see, he also tried to do the same thing with Charbonneau's chapters, but instead of representing the French train of thought, he came up with a stereotyped Pythonesque caricature of a Frenchman. I suppose I'm particularly sensitive to this as a French to English translator, but French does agree its verbs and nouns and you can't represent French thought just by messing up the grammar. It would have been much better to use abstract verbs, eliminate verbed nouns, and, if that wasn't enough, use "he" and "she" instead of "it". The author's inability to carry off the Other Language train of thought in French make me doubt his ability to do so in Sacagawea's language, which made me disappointed in what I had originally thought was the most interesting part of the novel.

If anyone is watching the Simpsons right now, what's the music they're playing as Lisa wanders through the museum?

I've been making a point of consuming as little American media as possible over the past few months, but yesterday I decided to watch a movie on US network television. The cultural difference is quite apparent when you compare commercials! I can't quite put my finger on it, but the commercials on the US stations seem to be intentionally alienating me. Sometimes on Canadian networks there are commercials where I'm not the target audience, but I get the impression that they don't mind if I sit in. But the US commercials make me feel like they actively don't want me there. Maybe it's because the American commercials seem to assume more strongly that the viewer is suburban and has a family of their own, I'm not quite sure yet. Also, they are positively infested with patronizing anti-drug commercials that trivialize the complexity of the problem.

What's the opposite of a dry martini? It can't be a wet martini...

Fun with the English language!

It occurs to me that the source of the main structural differences between English and French is that English verbs more willingly.

I have lost nine socks since I moved in here last April. That doesn't include any complete pairs I might have lost.

They should invent window blinds that are also solar panels.

I fucked up today. My boss was talking to me, and I misinterpreted a tonal modulation and thought she was asking me a question when she was in fact giving me a compliment. So I answered with a rather apathetic affirmative acknowledgement (nodding head, half-hearted "mm-hmm" equivalent) when I should have answered with my trademark slightly embarrassed, brief-modest-lowering-of-eyes thank you.

Last night I had a dream that I was at my university graduation (BA) and in my package of stuff there was an acceptance to the MA program. Interesting.

There were some people on TV trying on wedding dresses. Some of these dresses were of the type that most people couldn't try on without good supportive undergarments selected with that particular dress in mind. But I doubt most people would buy their undergarments before they buy their dress. So do they sell lingerie at bridal stores too? Or is that why everyone on that show was incredibly skinny (by which I mean incredibly skinny, not just smaller than me).

On a side note, am I the only person in the world who thinks that there is no garment in the world that is more flattering strapless than it would be with straps?

Went to bed way early last night because I was exhausted and got 10 hours of sleep. Now I feel like I'm coming down with something - I'm thirstier than usual, and not as well-rested as I should feel after 10 hours. Time to OD on supplements and hydrate the whole day - I'm so lucky I have a job that lets me do that at work! All I have to do is hold out until Friday, then I get a nice long weekend since I'm taking Monday off.

I was reading a thing about the quotative "like" that is prevalent in youth speech (e.g.: He was like "Oh my god, EW!") and I realized that when I use "like" this way, it takes on certain characteristics that other synonyms of "said" do not.

First the obvious one, it is only used in speech. I would never write a quotative like (unless for the purpose of emulating a certain register of speech).

Secondly, while it is quotative in function, it implies that what I'm about to quote is not necessarily a direct quote, but may be my own wording of the speaker's intent. So when he was like "Oh my god, EW!", he might not have actually said "Oh my god, EW!" he might have said something else or just made a face of disgust.

Finally, when I use the quotative like, I am, if only to some small extent, acting out the role of the speaker. I might modulate my voice, wave my arms about, make faces, etc. I'll often do this rather subtly because not all the places I have conversations are conducive to acting out every character, but the implication is that from the time I utter the word "like" to the time I finish quoting, I "become" the person I'm quoting.

Since a lot of people reading this are of similar demographic and probably use the quotative like themselves, I'm wondering if it has the same characteritics and connotations when you use it, or is this just something personal to me?