Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
So yesterday my English teacher writes on the board:
"A man was bitten by a dog."
"This is in the passive voice," he says. "Does anyone know how to restate this into the active voice?" There are some flailings along the lines of "A man is bitten by a dog" and "A man had been bitten by a dog". I keep mum, trying not to make myself even more of a nuisance in that class than I usually am. (The class before, he had thrown up his hands, turned to me, and said, "Let me ask you a question, Mirabai: What are you doing here? I think you may be a little too analytical for this career.") He sighs and writes:
"A dog bit a man."
"That's the active voice," he says. "Now, can anyone tell me why someone would want to use the passive voice rather than the active voice in a case like this?" Dead silence. "Aw, screw it," I think. I raise my hand.
"'Cause my friend Martin was in Istanbul, and he got savaged by a pack of wild dogs, and he had to have crutches and rabies shots and everything, and if I said, 'A pack of wild dogs savaged my friend Martin in Istanbul,' it would be putting the emphasis on the dogs instead of Martin, which is totally unfair after all he's been through, so it has to be, 'My friend Martin was savaged by a pack of wild dogs in Istanbul,' 'cause he's more important than those evil mangy bastards!"
He looks at me. "Thank you, Mirabai," he says. "That's exactly right."
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(6)
12:39:11 PM,Wednesday 19 April 2006
Thisis what I want to do when I grow up. I think it'd be bloody wonderful.
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(1)
04:58:11 PM,Friday 14 April 2006
So what with paying three months' worth of rent to secure the new place (borrowing a third of it, which I'd like to pay back as soon as I can) and having to keep up the rent on my current place through May, I'll be a little strapped for a while. My biggest unavoidable expense is food. I know how to eat cheap, but it means eating dreck. Yesterday, for example-- three slices of bread with marmite, two bags of potato chips, two bananas, one bag each of cheddar popcorn and Cracker Jacks, and some leftover salami and pasta. Total out of pocket cost: $2.
But when my girl's around, she rightly balks at that sort of diet, and I know I can't eat like this indefinitely, either. Eating well in this city is not hard if you've got $20 or $30 to drop at each meal, but for the moment, I don't. What sorts of dinners do you guys cook up when you're eating cheap, presupposing limited fridge space and less than two hours in the evening to cook and eat it?
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(13)
12:50:18 PM,Thursday 13 April 2006
Q. How do you tell a separatist fundamentalist?
A. She only approves of FFM threesomes for the purpose of procreation.
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11:08:08 AM,Thursday 13 April 2006
1. We call it pop, damnit.
2. Cartoon merchandising goes upscale.
3. One in a series of brilliant Manhattan Storage ads.
4. Some outfit filming on location, a block from my apartment. Sign posted on trailer reads "Dominican Thug #2".
5. The guy who'll sketch you on the subway for a voluntary donation. Took him from 191st to 96th for mine. It looked like my mother. I gave him $10.
6. Martin thinks he's all this-and-that, all, "Oh, oh, I got attacked by a pack of feral dogs!" Oh yeah? Yesterday I got attacked by dogs too. Well, dog. Well, two month old pekingese. But look-- it drew blood! After 20 tries... of my sticking my fingers in its mouth 'cause it was teething and wanted something to gnaw on. Still. Where's my sympathy, huh?
7. A picture of a church I took on Porter's last night in New York. I took a lovely picture of Porter, too, but I've been forbidden from posting it, so fooey.
8. Snow piled up high in Park Place, next to school. Covered about two stories. Never did get to go sledding, though. The other day I saw an ad for my school in the subway for the first time. Was relieved to see that it wasn't riddled with misspellings and punctuation errors, like most of the other ubiquitous trade school ads. You get your naches where you find it, I guess.
9. What I'm pretty sure is an intact chrysalis of some sort of moth or butterfly, fastened to the hand railing of an escalator in Times Square Station.
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(5)
11:43:52 PM,Wednesday 12 April 2006
via my sometimes extremely weird job (this morning more than most).
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(3)
10:53:46 AM,Wednesday 12 April 2006
I just transcribed an entire show for work on my steno machine for the first time. I've tried to do it a few times before, always just too impatient, and just ended up finishing it qwerty-style. But I finally banged one out in toto, and I'm all proud. On the regular keyboard, it would have taken me about 36 minutes. Stenoing, it wound up taking me most of the weekend, even though (and partially because) I slowed it down 54%, but it was hypnotically fun after I worked around a couple obnoxious DigitalCAT bugs (any of you steno types reading this blog ever encounter the one where it'll suddenly decide you're a few words behind where you actually are, so if you want to define the last word, it'll try to define the third from last word, and if you hit the asterisk to delete the last stroke, it'll delete the last two strokes instead?), and I was surprised how few words I had to add to my dictionary. Maybe I won't need to get a custom dictionary building program written after all, and can just do it little by little, as the new words come up. That would be awfully nice. Anyway-- glorious weekend. Full of sun and grins and pulverized fruit. Still haven't signed the lease; the super came home too late on Friday, but he told me to come over tomorrow. Life is pretty brilliant.
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11:11:08 PM,Sunday 9 April 2006
A fascinating article on a new surgical treatment for depression.
Via Erika.
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08:48:09 PM,Friday 7 April 2006
Got official approval for the apartment! Signing the lease and paying the money tonight after work. WAHOO!
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(9)
02:46:01 PM,Friday 7 April 2006
Blogging from phone in English class. Have discovered that 'Unit sixteen skills test A' is anagram of 'Unix, Skittles, 'n' Tesla's tie.'
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(1)
06:00:53 PM,Thursday 6 April 2006
Geeeeeh!
So maybe this is counting chilkes, 'cause I haven't actually signed a lease yet, but I just saw two apartments and chose the nicer one and the guy went through all my papers and shook my hand and said he's just gonna check with the owner but I'm the first one to apply and everything seems to be in order and he should be calling me Friday or Monday and when he does he'll need three months' rent and I can move in May 1st.
GEEEEEEEH!
And there's so much light and so much space and it's on the sixth floor in a building that doesn't smell like pee and it's three blocks from here and I'm finally gonna be a grownup dude dude dude zoink blargh!
And now I go do laundry.
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(7)
01:57:29 PM,Thursday 6 April 2006
Via Sola.
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(5)
12:00:01 AM,Thursday 6 April 2006
The other day at school I accidentally got into an elevator going up instead of down. The doors opened and closed on the 11th floor before descending to the lobby, and I got a glimpse of a sign on a door that read:
Saul Mildworm, Attorney at Law_
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(7)
08:59:30 PM,Wednesday 5 April 2006
"Let's make like the second largest city in Croatia and Split!"
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(1)
10:27:01 PM,Tuesday 4 April 2006
Kiped from the broadcast captioners mailing list:
On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be
01:02:03 04/05/06_
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(1)
08:36:19 PM,Tuesday 4 April 2006
So, hm.
I put new strings on my violin and it sounds so much better it gobsmacks me. K. and I celebrated by playing and singing The Female Drummer in the spring sunlight, which is now spring drizzle, both of which I dig.
On Saturday we saw V for Vendetta, which, as I mentioned in the comments a little while ago, is tremendous. It's too violent for my parents, unfortunately, 'cause I think otherwise they'd get a lot out of it, but my brothers and nephew and most of my friends should go right away.
I dunno if I should post this, 'cause I'm worried about jinxing things, but I applied for an apartment on Friday. It's beautiful. Here's hoping. Also, I discovered I'm moving out May 31st, not May 1st as I'd thought, so Neil and I will be able to frolic in the city without having to worry about getting all my stuff transported.
Steno proceeds apace. I've passed my 30 and 40, and am positive I passed my 50 last week. I did 60 and 70 informally the week before, so I'm kind of just cooling my heels and playing lots of Typestriker XE (which is so much better than the original-- well worth the $10) to learn the necessary briefs so I can take my two 60s and flee to actual proper speed classes.
I'm happy.
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01:40:30 PM,Monday 3 April 2006
I'm listening to an audiobook of a novelization of a movie of a comic book. Metalicious.
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(3)
12:20:40 AM,Monday 3 April 2006
Why my girlfriend wins #82,168:
"You got sex in my death!"
"You got death in my sex!"
"Stop, you're both right-- it's Thomas Mann!"
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10:09:29 AM,Saturday 1 April 2006
Walking through Columbia Presbyterian is like playing Wolfenstein without a gun.
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(5)
08:02:29 PM,Friday 31 March 2006
"No more reading The Magic Mountain," I growl emphatically to myself, wrenching my eyes off of page 241 as I step off the subway. "Gotta steno, work out, call your mom, go to bed. No more reading tonight." I'd already blown off half my steno class by reading it on the sly while the teacher was going over briefs. Then I spent time and money I shouldn't have on a sandwich so I could read in the fast food joint. Then an hour on the subway. No bath allowed, not even with the fizzy thing K. gave me for my birthday. No more morbid-erotic sanatorium hijinks for me! So I close the book and go online for just a few minutes before getting down to things. "Byowowowowow," my jew's harp email notifier boings at me. The OED word of the day, my friends, is "tubercular". It just ain't fair.
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09:56:31 PM,Monday 27 March 2006
