I like myself, and I have a lot of other great qualities as well.

If you haven't seen this yet, you're deprived. If you have seen it, watching it again is not a bad idea. Just sayin'.

Dreams

Last night, I dreamed that I lived and worked on a farm where my primary responsible was taking care of and choosing names for three teeny, tiny newly-hatched chicks. I woke up before I pinned down names for each of them (mostly because I couldn't tell them apart), but we managed to still get in a pretty good time playing hide-and-go-seek together. It's actually pretty hard to find baby chicks that are only two square inches in size.

Perhaps my subconscious wants a vacation?

"Jimmer, more interesting than the most interesting man in the world."

This is amazing and hilarious and possibly disturbing. Enjoy.

ESPN: Jimmer Mania spawns epic Facebook thread

"I'm getting upset!"

This past Thursday, I babysat my three-year old niece while my sister attended BYU's forum by Condeleezza Rice. My niece and I hung out at BYU's Bean Museum where she most enjoyed the playroom, a display of ducks, and a picture of a buffalo that was, she informed me, actually a gruffalo.

Afterwards, we had lunch with my sister and brother and then talked for a bit before my sister dropped my brother and me back off on campus. The conversation turned into a discussion of Rice's talk. My niece quickly became bored as everyone's undivided attention was not centered on her. She dealt with her boredom at first by demanding chocolate: "MOMMMMMYYY! I want some CHOCOLAAAATE!"

When her pleas went unheeded, she changed her tactics. Rather than trying to turn the tide of the conversation, she decided to end it instead. "Everybody STOP TALKING!! STOP TALKING NOW! STOP TALKIIIIINNNG!!"

When I asked her why she needed everyone to stop talking? "Because I'm trying to sleep, and it's too loud!"

I laughed a little. She looked stern, and, after unsuccessfully asking me for some chocolate and for help stopping the conversation, put on a pouty face and said, "I'm getting upset!"

"You're getting upset?"

"Yes, I'm getting upset!"

I gave her some chocolate.

It's rough to be three.

New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year

NY Times: A Twitter Flub Becomes a Word of the Year

My question: How could Cookie Monster's nom nom lose to Sarah Palin's refudiate? I mean, seriously, did they read this definition?:

nom nom (informal) exclamation an expression of delight when eating. [origin — imitative; popularized by the noises made by the character Cookie Monster on Sesame Street (usually as “Om nom nom nom”)]

The new face of Jane Austen

Look at this:



Now look at this:



You know you need to fear for the literacy of American youth when people feel the need to make a Jane Austen novel look as if it were written by Stephenie Meyer.

Overheard as I walked home tonight . . .

"We were best friends until that foosball match."

Speaking of Facebook . . .

My sister just showed this to me. Hilarious. And so true.

Oh, the bus stop

So every day after work, I wait for the bus at a stop that seems to attract a lot of interesting people. Today, as I was minding my own business and probably looking depressed (not because I was depressed, but because I'd just gotten out of work and was tired and staring into nothingness), a middle-aged man approached me. He was tall, wore tan pants, a short sleeve striped collared shirt, glasses, and a straw hat.

"You made me feel really good today," he said.

I wracked my brain, trying to figure out how he had confused me with someone else or how I had unwittingly performed some act of Christian service while looking depressed, when he followed this comment up with, "You look so cute. It brought back some memories for me and made me feel good. Have a nice day."

Then he walked away.

I was wearing no make-up and my hair was pulled back in a tight bun.

Go figure.

This experience was almost as bewildering as what happened last week when another man (this one short and also middle-aged and probably not completely sane) approached me and said, "Did you put that outfit together yourself?"

I answered in the affirmative.

"It is so cute! You should go into business."

So, there you have it, folks. Apparently, I don't need to wear make-up or do my hair. And I can drop out of graduate school because I have a promising career in coordinating clothes.

I love crazy people.

So . . .

when you spend about two and half hours a day on a bus and another eight hours a day sitting at a computer screen working on a website, funny things happen to you. Trust me. I know.

One thing that happens to you when you're in this situation is that the things that wouldn't be funny to you in real life are REALLY funny at work. And life only gets funnier when you COME HOME from work because all that pent up energy has to come out in some way. And it may or may not come out in hysterical laughter over nonsense.

Just sayin'.

Today, for example, when I was at work engaged in my typical daily clicking, sorting, and editing of linkage covering 40 years of LDS.org content, I came across this beautiful poster and, in my desperation for any kind of stimulation or entertainment, thought it was awesome:

I mean it's about punctuation for goodness' sake! How could I not be entertained? Especially in my fragile state of mind?

On a completely unrelated note, the best headline to appear in any news source today was surely the headline for this story.

Okay, you've reached the end of this random it's-Friday-I-just-got-home-from-work-after-a-long-week-and-my-brain-exploded moment. Run along now, children.

Suddenly is a lovely word

I love this poem. I first heard it when Billy Collins did a reading at BYU a few years ago. Enjoy!

Tension

by Billy Collins

Never use the word suddenly just to create tension.

-Writing Fiction

Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias

outside in the garden,

and suddenly I was in the study

looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.

When suddenly, without warning,

you planted the last petunia in the flat,

and I suddenly closed the dictionary

now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.

A moment later, we found ourselves

standing suddenly in the kitchen

where you suddenly opened a can of cat food

and I just as suddenly watched you doing that.

I observed a window of leafy activity

and beyond that, a bird perched on the edge

of the stone birdbath

when suddenly you announced you were leaving

to pick up a few things at the market

and I stunned you by impulsively

pointing out that we were getting low on butter

and another case of wine would not be a bad idea.

Who could tell what the next moment would hold?

another drip from the faucet?

another little spasm of the second hand?

Would the painting of a bowl of pears continue

to hang on the wall from that nail?

Would the heavy anthologies remain on the shelves?

Would the stove hold its position?

Suddenly, it was anyone’s guess.

The sun rose ever higher in the sky.

The state capitals remained motionless on the wall map

when suddenly I found myself lying on a couch

where I closed my eyes and without any warning

began to picture the Andes, of all places,

and a path that led over the mountains to another country

with strange customs and eye-catching hats,

each one suddenly fringed with colorful little tassels.

One of those days

So, this morning I didn't hear/subconsciously ignored my alarm and woke up naturally at 6:15am. My alarm was set for 5:15am. I usually leave my apartment at 6:20am to walk the approximately ten minutes to the bus stop for the 6:30 bus to Salt Lake. So, waking up at 6:15 was not good.

My first thought was "Dang."

My second was "Five minutes."

In five minutes, I half-showered, threw on clothes, pulled my hair back and covered it with a headband, applied a minimal amount of make-up, and headed out the door--only to realize when I reached the street outside my complex that my toothbrush was still hanging out of my mouth.

But I still caught the 6:30 bus.

Gender roles according to a two year old

So, a few weeks ago, my sister and my two and a half year old niece, Audrey, visited me at work to have lunch with me in the cafeteria.

On their way to meet me, my sister pointed out to my niece the building she worked in before Audrey was born. She said, "Look, Audrey, this is where I used to work."

Audrey looked at her skeptically and replied, "Mommies don't work."

When my sister repeated this story to me over lunch, Audrey (overhearing) enthusiastically announced, "Yeah, my daddy goes to work!"

I asked her what her mommy did. The reply? "She stays home and plays with me."

A valuable lesson for us all

This wisdom was displayed on a sign above the printer at work today:

Electronics clipped to your pants are ok only if you are Batman, Superman, and or any other kind of man who needs them to SAVE LIVES, not to send email.

Wanted: a nice man

"A woman should have the same chances in the professions as a man. But a woman's work about the house is never ending; the care of a child is the sweetest of professions; and that woman is neglectful of her best interests who goes out into the world to work when she can get a nice man to do the work for her."

--Sarah Grand (1854-1943), feminist activist

Oh, the gems you find when you're writing a paper titled "Women's Heads Weren't Made for Thinking"!

Did you know it's National Poetry Month?

As I was walking through the BYU bookstore today, I spotted a book called B is for Bad Poetry. Of course, I had to stop and take a look. I read the first few poems in the book and was impressed by the badness of this bad poetry. I wanted to buy it, but the $10 price tag was too spendy for me. Unfortunately, my searches in the BYU library catalog, the Provo City Library catalog, and the Orem City Library catalog proved that this book is not locally available for free or for loan. Alas, apparently you have you pay for your bad poetry these days.

In honor of National Poetry Month, I've included below one of the bad poems from B is for Bad Poetry that I had time to read in the bookstore. If you like it so much that you decide you need to rush out and buy the book, you know who to lend it to first.

Tea for Two (A Tragedy)
by Pamela August Russell

It wasn't until after
I poured the second cup
that I realized
I was alone.

The worth of a soul . . .

. . . is one tenth the price of a Whopper from Burger King.

Look! I'm famous!

That's right. I've reached the pinnacle of literary achievement: I was published in The Daily Universe. My BYU-centric spoof of Stephenie Meyer's overwrought style won first place in a Stephenie Meyer writing competition. I am the happy winner of a $25 gift certificate to the Olive Garden and two tickets to the opening night of New Moon.

Not only did I get free things, I've got a new career direction: imitating Meyer for a living. I mean, that's where the big bucks are. This gift certificate is only the beginning . . .

Adventures in studying

So I'm studying in the little alcove off the main hallway in the JFSB. Another guy who is also studying in this area just got off a loud, long telephone conversation. Now, I know this is not the library, but everyone in this area is quietly studying--some are quietly sleeping. Common courtesy requires not having a long cell-phone conversation--or, at the very least, it requires hushed tones. This guy talked for nearly half an hour about dating, Halloween costumes, etc. in a loud voice just outside the alcove. At the end of the call, he said, "Well, it was nice talking to you, Grandma and Grandpa," and hung up his phone. He then walked back into the alcove, laid down and slid underneath one of the benches, and, using his backpack as a pillow, went to sleep.

I'm thinking it's probably time for me to get my cellphone out.

What do you mean by that?

One of my favorite classes this semester? ELANG 325: English Grammar.

Why, you may ask, would grammar be among my favorite classes? Well, apart from the fact that I am simply weird and also a nerd, who could resist a class where cheesy, grammarians-only jokes such as the following are made?:

In reply to how confident she was about her answer for a question about appositives, one student said in class, "I am appositive that this answer is correct."

Another discussion revolved around animate versus inanimate nouns.

Student 1: "That rule applies here because the noun is inanimate. After all, you can't eat a country."

Student 2: "You can eat Turkey."

All semester long there have been some very good debates surrounding adverbials, but my current favorite discussion is about clauses introduced by the word "that." Here is a sentence we analyzed in class:

"That that that is the right that is something that I know." We talked about what each of those thats is operating as, but before we came to agreement, there were quite a few arguments. At one point, a student said, "Well, what do you mean by that? You have to explain what that you are using." Indeed, what do you mean by that? A relative pronoun, a demonstrative pronoun, a complementizer? 

My professor, who does his very best to bring the gospel into everything he can, including the study of grammar, brought a quote from President Monson involving that clauses for us to analyze. He happened to bring the quote that is along my sidebar (look to your right). The sentence in question? "I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not."  Our task? As my professor put it, "Let's distinguish between what is important and what is not at least with the thats." What is the function of the that clause "that help us distinguish . . ."? Our professor insisted it was an nominal appositive clause renaming lessons, but we all knew it was an adjectival relative clause. For the first time this semester, there was strong opposition to what the teacher said was right. But Professor Anderson was so convinced he was right, that he committed to bring us treats if he was wrong.

I headed eagerly to my grammar class last Thursday afternoon, still in full confidence that my classmates and I had been correct. Sure enough, the first thing we went over was that tricky that clause from President Monson, and our professor admitted his mistake, and brought out mint nut brownies. He then proceeded to apologize in a way that only a BYU grammar professor could: "I get excited and have an emotional response and allow that to hijack the amygdala. I didn't stop to think it through and allow the Holy Ghost to tell me what the right answer was. If you had asked me how confident are you that the "that" in that clause is a nominal appositive, I would have said 137.6925% sure, but that was based on my emotional response."

Who knew grammar could be so emotional? I, however, am not complaining as long as grammar's hijacking of the amygdala continues to get me mint brownies.

P. S. Extra credit if you can identify and categorize each of the that clauses in this post.