More Loss Than Maintenance

It is hard to be deprived of my native language--so hard, in fact, that I now believe the maintenance-loss theory of language acquisition to carry more weight than I did previously. Look how crappy that sentence was! Don't you believe it, too? Another result of my Englishlessness has been my utter neglect of my blogging duties. Sorry. Forgive me. Thanks!

What struggling through sentences in this mysterious foreign tongue reveals even more convincingly than a confirmation of the maintenance-loss hypothesis is my own speech patterns. I have gained a great deal of awareness on how I conceptualize and produce my utterances since, speaking in a language I know cripplingly worse than my own, I have had to consciously mull over my lexical and syntactic choices every time I open that beautiful mouth situated on my face.*

So what are my revelations on my language use? I have come to realize that I am an awfully vague speaker. I use useless filler phrases such as "or something" just about every other sentence, I rely heavily on spatial terms that denote "here" and "there," and I like to qualify everything I say by beginning my utterances with "I think" or "I wonder." But maybe that's just the narcissism talking.  

 Narcissus and Echo, ECHO, ECHO!

*I forgot whether everyone in the U.S. has mouths on their faces--here they definitely do, though.

Fishwords

Holy mackerel!

This blog hasn't been updated since the Mets won the pennant. Zing! Speaking of "zing," or, I guess, speaking "zing," I would like to issue a warning to you on behalf of all who enjoy the occasional word game. My warning is what follows in bold, if mere placement of the warning directly following the statement describing its delivery was not clear enough: the Scrabble dictionary is an anti-intellectual, consumerist, pro-life conspiracy of corporate America. OK, so I have only anecdotal evidence to support its position on abortion. You may solicit that evidence directly from me, since my keen journalistic integrity forbids me from posting hearsay. But play a game of Scrabble with one of those middle-aged Jews (yes, you) who has memorized those ridiculous Scrabble-ordained 2-letter combinations and the slang words that have been deemed acceptable by that corrupt multinational "toy"-maker known as Hasbro, and you will not only discover the insidious way by which the Scrabble dictionary manages to sustain itself, but you will also, frustratingly, lose.

I propose a boycott of the Scrabble dictionary. Maybe we should just play more Bananagrams, though.

Vagueness City, Ambiguity Nation

Friends, frenemies and randos who find my blog by Googling "obama earwax,"

Soon I will be spending an unspecified amount of time in an unspecified foreign land. An unspecified result or results shall arise as a result of the temporary relocation of my person and accompanying soul. I may blog more frequently or less frequently, accidentally record my blogular thoughts in the language native to the land to which I shall be traveling (French? English? Swedish? Korean!?), or even turn "From a Concerned Friend" into a series of photos of ceiling lights.* As I said two sentences ago, what will come to pass in terms of blogs, and, indeed, Libyan uprisings and Japanese nuclear crises is really a mystery to everyone except the divinity of unknown gender and person who lives
"upstairs." Actually, there are plenty of religions that don't ascribe to the concept of an omniscient, heavenly-dwelling god, so, I guess, nobody knows.

Heaven is most certainly full of manatees.

Would you like to know something cool? How about two things? Yeah, I'll bet you do! But wait! Don't get too excited or you'll accidentally close your browser window.

OK. One cool thing is that manatees are flexitarians--that is, their main girth comes from a solidly herbivorous diet, but they occasionally eat small marine animals by accident while browsing on sea vegetables and the like.

What a manatee would not eat by accident is a Golden Opulence Sundae from Serendipity 3, a restaurant on the Upper East Side (of Manhattan, you dolt). This occurrence is unlikely to transpire because the Golden Opulence Sundae falls within the set defined by things that are desserts, a characteristic of which is a tendency to be found on land rather than in the ocean. Furthermore, the humans who fabricate this particular sundae have a rather strong impetus to keep it out of the water, since it holds the Guinness World Record for most expensive sundae. It costs $1,000. I will eat one when I am rich.

Until we meet again, but before I hit the jackpot and move to this building,
A Concerned Friend


*Wait, that would be an amazing blog...and, according to Google, it already exists in at least one permutation. All right!

Spring Begins Tomorrow

I haven't been a responsible blogger recently. I bet you've been concerned for me, as I am so frequently concerned for you; but, unlike that which I bestow upon you, yours is quite unnecessary concern. You see, my cerebral cortex is undergoing a much-needed period of rehabilitation in which the edges of my gyri and sulci loosen up, play a little bridge, and go kayaking.

Yes, I did spend time making this.

Being on this "spring break" has also afforded me the opportunity to read. Although I have not yet taken that opportunity, I would like to start now. Have you ever read a book? What book was it? Did you like it? Leave me a comment and tell me about reading.

A Concerned Friend

For Cornelius

Yesterday I got a fancy new computer. It will be replacing Cornelius, who has served me for five years and two days with grace, poise and, towards the end of its stint as my laptop, a rather grating noise emanating from his fan that was once mistaken for an electric shaver being operated in an adjoining room.
 
Cornelius was a miracle laptop. A few weeks before I first headed off to ____ College/University, Cornelius stopped turning on. The folks at the--let's call it the "fruit stand"--informed me that a repair would be more costly than a new laptop. I took my large aluminum paperweight home, happy, at least, that it had lived to see the election of our first biracial president. "Yes we can!" my computer said, and allowed a hard drive hanging around the house to make it functional once more.

This is Cornelius. It has rested on a lap stand for four years because my thighs would otherwise have melted long ago.

It is hard enough saying goodbye to a computer I have sort of anthropomorphized, but at least I don't know how to drive. It would probably rack me with guilt to give up a car with those neotenous headlights. At least personal computers don't have human features, am I raight?