Word of the Day

Susurration.

I like the way it sounds. I like sibilance of it; I've always had a week spot for 's' sounds. It's the sound of slow, comfortable conversation, of people who know each other too well to have to speak loudly. It's the sound of people sitting on the verandah with their shoulders touching, leaning on each other, into each other, drinking tea together, birdsong as the backdrop and the wind teasing the trees as they softly share secrets.

Word of the Day

Heuristic.

... yeah I was writing an essay.

Oh No November!

I've gone insane(r).

I signed up for NaNo. There's this novel I've been planning for YEARS, which I could never get to work, and I've finally said fuckit and decided to write it as the big, sprawling epic it wants to be, all about Gods and Demons and Angels and Fae and Mages, and a love story... I figure, I'll write it until the story is done. That was my block, I forgot it was a story first of all.

So I signed up for NaNo. I have a 5000+ word research project due in November (which involves talking to people. I AM NOT GOOD AT TALKING TO PEOPLE). And my mother and grandfather arrive in China on the 6th and in Kunming on the 12th. And if I want to submit stories to the UTS Anthology (and I do) I have to have them written. And this in ADDITION to the 16 hours of language class I have each week, which carries ungodly amounts of homework with it...

I may not survive.

Of course, typically of my family, my parents are bitching to me about my Grandpa not being organised, and my Grandpa has just emailed me asking if I can get my parents into gear, because it makes much more sense to talk to the 22 year old who is in another country than to pick up the phone and talk to each other, I don't even know.

Can it be December already?

Word of the Day

Collocate.

This was in my Chinese textbook as the translation for 搭配, and I thought it must be a typo. Nope, turns out it's an actual word. You learn something new every day.

Quote what I like

Historically, with whom do we fight the most frequently? It is our nearest neighbors or those closest to us in terms of religious or social ideology, even our family members. Christians, Jews and Muslims? Neighbouring clans in Africa, or gangs in New York? Husbands and wives? It often appears that it is not truly the "other" that we fear. It is the all-too familiar, yet different in ways that shock our sensibilities, that we rail against most loudly. Being understandable to us, we cannot easily consider them so foreign as to ignore.
- Sam Mitchell

Someone said it better

I wanted to write a post, but then I read this, and realised I wanted to post that instead.

This is why I hate reading the news

I know what the reaction will be to this post: I'm hysterical, and humourless, and a feminazi bitch who needs to get a life and focus on what's really important, with the understanding that, of course, what's really important cannot be the niggling sense that the society in which I live is sexist, and wrong, and wants to treat me like a thing.

Same song, second verse...

Why was this article headlined on Windows Live Today as: "Stepfather killed: Teen 'sex slave' to stand trial"? If it was me, I would have headlined it "Rapist killed: Teen victim to stand trial", or "Teen accused of killing rapist". But I guess that would paint the poor girl in far too sympathetic a light for the media.

The article, too, is a bit hit and miss "after she performed the act" where I would have said "after he assaulted her" (correctly assigning agency "after she performed the act" implies consent) and "many pictures of the pair engaged in sexual activity" where it should read "many pictures of the man raping her".

Please, people, call a spade a spade, and a rape a rape.

Ugh

Note to self: packing sucks.

Dust in places... well.

Pronouns

This post at Shakesville reminds me of a story a substitute professor told me. He was a baby lecturer (his words) at Sydney Uni, in the 70s, the early days of Women's Lib. One day a young activist protested the use of the male pronoun as universal in the University handbook. It made it sound like all the students were male. The women students were feeling a little alienated. Don't be silly, said the male Dean, it's understood that the male pronoun is universal, and means men and women.

Now, this activist had a mate at the printing press, and when the next bunch of student handbooks went to print, there was one small difference. Oh sure, the book was still written with only one gender pronoun, it was just that - it was the female pronoun.

The Dean pitched a fit. How dare those feminists! It made it sound like his University only had female students! The horror! Don't be silly, said the activist, it's understood that there are students of both gender.

Of course, it wasn't understood. The Dean ordered the run of handbooks pulped. The activist's mate (and higher-ups who had failed to disapprove the change) were fired. But the activists won, because someone realised the Dean's hypocrisy. Obviously, it mattered, and the handbook started using both pronouns.