So you know how my blog posts usually aren't very meaningful and are just a bunch of random thoughts? That's because I'm usually just too lazy to put thought into them. It's easier not to have to think hard and just write what I feel. Once in a while I write something meaningful, but usually I don't. I thought about writing something meaningful tonight, but I don't feel like going through the effort.
I'm excited it's Memorial Day weekend, because that's when I start the Fourth of July season! That means I can once again have candies and desserts, as long as they're red, white, and blue. For the past month and a half, I have been using Krave cereal as a dessert. It's cereal, so it's not really a dessert, but it's too dessert-like to eat for breakfast. So I eat it as dessert during the off-season. Unfortunately, red, white, and blue desserts are something that you can't depend on from one year to the next. Last year they made patriotic Oreos and Keebler rainbow cookies, but they don't have them this year. And two and three years ago they had patriotic Dots, but they don't anymore. Fortunately, they still make red, white, and blue Tootsie Roll Pops and star-shaped marshmallows.
I also added my Fourth of July music to my playlist. I have a playlist that I listen to on shuffle. I dump all of the music I care to listen to into my playlist, and it's like my own personal radio station. The playlist allows me to not listen to songs I don't care for (e.g., Coldplay's painfully boring songs "A Rush of Blood to the Head" and "Amsterdam"), but more importantly it allows me to move holiday music in and out, so that I only listen to it when it's in season. I have a lot of holiday music (St. Patrick's Day is the only holiday for which I don't have any music--and I think Jan Terri's working on that). Unfortunately, I don't particularly like my Fourth of July music, and I add all of my holiday music to the playlist, whether I like it or not. Twelve songs are recordings from lds.org of the patriotic songs in the hymnbook and Children's Songbook. These recordings are absolutely terrible. I don't know how they made them so bad.
The rest of the Fourth of July music is from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's album Spirit of America. What bothers me most about the MoTab is that so many of their songs are really slow and really quiet. There are songs on their albums that I have "heard" many times, yet I could not tell you even how the tune goes, because the songs are too quiet to really hear. What's the point of making music if no one can hear it? And it's not like I can just turn it up, because not all of their songs are that quiet, and some songs even start out really quiet but get quite loud. The Spirit of America album has a very rousing version of "America the Beautiful," but other songs fit into the barely audible, painfully slow category. Like "The Star-Spangled Banner." That is not a song that should be slow and quiet! They pick it up at the end, but that just means that all you hear is the end of the song.
I hear stories about mission presidents only allowing missionaries to listen to the Tabernacle Choir. I understand that they may not want Christian rock going on, but I don't think that the Tabernacle Choir has a monopoly on spirituality. I really like the Lower Lights, and I think I get more out of their music than I do out of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. For one thing, I can actually hear the music. For another thing, it's so fun that I want to sing along, and that really gets me thinking about the lyrics. You should give them a listen.
I don't dislike the Tabernacle Choir, I just wish they'd pick more exciting arrangements. (They even sing a really slow and boring version of "Praise to the Man" on their album of the same name, a song that, in my opinion, was not meant to be sung slowly and quietly.)
This week I had instances that really left me mentally exhausted. For my editing class I've had to do some substantive edits, and then after those I had to go to work, where I have to work on a difficult source check. That has left me unmotivated to do much stuff for my clerk calling.
At work I use a Mac, and I don't know if I can say which is better, PCs or Macs. I think they both have their merits. But I get really annoyed with Macs when I have to keep switching between several open programs, which is what I've had to do for my source check. On Windows, I have my taskbar at the bottom that shows me what programs are open and where they are. But on a Mac, I have a taskbar full of programs I don't use, and I can't tell what's already open. The only way I can do that is to minimize the program, but that's an extra step I don't want to take, especially when it does its fancy minimizing graphic, which doesn't take long but feels like it takes thirty minutes. My options are either to minimize programs or to move my windows around until I find the appropriate one. It's like working on a cluttered desktop that can't be satisfactorily organized.
The last two weeks I've tried to do a better job of staying on task. I've done reasonably well, but yesterday and today I've had a hard time staying motivated. I don't know how I get distracted, but I do.
And I'm distracted from writing anything else.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Sunday, May 19, 2013
The editor is in
After I graduate as a linguist/editor/geologist, I hope I will be able to get an editing job.
But I really don't know where to begin to look. I'm hoping that my capstone editing class this term will point me in the right direction.
I also wonder how good of an editor I am. At my internship, I will often suggest a change in a manuscript and then submit it to one of the main editors--then later I will see it again and I will see that my changes were not incorporated. That makes me think, "Is my editing out of line? Am I going too far?"
Other times I see when my changes were accepted, and that's a good feeling.
This week at work we were doing some final read-throughs before sending the journal off to be printed. I got my hands on a paper copy of an article that the other intern had read through. I found myself disagreeing with many of her changes, so I marked my disagreement and explained why I disagree. It still waits to be seen who they decided is right.
I do lots of editing these days, both for my job and for my editing class. And as I make decisions on what things to change, I often find myself in a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, I'm a descriptive grammarian, and I don't want to make changes that I think are unnecessary. On the other hand, both my job and my class (and most other places, I think) have us more-or-less follow the guidelines in the Chicago Manual of Style, so I have to follow what Chicago says is "right."
In linguistics, we talk about two competing ideas, descriptivism and prescriptivism. Prescriptivism relates to prescribed rules that people "should" follow. You've heard them all before: when you answer the phone, you should say "This is he"; you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition; you shouldn't say "Me and John went to the store."
Descriptivism, on the other hand, is interested in what people are actually saying and why they are saying it, rather than what they "should" be saying.
In high school, I was very much a prescriptivist. I would go around learning new prescriptive rules and correcting people. I became an English Language major, hoping that I would learn even more rules. But what happened instead was that I was converted to descriptivism. It really makes more sense. A lot of our rules are completely arbitrary and foolish. Many of them exist because early grammarians in the 1600s and 1700s were studying Latin and tried to apply Latin's rules to English, not realizing (or perhaps ignoring) that English most definitely is not Latin! English is a Germanic language with influences from other languages, including Latinate languages, but it is not Latin. Yet many of the archaic, nonsensical prescriptive rules still occur today. I think a lot of prescriptivists will follow those rules to show how intelligent they are--but I think the descriptive approach is even more intelligent.
I will admit that I am perhaps more of a prescriptivist than I would like to believe. For example, when I see someone use an apostrophe to make a word plural, I think of them as less intelligent. When I see someone use an apostrophe to conjugate a verb, I think of them as even less intelligent. There still are some stigmas attached, fairly or unfairly, to certain forms. But I try to be understanding and rational about most grammar usage problems.
This week I found a very entertaining website, the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. It has tons of pictures of people using quotation marks incorrectly. Maybe it's a bit prescriptivist, but people need to realize that if they use quotation marks in those ways, there are some consequences, not least of which is that people may question their intelligence. But what makes this site so entertaining is that the quotation marks completely change the meaning of what people mean to say. There are countless instances of businesses offering some "free" service or product. They use quotation marks around free to emphasize it, but instead they end up implying that it really isn't totally free, that there is a catch. Some of it can be very funny.
But my problem with this site is that it does tend to cater to the prescriptive crowd. There are many pictures on there in which I think the quotation marks are perfectly acceptable; in fact, there was one where I thought the quotation marks were better than no quotation marks, yet people were making fun of it. On one caption, the blogger ended a sentence with at, and one of the comments was, "Is there a blog for unnecessarily ending a sentence with a preposition?"
Ms. Know It All, do you even know why ending a sentence with a preposition is so "wrong"? Well, the morphology of the word preposition is pre-position, meaning it should come before something else, but the morphology doesn't reflect actual usage. It appears that the "never end a sentence with a preposition" rule began with John Dryden in 1672, and he probably said it was wrong because Latin doesn't put prepositions at the end. But English isn't Latin. Countless esteemed writers, such as Shakespeare, put prepositions at the end of their sentences without a problem. It's just something we do in English. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says, "The preposition at the end has always been an idiomatic feature of English. It would be pointless to worry about the few who believe it is a mistake. You can avoid the construction but you should do so at your peril."
(By the way, Merriam-Webster is probably the most authoritative dictionary. Noah Webster created the first influential American dictionary, and then people started colloquially calling dictionaries a Webster's, so then other dictionary companies called their dictionaries Webster's Dictionary. The original Webster company went to court, but the court ruled that Webster's was in colloquial use, so they didn't have a copyright to the name. They had to switch to Merriam-Webster's instead. So if you find a dictionary that says Webster's, I would be a little leery, because it's a misleading title.)
This week I had a dream that I was applying for a job opening. I was a little worried, because I had submitted my resume but I forgot to update it in the past year. We had to take a test that had very convoluted, complicated questions. One of the questions asked us to identify the split infinitive. I thought, "I don't know if I want to work here if they care about split infinitives."
An infinitive is a phrase like to go, to see, to be, etc. Splitting the infinitive is putting a word between the to and the verb, like to fully understand. The rule to not split an infinitive (like I just did) is one of the stupidest rules there is. They said you shouldn't split an infinitive because you can't split one in Latin. But you can't split an infinitive in Latin because infinitives are one word in Latin. It's ridiculous! When Star Trek premiered, people were up in arms because it said "to boldly go." If people are going to get upset over something like that, I can only imagine how often their blood pressure rises.
One of the problems I encounter often in editing is the use of they to refer to a single person of undisclosed gender. If you don't know someone's gender, you can't say he because that gets the feminists angry, and he or she is just awkward and cumbersome. Some people have tried to overcome the problem by inventing new pronouns. When I was in high school, I tried to make thon a popular pronoun (I didn't invent it, I just used it). Like "Thon didn't use thons blinker" or "I can't tell if thon is a boy or a girl." Mostly it just confused people.
But now I realize how foolish that is. If you're trying to change the language, why not use something that people already understand--they? It is completely understandable to say something like "Each student is trying their best." So much better than "trying his best" or "trying his or her best." Some people have taken feminism too far and even say "trying her best." Using they, them, and their is the best solution. When I come across singular they in a manuscript, I flag it--not because it's wrong, but because I don't want someone else to change it! I want to help it become a standard, nonstigmatized pronoun. It just makes perfect sense.
But I really don't know where to begin to look. I'm hoping that my capstone editing class this term will point me in the right direction.
I also wonder how good of an editor I am. At my internship, I will often suggest a change in a manuscript and then submit it to one of the main editors--then later I will see it again and I will see that my changes were not incorporated. That makes me think, "Is my editing out of line? Am I going too far?"
Other times I see when my changes were accepted, and that's a good feeling.
This week at work we were doing some final read-throughs before sending the journal off to be printed. I got my hands on a paper copy of an article that the other intern had read through. I found myself disagreeing with many of her changes, so I marked my disagreement and explained why I disagree. It still waits to be seen who they decided is right.
I do lots of editing these days, both for my job and for my editing class. And as I make decisions on what things to change, I often find myself in a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, I'm a descriptive grammarian, and I don't want to make changes that I think are unnecessary. On the other hand, both my job and my class (and most other places, I think) have us more-or-less follow the guidelines in the Chicago Manual of Style, so I have to follow what Chicago says is "right."
In linguistics, we talk about two competing ideas, descriptivism and prescriptivism. Prescriptivism relates to prescribed rules that people "should" follow. You've heard them all before: when you answer the phone, you should say "This is he"; you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition; you shouldn't say "Me and John went to the store."
Descriptivism, on the other hand, is interested in what people are actually saying and why they are saying it, rather than what they "should" be saying.
In high school, I was very much a prescriptivist. I would go around learning new prescriptive rules and correcting people. I became an English Language major, hoping that I would learn even more rules. But what happened instead was that I was converted to descriptivism. It really makes more sense. A lot of our rules are completely arbitrary and foolish. Many of them exist because early grammarians in the 1600s and 1700s were studying Latin and tried to apply Latin's rules to English, not realizing (or perhaps ignoring) that English most definitely is not Latin! English is a Germanic language with influences from other languages, including Latinate languages, but it is not Latin. Yet many of the archaic, nonsensical prescriptive rules still occur today. I think a lot of prescriptivists will follow those rules to show how intelligent they are--but I think the descriptive approach is even more intelligent.
I will admit that I am perhaps more of a prescriptivist than I would like to believe. For example, when I see someone use an apostrophe to make a word plural, I think of them as less intelligent. When I see someone use an apostrophe to conjugate a verb, I think of them as even less intelligent. There still are some stigmas attached, fairly or unfairly, to certain forms. But I try to be understanding and rational about most grammar usage problems.
This week I found a very entertaining website, the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. It has tons of pictures of people using quotation marks incorrectly. Maybe it's a bit prescriptivist, but people need to realize that if they use quotation marks in those ways, there are some consequences, not least of which is that people may question their intelligence. But what makes this site so entertaining is that the quotation marks completely change the meaning of what people mean to say. There are countless instances of businesses offering some "free" service or product. They use quotation marks around free to emphasize it, but instead they end up implying that it really isn't totally free, that there is a catch. Some of it can be very funny.
But my problem with this site is that it does tend to cater to the prescriptive crowd. There are many pictures on there in which I think the quotation marks are perfectly acceptable; in fact, there was one where I thought the quotation marks were better than no quotation marks, yet people were making fun of it. On one caption, the blogger ended a sentence with at, and one of the comments was, "Is there a blog for unnecessarily ending a sentence with a preposition?"
Ms. Know It All, do you even know why ending a sentence with a preposition is so "wrong"? Well, the morphology of the word preposition is pre-position, meaning it should come before something else, but the morphology doesn't reflect actual usage. It appears that the "never end a sentence with a preposition" rule began with John Dryden in 1672, and he probably said it was wrong because Latin doesn't put prepositions at the end. But English isn't Latin. Countless esteemed writers, such as Shakespeare, put prepositions at the end of their sentences without a problem. It's just something we do in English. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says, "The preposition at the end has always been an idiomatic feature of English. It would be pointless to worry about the few who believe it is a mistake. You can avoid the construction but you should do so at your peril."
(By the way, Merriam-Webster is probably the most authoritative dictionary. Noah Webster created the first influential American dictionary, and then people started colloquially calling dictionaries a Webster's, so then other dictionary companies called their dictionaries Webster's Dictionary. The original Webster company went to court, but the court ruled that Webster's was in colloquial use, so they didn't have a copyright to the name. They had to switch to Merriam-Webster's instead. So if you find a dictionary that says Webster's, I would be a little leery, because it's a misleading title.)
This week I had a dream that I was applying for a job opening. I was a little worried, because I had submitted my resume but I forgot to update it in the past year. We had to take a test that had very convoluted, complicated questions. One of the questions asked us to identify the split infinitive. I thought, "I don't know if I want to work here if they care about split infinitives."
An infinitive is a phrase like to go, to see, to be, etc. Splitting the infinitive is putting a word between the to and the verb, like to fully understand. The rule to not split an infinitive (like I just did) is one of the stupidest rules there is. They said you shouldn't split an infinitive because you can't split one in Latin. But you can't split an infinitive in Latin because infinitives are one word in Latin. It's ridiculous! When Star Trek premiered, people were up in arms because it said "to boldly go." If people are going to get upset over something like that, I can only imagine how often their blood pressure rises.
One of the problems I encounter often in editing is the use of they to refer to a single person of undisclosed gender. If you don't know someone's gender, you can't say he because that gets the feminists angry, and he or she is just awkward and cumbersome. Some people have tried to overcome the problem by inventing new pronouns. When I was in high school, I tried to make thon a popular pronoun (I didn't invent it, I just used it). Like "Thon didn't use thons blinker" or "I can't tell if thon is a boy or a girl." Mostly it just confused people.
But now I realize how foolish that is. If you're trying to change the language, why not use something that people already understand--they? It is completely understandable to say something like "Each student is trying their best." So much better than "trying his best" or "trying his or her best." Some people have taken feminism too far and even say "trying her best." Using they, them, and their is the best solution. When I come across singular they in a manuscript, I flag it--not because it's wrong, but because I don't want someone else to change it! I want to help it become a standard, nonstigmatized pronoun. It just makes perfect sense.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Not terribly much badder
Yesterday I was at home to visit my mom for Mother's Day. She asked about the attendance drop in my ward for spring. I told her that last Sunday it was 99, and it was usually around 150 in the winter. (I know these things since I'm ward clerk.) Then my mom said, "Oh, that's not terribly much badder."
Then she looked at me with a surprised, puzzled look and said, "Where did that come from?!"
I suppose that's kind of been the theme of my week--not terribly much badder.
I am a little worried about my editing class. It's going to get busier. I'm going to get more assignments, and the assignments are going to get longer and harder. Hopefully I'll be able to stay on top of it. It will get badder, but hopefully it won't be terribly much badder.
In my Structure of English class, we got a new homework assignment, and I don't think it will be overly hard, but I'm not sure how to proceed doing it. I think this class will be harder than my semantics class from the same professor, but it can't be terribly much badder.
My calling seems to be getting busy. Part of the reason I'm writing this blog so late is because I had a lot of calling things to do today. We have a ward webpage that serves as a directory and helps us bring people's records in. I've been encouraging people to make a profile on it. And tonight I went through and gave pictures to those who didn't have one uploaded. I selected twelve pictures from AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com and put them up. I do have a lot to worry about now for my calling, but it's not terribly much badder.
This weekend I went home to visit my mom. I had to go to meetings today, but I did visit her this weekend. I think about how lucky I am. Just as Earth formed in just the right place in the solar system for life to exist, I was born in just the right place to have a great mother. My mother is sane and intelligent. I don't have a mother who does crazy and dumb things. I have a sensible, wise mother, and I couldn't be more content.
Even if she says things like "not terribly much badder."
Then she looked at me with a surprised, puzzled look and said, "Where did that come from?!"
I suppose that's kind of been the theme of my week--not terribly much badder.
I am a little worried about my editing class. It's going to get busier. I'm going to get more assignments, and the assignments are going to get longer and harder. Hopefully I'll be able to stay on top of it. It will get badder, but hopefully it won't be terribly much badder.
In my Structure of English class, we got a new homework assignment, and I don't think it will be overly hard, but I'm not sure how to proceed doing it. I think this class will be harder than my semantics class from the same professor, but it can't be terribly much badder.
My calling seems to be getting busy. Part of the reason I'm writing this blog so late is because I had a lot of calling things to do today. We have a ward webpage that serves as a directory and helps us bring people's records in. I've been encouraging people to make a profile on it. And tonight I went through and gave pictures to those who didn't have one uploaded. I selected twelve pictures from AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com and put them up. I do have a lot to worry about now for my calling, but it's not terribly much badder.
This weekend I went home to visit my mom. I had to go to meetings today, but I did visit her this weekend. I think about how lucky I am. Just as Earth formed in just the right place in the solar system for life to exist, I was born in just the right place to have a great mother. My mother is sane and intelligent. I don't have a mother who does crazy and dumb things. I have a sensible, wise mother, and I couldn't be more content.
Even if she says things like "not terribly much badder."
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Only because it's spring
This week it has verily felt like late springtime. Well, except for one or two days where it was really cold and windy. I heard it snowed in Salt Lake, but I didn't see snow where I was, so it doesn't count for my desired snow in May. Hopefully it will snow sometime this month.
But spring classes started this week. I'm taking Editing for Publication (ELang 430, the capstone class of the editing minor) and Structure of Modern English (ELang 529). The editing class will be a lot of work, but I think it will be manageable. The professor is new and it's her first time teaching this class. I'm hoping that means she'll go easy on us. She seems like a nice person.
The other class is taught by Dallin D. Oaks. He's one of my favorite professors ever. He's hilarious, and in many ways he reminds me of me--he gets really excited by grammar and linguistics and remembers lots of stories. I had him for Semantics and Pragmatics last year. That class was really easy. I think this one will be a little harder, but it shouldn't be too bad.
I give myself mandatory study hours, but this term I'm giving myself fewer mandatory study hours, because it is generally impossible to do all the recommended hours for every class. This has given me a lot of free time, which I don't know what to do with. I have been watching Hulu because it has TV shows that aren't on DVD. I'm been watching the fourth season of Green Acres since the last three seasons aren't on DVD. The fourth season isn't as good as the second and third, but it's still funny.
The other show I've been watching is terrible, but it's like a train wreck and I can't look away. It's The Munsters Today, a remake that debuted in 1988. (All I can say is I'm glad I was a baby when all that 80s-ness was going on and I was too young to know what was happening.) It is awful. It's not just a bad remake of the original, it's just a bad TV show all around. The jokes are not funny at all ("If you wanted an animated family, you should have picked the Simpsons"), and the characters are completely unrealistic, even for a TV show about monsters. Why I have kept watching it (and why I will continue watching it), I don't know. Jan Terri may be a terrible singer, but she's entertaining. I don't know if I can say the same about The Munsters Today. NBC did a rather dark remake last October. I didn't particularly like that one, but it worked a lot better (it was basically a new TV show that had the same character names). But I often cringe when I read my old blog posts and see all my pop-culture references, so this is enough.
I went on two very spring-like runs this week. One was on Thursday evening. It was so nice outside. It was between 8:30 and 9:30 and it was still a little bit light out. I could smell the tree blossoms, and it just generally seemed like spring. My second run was yesterday during the day. It was a little warmer. I was wearing twelve-year-old sunscreen that I found under the bathroom sink (meaning it expired eleven years ago, not that it was for twelve-year-olds). The smell of sunscreen always makes me think of summer and Lagoon. Last year I couldn't go running during the spring. First I was all scraped up from fainting, and then I had problems with my right knee. This year I seem to be having some troubles with my left knee, but they're not as bad as last year's, and hopefully the exercises that helped my right knee will help my left.
On Friday I went to two free, local concerts. The first was the Rooftop Concert Series. I went with some people from my ward, Carrie and #Megan. We felt kind of out of place among all those hipsters. The only other Rooftop Concert I've been to was last October with the Lower Lights. I liked that one better--I guess I'm more of a folk person than a rock person. (I should specify rock music person, since I am a wannabe geologist.)
The other concert was at a new venue in the Wilk, the Wall. It replaced Outdoors Unlimited. For some reason I heard of the Wall but thought it was a climbing wall. It's a little nightclub thing that has a bar (with nonalcoholic beverages, of course) and food and tables, with a stage for bands to play. One of my roommates from three years ago, Alex Vincent, was playing in his folk band, so I went since I hadn't seen him for a while. My experience was kind of weird. I was sitting at a table by myself, waiting for my order of French fries, when a group of people I didn't know came and sat around me. There was plenty of empty space in the place, but they decided to sit by me. It was kind of awkward. Afterwards I went and talked to Alex, and it was good to talk to him, but we don't have a lot in common.
Yesterday my ward had a Cuatro de Mayo party; it was our second time at Kiwanis Park this week (the other time being for ward FHE). Then I had to go meet my parents at a wedding reception of one of my second cousins. I didn't even go through the line because I don't know anyone in that part of the family. My parents brought down some belts I had left at home and also my French textbook from last summer, since my roommate Jordan is taking the same French class. (Le français me manque souvent.)
I'm starting to feel the burdens of being ward clerk come upon me, but I have two assistants now, so that should alleviate some of it. I really see now how all the callings in the Church are intertwined and help everyone else.
Spring and summer really are the best times to be in Provo. It's going to be a fun summer.
The worst thing about spring is Women's Conference, when hundreds of middle-age women crowd campus and generally get in the way. I'm glad that's done with now.
But spring classes started this week. I'm taking Editing for Publication (ELang 430, the capstone class of the editing minor) and Structure of Modern English (ELang 529). The editing class will be a lot of work, but I think it will be manageable. The professor is new and it's her first time teaching this class. I'm hoping that means she'll go easy on us. She seems like a nice person.
The other class is taught by Dallin D. Oaks. He's one of my favorite professors ever. He's hilarious, and in many ways he reminds me of me--he gets really excited by grammar and linguistics and remembers lots of stories. I had him for Semantics and Pragmatics last year. That class was really easy. I think this one will be a little harder, but it shouldn't be too bad.
I give myself mandatory study hours, but this term I'm giving myself fewer mandatory study hours, because it is generally impossible to do all the recommended hours for every class. This has given me a lot of free time, which I don't know what to do with. I have been watching Hulu because it has TV shows that aren't on DVD. I'm been watching the fourth season of Green Acres since the last three seasons aren't on DVD. The fourth season isn't as good as the second and third, but it's still funny.
The other show I've been watching is terrible, but it's like a train wreck and I can't look away. It's The Munsters Today, a remake that debuted in 1988. (All I can say is I'm glad I was a baby when all that 80s-ness was going on and I was too young to know what was happening.) It is awful. It's not just a bad remake of the original, it's just a bad TV show all around. The jokes are not funny at all ("If you wanted an animated family, you should have picked the Simpsons"), and the characters are completely unrealistic, even for a TV show about monsters. Why I have kept watching it (and why I will continue watching it), I don't know. Jan Terri may be a terrible singer, but she's entertaining. I don't know if I can say the same about The Munsters Today. NBC did a rather dark remake last October. I didn't particularly like that one, but it worked a lot better (it was basically a new TV show that had the same character names). But I often cringe when I read my old blog posts and see all my pop-culture references, so this is enough.
I went on two very spring-like runs this week. One was on Thursday evening. It was so nice outside. It was between 8:30 and 9:30 and it was still a little bit light out. I could smell the tree blossoms, and it just generally seemed like spring. My second run was yesterday during the day. It was a little warmer. I was wearing twelve-year-old sunscreen that I found under the bathroom sink (meaning it expired eleven years ago, not that it was for twelve-year-olds). The smell of sunscreen always makes me think of summer and Lagoon. Last year I couldn't go running during the spring. First I was all scraped up from fainting, and then I had problems with my right knee. This year I seem to be having some troubles with my left knee, but they're not as bad as last year's, and hopefully the exercises that helped my right knee will help my left.
On Friday I went to two free, local concerts. The first was the Rooftop Concert Series. I went with some people from my ward, Carrie and #Megan. We felt kind of out of place among all those hipsters. The only other Rooftop Concert I've been to was last October with the Lower Lights. I liked that one better--I guess I'm more of a folk person than a rock person. (I should specify rock music person, since I am a wannabe geologist.)
The other concert was at a new venue in the Wilk, the Wall. It replaced Outdoors Unlimited. For some reason I heard of the Wall but thought it was a climbing wall. It's a little nightclub thing that has a bar (with nonalcoholic beverages, of course) and food and tables, with a stage for bands to play. One of my roommates from three years ago, Alex Vincent, was playing in his folk band, so I went since I hadn't seen him for a while. My experience was kind of weird. I was sitting at a table by myself, waiting for my order of French fries, when a group of people I didn't know came and sat around me. There was plenty of empty space in the place, but they decided to sit by me. It was kind of awkward. Afterwards I went and talked to Alex, and it was good to talk to him, but we don't have a lot in common.
Yesterday my ward had a Cuatro de Mayo party; it was our second time at Kiwanis Park this week (the other time being for ward FHE). Then I had to go meet my parents at a wedding reception of one of my second cousins. I didn't even go through the line because I don't know anyone in that part of the family. My parents brought down some belts I had left at home and also my French textbook from last summer, since my roommate Jordan is taking the same French class. (Le français me manque souvent.)
I'm starting to feel the burdens of being ward clerk come upon me, but I have two assistants now, so that should alleviate some of it. I really see now how all the callings in the Church are intertwined and help everyone else.
Spring and summer really are the best times to be in Provo. It's going to be a fun summer.
The worst thing about spring is Women's Conference, when hundreds of middle-age women crowd campus and generally get in the way. I'm glad that's done with now.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
The best of Mark My Words
Two years ago today, I started this blog!
A year ago, in honor of my anniversary, I made a post describing each of my posts from the previous year.
But I don't feel like doing that today. Instead, I will describe what may be the top ten of my posts over the past two years. These ratings are totally subjective, but I'm basing them on my own opinions and on the amount and type of feedback I got for them. They are here presented in the order I wrote them.
The REAL most wonderful time of the year, November 6, 2011. I expressed my happiness at the new Thanksgiving season and my annoyance at early Christmas stuff. My friend David Christensen even quoted my closing paragraph as his Facebook status.
The most overhyped pointless day of the year, March 18, 2011. I recounted my experience going to the Salt Lake City St. Patrick's Day parade, even though I'm quite cynical about both St. Patrick's Day and parades. I got a few comments about how entertaining this post was. I even unwittingly took a picture of Peter Moosman (standing in the back right with the green and black shirt)!
Global Warming, April 13, 2012. I'm politically unafilliated, but I get so annoyed when Republicans put their fingers in their ears and say that global warming doesn't exist or that it isn't caused by humans. I can think of no motivation for scientists to say there is a problem if there isn't one, but I can think of plenty of motivation for people to deny the problem exists.
A year of holiday memories, published April 22, 2012. I include this not because it's particularly good or because I recommend you read it. In fact, I recommend that you don't read it. But it is the longest post I have ever done. It took me days. It was also the last memory post I made on this blog before creating the Mark Remembers blog. I talked about running a 5k on the Fourth of July, having an awkward devotional at work on Halloween, going to my grandparents' for Thanksgiving, being disappointed at a Christmas sacrament meeting, spending New Year's with my nephews, taking a sedimentary rock quiz on Valentine's Day, attending the temple with roommates on St. Patrick's Day, and eating lots of Easter candy.
What a weirdo, part 2, June 10, 2012. I formally wrote down my rules for eating seasonal desserts and candies. Shortly after I wrote this, some friends invited me on a picnic, and one of them wrote about the picnic on her blog. She provided a link to this post to explain my eating habits. I would post a link to her blog, but there are pictures on there of me with a really ugly hairdo. (They invited me on the picnic before I had showered for the day, and apparently I didn't even comb my hair. But I hate talking about my hair.)
Why I hate politics, October 21, 2012. Two weeks before the election, I expressed my disgust at party politics. I generalize Republicans as being ignorant, and I generalize Democrats as being intolerant by saying others are intolerant. When I posted this on Facebook, I got several likes and comments.
Death Valley Days, November 11, 2012. I described my Geomorphology field trip to Death Valley and the geology we observed there. My favorite part was the Racetrack, where rocks moved themselves along the ground.
I usually think of vacation posts as boring, but I got a few comments on this one. My sister said she didn't understand what I was saying but said it looked cool, my brother tried to convince me to be a scientist, and my cousins commented about how I lick rocks.
My annual rant, November 18, 2012. Once again, I expressed my disdain at Christmas before Thanksgiving, but this time I went into more depth. I keep Thanksgiving in its proper time frame and Christmas in its proper time frame out of respect for both holidays.
My thoughts on gun control, February 10, 2013. I've wanted to repost this after the disappointing defeat of Obama's gun plan. I think people opposed it, either consciously or subconsciously, simply because it was Obama who presented it, not because they actually objected to it. Why on earth would you object to background checks? I'm going to go ahead and say it. If you object to background checks, you're a moron. I also got some comments and likes from this post.
It Passes All My Understanding, April 7, 2013. Learning about and believing in science, including such topics as evolution and the Big Bang, actually strengthens my belief in God instead of diminishing it. Cherie Call's song says it well. I had debated making this post, but general conference convinced me to do it.
Thanks to those of you who keep reading this blog! Starting year three!
A year ago, in honor of my anniversary, I made a post describing each of my posts from the previous year.
But I don't feel like doing that today. Instead, I will describe what may be the top ten of my posts over the past two years. These ratings are totally subjective, but I'm basing them on my own opinions and on the amount and type of feedback I got for them. They are here presented in the order I wrote them.
The REAL most wonderful time of the year, November 6, 2011. I expressed my happiness at the new Thanksgiving season and my annoyance at early Christmas stuff. My friend David Christensen even quoted my closing paragraph as his Facebook status.
The most overhyped pointless day of the year, March 18, 2011. I recounted my experience going to the Salt Lake City St. Patrick's Day parade, even though I'm quite cynical about both St. Patrick's Day and parades. I got a few comments about how entertaining this post was. I even unwittingly took a picture of Peter Moosman (standing in the back right with the green and black shirt)!
Global Warming, April 13, 2012. I'm politically unafilliated, but I get so annoyed when Republicans put their fingers in their ears and say that global warming doesn't exist or that it isn't caused by humans. I can think of no motivation for scientists to say there is a problem if there isn't one, but I can think of plenty of motivation for people to deny the problem exists.
A year of holiday memories, published April 22, 2012. I include this not because it's particularly good or because I recommend you read it. In fact, I recommend that you don't read it. But it is the longest post I have ever done. It took me days. It was also the last memory post I made on this blog before creating the Mark Remembers blog. I talked about running a 5k on the Fourth of July, having an awkward devotional at work on Halloween, going to my grandparents' for Thanksgiving, being disappointed at a Christmas sacrament meeting, spending New Year's with my nephews, taking a sedimentary rock quiz on Valentine's Day, attending the temple with roommates on St. Patrick's Day, and eating lots of Easter candy.
What a weirdo, part 2, June 10, 2012. I formally wrote down my rules for eating seasonal desserts and candies. Shortly after I wrote this, some friends invited me on a picnic, and one of them wrote about the picnic on her blog. She provided a link to this post to explain my eating habits. I would post a link to her blog, but there are pictures on there of me with a really ugly hairdo. (They invited me on the picnic before I had showered for the day, and apparently I didn't even comb my hair. But I hate talking about my hair.)
Why I hate politics, October 21, 2012. Two weeks before the election, I expressed my disgust at party politics. I generalize Republicans as being ignorant, and I generalize Democrats as being intolerant by saying others are intolerant. When I posted this on Facebook, I got several likes and comments.
Death Valley Days, November 11, 2012. I described my Geomorphology field trip to Death Valley and the geology we observed there. My favorite part was the Racetrack, where rocks moved themselves along the ground.
My annual rant, November 18, 2012. Once again, I expressed my disdain at Christmas before Thanksgiving, but this time I went into more depth. I keep Thanksgiving in its proper time frame and Christmas in its proper time frame out of respect for both holidays.
My thoughts on gun control, February 10, 2013. I've wanted to repost this after the disappointing defeat of Obama's gun plan. I think people opposed it, either consciously or subconsciously, simply because it was Obama who presented it, not because they actually objected to it. Why on earth would you object to background checks? I'm going to go ahead and say it. If you object to background checks, you're a moron. I also got some comments and likes from this post.
It Passes All My Understanding, April 7, 2013. Learning about and believing in science, including such topics as evolution and the Big Bang, actually strengthens my belief in God instead of diminishing it. Cherie Call's song says it well. I had debated making this post, but general conference convinced me to do it.
Thanks to those of you who keep reading this blog! Starting year three!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)