The other day I was browsing books online (something I spend an embarrassing amount of my time on) when I discovered such curiosities as these. Curious about this publishing house I’d never heard of with titles that were either a) identical to those of movies, comics, music videos, etc., or b) nearly nonsensical chains of free association, I became suspicious about this imprint called Alphascript Publishing.
Hey, you guys know what’s awesome? Green stuff, outside. Miss the east coast this time of year.
Today I learned of independent documentary, Orgasm, Inc., which examines the current race by pharmaceutical companies to develop a female sexual enhancement drug. The idea is that with the remarkable financial success of Viagra, there must be a market for a drug to offer women sexual satisfaction, to which end medical researchers have been aggressively promoting the idea of widespread female sexual dysfunction. As explained in Newsweek piece on the film, “The selling of the female orgasm,” Liz Canner, the filmmaker, was approached by Vivus, a company whose suppository for erectile dysfunction lost its market dominance with the advent of Viagra and wanted her help with their female sex research. Another article in the Guardian identifies the drug (which they subsequently gave up on developing) as an “orgasm cream“, which sounds all kinds of disgusting.
Conveniently, I learned of this film but three days after it debuted in NYC at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, so it looks like I won’t be able to watch it for the foreseeable future without coughing up $30 for a DVD. So I figured I’d help other people avoid making the same mistake and encourage anyone interested to find a screening this summer – the filmmaker is showing it on various campuses in hopes of building up to a nationwide theatrical release. It also looks to be coming to Netflix, although it’s not there yet.
When I saw that Scott Kaufman and Jeremy Osner had participated in a meme to post the first thing you ever ordered from Amazon, I thought that sounded like fun and that I would join in.
When I learned that the first thing I ever bought from Amazon was Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, I thought that was pretty fitting.
When I realized that this meant I would have two posts in six months, and that they would both be about a band with no significant releases since my first Amazon purchase seven years ago, I felt a little silly.
If you aren’t already, I highly suggest following Dave Segal’s I Love Rap. I’m so jealous of Dave’s ability to pull out these random cuts that pretty consistently knock.
I’m providing the music for a wedding reception this weekend, and the groom said something the other day like, “Todd, you have so much enjoyable music by people I’ve never heard of, it’s amazing.” My response was, “… Yeah, it’s not that impressive. Read Pitchfork for like 10 minutes a week and you’ll know more than I do about everything.” But, as someone who actually kinda-sorta tries to know a thing or two about rap, I feel comfortable saying that Dave’s knowledge is considerable.
Anyway, while I’m blogging, here’s one relatively obscure track* I can play for you. OutKast & Slimm Calhoun’s “High Schoolin’”:
The words to this song have nothing to do with my high school experience, but from the opening bar I’m immediately back in 1999. Because I lived at least half an hour from anything worth doing and didn’t drive, my high school experience was to some extent defined by time spent in passenger seats, and by the music we played in the car. I had this song on a mixtape that I played constantly in Allison’s beat up Chevy Nova. Fortunately, I did not develop the same lasting attachment to the Rage Against the Machine on the same tape.
*It’s possible that this is a throw-away track from a weak soundtrack, and I’m just biased because my love for pre-Stankonia, “two kids from Georgia” OutKast knows no bounds. Let me know in the comments if so.
This week I have learned that it is impossible for me to read undergraduate prose within fifty feet of an unoccupied computer. Fighting through their awkward sentence constructions and stilted, thesaurus-driven vocabulary takes more concentration than I can muster when there is anything remotely interesting to do nearby. Honestly, it’s a mystery to me how so many college students can be so bad at putting coherent ideas together on paper.
But, with this understanding, I was able to make good progress for a while this afternoon by isolating myself at a table outside of Phoenix Grill, a little coffee-and-sandwiches deal on campus. Then I got distracted by an out-of-place smell. Confused, I turned to the student a the next table over, and he answered a number of my questions at once.
Me: Does it smell like weed to you?
Student: Heh. Yeah.
(short pause)
Student: I’m smoking it.
Student: <showed me his bowl>
Student: <grinned dopily>
Me: Oh. Oooooh.
As some of you know, I spend a small, but still unjustifiably large amount of time railing against linguistic prescriptivism, at least about rules that don’t matter. One of the ones that has continued to bother me since I began thinking about this topic was MSWord’s incessant complaining that “which” clauses must follow a comma while “that” clauses can under no circumstances do so. The vast majority of times I seemed to be in violation of the rule Word was applying, and on reflection I could hear no mistake in the grammar as I had it originally.
So I planned to write a post in response to this analysis of the mistake, which seemed to be to illustrate what was wrong with this distinction. It explains the commonly held view (“that” is for restrictive clauses; “which” for nonrestrictive clauses) and provides examples to demonstrate. So:
The painting, which was hanging in the foyer, was stolen.vs.
The painting that was hanging in the foyer was stolen.
But while my first reaction was to simply point out that competent language users don’t really hear a mistake when “that” and “which” are used interchangeably, I a better explanation of what is going on here:
Which and who (occasionally whom, but that’s another thread) can be used in restrictive relatives. And so can that. And, if the relative word isn’t the subject of the clause, you can also just use [ZERO] if you like.
On the other hand
In non-restrictive relative clauses, that MAY NOT be used. If you did use that, you’d have to do without the commas or intonation dip, and you’d convert the clauses to restrictive use:
The turkey that was overcooked was nonetheless flavorful.
(implies there was another one that wasn’t overcooked)I deducted the cost of the duck that I gave to an orphanage.
(implies there was another, undonated, duck)
I can see the distinction invoked here. My one reservation is the intonation dip seems to be what signals that the nonrestrictive meaning is intended, so it’s not clear that over time we won’t just increasingly find “that” following a dip. But there might be stronger resistance to this than to using “which” in restrictive clauses, having to do with broader semantic role of “that” (e.g., that it serves to pick out one thing from several; it “points to” the turkey that was overcooked versus the turkey that wasn’t).
Such are my admittedly naïve thoughts on the topic. What are yours?
Hot on the tails of my last vegetarian post, I learn the City of Ghent has a weekly “Veggie Day”:
The Flemish city of Ghent has designated every Thursday as “Veggiedag” — Veggie Day — calling for meat-free meals to be served in schools and public buildings, and encouraging vegetarianism among citizens by promoting vegetarian eateries and offering advice on how to follow a herbivorous diet.
(h/t Caroline, who got it from here.) If you read the article, the day is (predictably) not gaining full compliance from its meatier citizens. But as a public awareness campaign, this is a great step. Imagine if New York declared a meatless day once a week. Sure, millions of people would ignore it, but even a few thousand conscientious meat-eaters might participate. I’m thinking of the kind of consumer who has considered the ethics of their diet but lacked the drive to forgo meat entirely. I’m thinking the impact would be noticed pretty quickly.
Of course, I think it would have at least as large an effect (likely larger) if people starting avoiding corn-fed livestock and eating beef only when it was grass-fed, but until that becomes even a remote likelihood, veggie days wouldn’t be that bad of quick fix.
Sean Carrol over at Cosmic Variance has a very nice piece today on how science and religion are not compatible. But my philosophical sense (like Spiderman’s spider-sense, only far less useful) went crazy at this sentence:
You can use words to mean whatever you want; it’s just that you will consistently be misunderstood by the ordinary-language speakers with whom you are conversing.
In fairness, I agree with the basic point. I’m really just quibbling with the word “use”. Or rather, with the claim that “you can use words to mean whatever you want,” when the second half of the sentence denies just that. Whatever you might intend by your words, if you fail to be understood by other speakers they’re not going to be of much use to you (or anyone).
Now back to your regularly scheduled internet usage.