Hi cat lovers. Here's a great video (courtesy of The Onion) on how to put the spark back into the relationship with your cat. Gilroy and I will be trying some new tricks tonight. Maybe even Audrey will join in. Who can say?

Labels: amusing, cats

Holy crap world, you need to see this:

C Me Dance

Ballet, cancer, hanging out, stigmata, and Lucifer, all rolled into one film. Yay!

Labels: amusing, ballet, movies

So no UTEP for me, not this year anyway. Unfortunate. I was really hoping for it.

Interestingly I am not bitter at all. When I got rejected from TFA my immediate reaction was "yeah well they suck anyway and I hate them and they're stinky and whatever nyeh nyeh nyeh." I can't actually get mad at UTEP or hold a grudge against them. I figure if they rejected me I'm probably not the right fit for them, but I still think they're a totally awesome program.

And on that note, major congratulations to Annemarie, Cindy, and Sasha, all of whom got the less lame version of the letter I did.

Labels: lame, utep

Just as I really need to go searching through my old texts to dig up somebody's number who I don't really know on the off chance I might get in touch with Nick that way...

...my phone has deleted all my old texts. Except one. From my birthday, June 7th, 2008. Not useful.

Not the time.

Quick! Look up there at that mido! Where did you look, at 1 or 2? I presume you looked at either 1 or 2, and I'm going to be so bold as to say you probably looked at 2, unless you were being purposefully difficult. Why? Because 1 is a dog. What's 2? I don't know, and you probably don't know either, so it might very well be a mido. If mido means "funny little squishy orange thing with saucer eyes and tufty hair in odd places," you would have been correct to look at 2. But what if mido meant "hot dog that has sprouted legs and head and likes being rubbed on the tummy?" Then it would have been better to look in 1's direction. After all, the word "dachshund" does exist. Similarly, the word "creature" exists. If I had said "look at the creature," looking at either 1 or 2 would be equally correct.

The point is that we as language learners (and yes we are all language learners on a daily basis whether we like it or know it or not) enter into a situation with certain constraints. There is this pretty nifty article by Au & Glusman (I'd link to it, but I only have access to it through my class's course reserves through the library here) on mutual exclusivity published in 1990. The paper details a number of studies designed to figure out when we honor the principle of mutual exclusivity (because in order to learn to words at the most basic level, we must honor it) and when we don't honor it (because there are so very many times when learning new words requires that we do not honor it). I'm not going to get into the details of the studies they did - though they were kind of cool experiments, but I am going to mention some situations I think are pretty interesting.

Hierarchies. They're neat. They are! Why? Well, because you came into the mido situation thinking well, I know that's a dog, so it can't be a mido. You assumed whatever a mido is it's on the same hierarchical level as dog. It didn't occur to you that it might be on the more general level of animal/creature or more specific level of dachshund. Granted, there is already a word for animal, and one for creature, and one for dachshund. Ok, so how about...

Synonyms! There's no way mido could have meant the same thing as dog? Our first response to a new word is to assign it to a new item. If an object already has a label, why give it another one? But of course, no language has perfect one-to-one mapping of words and referents. Though I'm not giving a list of synonyms here, a dog might also be a hound, a beast, a furball, a mutt, a cur, a puppy, a pooch, a mongrel...and whatever else. Those are all (except maybe puppy) on the same hierarchical level as dog, but they are secondary (or tertiary or further). You learned the word mongrel years after you learned doggie, I will bet money and/or yarn on it. So at what point did you say, "Ok, mutual exclusivity out! Synonyms in!"? I bet you don't know, because researchers don't know either.

And what about an even cooler and more complicated case: bilingualism? Specifically bilingualism in kids young enough to still be acquiring the basics of both languages. The situation gets so much more complicated! Think about it. I'm a bilingual (French-English) baby in my first critical language-learning months (in other words, I'm moving past mama, ba-ba (bottle), no, and picking up words for animals, small objects, people, etc.) and here comes this four-legged furry thing that barks and chews bones and lives in my house. I can't make out most of the words my mother says, so I hear "Gobbledygook DOG." I have to look at the dog. I hear "Gobbledygook CHIEN." I have to look at the dog (chien in French, of course). I hear "Gobbledygook MIDO." I have to look at SOMETHING ELSE and attach mido to the cat that just walked in (or whatever). I have to be able to apply mutual exclusivity within each language but not cross-linguistically. Is it based on phonological features? Do I have to be able to tell that dog sounds English while chien sounds French and mido sounds, well, I'm not so sure. Somehow, I have to catch on pretty freaking fast!

Somehow we both honor and choose not to honor this principle of mutual exclusivity, and I just think it's fascinating how and when we do and do not, and that the whole thing happens without our being aware of it. Tell me that isn't at least a tiny bit cool.

Labels: linguistics

OK. Teach for America? Rejected. Not like I didn't see that coming.

(I won't lie. It still stings a little.)

At least I didn't have to wait till 8 o'clock.

Labels: tfa

It is 1:01pm as I begin writing this. I am waiting patiently for my rejection email from Teach for America. It will come today, but I just checked the website and it said results may not be posted (and therefore emails sent, I presume) until after 8pm.

Really? You're going to make me wait that long?

Yeah, I know I didn't get the job. I remember that day back in December. The legendary "TFA INTERVIEW DAY." I blew my chances. I think I'm actually well qualified to be a part of this program, but I know (yes I know) that I ruined any chance I had with that disastrous interview.

And yet...I wait by my computer for the email. Why? Is it because maybe, just maybe, it will say "Congratulations!" instead of what I know it will actually say? No. That can't be it. I think I just need closure. It's been months since I began the application process to TFA. It's time to accept that it's over, and I need someone besides the little elves in my head to tell me that for sure.

Labels: tfa

There is a person in my life who would make a great blog. As in, if I recorded his interactions with me and shared them with the interwebs (I don't like when people say that, why did I just use that word?), the internet would read, the internet would sympathize, and the internet would enjoy.

It is, however, fairly cruel to blog about how obnoxious someone is when they are not out to get you in any way. I mean, this particular character is an incredibly kind and well-intentioned individual. He just can't read social cues for the life of him, and for this, I want to strangle him most times I interact with him.

I learned recently I am not alone in my sentiments toward him. This makes the temptation to create a running blog about his oh-so-many ridiculous actions ever stronger. But I resist temptation. What if he stumbled across nattily randomly deciding to googe [insert how he knows me here]? He would be so hurt and I couldn't deal with that.

So I don't start a mean blog about this kid. But if you run into me in person and you want a laugh, ask me for the saga of Most Awkward Kid. Someday I'll write the book.

Labels: Most Awkward Kid

I just want to post something, anything, to be more recent than the post below this.

So, uh, how 'bout the weather? Pretty warm out, huh? Like the high 30s, maybe even 40. Yeah. How 'bout that?

grumblegrumblegrumbleIWantToGetIntoUTEPSoBadlygrumblegrumblegrumble

Coppelia! How about Coppelia? That's always good for a talking-about. It's going quite well, I'd say. I witnessed the Wedding Pas and I'm just in awe of how Lauren just kind of floats up to Gene's shoulder over and over again. Mazurka and Czardas are looking...ok. They need help, but they'll be fine. I actually have videos I could post of them but that would be mean, and I promised I'd keep them private.

My brain says, "Don't be so invested in one program! You're putting all your eggs in one basket!" Every other part of me says, "SHUT UP BRAIN I WANT UTEP!"

Labels: Coppelia, utep

Internet...so...slow...

...practically...nonfunctional...

...so...incredibly...frustrating...

...at 8:20 in the morning.

Actually my internet has been terribly slow for at least a week, but Comcast doesn't feel like doing anything about it. We called to have them come out, and they just didn't come. Then yesterday they finally did come by the apartment to check out what was wrong, but of course it started working perfectly for like three hours. That's how these things work.

I should give a shout out to Sasha for successfully making it through his UTEP interview. Congratulations, sir. I wish you the very best of luck! (Also, I can do that totally honestly because we're not fighting for the same space. He's going for secondary math education and I'm going for elementary education.) I was up half the night last night going over possible interview questions and realizing that I have no good answer as to why I want to work in urban schools instead of classy upper class prep schools. I just do! Well, my interview is tomorrow, so we'll just see what happens, won't we?

I wish I had something more interesting to blog about, but right now my brain is just UTEPUTEPUTEP. Maybe come Saturday I'll be interesting again. If you're looking for a way to kill time, go to youtube and search for the CaptainValor channel. It's the dude who signs "Party in the USA," but he's got about a million (yes, literally) more videos up now. You should check it out.

Labels: utep