Grammaticence: The Apostrofickle Edition*

Grammar. A sensitive topic. The amount of distress I feel on behalf of small misappropriated pixels of apostrophication is quite large. Possibly exceeded only by sense of frustration which overwhelms me when said apostrofickles are absent altogether. Or when people hyphenate un-necessarily. Or when for some mysterious reason unbeknownst to me the author has decided to quite without precedent scorn traditional modes used to enhance legibility and withhold from the reader altogether the joy of a short pause or two signalled by a humble comma.


GRAMMANGST!


I feel I am not assisted in this by working with science people. Science people (Who? What? Why? Shut up woman; I will make as many broad, meaningless generalizations as I choose to, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop me, apart from if you are my statistics lecturer and choose to send me out of the class for outrages against mathematics, and EVEN THEN I will still secretly make a pie chart behind your back. Because they are fun and have colours and are the most cunning of culinarily-oriented graphical devices) ... Science people think that if you reference a sentence, then it is correct.
They are wrong.


In fact, things are right when people believe them (Me, Myself and I, 2011).
Example.
Do apples have caffeine in them?


Scientific answer: No. You are an idiot.
Correct answer: How much more value would you assign them if you thought they did?


It is for this reason that people buy shit, and the world (largely) functions. Liz knows about these things. She tells me at great length. Occasionally I listen. Our conversation this morning (over breakfast. Which I had to make MYSELF. What is the point, honestly. Women.) ran a little something like this:


(Warning: not direct quotes. Content may offend the truth. But the truth has a lot to answer for; and, as conclusively proven in multiple randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, multi-phase washout clinical trials, is completely and irrefutably subjective. (Ferric et al. 2069.))


Me: "blah blah blah, something vaguely ill-thought out and left-wing, but multi-syllabic and with perfect diction, opine opine opine. Exclaim!"


Liz: "...ummm yes... but you have to think about the differential marginal value, and then take into account the relative risk-benefit ratio when making these claims. In addition, you must consider that not all of your arguments are valid under a macroeconomic scope adjusted to incorporate real-time market edition remake pterodactyl activities; not to mention disincentives of a manlicious nature"


Me: "Oh."
        [pause. In which I think for some moments.]
        "Did you just make all that up?"


Liz: "You will never know."


Grammar. Economics. Yesterday I played tennis with twenty-three lovely senior citizens. I say played. I ran; they laughed.


Which segways me to:


Tennis outfits.


The main thing that... three main things?
The three main things about tennis... four main things?
The four main things about tennis which differentiate it from other sports... five main things?
Nobody expected that.
Hrrrrmmm.


The main aspects that differentiate tennis from other sports seem to be:


(1) Rafa.
(2) His ARMS! Swoon.
(4) Federer
(11) His smile. Awwwww.
(3) Those hilarious hats they put on the ball-children in the Melbourne Open.
(8b) That the players wear outfits meriting multiple pages in glossy magazines.


Why? Well, for a start, tennis players do not have to wear uniforms when they play. This is a mistake. Sportspeople are renowned for having egos roughly the size of the amount of money Sarah Palin would receive from anti-choice campaigners if she filmed herself eating a burger in Westboro and sent the tape to Fox. (This is alot**).  So these beautiful, intelligent people (with abs. I had an ab once. It left me for someone else. I was quite... cut about it at the time. BAM.) get to prance around in ANYTHING THEY LIKE. It is just not fair!


Professional rugby players have to engage in organised cuddles with sweaty mean in tight, short, tight short shorts so that sweaty men in short (tight) short shorts will buy MySky and deodorant will be sold; netball players have to wear skirts (with short shorts underneath, to render the motive beyond doubt un-athletic); hockey players have to carry those hilarious sticks around with them; BUT TENNIS PLAYERS WEAR WHAT THEY WANT!


So do golfers. But we are talking sports here. Not retirement village options for your uncle GP White.


So; in conclusion:
Things I would like to be better at:
(1) Tennis
(3) The stuff quiz. (Don't we all.)
(IV) Counting.


Enjoy you're respective days.
Ruby.




References:
(APA style; Answer Properly Assessed. (Fact.))


Ferric et al. 2069; studies on iron; its roles, regulations and derogatory uses. Call number: No.


Ruby 2011; a reflective review of wisdom accumulated over the years. Call number: Only if interest on student loans in introduced.




*Now with less swearing! Cos I'm classy. (From Now.)




**More than abit. Less than aload. Quieter than aloud.

Dinosaurs101

One of my favourite things is dinosaurs. They're probably in my top 5 things. Ever. They're just so freakin' massive and cool. They can fuck things up. The triceratops is (subjectively) the best. Spot a triceratops on any given day and you can find him, intelligently, chillin' out in the trees with his mates and his three horns. He doesn't use his horns all the time, but he knows he can if he wants to.

After a few cheeky gin and tonics, I will often, usually upon meeting someone for the first time, ask them what their favourite dinosaur is. If I did this to you, you will have been judged.
Oh, and if you said "...um...I dunno, eh. I don't really like dinosaurs..." then you will have been blacklisted.

This is exactly how I judged you:

What Your Favourite Dinosaur Will Tell Me About Your Persona

That is all.

With love

From Liz

P.S. It is a well-known fact that velociraptors like to ride bikes.

My childhood. Was not boring.

Despite what some (clearly jealous) people think, growing up in a white suburban upper middle class home, and all the privilege that that entails, with a doctor and a housewife (with two tertiary degrees) as parents, three siblings, a dog and a cat, is not exactly a walk in the park. (Though I did, often, walk in the park, the one over the road. With the gleaming child-friendly playground and sea views; attractive blonde women walking various animals and pet children about, sipping chai mocchalattefrappes and tweeting on i-phones, or whatever the 2002 equivalent of an i-phone was. A cellophone with no aerial. A home phone with a really long cord. A tin with a string. What did people DO in 2002? Did they still wear bootleg jeans? I know I wore orange and pink skivvies and leggings (possibly, yes, with teapot motifs) until high school. And then it was on with a continuation of the orange theme with USA hoodies and dickies shorts. Orange. Giant backpacks. Che shirts.)

From the start, I think that, growing up, I had a fairly non-conventional attitude towards various necessary childhood activities, which could have been summed up in two words “my way”. I did not wear shoes until I was four, and my mother was nearly arrested for child abuse as she pulled me, barefoot and hysterically clinging to street signs and spelling them out in sobs, tears and snot (this has always been a pet joy of mine. I once slapped a small child when she refused to admit that cupboard was spelled “cup” + “board”. I was also a small child at the time. But I would do it again. The fight against stupidity accepts no parameters.) through the knee-deep snow in Bristol in December. 

People, too, annoyed me quite a lot. I would viscously verbally attack any adult who dared to challenge me on any view whatsoever. My primary school teachers would not argue with me about grammar. Or anything. Especially Mrs Jones. She was a smoker, and when I saw her smoking after class one time I explicated with such persistence about the negative consequences of this abhorrent behaviour (with, I have no doubt, extreme usage of fictional anecdotal evidence) that I was made to sit outside the principle’s office for two hours. I wrote a story about drug abuse (“She stopped, there, at the top of the stairs. Something, dark, called from below, and she slowly stepped forward, into the abyss that awaited”) and got a gold star for using so many commas.

I also broke my nose doing a cartwheel. To this day I still do not fully understand in what way, exactly, this is possible.

In intermediate I had to come to New Zealand. So I sat under a desk and read. 

It was a nice desk; it faced out of a window, from which I could watch everybody else riding in tiny circles on scooters and hitting people with scooters and holding hands and getting pregnant and so on (Evan’s bay intermediate. Need I say more.) I did not have a scooter. I really wanted a “RAZOR!”, which was metallic and shiny and (I assume) could corner extremely sharply. But my mum did not believe in scooters. Or trans fats in school lunches. Or TV. So, these being the primary measures behind acceptance into pre-teen society, I remained a non-homogenised child, and read War and Peace (boring. But they shoot bears and fuck peasants) and the Satanic Verses (fucking boring. Everybody has the same name) and Annie Proulx and Margaret Atwood and Mark Doty and other various tomes I collected from the shelves of my parents' bookshelf that were reachable for a 120cm child (I actually grew a whole 40cm in high school!) and occasionally teachers would approach me (moderate trepidation in their voices) and ask if I would like to emerge and participate. And I would look at them. For a bit. Then utter a measured “no”, and return to Bill Bryson or Forster, and they would dither for a bit, then leave me alone for another week.

In addition to this scooter-related failing at life (I fucking swear, EVERYBODY had a scooter! It was a seriously big deal. Not having a scooter was kind of like not having a favourite dinosaur; unimaginable, inexplicable and unacceptable) I never had a bedroom. I feel that there is some sort of adolescent rite of passage in which one is required to retreat and lurk for four to six years in a dark, somewhat acrid-smelling cave filled with posters of guitar-clasping individuals in eyeliner and vaguely explicit jeans and tissue boxes and broken cd cases and pieces of ego, to emerge, wearied but not spotty, an unsullied fresher with a limitless alcohol tolerance and positive outlook on life and ipod. 

But all I had was an alcove in the hall. It had a bed and a pinboard, but the amount of angst possible without doors and walls proved severely limited. I tried my best with surly lesbianity (and goddamn did I try! Waistcoats, lip piercings, the entire Tegan and Sarah back catalogue) but after five years of emotional anguish and not a single tattoo, I gave up the premise and turned away from drama class and cask wine, and set off to find my place in the world. LOL. Jokes. I went to Mexico.

After being sufficiently (catholically and cathartically) heterosexual for a year or two, I cut my losses, bought some scratchy tweed pants, eighteen scarves, and a longboard, and went off to some cold place to sit.

And so I became.... Not a child. Called Brian.


Called Ruby. LOL. Enjoy.

Girl problems. A brief graphical schematic.

Mature students; a short rant in rap.

Hmmm HMMM! Hemm hemm HEMMMMMM. I have something to say. Briefly.

 And it is not that I just wiped soy sauce on my keyboard in excitement (though it's somehow deeply satisfying having a salty T R and Y. Some sort of hilarious hypertension-themed pun in the making here). And not an apology because I am starting sentences with "and", in total awesome defiance of everything I ever learnt in intermediate school. (A summarized list of which would run; Don't give 480 eleven year olds scooters; Don't expect to study medicine if you managed to break your nose doing a cartwheel; Don't be the teacher who gets a tampon stuck in a pump bottle while trying to teach health class and horrifies 35 tiny pre-pubescents and NEVER start a sentence with the A word. Alright.)

It is about... mature students. Ohmigosh!

This morning in class; there was a mature student. This particular mature student is of the "I am taking this paper as an interest paper, have not a clue what anyone is talking about, spent the last ten minutes of discussion explaining my allergies (or cats names. I assume.) in some detail to neighbouring small, vaguely frightened, asian student BUT despite your nerdy and extensive lit review (heh heh. "lit". heh), the summary of which you have just presented to the class in 25 minutes with 82 references, I Believe That You Are Wrong Because; when I gave birth to my second child, yes the one with the congenital herpes, I didn't like bananas anymore. And my eldest did, you know. And he had had asthma since we moved from Corstophine! And that wasn't just the cat. No, the one who wasn't run over by the milk-truck driver that we later found out was my uncle's dead cousin. Off Shortland Street. Soooo.... you really should go back and re-evaluate your study hypothesis. You know?"

The one who claimed "well MY education wasn't formed on positivist principles!" And then followed that up with the winning; "some scientists believe in god. And it could affect their research".

Someone get that woman on TED. A to the sap.

So, in deference to my small, sad brain, I wrote a short rap about it.

It's a truism that sometimes years don't bring wisdom to the wise
Your lack of formal secondary schooling and gender studies research shines through vapid eyes
When you say "I don't have a background in positivism"; that's a schism
When you fight for god in epi class, it's qualitative fundamentalism.*

Enjoy. When you hear a nasal voice pipe up from the front on a monday morning when it is five minutes to eleven, possibly on the importance of emphasising the underappreciated** place of strong anecdotal evidence in the empirically-based research paradigm (oh, STRONG anecdotal? That is just fine then!) you may hum a wee bit under your breath. Or add a stanza. You know?
Grrr!

Ruby.
(moderately angrily on a Monday morning)



* there was another stanza. I, very sensibly, left it out.

** new word new word yay yay yay!