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.

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!

Mondays. Caffeine. The Why and How edition.

The only thing, as I’m sure Wilde would have said, through his green teeth*, worse than NOT having a big weekend, is having a big weekend. And bygod Mister, you are so right on! 

I seem to spend my whole week being incredibly diligent and getting up very early (sometimes, and I shit you not, BEFORE 7am! My diary doesn’t even recgonize the existance of TIME before 7am! Before this year I had only the vaguest of mathematical notions of the hours extant between 5 (“kicking girl out of bed”** am) and 7 (“oh my fuck it’s daytime” am)), with the promise of two joyous days of sleep as a consolation prize for getting through it all. The sweet, sweet premise of the weekend.

But then, high as a Chambers’ Street hippie on the excitement the brief spells of punctuality and industriousness that sporadically punctuate my weekdays, I am inspired to schedule “fun activities” over my precious freedom. 
These may include, but are not limited to: 

- Running up hills

- Running around various parks (or, more frequently, sitting on benches at parks)

- Drinking more than four standard drinks on any one drinking occasion*** (cry your fucking heart out, ALAC)

- Illegally appropriating and re-distributing varied garden furniture (sorry mum! But, honestly, some people obviously have no conception of the potential visual nuances and heightened impact that the simple doormat can, with an entourage of similarly absconded doormats, make to the whole “ambiance” of a footpath)

- Hanging out and swearing and taking in and hanging out and fucking taking in and sulking and stuffing in drier a week’s worth of washing

- Other things (see: “sport”, “homework” and “rain” for details)

Which leaves me feeling justifiably rather fatty-gay by Monday.

Ah. Mondays! They tend to follow rather a rigid pattern. 

And that pattern is a spiral. 

Into hell.

First you have the whole “I do not wish to get out of bed.” But you do. And it is... ok. And then you wash your hair and then cannot wear a beanie on the walk to uni because your hair is wet. And your ears get cold, but it is still ok. Then you walk across the park and... your shoes get wet. This is less ok. Then you trip over on the second step (DESPITE all eight signs!) coming in cafe door to get coffee. And a tiny piece of you begins to narrow its eyes and clench its fists. Then you step on a drawing pin someone (you) left point-up in your office (hanging up cat posters) and a small swear word escapes from your pursed lips. Then your ipod dies. Then you go to class... and there is statistics. And it’s like urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRGHHHH MONDAYS!! WHY DO YOU EXIST TO CURSE ME!!

Once you have reached this point, there is only ever one answer. 

The best answer. 

More coffee.

Coffee is truly dear to my heart, and to that small withered piece of libertarian cardiac tissue that stands in the place of Liz’s.

It is a drug.

The best drug! 

A cheap, socially acceptable drug, responsible for thousands of first-rate third-world job opportunities, marketing degree passes and corporate fat-man heart attacks annually. 

But it is also so much more than that; it is a cure for all the ills in the world (primarily sneans, studylink, and Mondays). 

The Monday jolt of impending deadlines and insufficiency of sleep means you end up drinking so much coffee you start to feel like your hands are very fast and far away. Vicious, headache-inducing, I-got-chest-hair-on-my-chest-hair amounts of caffeine (brewed in a saucepan for extra hardcore-ness and cos I broke my plunger glass last year when it was the only vaguely clean surface in the house and I tried to bake nachos in it (oh, and just for the record, this is not really recommended)).

Coffee. I love you. We should have tiny hyperactive babies together and live in a giant white house by a lake and paddle little kayaks around and have picnics and parties in the woods and really energetic sex. We could have such a beautiful, fast, life together.

It’s Monday.

It’s coffee time.


Byeeeeee Ruby.

* Interesting story actually! So Wilde, epic homo, was arrested for having the criminally faggy affectation of covering his mouth with his hand when speaking. In fact, this was because he ingested vast quantities of mercury (chemical abbreviation, Huge Gay, an obvious clue) which at the time was the accepted cure for syphilis (and, remarkable for the time (when pregnancy was treated with bloodletting and the flu with abstaining from drinking fluid) a functional one. Though mostly because it poisoned the bacteria marginally more swiftly than it poisoned you) WHICH he got from sleeping with a (female) prostitute. LOL.

** This one is for you.

*** I initially wrote coccasion. heh. heh. heh.