"such sweet-complaining grievance" the two gentlemen of verona: iii, ii

I would really prefer it if the portmanteau-word "ginormous" would disappear completely from the American lexicon. I can't explain why, but it irritates the hell out of me, almost as much as hearing the Austin-Powers-inspired phrase "YEEAH, Baby!" exclaimed by a douchetastic frat-boy. I guess I don't feel as though the word ginormous adds any value or color to the language; in fact, if anything, it feels to me as though it detracts from the language.

I'm sitting at the bar at a tea shop right now, and I am loathe to confess this but I need to get it off my chest -- instead of studying for the last hour an a half as I intended to do when I came in here, I spent it purusing a copy of JANE magazine that someone had left here. That's an hour and a half of my life that will never be restored. I just feel fortunate that I was able to stop myself before delving into the LUCKY magazine that was underneath it. Man, it is like eating M&Ms.

Meanwhile, I am trying to tamp down all the knowlege I already have in my head about tempering chocolate so I can make room for more. As soon as I think I have learned all that I could need to know to succeed in this class, more information is presented. The class is extremely interesting and I find the work supremely gratifying, but it is pretty intense, to say the least.

On the bright side, I feel pretty relaxed today, and am hoping I will have a nice sleep through the night and will wake up tomorrow feeling ready to go.

Well, back to the books.

"you taught me language; and my profit on't is, i know how to curse" the tempest: i, ii

So this is a pretty good quiz; it pegged me pretty darn well.
Take it yourself - it's kind of fun!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

In other news, today I made my first wedding cake.



Yes, it's very small (two tiers, one 9 inches and the other 6 inches), and there's a couple of dents from when I transported it home, but it's mine, and I was happy with it. And my instructor gave me an "A", which, I hate to say, matters to me. I'm a grade hog. I get pissed if I get below an A or A- in any subject that I feel I should do well in. In other words, it's no problem to me if I skate by in pre-calc or chemistry. But if I get an 89 on a very difficult English test, I get super pissed at myself. I got a 4 on the AP English exam without taking the AP English course, so I took the test again the next year and got a 5 (at the time that was the highest you could get, I don't know if that's still true). I wish I had that kind of stick-to-it-tiveness (that might be my favorite dorky-ass made up word ever) in all walks of life. Ah, well. Life is a work in progress. To celebrate my A, I am going to treat myself to an eggnog latte.

"but what care i for words?" as you like it: iii; v

I say I'm a recovering English major in my profile, but it's not entirely accurate. More correct would be to say that I'm an English major who's found her calling not to be in reading and writing English, but who still harbors a crush on it as a hobby. I get a kick out of the written word; it's pretty astonishing to think how language has developed and evolved and devolved. I try to be observant of language patterns in our changing culture, and so I read a lot of different, and in some cases, crappy, literature and media. Along the way, I often pick up amusing anecdotes that have not so much to do with language, but more about how absurd life can be.

Like this.

If, like our president, you're not what we call a "reader", here's the Reader's Digest: A British biographer named A.N. Wilson wrote a biography of the British poet John Betjeman, who had, apparently, stated late in his life that he wished he had had more sex. He was married and it was assumed his sex life was dull. Well, the biographer received a letter that supposedly revealed an extramarital affair between Betjeman and another writer; it was apparently a love letter from him, and Wilson printed the letter in the biography saying there had been this affair. Ok, here's the thing: it was a hoax. The letter was a fake, and not only that, but encoded in one section of the letter, using the first letter of each word, was the sentence "A.N. Wilson is a shit." Nice!!!! But ok, here's the other thing: the letter came from an unknown correspondent using a French return address, but the letter was postmarked in London.

Now, I'm not a fancy-schmancy biographer or anything, so maybe I'm overthinking things, but it seems to me that before actually publishing a letter received from an unknown person in a book about someone else, one might take care to research the contents of that letter, and perhaps check other sources to corroborate, or, at the very least, cast some degree of authenticity on the whole matter.

What's worst about the whole thing, for this dumb-ass biographer, is that it seems that he was informed of the hoax by the Sunday London Times, who pointed out the nasty encoded message to him, and he was left lamely saying "I should have smelled a rat." Smelled a rat? No, good sir, it is not that you should have smelled a rat, it is that you should have simply done your job.

* * *

Well, I am trying to finish up a book about Shakespeare, so I'll close for now. Shakespeare: now there's a guy who liked to play with words. If he didn't find a word he liked for what he was trying to express, he just made one up! And a lot of them stuck! To name a few: impartial, jaded, gloomy, premeditated, frugal, and zany. I find that to be ... well .... transtounding.