Chicago MMXII

i see. it's a problem for googling esl students, i would imagine.

Could be. Though hopefully they would figure it out from some of the absurd examples with silly voices.

My boss lives at 15th and Indiana in a 5 story condo, which has hired off-duty CPD as 24 hour security for the NATO days.

speaking of language, i'm reading this book and it's really interesting so far:

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-QP888_bkrvla_DV_20111117135905.jpg

That totally sounds up my alley. When I was a kid I was a big fan of books about etymology, wordplay, and other linguistic topics. Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, for instance. Books by avuncular British authors explaining Cockney rhyming slang.

Lx lite

not a judgement btw, just how i categorize books like that in my head
i like some of them, not all of them

Lx = linguistics?

What do you think about Deborah Tannen?

Yes.
Interesting, but kind of pseudosciencey and therefore not really very interesting to me personally as I don't really enjoy speculation about why as much as observation of what happens in people's language use. Basically I like description and not analysis.

I like George Lakoff a lot.

sittin in the lol terry gross window here

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/08/images/lakoff_1541_2.jpg

http://ia600206.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/17/items/olcovers9/olcovers9-L.zip&file=94263-L.jpg

I'm more interested in other various language issues than gender issues too, so that's another reason i feel ambivalent about 'men and women in conversation' type socio stuff. if i am reading about language, i'm usually reading about stuff more related to what i do at work.

I ask about Tannen only b/c my mom used to teach her books in her days as a speech/communication prof, and I thumbed through one once.

I think I read Lakoff's Moral Politics but don't know much about his straight-up linguistics work. IIRC, he seems influenced by the Wittgensteinian notion of "the limits of my language are the limits of my world" -- which I'm sympathetic to.

i'm ok with linguistics light because i don't know anything about linguistics. same with pop science, pop history, whatevs, i just want to know a little bit about everything. that book though is more about the battles over the ideas of good grammar/spelling/etc than linguistics per se, it's more of a history book than a linguistics book.

I love linguistics light because linguistics heavy, even as distilled into wikipedia articles, is nearly incomprehensible to me.

That book looks inneresting to me.

Dumb linguistics lite story about "inneresting": when I worked as a telephone sales associate at a memorial park in southern DE, I worked with this woman who had the classic Delaware accent (which is like half that boat cop from the Wire, half southern, with a sprinkle of LOLWFT pronunciation habits on top). And she would FLIP OUT when people would say "innerestit" (four syllables, very Delaware way to pronounce that) instead of "intrested" (three syllables like normal people). And since we were trying to sell people pre-planned funeral services over the phone, we got "I'm not innerestit" as a response A LOT, so she would rant about this at least once, but usually twice during each shift. And it always cracked me up because "interested" was like the ONLY word that she did not pronounce with her outrageous Delaware Swamp Tongue.

Selling funeral pre-planning services was her second job. She and her mother (who also worked at the memorial park), also owned a health food restaurant called "Garden of Eatin'" (now closed).

I *ADORE* lx-lite!! For some reason my talking about it *INFURIATES* Courtney.

When I was in high school I shoplifted several language/lx-lite books (amongst many other books I lifted and pages I cut from the encyclopedia).

I read non-fiction light. If I read heavy it would just be all math. That would probably be boring.

have any of you had to renew your drivers license recently? i was going to go do mine tomorrow but i can't tell from the DMV site exactly what's involved

If any of you AT&T users keep getting a missed call from TN, it's a customer satisfaction survey for AT&T's data/phone connection, and if you complete it, they will send you $5. So basically I just got paid $5 to spend ten minutes telling some cute southern woman that AT&T suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

xp I had it renewed my birthday before last, I believe. If you're not changing anything, I think you just have to have your license and whatever it costs to renew it. Probably can't hurt to have a passport and something showing proof of residency, just in case they want to be shitbirds. They payment methods for the fee are weird, too, IIRC. Like, checks only or something. So I'd be prepared for that.

But they also might not take checks, so you should also bring cash.

i need to change my address, which means i have to scramble around to find bank statements and utility bills and shit, ugh

saturday night, 42 comedians performing for 42 seconds each: http://www.avclub.com/chicago/articles/46-local-standups-to-perform-in-one-show-saturday,73829/

I think the DMV only takes MC, not visa. I had exactly enough cash the last time I went.

They make you pay in blood and then give you a retina tattoo to show you renewed. Hope you're prepared for that.

n/a, a utility bill will work for your new address. Do you have a voter registration card on you?

The great news is that the SoS Express place is crazy fast, so if you don't have the right papers, you haven't wasted much time.

oh my god some of those pronunciation videos are great.

my favorite is "Ng".

I renewed mine a few weeks ago and changed addresses. Two pieces of official mail addressed to you plus your old license should do it. I went to the express place out at like Diversey and Cicero and it was pretty fast, but bring cash. Iirc it was 30-something dollars.

Or was it one piece of mail and something else? Now I'm second guessing which is probably not helpful. Birth certificate maybe?

Holy shit, that much? I have only renewed once, but I've gotten a replacement and address change and they were either $10 or $15.

Fortunately there is a 24 hour information network where you can find out exactly what sort of ID you need!

iPhone

lol, AGAIN my clipboard got me. IDK why "iPhone" was in my clipboard, but I meant to c+p this: http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/publications/pdf_publications/dsd_x173.pdf

n/a, YOU need 1 from each of columns A, B, C, and D b/c you are making changes to your address.

Also bring the little one, they're going to want a stool sample. You might want to bring a sample from the cats just in case.

the 'real' acct can be just as funny



goole posted this video of the non-parody pronunciation guide in another thread. Odd.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-police-man-uses-bobcat-to-break-into-store-steal-deodorant-20120511,0,6107192.story

Haha, misled by that URL.

Oh, that video didn't work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N47kj7wjrGU

Ha, I was like "What's misleading about that URL?" and then I remembered that bobcats are not just construction vehicles.

since we were talking about twitter the other day I wanted to share this, one of my favorite non-soccer feeds:

JADEDPUNKHULK @JADEDPUNKHULK
HULK JUST WATCHED DOCUMENTARY ABOUT RARE TRIBE IN REMOTE PART OF WORLD THAT STILL LISTEN TO GOLDFINGER.

Heh.

Someone with whom I was childhood friends (my dad and his dad were coworkers) is profiled in the NYT Magazine this week:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/joe-weisenthal-vs-the-24-hour-news-cycle.html

got my license renewed. i had to take the written test for some reason but it was really easy. whole process took an hour and cost $30.

Can't believe you had to take a written test.

That URL also suggests that he used Bobcat Goldthwait as a weapon.

I think I had to take a written test when I renewed in 2006.

maybe because i've gotten a couple of tickets over the past few years?

this morning i was listening to jaymc's steely dan mix and i was like "i'm going to wait and listen to 'hey 19' after i'm done at the dmv and walking over to my work." and then while i was taking my written exam at the dmv, i realized they were playing "hey 19" over the speakers.

I think I have a free ticket to see Kurt Vile at Lincoln Hall on the 20th, as part of an assignment to photograph the show. A paid assignment with a press pass! Awesome!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v309/plsmith/10876808.jpg

You are at Pippins.

My head is awesome.

What year was that?