Just Sayin'

So, the other day I read this article about how scientists collect ear wax from whales to learn about their lives and what sort of chemicals they were exposed to. Which, of course is very interesting from a scientific perspective, but my first thought was whales have ears ? Like, that puts an image in your head: a whale swimming along with big dumbo ears flapping against its head. I don't know about you, but I find that vaguely terrifying. I mean, I'm assuming they have internal ears, but it's still a really weird thought. And even if I accept that whales have ears, it still doesn't explain why they have ear wax. Like, I don't even understand why people have to have ear wax. So, I really don't understand why whales have to have ear wax. The only use I can think of for wax is as a candle and whales can't use candles because they live underwater . And it's not like it's a little bit of ear wax either; this article said that they extracted almost ...

So, since it seems that I'm on a the-English-language-is-weird kick this week, I'm going to talk about something that really bothers me: the discrepancies between English and American spelling. As you probably already know from my Spelling Shenanigans blog, I sort of suck at spelling. My feeling is that, because it's been scientifically proven that as long as a word begins and ends with the correct letter and has the right letters in between, a native speaker can read it without a problem. So why do we care so much about spelling. I mean, when I'm typing, I obviously use spell check, but if I'm writing something by hand, I just sort of make some circles and loops in the middle of the word and hope that they can pass for an L or an I or whatever is supposed to be there and hope for the best. And, it's not just me; English spellings were standardized until fairly recently, in the history of the language that is. Like, even Shakespeare's spelling was pretty ...

So, this semester, I'm taking a grammar class. Which, for me, as an English major, is actually quite interesting. Now before you start having punctuation nightmares, let me reassure you that I'm not going to start lecturing on the proper use of the semi-colon. For me, as an English major, this is actually quite an interesting class. For example, the other day we were talking about grading adjectives. In a nut shell, If you don't know, grading adjectives is when you assign some sort of value or degree to which a characteristic applies to an adjective. For example, you have the adjective 'big', but you also have 'biggest' and 'bigger'. When you change 'big'  to 'bigger', you are grading the adjective. Anyway, our professor was talking about the fact that not all adjectives could be graded, and the example he used was 'dead'. His point was that, once someone is dead, they're dead; they can't die again, they can't be...

So, I'm like a month into my fall semester and it's going pretty well so far. Of course, I have a lot of homework but, fortunately, I get to do a lot of different sorts of things, sometimes I read, occasionally I read, and, when I don't have anything else to do, I read. So, clearly, I've been experiencing some of that famous college diversity. Occasionally, I read novels, sometimes I read novels, and the rest of the time I get to read about parts of speech and bilateral symmetry in ancient Meso-American cities. So that's always fun. All. I. Do. Is. Read. I know that you're thinking that since I'm an English major, I should like reading. I do like reading, of course, but, since the first day of classes, my life has been: wake up, go to class, go to work, come home, read , eat, read some more, go to bed, and repeat. Besides that, when ever I have free time, I read for pleasure because I have this problem where I go to the library and check out all the book...

So, I'm taking a pre-Colombian art history class right now, and I'm really learning a lot. Like, we just finished learning about the Olmec culture and one of the recurring themes in their art is the were-jaguar. That's right, half person, half jaguar. We looked at a lot of examples of the were-jaguar in art; some art historians believe that this is because the Olmec traced their mythic origin to a were-jaguar child, which sort of reminds me of the story of Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome.  Of course, the other possibility is that it isn't a were-jaguar at all and it's actually something completely different. No one actually knows, but I'm just going to ignore it and go with the whole were-jaguar thing. So my question to the world is, why aren't were-jaguars a thing? Like, I don't know about you, but I think that a were-jaguar would be a lot scarier than a were-wolf. Like if you could face off with either a wolf or a jaguar, I think everyone ...

Season 1 So, because all of my favorite tv-shows have ended for the year and there's still a few weeks before the new season of Downton Abbey airs, I decided to re-watch season one of True Blood . I forgot how much I liked season one; it's a very neat, self contained story. Anyway, it's made me realize that I hold rather a controversial opinion: I like Eric's hair in the first season. Because, apparently , I'm writing a series of blogs on fandom hairstyles. Like, not to say that I don't like his short hair style, but I never saw why no one liked his long hair style. I mean, he's a viking , he's supposed to have long hair. I mean, when was the last time you saw a viking with a buzz cut? And, I thought it really suited him. In the first season, Eric is such a mysterious character; you know next to nothing about him and he only really turns up when something serious and vampire-ish is going to happen. Whenever you see him, he's just like chillin...

Sometimes, I take pictures of Ducks I go to Penn State, which, in case you don't know, is basically in the middle of the wilderness, so I see a lot of wildlife on a daily basis. We have chipmunks, rabbits (cute), squirrels (terrifying), wood chucks, cows (not in the wild or anything, but we are a big dairy school), and, most importantly, ducks. I have a lot of appreciation for ducks. Like, they're my favorite aquatic bird (a lot of people like swans, but I think they're pretentious). Like, when you see a duck in a body of water, you're immediately like "that's a legitimate body of water because it has ducks". Ducks confer legitimacy because you can't fool ducks. Ducks fool you; they have three eyelids. You might think that a duck's eyes are closed, but they're actually open because ducks are mystical creatures with multiple eyelids so their eyes can be both open and closed. Like what ? I can't even explain to you how cool that is. ...

So, my friend and I recently moved into our college apartment, and, to decorate it, we bought a Friends poster. It looks basically like this: Anyway, we both really like Friends, so we were really excited about our poster. Especially because, weirdly, Friends is becoming like an old show and it's hard to find posters. Like, there's nothing to make you feel old like realizing that Friends has been off the air for almost 10 years! But, anyway, that's not the point. We were really excited about the poster, until we looked at it. I mean, really, really looked at it. And we were all like "who is the ice cream for?". Because, no one is eating the ice cream. I mean, they're drinking milkshakes. Like, not to say that you can't have both ice cream and milkshake (although, you shouldn't). But, literally no one is eating the ice cream; they're completley ignoring it. My roommate and I had a whole discussion about it. There are so many things v...

So, this past weekend I read the Old-English poem Beowulf for one of my English classes. In case you don't know, Beowulf is an Old-English, epic poem about the hero/warrior Beowulf who kills the monster Grendel (and his mother) and slays a dragon. I had read parts of the poem before in other classes, but I sort of skipped over a lot of the supernatural details in the poem. Like, for example, when Beowulf kills Grendel's mother, he battles her underwater and he spends like an entire day at the bottom of a lake, and no one thinks its weird. And, I guess because no one in the poem thought it was weird, I just sort of ignored it. Like, Beowulf is constantly doing things that are physically impossible. On premise, I don't really have a problem with this because I understand that it's a legend, and things are 'legendary' for a reason. Also, as an English major, I am constantly reading books in which people are doing impossible things, so, at some point, you k...

The Oxford Comma Prevents Misunderstandings There are a few things that really annoy me: people who take up two spaces when they park, scientists who say that Pluto isn't a planet, and people who deliberately ignore the Oxford comma. In case you don't know, the Oxford comma is a magical creature that comes from Denmark, where all the magical creatures like unicorns, narwhals, and breakfast pastry, come from. It also happens to be used as a serializing comma. The Oxford comma is the comma that comes before the 'and' when you have a list of three or more things. I have a deep abiding affection for the Oxford comma because it circumvents a lot of unnecessary ambiguity. It's like my favorite piece of punctuation. I'm an English major, so I'm allowed to have a favorite piece of punctuation without being weird. My second favorite piece of punctuation is the upside down question mark, which is used in Spanish and some other languages at the beginning of a...