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This is how I've been sleeping lately. I fall into Lake Louise and when I pull myself out again I'm all gangly arms and a flat face, and I'm pretending to be what I guess everyone around me calls normal. I can't really tell, though, so I'm constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering if today's the day I get pulled aside. "We saw the way your teeth glinted when the alloted three minutes of sun shone through the window. We're sorry but we have to gut and mount you on a hook, as a warning against any more of your kind who would try this. Oh, and try not to thrash about too much; we'd like to put someone a little more deserving in the shell."
I'd rather do it on my terms. I'd like to rip off my skin myself, actually. But for some reason, they say I'm not allowed -- I can only stand up with my muscles exposed and bleeding once someone else has made the first cut. I want to be braver than this. Maybe I can cut a deal to at least let someone I know hold the knife. I want out, man, I'm not really satisfied with how things are going and I'd like to accelerate the process. Let this sick bloated body turn around and wither and melt in the sun (which doesn't shine on Lake Louise this time of year.) Climb out looking the way I do when I'm still half-asleep and looking in the mirror.
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I'm looking for respondents for a survey on language perceptions of bilingual (Spanish-English) Hispanics and Latinos....It would really help me out, if any of you have like 10 minutes to spare.
Here are the links...
Part 1: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LSGBPPJ
Part 2: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LTMXVS2
Gracias!!! |
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So, I submitted a talk to 26C3 on "Conlanging 101". And it actually got accepted (with flight paid!).
Which means I get to go to Berlin and attend an awesome hacker conference, and all I have to do is give a talk I'll enjoy. W00tage.
The talk is a) an intro / overview to conlanging (like an expanded version of my lightning talk at Toorcamp - http://conlang.org/toorcamp.pdf) plus b) conlanging-by-crowd-committee where I'll (albeit very quickly) go through actually making a new language on the spot good enough to translate part of the Babel text (like a super-compressed version of my Berkeley DE-Cal class). Plus workshop afterwards.
Most likely what I'm going to do is spend ~10 minutes giving a fairly fast-paced overview, ~35-40 going through making a language on the spot, and anything left over on Q&A.
Anywho:
a) got ideas for how to improve the talk / workshop? (German speakers: anything I should be aware of, or any good jokes to make? Ich spreche keine Deutsch. :()
b) anyone else going?
c) anyone in the area (even vaguely, as in Western Europe; I'm somewhat tempted to make it an excuse to visit other places in Europe) who's either interested having a visitor or willing to host me for a couple days? (if yes, please email me directly) |
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For those who like the site SpanishDict.com, I just set up an LJ feed for their blog: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) spanishdict. The blog is in English, but is geared toward people learning Spanish and has things like language learning tips, cultural information about Spanish-speaking countries, etc. Posts don't seem to be very frequent, but what there is looks interesting.
(Sorry for posting this in English - my Spanish is not yet at a level where I can write about things like blogs and RSS feeds.)
ETA: I just realized the LJ feed is showing something like a year's worth of posts, all with today's date! No, there are not really that many posts in a day. There's more like one every month or two. |
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If you are in Google Wave, someone has started a collaborative conlang project in there:
https://wave.google.com/wave/#restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B5TBtlj0WD
They are going for more of an auxlang approach. I've been piping in, but I figured it might be fun if more people were churning away at it :) |
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Finding a method for quickly painting reptilian scales proved difficult, so this is yesterday and today's speed paint. I did the background and basic body structure on the Komodo dragon yesterday, and then some retouching and scale texture today. I believe in total it took about an hour and a half. I'm not quite satisfied with the results, but that's not the point of these exercises. It's to expose myself to new challenges.
I think I'm in a rut with the greens and browns. I'll try to work some different colors into the next one. |
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Nov. 13th, 2009 @ 10:33 pm
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Dear LJ:
I'm in love with Pomplamoose.
Why? Judge for yourselves.
I want their CD. So. BAD.
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Those within the fandom may already have heard about this, but for those who haven't . . . drop by BBC News and you should see a little something about furries there.
It's not perfect, but the tone is appropriate, and the large proportion of quotes from those who know what they're talking about gives it a lot of value.
Further reading: Marshall Woods - Ian Wolf - Kathy Gerbasi - Fred Patten (Wikipedia) - Mark Merlino - TaniDaReal Current Mood:  pleased |
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Nov. 13th, 2009 @ 10:14 am
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This question's possibly a little technical, and maybe belongs on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) linguaphiles or something like that, but it is related to a conlang I'm putting together, so I hope you'll bear with me!
Right now I'm building a conlang that's basically the love-child of Tibetan and Nepali for a pseudo-Tibetan society in some fic I'm writing. Tibetan's agglutinative (and Nepali is mixed agglutinative and inflective) so my morphology for this project is agglutinative. The problem is I'm not sure where to go from there.
I've studied Japanese, which is heavily agglutinative and primarily uses mostly suffixes with a handful of prefixes (like o- for formality). I've also taken a stab at Coptic, which, if memory serves, has prefixes (though I don't remember if it's agglutinative). Cue confused linguistics student.
I've also got a whole lot of different classes of affixes going on. I've never actually taken morphology so I'm not clear on the exact terminology here, but my conlang thus far features several different classes of morphemes that can be appended to verbs, including person, tense, formality, and various other factors (was it personally witnessed? Is the speaker voicing an opinion? etc). Some of the latter class of affixes are also functioning like free-morpheme copulas in some simpler sentences--this might be a problem. Mostly, though, I'm worried that this is getting maybe a little too complicated, and I'm having trouble figuring out what orders to put these suffixes in, when I'm merrily adding three or more bound morphemes to a verb.
I'm concerned particularly with verbs in my three main questions:
1) How typologically rare are languages (like Coptic) that conjugate by adding prefixes rather than adding suffixes? (In other words, is this implausible in a real-world language?)
2) How about using both prefixes and suffixes to form verbs? Is this implausible in a real-world language?
3) Could you give me some examples of how, in heavily agglutinative languages, prefixes and suffixes are ordered? If you've made a heavily agglutinative language, how did you handle this? (I could just look up how Tibetan and Nepali do it, but that's proving a little difficult to dig up, and I'd really rather deviate somehow from the source material...)
Thank you in advance! |
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Inspired by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mansionmaniac, I'm here to tell you that I make mix CDs all the time. I used to do tapes but they're a lot harder -- lots of tracks cutting off two-thirds of the way through because I hit the limit. A CD burner tells you exactly how much time you've got left, so you can max out the value. Here's one I made recently:
The Weather Channel
Side 1: Studio I
1. Pearl Jam -- Dead Man Walking
2. Pavement -- Stereo
3. Dinosaur Jr. -- Just Like Heaven
4. The Tragically Hip -- The Depression Suite
5. Biz Markie -- Just A Friend
Side 2: Live
6. The Band feat. Joni Mitchell -- Coyote
7. Barenaked Ladies -- Crazy/Fox On The Run
8. Chess -- Nobody's Side
9. Meatloaf -- Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad
10. The Band feat. Neil Young -- Helpless
Side 3: Studio II
11. Alanis Morissette -- Hand In My Pocket
12. Michael Jackson -- Billie Jean
13. Steve Miller Band -- Rock'n Me
14. The Rolling Stones -- Wild Horses
15. Pearl Jam -- Fatal
Now, I'm not super-crazy about the construction of the perfect mix album like John Cusack in High Fidelity, but I do like to hold down a bit of decent organization. As you can see, the album divides nicely into three sides, developing the appearance of symmetry -- but the TTH track is a good nine minutes long, pushing its distance into deeper territory. A lesser example is the bookending of Pearl Jam songs, as well as The Band on the live portion, although I might've chosen a better closing song. It was a risk I had to take, though. Going the easy route ("Footsteps" would've worked, as would "Dirty Frank") invariably leads to blandness.
Most of the choices reflect what I'm listening to at the time: the entire reason I picked up "Sticky Fingers" was to have Wild Horses in my collection, and the inclusion of MJ was a natural choice after his passing. And maybe it's been ten years since Alanis was relevant, but it's ozwalled's fault for bringing her up and getting me all nostalgic up in here. So aside from being a collection of songs that I happen to like, the mix becomes a signpost, an inuksuk built out of vague memories and feelings that I've had. The reason I started making this one was because I heard a song that sounded a little like Dead Man Walking, only it was terribly lame, and I had to get it out of my head. I forget what it was now, so obviously my plan succeeded. And the reason it's called "The Weather Channel" is because I left my Wii pointed at the weather channel while I was working on the tracklist. Have you ever sat down and listened to that channel's music? It's really soothing and nice, just what you need any time of the day. Beats the heck out of the news channel.Current Music: The Weather Channel |
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Stuff I've found in my latest expedition into the unknown:
A Samurai Pizza Cats soundtrack album and a drama album;
The Generic Band: The Dr. Ruth Rap-Hot Lunch Lady Blues (vinyl rip?);
The Jan & Dean Batman Album;
Toon Tunes (theme songs from several cartoon shows);
Invader Zim Soundtrack;
Yogi Bear And The Three Stooges Meet Dr. No-No (?!?!);
Botcon 97: The Concert (BUTT ROCK FTW)
Easy Melodias (a CD with tons of old Mexican TV and movie music);
Stuff by a band called H.P. Lovecraft?
A bunch of stuff I got from twindowlicker's LJ;
Oh yeah, I also found downloaded copies of the first two issues of the Game Boy comic. The Valiant one. The thing is full of crack. It's ridiculous.
And it's giving me the wrong ideas...
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I have a problem, y'see. I think the most romantic scene I've ever witnessed in a movie, moreso even than "here's lookin' at you, kid," is when Barry (Adam Sandler) and Lena (Emily Watson) are in bed together in Punch Drunk Love. The quote from imdb says it all:
Barry: I'm lookin' at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fuckin' smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You're so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face, and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them and chew them and suck on them.
[pause]
Barry: OK. This is funny. This is nice. It came out when we were in high school. We went and saw it on one of the postcard-sized screens at the World Exchange. There were maybe three or four other people, sitting on the far side of the aisle. My companions wanted to sit nearer to the back so they could make out. Now, this girl, she turned out to be a psycho (to the point where her other friends, the street kids, watched their backs around her) but if I'd made a move a few days earlier she would've been my girlfriend. Maybe. It's always impossible to say what someone will or won't do. She thought the movie was boring, so it certainly wouldn't have worked out in the long run. This was the same girl who forced us to watch Legally Blonde because we watched five minutes of Mulholland Drive and she thought that was boring, too.
I want to be so in love that I take out a wall with a baseball bat. I want to spiral off to Montreal, four hours round trip on the road, so I can spend 45 minutes with a girl. I want to tell her, honestly and earnestly, that I want to rip her to shreds so that nobody else can do it, and have her tell me back that she wants to be the only other person in my car when we inevitably get crushed by a garbage truck. That's me, that's my idea of the perfect love.Current Music: Barenaked Ladies -- The Old Apartment |
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New speedpainting. Going to try to get back into the habit of doing one a day again. :) Photoshop CS3, 1 hour, 9 minutes
It was my birthday on the 9th. I turned 28. I went to Animal Kingdom to celebrate, where I encountered this crow. He looks like he's standing on water, but it's actually a solid object that's been painted to look like water. |
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anyone know of any good logical ways to create new words? Not talking about just a word generator, but some logical ways of combining suffixes, prefixes and infixes, etc to formulate a system for creating all words. Not sure if there are any tried and true methods here. |
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Hey everybody!
Just added "Reader Reviews" in the Interviews and Reviews section of the site. It's open to anybody who wants to submit a review about "The God Machine" through their blog. Best and fair ones will be picked. [Blogs like: LJ, Wordpress, Blogspot, Myspace, etc.]
Tips: Make it at "least" 2 paragraphs if you can. Try to be professional and add links back to "spookychan.com/thegodmachine". Talk about the art and the story. Scales 1-5, or 1-10 work nicely. No internet speak!!! [this should go without saying]
Send your links to your blog to:
witchycrankypoo@gmail.com
Looking forward to hearing from you! Happy blogging!
-ChanCurrent Music: VAST - It's been so long |
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(partial repost from smnet)
My most memorable sickness was a common cold I had when I was about five years old or so. It was my first experience with the sheer amount of fluid that one’s nasal passages can produce, and as such I had a dream that night about a carnival sideshow character named "Strange Doctor Strang" (Strang rhymes with twang) who would suspend fairgoers upside down in a box filled with translucent green slime, for reasons which remain unclear to this day. I described it to my parents when I woke up, and they said it was probably just my brain thinking about how hard it was to breathe while I was sick. But to this day, when I have to blow my nose, I sometimes wonder if Strange Dr. Strang is still out there somewhere, putting up his bizarre experimental show for repulsed, yet intrigued crowds.
(now this part is new)
The way I remember it, Strang wasn't entirely present in the dream. When I went into his tent, it was all done in black with green writing, more "psycho rave" than "Matrix" (this was twenty years ago, remember, although really my brain had no business understanding raves at that time either.) The placard in particular was written in a sprawling, spattered font, reminiscent of Ralph Steadman's illustration for the title of "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas." From the main room, it split off to four different chambers -- two downwards and two upwards, as if I were looking at an overhead map. For some reason I associate it closely with the layout of Gertrude's Secrets. The upper-left chamber was definitely occupied by a girl with pigtails. At the center of the main room was a large cubical block which gradually sunk into a fitted box; I think this was meant to be some sort of timer device.
I've got all this detail stacked up in my head, but when I try to recall Strang himself, there's nothing. I want to say that he had the usual characteristics of the "mad scientist" archetype: the wild shock of white hair, the skinny body clad in a white coat, elbow-length gloves, you know the drill. But something in my memory always nudges me away from that. He may have been Strange, but he wasn't really all that weird. Whatever he may have been doing, he believed it was beneficial to society, and maybe it really was. He really could've looked like just about anyone.
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Me interesa muchisimo cuales son recursos donde puedo descargar algunas podcasts con la dicha espan'ola:)
Me gusta mucho esta pagina de web - http://newsinslowspanish.com/home.php - tu puedes tambien bajar estas noticias en mp3-files...
Pero no se' ningunas otras..
Puedes ayudarme? :) |
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I miss my LJ-
I got to talk freely about random musings anymore. It's like i gave up my soul when my hands failed me. Least twitter is around for short thoughts.
Guess i'm feeling nostalgic right now for a place to put down my free thoughts.
So i apologize if everything seems fragmented.
Thinking how the story [the god machine] will mature as it goes further- much like my lead. Seems appropriate for it's content. I realize it's not for everybody, my book. Makes sense.
I'm more eager to get into the politics, and more deeper aspects of the story than it's starting high school drama.
Just wrote chapter 4 last month- more like a rewrite of chapters 4 and 5 into one. It's more robust than chapters 1-3. It has more depth of character and interaction, and less of silliness. I'm proud of this bit from a story standpoint.
Also, emotional, psychologically it's rather disturbed. We really learn who Guy is, and it's more than just seeing things...
Probably next month i'll think chapter 4 is rubbish, but right now it's the best i've written.[i think?] i have never claimed to be a writer...
Finally getting a deadline for the graphic novel. Which, also means I need to figure out it's page count. This is proving to be tricky- I have to do lots of estimates due to content that depends on others... like say a "forward" - I'm not sure how to approach the person I want to write it without an entire book to give to them to read. Or even how you're supposed to ask... ugh.
Got one stupid review that criticized me for not having cleavage or boobs and attributed it to me being a girl. What the hell does he know? He should see chapter 4... How unprofessional.
enough of this.
-chanCurrent Mood: a bit depressed |
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So ninjapeps over at Scans Daily just informed me that I've been mentioned at TV Tropes.
To which I can only say AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!111!11111
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mixed