The worst part about my cat having a Facebook account is that, more often than I'd like, people I've met add her but not me.
I know she's charming, but am I considered her frumpy mom or something? Not to spoil the anthropomorphic fun, but does everyone share a common fantasy that she clambers up onto the computer chair, reaching her furry white arms up to the laptop in order to accept new friends and add to her "about me" section, maybe getting distracted by the odd fly, before padding at the keyboard to update her status in Quebecois?
I'm obviously the one looking at her account, guys.
Please add me too.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
I didn't forget you, blog.
Kyle says there is no excuse for such blog laziness if I am not on vacation. He's right. Or should I say, you're right, because so far Kyle (you) is (are) still the only person who knows I have a blog.
I said I'd dedicate a post to him/you, but I don't have any interesting material, so instead I'll dedicate my new favourite word to you. I didn't make it up myself or anything, but the dedication is most sincere.
It also happens to be the
Accidentally discovered word of the day:
gaslight
(verb) : to drive someone insane by making them doubt their perceptions or memories
gaslight
(verb) : to drive someone insane by making them doubt their perceptions or memories
The term comes from "Gaslight," a 1944 movie in which a husband tries to drive his wife crazy by changing minor details in their house – including the brightness of the gas lights – and then insisting they've always been that way.
(Thanks, Merriam-Webster online!)
Friday, January 21, 2011
I hope I don't find myself in any chemical warzones this weekend, I haven't yet had my chance to read up.
Today's learnings:
-Razor wire is actually easier to cut through than barbed wire, but is considered effective in combat situations for being a psychological deterrant.
-There's a "Barbed Wire History Museum" in Illinois.
-Horses panic more easily than other animals (which I guess I knew already but hadn't really considered)
Today's learnings:
-Razor wire is actually easier to cut through than barbed wire, but is considered effective in combat situations for being a psychological deterrant.
-There's a "Barbed Wire History Museum" in Illinois.
-Horses panic more easily than other animals (which I guess I knew already but hadn't really considered)
I'll take this opportunity to present you with my favourite work research (discursion) discovery to date: Buzkashi
If you ever are at an awkward loss in a social situation, you could bring this up.
I was translating something about someone who went on a mission to Khandahar and then I thought to myself "I know literally nothing about Afghanistan, I wonder what kind of entertainment culture they have?" You know, because that's not only relevant, but also all I need to know for the text I'm working on.
If you ever are at an awkward loss in a social situation, you could bring this up.
I was translating something about someone who went on a mission to Khandahar and then I thought to myself "I know literally nothing about Afghanistan, I wonder what kind of entertainment culture they have?" You know, because that's not only relevant, but also all I need to know for the text I'm working on.
Then, unfortunately, I found their national sport. Buzkashi. Essentially it's like polo, but instead, guess what they throw around. Guess. I'll give you a clue, it's like a goat, but without a head. Still don't get it? Me neither. But it's a headless fucking goat. They try and toss it over a goal line into a vat or something.
I assumed someone had been trolling poor old Afghanistan's Wikipedia page, but alas, it's not only real, but a big thing in all the "-istan" countries. When the Taliban were calling the shots, they banned it for being immoral. I never thought I would agree with the Taliban on something, although I'm sure they were trying to stop the happiness and fun of fans and participants, and not injustice towards goats.
Really, Afghanistan?
 |
| What's wrong with soccer? |
Really, Afghanistan?
No wonder horses panic so much, they're afraid of having to partake in things like this.
Other discoveries:
-The BASE in BASE jumping stands for stuff you can jump off: Buildings, Antennae, Spans, Earth
-Anne Hathaway is next in line to play Cat Woman. What is she going to do, bore her victims to death?
Other discoveries:
-The BASE in BASE jumping stands for stuff you can jump off: Buildings, Antennae, Spans, Earth
-Anne Hathaway is next in line to play Cat Woman. What is she going to do, bore her victims to death?
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Let's try this again!
Another day, another new blog. I wanted to go back to the most recent one, but not only have I forgotten my email address, but my password too and if it really was on Blogspot. Wherever it is, apparently it has taken on a life of its own. And if my past blog were anything to go by, it was probably lame. Anyways, I found this account kicking around from an old class project and thought to try again. This year is going to be all about productive endings.
Today I learned that a synonym for the French word for an office cubicle is alvéole, which means honeycomb as well. And you know what kind of bees work in honeycomb? Drones. See what I did there?
Other things I learned today:
-How to build an igloo (keep in mind, this is passive knowledge gleaned from diagrams in a military survival guide from the eighties. Either way, I’d be slightly better off in any arctic survival situation than I was yesterday).
-How to de-thaw a frozen body part (so basically, my supervisor told me to read up on military terminology as well as its organizational hierarchy, but the binder those things are in was missing so I picked up some warfare survival guides, because when the zombie apocalypse comes, concept terminology won’t be at all helpful).
-That Borden is a military base, not a town, but military bases are like towns but with more relationship counselors and worldly street names.
-To a lot of people, the most obvious meaning of the acronym DND is actually Department of National Defense.
-Apis is not only the genus of bees, but also an Egyptian bull deity.
-That Apep was the deity of darkness and chaos.
-That if you play word association long enough: cubicles->alvéoles->bees->Apsis-is+ep=darkness and chaos. The perfect calculation for how I feel in a cubicle.
If university has taught me anything, it's that you can bullshit a relationship between anything with enough words.
One of my friends says my new place of work sounds made-up and maybe like something out of 1984. I would say what it's called, but translators are the detectives of the internet and I'm afraid they'll find this. Now that I have that 1984 idea in my head, my office feels like something out of 1984. No matter how many websites I attempt to access during my research forays (whether or not they're relevant to my projects), Big Brother says no, and stop leaving tell-tale crumbs on your keyboard. No eating, no music, hold your breath while you type, there is only so much air in here. All I can hear is the whirring of the ventilators, the quiet, sporadic tapping of keys:
keys
silence
keys
silence
whirring
keys
Like hundreds of uncertain mechanical workers bees flitting around in the endless horizon of fluorescent lights. It's ok, they say, we don't need a lunch break. So I eat alone.
The other parallel with 1984 is that my work is functionally futuristic, like 1984 was supposed to be to someone in 1949. For example, in our library, we have huge metal bookshelves that are lined up together, with only space between two of them to walk between. You press some flashing buttons and they spring to life, one by one gliding out of the way to open a new space for you, following each other like a family of mechanical elephants, keeping a guarded distance from one another. They aren't on tracks or anything. They're equipped with sensors so that they stop before any obstacles, even ones as small as a sheet of paper, and the librarian assures me that for this reason, no one has met their demise between our collection of lexicons. I would gladly welcome the threat of death to break up my day. Another cool thing is the secret radio-wave proof, bomb-shelter-esque vault room for translating the nation's secrets. I picture retina scanners and attack robots. I hope I never have to work in there, the spy fantasy will undoubtedly be ruined.
Sometimes I get paranoid that there is a camera over my cabinet, recording my every move as I wheel around my cubicle, waving my arms with the anxiety of having a body, and energy, but no where to funnel it but out through my hands. A body I don’t get to use between 9 and 5. Just my fingers.
So I type. Slowly. I'm still trying to get our style down (favourite in-house style tip so far: "No girly writing").
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.
Wrist rotations, CRACK-SNAP.
Tap-tap-tap.
Backspace.
Tap.
Cracking knuckles.
I realize I'm talking to myself again and am not even sure what I was saying. That's disconcerting.
My legs, jealous of my fingers, go “How fun would a cartwheel be right now?! Or jumping jacks! … A marathon? LUNGES. Lunging a marathon!” It's amazing how much potential you have to do things when you aren't allowed to do them. I like to see how long I can hold my legs perfectly straight when typing, but that’s all the attention they get. Periodically, I pretend to melt into my chair, exhaling like a deflating balloon until my legs are totally on the floor. These are the high points of my day; it's almost exciting, because I don’t know when my supervisor is going to appear unannounced in my cubicle and I have no idea how I would explain being half on the floor. She’s like a grammar ninja, materializing to tell me that I need to better collocate a preposition, and to be aware of the difference in noun-string frequency in French and English, before dissapating as silently as she appeared. I could say I dropped a dictionary or something. Maybe I should keep one on the floor for this premeditated excuse. In our safety manual, there’s an actual clause on dropping dictionaries on your feet. It says something like "You should report all incidences, because if you drop a dictionary on your foot without reporting the incident and later develop gangrene..." It's a dangerous word for translators. I like how we're translating for the military too, tanks and bombs and death and repatriated bodies everywhere, but our main concern at the end of the day is falling reference books.
Tomorrow, if I don't have any projects on, I'm going to learn about strategy in chemical warfare. I'll report back.
Today I learned that a synonym for the French word for an office cubicle is alvéole, which means honeycomb as well. And you know what kind of bees work in honeycomb? Drones. See what I did there?
Other things I learned today:
-How to build an igloo (keep in mind, this is passive knowledge gleaned from diagrams in a military survival guide from the eighties. Either way, I’d be slightly better off in any arctic survival situation than I was yesterday).
-How to de-thaw a frozen body part (so basically, my supervisor told me to read up on military terminology as well as its organizational hierarchy, but the binder those things are in was missing so I picked up some warfare survival guides, because when the zombie apocalypse comes, concept terminology won’t be at all helpful).
-That Borden is a military base, not a town, but military bases are like towns but with more relationship counselors and worldly street names.
-To a lot of people, the most obvious meaning of the acronym DND is actually Department of National Defense.
-Apis is not only the genus of bees, but also an Egyptian bull deity.
-That Apep was the deity of darkness and chaos.
-That if you play word association long enough: cubicles->alvéoles->bees->Apsis-is+ep=darkness and chaos. The perfect calculation for how I feel in a cubicle.
If university has taught me anything, it's that you can bullshit a relationship between anything with enough words.
One of my friends says my new place of work sounds made-up and maybe like something out of 1984. I would say what it's called, but translators are the detectives of the internet and I'm afraid they'll find this. Now that I have that 1984 idea in my head, my office feels like something out of 1984. No matter how many websites I attempt to access during my research forays (whether or not they're relevant to my projects), Big Brother says no, and stop leaving tell-tale crumbs on your keyboard. No eating, no music, hold your breath while you type, there is only so much air in here. All I can hear is the whirring of the ventilators, the quiet, sporadic tapping of keys:
keys
silence
keys
silence
whirring
keys
Like hundreds of uncertain mechanical workers bees flitting around in the endless horizon of fluorescent lights. It's ok, they say, we don't need a lunch break. So I eat alone.
The other parallel with 1984 is that my work is functionally futuristic, like 1984 was supposed to be to someone in 1949. For example, in our library, we have huge metal bookshelves that are lined up together, with only space between two of them to walk between. You press some flashing buttons and they spring to life, one by one gliding out of the way to open a new space for you, following each other like a family of mechanical elephants, keeping a guarded distance from one another. They aren't on tracks or anything. They're equipped with sensors so that they stop before any obstacles, even ones as small as a sheet of paper, and the librarian assures me that for this reason, no one has met their demise between our collection of lexicons. I would gladly welcome the threat of death to break up my day. Another cool thing is the secret radio-wave proof, bomb-shelter-esque vault room for translating the nation's secrets. I picture retina scanners and attack robots. I hope I never have to work in there, the spy fantasy will undoubtedly be ruined.
Sometimes I get paranoid that there is a camera over my cabinet, recording my every move as I wheel around my cubicle, waving my arms with the anxiety of having a body, and energy, but no where to funnel it but out through my hands. A body I don’t get to use between 9 and 5. Just my fingers.
So I type. Slowly. I'm still trying to get our style down (favourite in-house style tip so far: "No girly writing").
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.
Wrist rotations, CRACK-SNAP.
Tap-tap-tap.
Backspace.
Tap.
Cracking knuckles.
I realize I'm talking to myself again and am not even sure what I was saying. That's disconcerting.
My legs, jealous of my fingers, go “How fun would a cartwheel be right now?! Or jumping jacks! … A marathon? LUNGES. Lunging a marathon!” It's amazing how much potential you have to do things when you aren't allowed to do them. I like to see how long I can hold my legs perfectly straight when typing, but that’s all the attention they get. Periodically, I pretend to melt into my chair, exhaling like a deflating balloon until my legs are totally on the floor. These are the high points of my day; it's almost exciting, because I don’t know when my supervisor is going to appear unannounced in my cubicle and I have no idea how I would explain being half on the floor. She’s like a grammar ninja, materializing to tell me that I need to better collocate a preposition, and to be aware of the difference in noun-string frequency in French and English, before dissapating as silently as she appeared. I could say I dropped a dictionary or something. Maybe I should keep one on the floor for this premeditated excuse. In our safety manual, there’s an actual clause on dropping dictionaries on your feet. It says something like "You should report all incidences, because if you drop a dictionary on your foot without reporting the incident and later develop gangrene..." It's a dangerous word for translators. I like how we're translating for the military too, tanks and bombs and death and repatriated bodies everywhere, but our main concern at the end of the day is falling reference books.
Tomorrow, if I don't have any projects on, I'm going to learn about strategy in chemical warfare. I'll report back.
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