This started as a comment on Facebook that just got out of hand. It was a response to a friend who was expressing her annoyance with people on TV saying “lay” for “lie.”

Grammar and usage are fluid and complicated things. There is often a structure underneath what we say. For example, this page elegantly explains the lie/lay confusion.

My number one peeve in this area is a homophonic transfer: it’s/its  EVERYBODY does it. All groups of people, I mean. Harvard to high school. Twitch, twitch.

Number two is a mispronunciation:  noo-cue-ler

That said–

‘k; weighing in here with my stupid: I was raised speaking Standard with such fluency that I just blew off the grammar lessons in grade school bc I A’d the tests anyway. Grew up; had husband whack with dead fish re comma splices. Only really learned formal grammar in Latin. (Oh brave new world!!!) I still have to look it up when I have to explain to somebody just why it’s so. (Did you know that there’s an order to adjectives? And it’s close to the pentatonic scale in intuitiveness for native speakers? I digress.) Every once in a while grammatical uh, um, creativity was nabbed in the dissertation. Sigh.

Anyway, part of the problem with TV is the increasing acceptance of colloquial regionalisms. “Lay” and “lie” just work that way for some people.  Proper English? meh. It comes from the same area of the country clever enough to realize we need a second person plural. Proper English? meh. But a syntactical line drive down center.

And as for those of us above DC: Quick! When there’s a queue at the bank, you stand . . . . Everybody but NY says *in* line. Where we shut the lights, get on the train with carfare, and pronounce it RADiator. (Not RAYdiator. Ayyy!) Where we give ya a little whack on the arm with the back of one hand to get your attention.

And my God, how do other areas of the country convey “schmuck,” “tsuris,” “agita,” and all the other bits New Yorkese (yes!) borrows? We have more ways of communicating with bad drivers in sign than anywhere else in the universe.

I realized two things while in college: One, that non-New Yorkers were like, “what’s up with the schmuck thing?” and two, that I had to dumb down my spoken English, because it was perceived as intimidating/snobbish. I even picked up Urban as a second language. To my surprise, I’m still perceived as intimidating. 😦

Start observing how awkward it can sound when you stop dangling prepositions in speech. Know why sometimes “the” is “thee” and sometimes it’s “thuh?” Dialect/creole/language? ooh it’s so-oo-oo much fun!

But enough of that, because now I have to go make some written English of my own. (No, not this blog, silly. This continues under the head of “stalling.”)

And that’s part of why this topic kindled such an interest for me–I had put all my novel in the 1st person of a fairly colloquial narrator, who alternates between past/present chapters. When deservedly biffed by my main reader, I realized I had to put the present chapters in 3d person, so as to convey info that Terry just doesn’t know. You’d think (well, I’d think. Thought. Whadevah.) that the pronoun change was the most of it–but no.

There are so many other changes. 3d person is much more formal, simply because you’re generally not having a conversation with the reader. (Break that barrier very gingerly, friends.) Also, even when you’re talking about an ongoing condition for a fictional people, using the present tense immediately brings you back to a more conversational mode, instead of the past tense, which is more . . . what? There are terms for this; always terms and words. But how to find them? Aphasia or a lexical lacuna?

I was amused to find that there’s even a label for the English I speak now: It’s called “rich” English. I suppose that’s accurate–it’s a semi-deliberate fusion of academic with urban, with splashes of gamer-geek and phrases from a number of professional mini-expressions: Fuck to the no. (Uh, “fuck ^no,” if that weren’t obvious. ) pwned. Made my saving throw. Non-trivial. And then there’s “lexical lacuna” and its like. Heh.

(Fuck ^no! I am not either pwned by my own sniping unconscious! After this was posted, I made my saving throw and fixed the if-were above back from *shudder* if-was. An error I usually consider non-trivial (because I’m a schmuck who has too much agita about stuff like that). Clearly, I myself have fallen into my self-created lexical lacuna.)

I talk this way because it amuses me. I write this way because it amuses me; and it gets the job done: Trying to communicate the best way I possibly can. I mean, when it’s not just devolving into self-referential gibberish. But that’s what readers are for: to show we writers to ourselves.

(Didja twitch there? Huh? Huh? bwah ha ha)

I’ve known for a while now that I need deadlines, and that I respond to them intuitively. After many, many years of sliding for home so far that the grass stains dissolve my uniform like acid, I’ve gotten it down. Partly due to hitting the plate pretty dead square on–and lots of caffeine–I now make most of my deadlines, by the simple psychic technique of somehow counting backwards.

My last achievement was in making a piece of beadwork for my last session with my awesome therapist, whose fellowship had ended. It was a fairly complex project, requiring a long time (and some eyestrain). I worked on it over a couple of weeks, pulling the obligatory just-barely-enough-sleep bit–and triumphantly zapped the last beads into place in her waiting area JUST in time for the session to start.

I’ve been dawdling over a grant I’m writing for a small non-profit I volunteer with–and finally begged for a deadline. I feel much better now. Now I can procrastinate with a purpose.

And now, I’m feeling the gotta-do-this-now urge with the novel. Maybe it’s just the feeling that the vampire obsession can’t last forever. (OK, that’s a completely terrifying concept.) I set myself a somewhat arbitrary deadline of first draft by Thanksgiving–let’s see how we do.

I lose things. I have no real idea where my wallet is right now, other than “somewhere in the house.” A recent high point was when I was concentrating on an announcement I had to make at church one Sunday morning. I got on the train, still thinking about it–and left my purse on the bench at the platform.

Due to the miracle of it being early Sunday morning, and thus a low traffic period, it was found by a substantially honest person, who turned it in to the transit guys, who gave it to the next conductor, who brought to where I was quite anxiously waiting at my destination.

I say substantially honest, because nothing was missing–except my transit pass. It was only a few days until the end of the month anyway; as I reapplied the next day I thought it was rather a shame that Substantially Honest would miss out on the finder’s tip.

Anyway, right now I can’t find my wallet. Which was very likely disappeared by my evil executive function, which took it to a neurological creek and applied cement overshoes.  I lost it while looking for my grad school ring, which was the first item to disappear this morning. (It had fallen off the shelf where I absent-mindedly placed it as a (wait for it!) mnemonic. The ring thus made a serious saving throw against being used as a pet toy.) My ring is one of my most favoritest possessions, so I kind of freaked out and did the burrowing about thing. Thus, undoubtedly burying the wallet.

I am almost completely positive my wallet didn’t fall out of something or other between my house and the bus stop where I noticed its absence. Almost.

At this point, I have taken my happy-calm-down pill, looked everywhere likely, and some unlikely. ADHD means looking inside the tea box,  just because it was beside the Important Things drawer which is my last clear snapshot of the wallet’s existence. (My class ring wasn’t there.) I have also cancelled the appointment I was trying to get to before a) losing the ring in the first place and b) losing the pass/carfare to get me there.

This is me, taking out the trash and then having lunch. I am sure better blood sugar can only aid in the search.

Part of what made yesterday so particularly sucky is that I was having a bout of Mysterious Pain.

For years now, I’ve had these recurring episodes of nasty gnawing pain in the lower left quadrant of my belly. It’s this dull pervasive burning thing that fits right between “being able to function normally,” and “Barbie and Skipper Go To the ER.” When I was diagnosed with kidney stones, it became apparent that much of this was a low-grade renal colic, caused by something smallish trying to escape. That said, there have been a time or two when I’ve gone in and a film says there’s nothing there. So I dunno.

It’s mostly better today. Sometimes they can last for a week. 😦 I need to have a determined come-to-Jesus with my PCP about acute pain meds. He thought it would be a good idea to put me on maintenance morphine instead if I really wanted it. Hulk smash.

Well, the flashdrive was actually on my bedside table. Oh well. Meanwhile back at the ranch, yr obedient servant survived the rain and the various goings on of the day, and the next day, only to end up on this day, where absolutely nothing has been done, at least by me. Except go to Walgreens, where I got eggs, aspirin, and a pack of highlighters.

I have emerged from this to find that my little virtual pets all ran away from starvation, and my crops have undoubtedly withered.  I’m (understandably, I think) mildly depressed.

Thus, the usual free associative random Web crawl unearthed a couple of ye old and ye good, posted in the links section for your similar amusement. I’m still kind of bummed, but maybe I’ll actually do something constructive. Or at least get more virtual pets.

(Neopets don’t run away. They just perpetually die. Which, come to think of it, is really horrible.)

So. I had a five-hour window between Saturday events 1 & 2, and, being a schlub, I don’t readily go home and then go out again. Particularly during the onset of the fall monsoon season. (We got a break this summer, so Gaia is catching up on her aquifers.) Accordingly, I put the lappie in a garbage bag (hmm, dorkiness/wet laptop, dorkiness/wet laptop. hmmmm), swapped my current novel folder from the desktop to my flash drive (triumphantly unearthed from the pits of the desk), and found the serial killer’s manuscript.

I dug out the fall clothes box (noticing that half the clothes had gone on summer adventures). I remembered my umbrella, the naproxen, my hairbrush and the second elastic needed after braiding at the T (preferred grooming place of the tardy). Lip balm, wallet, watch, phone, and keys. I remembered to grab my earphones, and–to my own amazement–the actual materials needed to find appointment #2. Put it all into my preferred laptop bag, i.e., the bright orange one with Son Goku in Super-Saiyan mode. Despite the complexity of this assemblage, plus washing my hair, I made appointment #1 in time to enjoy the breakfast beforehand.

Unfortunately, the flash drive with the four hours of work planned is still on my desk. I think the moment I realized this on the T was the first time I actually did that thing where you smack yourself on the forehead.

I consoled myself with my serial killer, and reminded myself that I was behind on my other blog. But I’m still less than pleased.

However, under the heading of my favorite German word, schadenfreude, I saw that apparently the suffering was going around. On the way over to my writing nook on the Law School campus, I saw several groups of cheerfully painted chairs in the Yard. At first I thought they had been set up for some al fresco catering thing (you can eat free several times a week at Harvard if you scout around)–but no tables. Instead, they were all circled around facing each other in the manner that screams, “This is the way we will force total strangers to make self-conscious small talk with others, in some fantasy that they will Get Acquainted, especially as we don’t know what else to do with them.”

When I got closer, I saw that the chairs were all locked together with a cable, presumably to keep their occupants from escap–whoops, no; I mean “from theft.” One group had all tipped over onto their backs: Their invisible captives had scampered off into the freedom of the rain. Bravo, I said. May we all similarly escape those damned socializing cables.

In what is now now known as Real Life, I have a decent sample of terrific good friends. The people who help you move, whinge at you and get whingeing in return, feed your pets when you end up in the hospital unexpectedly, and whose children, parents, and jobs you actually don’t mind hearing about. You get the idea. You probably have them too. I hope so.

The problem is, most of these people live far away, fallout from the modern American Diaspora.

Thus, my daughter worries about my general lack of play dates. She is ecstatic that I am in my church choir (which is a largish group of 45 or so people who all get along very well), and firmly encourages me to go do tech theatre stuff with the people I’ve done it with in the past. She’s started hinting that I should go out there and find somebody to date.

And in return, I’ve picked on her and fretted because something like 75% of her own social life has been spent online.  Night after night, she would sit there with several chat windows open, some of them multichats. I slept over at people’s houses in high school, and actually did things like go to the beach and on picnics and smoked pot and went to movies and so on. Thus I found this somewhat disturbing.

Then at some point in the last couple of months, I meandered back to my Facebook account. I really don’t recall what sparked this. By now, I have friended a guy solely because he was mutual friends with two people from very different ends of my social spectrum; and another because we were introduced by a mutual friend upon whom we were co-commenting. And then the Facebook games. At first, I thought of the idea of having friends who were not, you know, friends was kind of weird, but it quickly became apparent that these games worked better that way. So I did as recommended, and shyly poked a bunch of total strangers, and the next thing I knew, there were 40 more people on my friend list.

And then an enterprising high school classmate tracked me down; and I’m now friends with the coolest girl in my homeroom. (Apparently she admired my wacky dweebiness too. Who knew?)

When my ex-husband showed up as playing one of these things, I was floored, as he more or less isn’t the type to get into something like that. But now we send each other little virtual gifts every day.

Now the cool things are happening:  I’m becoming Real friends with some of those random gameplaying women. (And silently unfriended one, when I read her info and discovered that she hated “liars and mexicans.”) And those videos on TouTube are usually pretty nifty.

My daughter now makes fun of me about the amount of time I spend hanging out with this stuff, but has slowed down somewhat since getting me into her favorite dumb little game.

In short, I now have . . . a life. I interact with other people; I hear about their days, worry about their kids’ serious illnesses, and touch virtual hands with people in England and Germany. It still seems a little odd to me.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to recall my godson’s mom from cleaning the john in my restaurant, harvest my crops and obsess over my flower beds–

–and feed my own (and other people’s) virtual pets. See ya!

(*pst!* Wanna join my mafia?)

Posted a few things from my Facebook notes.

Spent four solid hours on the phone with Verizon this morning. The short short versi0n of my narrative post is run run run away.

Feeling morose and tired. Facebook is having a dark night of the server. Daughter having attack of nerves re medical issues.

(PSA: Please, never put people on your insurance policy without consulting them. The remark makes itself.)

I am going to enjoy the bathroom etiquette site ===> in my links, play something fluffy, and go to bed. It has been generally a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Feh.

My list from one of those dumb Facebook things. This one was cool:

“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what books my friends choose.”

I annotated because I’m a geek, primarily for my own benefit. You don’t hafta. Hell, you don’t hafta take the quiz.

1. Stranger in a Strange Land–Robert Heinlein
“Thou art God.” Immanence. Hmm. “Drop your boundaries and let your so-called water brothers walk all over you.” Hmm. “Sex is pretty much essential to any meaningful relationship, or enjoyable relationship, or lack of relationship.” Um, does my personal individual opinion of what I feel like doing with my body get any say? I’m wrong and I should do it anyway if I’m evolved? Hmmmm.

2. Illuminatus! trilogy– Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
The world is not what you think it is. (Useful.) Weirdness is in itself a cultural imperative: No matter what, if it’s weird, it’s cool. If you’re weird, you’re cool. Oh, and by the way, drugs are really cool. (Not as useful.)

3. There is nothing wrong with you–Cheri Huber
The title says it all.

4. Narnia Series –C.S. Lewis
You can get enormously wonderful things from believing in the cheerful irrationality of a theistic cosmos if it floats your boat; and, if you don’t proselytize about it, feeling secretly smug toward atheists who do proselytize is an Easter egg. (Easter egg. Get it?)

5. Sister Carrie–Theodore Dreiser
I knew every bit of what Hurstwood was going through even before I went through it myself. Now I’m going for the Carrie part.

6. Lolita–Vladimir Nabokov.
Go look up “unreliable narrator.” Then come back. I’ll be here.

7. Nine Princes in Amber–Roger Zelazny
I just took enormously to Corwin at the git-go. One of the books holding a topography of a huge piece of my inner space. Don’t know why.

8. Little Women–Louisa May Alcott
A real family. The fantasy aspect of the different world of Civil War New England. Positive female characters. I needed this book.

9. Moby Dick–Herman Melville
“God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught — nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh,Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”

Go magnetize yer own harpoons. Arr!

OK, not for everybody, but it’s my favorite book.

10. Jonathan Livingston Seagull–Richard Bach
Well, *have* you ever seen an imperfect sky? Have you? Book on this list I most wish I could disown, but . . . Doh! Stupid seagull!

11. A Wrinkle in Time–Madeleine L’Engle
Being a nerd kid is cool. (In case you don’t know, it’s only the first book about the Murrys, and the one about the twins is possibly my favorite.)

12. The Phantom Tollbooth–Norton Juster
I got up my nerve and approached him after a talk. I confessed that PT had such a profound influence on the way I thought about learning, that I was about to graduate from Harvard with my PhD. I thanked him.

YES. I actually got to personally thank him. What made it infinitely even more awesome was that he got just a teeny-tiny bit damp around the eyes.

13. The Faerie Queene–Edmund Spenser
What a long strange trip it’s been. The reason I went to grad school in English.

14. The Tempest–William Shakespeare
The three-line literature course:

III,ii CALIBAN: I am subject to a tyrant, a
sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island.

V.,i. MIRANDA: . . . O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!

PROSPERO: ‘Tis new to thee.

15. Xenogenesis trilogy–Octavia E. Butler
I wrote my &^%^$%^& dissertation on it. “Stay with me.” Heh.

(Re-posted from Facebook, original date 6/26/09)

Michael Jackson was very complicated.

English geeks have something called semiotics, a sort of science about meaning, which we take for granted now, because it’s like Newtonian physics: Yeah, so what? (Now.) Anyway, there’s this whole thing about how we need figures upon which we project ourselves, so as to keep from owning our shit.

Our academy peeps have often said that this is a BIG piece–if not the only piece–of racism. If Michael had been white, he would have been viewed very differently.

Think about Stalking Cat. Cool. Bizarre. Psycho. Whatever. The creative Mr. Avner has gone out and DONE IT. Yet, his transformation is simply himself–and doesn’t claim to be otherwise–in fact, it’s a spiritual thing.

It’s a lot more OK for America to deal with a man turning into a cat, than for a black man turning into . . . something else. And we all know the disturbing something else was .. .

How dare he?

I heard once that he started on his path because the boys’ father had abused him horribly, and that every morning he looked in the mirror and saw his perp’s face. If you don’t know how that feels, don’t judge. Because I do, and if I’d had the resources, I’d have tweaked some stuff too.

Of course the man was really fucked up. Abuse. Horrible stress being pimped out nationally as a little boy. Having a terrifying amount of talent. Money money money money. And he wasn’t “authentic,” which is englishgeek for “not black enough.” (How dare he?)

Thing is, lots and lots of people do dumb things with their babies; they just don’t get caught at it. (If I’d been famous the day my two-year-old was spotted walking on the two inch ledge OUTSIDE the balcony bars . . . luckily, he himself has a dancer’s balance.) Thing is, lots of people have an appalling lack of boundaries with kids (to say the very least), and not a single one of those MANY priests scurrying out of the woodwork got the press Michael did. Thing is, yup, he was crazy–but Michael was so so so less crazy than he might have been, given his resources.

I think that perhaps the most disturbing thing about Michael was the talent. How dare he?

Art dies, but that’s the whole sucky phoenix gig. It’s its job.