edge of

people can say "it's impossible, how can one know what French sounded like 500 years ago? there are no recordings"

but look, people were interested in these matters even 500 years ago. Theodore de Bèze wrote De francicae linguae recta pronuntiatione

Oi.

Haec diphthongus natiuo suo sono, id est, vtraq. corrept? prolata vocali profertur, -48- quoties cum illa coh?ret n, vt moins, minus: moindre, minor: soin, sollicitudo: loin, long?: besoin, necessitas: tesmoin, testis, quibus dictionibus extremis imperit? nonnulli g adiiciunt. Sin min?s, id est, nisi n habeat adiunctum, non amplius diphthongi, sed triphthongi sono pronuntiatur, nempe vt oai, & diphthongus ai, pro ? siue pro e aperto, vt loi, lex: loix, leges: moi, ego: mois, mensis: roi, rex: soi, se: toi, tu: voi, video, quas dictiones vulgo vitios? per falsum y Gr?cum scribunt, vt suo loco diximus. Huius autem diphthongi piguiorem & latiorem sonum nonnulli vitantes, expungunt o, & solam diphthongum ai, id est e apertum retinuerunt, vt Normanni, qui pro foi, fides, scribunt & pronuntiant fai: & vulgus Parisiensum parlet, loquebatur: allet, ibat: venet, veniebat, pro parloit, alloit, venoit, & Italo-franci pro Anglois, François, Escossois, pronuntiant, Angl?s, Franc?s, Escoss?s, per e apertum ab Italis nominibus Inglese, Francese, Scosese. Nam ab hac triphthongo sic abhorret Italica lingua vt toi, moi, & similia per dialysin, producto etiam o pronuntient fo,i, & mo,i dissyllaba.

Corruptissim? ver? Parisiensum vulgus Dores ???????????? (plataizontas) imitati, pro, voirre, vitrum: siue vt alij scribunt, verre, foirre, palea farracea: scribunt & pronuntiant voarre, & foarre: itidémque pro trois, tres, troas, & tras.

all over that bread like sesame seed

alternative asian thanksgiving, celebrated on any public holiday.

last night was a warm-up.

the table next to us in a chinese restaurant, where all the staff was viet, as big as a luby's, was like ours: an asian family and one white guy, likely a sex tourist.

i was eating my crispy noodles and scallops in broth and there was a heated discussion where i kept hearing one of the words i have learned recently, xe. the younger brothers are not involved and one of them is a cheetah head; let's call him mauricio. duylinh turned to me and said

OK, it's done. we are officially living a lie.

everyone looked at me to finish my beer because we were in a rush to get to the bakery before it closed. i had one banh mi thit nuong and a square of nam chua. nam chua is raw ground meat denatured with some type of natural chemical, served with a slice of thai chili and garlic. it makes you cry. back at the house we had a small bowl of cocoyam curry.

i slept at my sister's house. she showed me pictures of new orleans. soup kitchen. in the morning she said that there was this awesome asian store that we should see. it was indeed large, and had a top-notch bakery. there were whole pigs roasted on a skewer cuius flesh you buy by the kilo. duylinh and i split a banh mi ba le, then my sister bought us two packages of spring rolls for the road.

"you've got to try spring rolls. this place makes good spring rolls."

back on the road. it is shorter when you do not get lost. 20 minutes instead of ninety. mauricio was watching a korean feuilleton and before i knew it i was hooked. mauricio is an aspiring womanizer so he was doing research. even though the subtitles were literal translations and it was never clear exactly what was happening. two hours and two beers passed.

it is called CATCH A KANGNAM MOTHER:

there are three mothers. we can situate each one on one of the following axes:

1. sophistication
2. snobbishness
3. intelligence

Mother 1: (-,-,+)
Mother 2: (+,-,-)
Mother 3: (+,+,-)

they are all hot. the drama concerns their efforts to make their children succeed in school so that they can get into Seoul University.

Something Mother 3 said kept echoing through Mother 1's head:

"father's economic contribution, mother's accompaniment, child's success. in jenbai district, is mothers study assistants indeed to child."

after a bowl of sharkfin soup and some sweetbread, we went to an asian shopping mall and had banh mi ba le, nam chua, and banh bot loc. then we had boiled crawfish and beer.

my final evaluation of Houston: come for the asian food, get the hell out because of the cars.

khoai mon nho

houston: i came here because holidays are not a time when i control my own time. i love the asian food. koreans are so pretentious.

the city is the center of the US oil industry and a well-known bloody mess. it has about 2.5 million people. it is not built for people, it is built for cars. you have a handful of 10-12 lane highways woven together pulsing with speeding cars talking on cell phones slashing across half of the lanes to escape EXIT ONLY or to make it in time to LEFT EXIT or to join the suitable member of the I-45 / US-59S / US-59N trifurcation. i don't feel safe. it takes twenty minutes at top speed with palpitating heart (now the two cell phones ring hip hop quattrains) to go between two houses that are "close." the city is about 40 miles in diameter.

the petroleum engineer phd student i tutor went on a petroleum crisis speech again recently. "houston... we're fucked. i mean how? i guess redesign the city? the whole fucking city. every city. i guess it could just collapse into anarchy."

but to be practical, (i was inspired by one of those painted plywood cutouts where your face has a dialogue bubble saying "I COULD JUST SIT AROUND AND COMPLAIN AND DO NOTHING, OR I COULD CONTACT MY STATE REPRESENTATIVE AND FIREBOMB THE POLICE STATION.") what could be done in a place like Houston, which is only a larger version of a common problem for western US cities, when it has to, will ye-nill ye, start drinking much less gasonline?

one of my favorite latin phrases

"But maybe their own very Iraqi, very ad hoc, very oil-lubricated, modus vivendi can still get us somewhere stable and decent." Thomas Friedman

testaruda

el varon de la silla de ruedas se siente al carrefour dean keaton & san jacinto. anda mas depressa que yo, aunque vamos por el mismo lugar... por eso me doy cuenta

it was crowded. there was a line. he got there before me and i only saw him leaving. no drink in his hand. there was a line going out the door.

bricks drown the sound

Here we have from the editor of one of the country's most influential conservative newspapers, National Review:

Look, I am as opposed as anyone to writing bigotry into electoral law. But perhaps the reason why so many people hold their votes so cheap is that their votes are, in fact, cheap. A heartbeat and existence on this planet for 18 years are the only qualifications to vote for American citizens.

What would be so bad about discrimination, properly understood? Not based on race or income, but on knowledge and commitment. Every election year, the race comes down to ?the undecideds,? many of whom are undecided because they don?t pay attention, don?t much care, and are still vexed by the task of discerning the difference between Republicans and Democrats. These are our kingmakers?

Would it be so awful if voters had to pass the same test of basic civic literacy that immigrants must pass to become citizens? What if we made the right to vote something to brag about? Something to aspire to? Is high turnout among people willing to hawk their vote for an iPod really that much better than high turnout among people who hold their franchise dear?


Mr. Goldberg's rhetorical techniques seem crude. here is one of the classics:

I will be the last to act thusly, always seems to precede the very proposal. in most forms, it is followed by "but," then one of the variants of "these tumultuous times call for drastic measures."

perhaps things are growing extreme when the apathetic rabble will trade their vote for an iPod. what kind of questions would be on the citizenship test that qualifies voters?

1. What body can try impeachments of the president of the United States?
2. Check the applicable definition of responsibility:
_____a duty
_____a speech
_____failure
3. Name the attorney general of the United States.
4. Women can vote on juries in Alabama State courts. (T/F)

1. If a person charged with treason denies his guilt, how many persons must testify against him before he can be convicted?
2. At what time of day on January 20 each four years does the president of the United States end?
....

These and other questions that demonstrate knowledge and commitment to citizenship can be found here. It is a circa 1965 literacy test used by the state of Alabama.

breathe

if i was blind, and i was still on the futon looking at the cookbook, i could feel the splatters of oil and soy sauce, and my toes would chill, even if i couldn't see the temperature reading on the air conditioning unit, and i could hear an ice cube clinking to show that the drink was still cold, and that there was some left.

turkeys may be injected with a broth or saline solution in an amount up to 8% mass without a disclosure about what constitutes the injected fluid or how it was imparted. overtaking eight percent, you must reveal this information.

From Maurice Tadadjeu's manifesto:

1. L'Afrique étant un continent multilingue, son intégration linguistique passe par le multilinguisme. Le mo[no]linguisme individuel c'est-?-dire la capacité d'un Africain ? ne parler qu'une seule langue ne constitue pas un facteur d'intégration linguistique africaine. Le mo[no]linguisme n'est pas bon pour les Africains.

2. Le bilinguisme comportant au moins une langue africaine d'intercommunication constitue la condition minimale d'intégration linlguistique africaine. En intégrant les langues comme variables, cette condition minimale peut etre largement valable tant socialement qu'individuellement.

3. Le trilinguisme fonctionnel comportant au moins deux langues africaines d'intercommunication semble constituer une condition optimale i.e. un mod?le d'intégration linguistique africaine. Ce mod?le se dégage d'une structure sociolinguistique de communication triglossique qui s'observe dans presque tout le continent africain. Cette structure comporte une langue maternelle africaine, une langue véhiculaire africaine i.e. servant d'intercommunication entre différentes communautés linguistiques et une langue d'intercommunication internationale pouvant etre d'origine non africaine (comme par exemple l'angalis et le français). En intégrant les langues comme variables le mod?le est valable socialement et individuellement.

in the backseat of that honda

duylinh's plans to be a shock blogger:

"i'll say something that will get me a lot of comments. that people will get riled up. like today, i slaughtered a pig. i cut its throat slowly. i like how it screams like a child. then the people who comment, they'll be upset, but they'll be my most faithful readers."

"pigs have stout necks and thick skin, and they can put up a great fight. no one would believe this."

"you can comment that, but then i'll just say i injected it with novocaine"

"novocaine will numb the pig but it will still be alert, and not feeling pain, will writhe all the more."

"you can't comment on my new blog."

this morning: cement slurry is poured into an annular space between a tubing (OD = Dt) and a casing (ID = Dc). it hardens in an exothermic reaction with constant heat production per voume, N. the cement takes time tset to harden. the casing and the tube remain at a constant temperature, Tres. find the radial position of the maximum temperature for
a) long tset
b) short tset
how do they compare?

debuccalization

so i return home for my lunch break. i check the mail and it's full of flyers from local businesses. the important one is fiesta's, because each week they feature a dangerously, criminally low price on a pork roast. this time it was at its lowest level in months, $0.67/lb. to boot there were turkeys advertised for $0.49/lb.

they feature these prices, but i think only once i've ever truly bought something for that price, because there are a limited number of the special products with orange stickers on them (LIMIT 1 WITH $10 PURCHASE). all of the women who get to shop and prepare food during the day buy them before i can get there in the evening.

not this time!

i called duylinh and she said she would work late. i wanted her to drive me there.

still not this time!

i got a large backpack and walked the mile to fiesta. four employees came up to the cash register to trick the bar code into giving me the special orange sticker price. the bagger was nice enough to put the meat directly into my bag.

on the way back, i was on the corner of this man. he had a leathery face, melting eyes and a long nicotine beard. and a cardboard homeless sign. and a bluetooth earpiece that he was talking into. he's up to something. i don't think he's a proper homeless.

banditry

if i ever die or disappear mysteriously, it will surely have something to do with a dream i had almost a year ago:

i am standing in a Whataburger restaurant. it is night through the glass doors, and it has the feeling of 3am. someone next to me asks what i'm going to order. i say "the new orleans breakfast, and perry's original lemonade, pink flavor." on the menu is a picture of a pancake with a sunny side up fried egg on top of it. this is the new orleans breakfast. a third person remarks, "that's what the Halloween killer drank. and the new orleans breakfast." i didn't know this. "yeah, but it's a pretty good combination," i said.

tonight i saw a video of a chef preparing "new orleans breakfast." in the same web site, one can see, by rearranging the fourth letter of each words, an important message sent by aliens.

gone in the air

a good vegetarian meal:

-cup of ranchero beans
-vegetable lasagne
-dill pickle
-vodka, chilled neat
-pretzels
-persimmon

the weather can't decide whether it will be cold or sweating.

wellchosen words

one of my students is an aspiring phd petroleum engineer. he said "petroleum engineers have the highest starting salaries. you know what my professor said?"

he drew five numbers on the board.

1. one times ten to the twelfth bbl
2. one times ten to the twelfth bbl
3. four times ten to the twelfth bbl
4. two times ten to the twelfth bbl
5. one to two times ten to the twelfth bbl

"this (1) is how much we've already used, conventional, this (2) is how much we've got left. let's see, i think this (3) is hydrates, these (4) are tar sands, and this... i think, ah, yes, this (5) is oil shale. you know what oil shale is? it's a kerogen in a rock matrix. you know what a caragen is? a kerogen is carbon matter that's been compressed, and it won't burn, and it's before you have oil, and if heat and pressure are added, then it becomes oil.
"hydrates, these are mostly under the ocean, thirty thousand feet. they're not gonna get to those any time soon. tar sands, they can't flow. shale, now Shell says they can do this, but nobody believes them, they're going to run electric current through it, but where that current comes from...
"so all of these can't flow, you need to add heat to extract them. now they want us to know about heat transfer. we already know enough about momentum transfer.

l? lu? m??gwi?

me na ndzie benu te ndzie be' a mo' suo ge, zi le luo mengwi. e suo gi mo', zi luo mengwi se. me ndzie te ndie le "nghe mbe', jose enrique quintanilla, a mo' suo ge, a bo luo mengwi" agaba, a tso'a ge nghe, "e bap. begang latino, ma begang lekhe. bo bo ze benu. bo bong tie. bo ze benu mi bo se nkonge. bo te bok bo." be nde' tipta ge.

un poco lento

i changed my walking route to pass by more pecan trees. i became irritable. i was sitting on a picnic table with tablecloths made by anheiser-busch, where fifty-something laborers and forty-something amateur investors discuss the way things are and the way things would be if the whole world wasn't crazy. men with dark glasses and suntanned wrinkled faces, whose accents all aspire towards the ideal state of the proprietor's accent. so i became irritable and i looked up from the cookbook where the glued binding was coming undone. no, didn't look, up, but moved my attention upwards and yelled something gruffly.

here was an inflection point.

i helped a girl do her homework then sat and listened to her telling stories to fill up the rest of the scheduled hour. something in those stories of frat parties, puddles of shitty beer, car keys, hastened drives to far off cities, sleepiness, missing english class, reminded me of myself of six years ago, things that i would have dismissed with condescension, talking about myself, but that she related with such conviction.

i tried out enthusiasm at the grocery store where i spent the hour break with duylinh. examined the different kinds of onions. a can of garbanzo beans fell and didn't land on anyone's foot. i bought a beef roast to make boeuf bourgignonne

back at work: "now, you understand, jesse, the fastest man in the world can run 100m in a little less than 10 seconds. this guy, and he has a twin brother; 300m in 33s. coach made me run with him. i did it in 37s. i was starting to break down."

"coach thinks you're fat."

culture wars

excerpts from livres en feu:

Gregory I, prefect of Rome and Pope in 590, future saint, has the existing works of Cicero, Livy, and many other authors from the great age burned, simply because the youth of the century overwhelmingly prefer these readings to the new testament. . . by ordering the burning of the Roman library, he also absolved Saint Augustine of the sin of plagiarism, for The City of God owes itself to Varron, whose final works disappeared at that time. (58)

Jerome would then also be able to make free use of this resource [the library of Caesaria] to compose his Vulgate, the translation of the Bible in Latin; he mentions the presence of manuscripts already ancient before his eyes - like the original of the gospel of Matthew or Origen's Hexapla, in which the maniac had simultaneously lined up on six columns as many different versions of the Old Testament - and indicates that there is good progress in the transfer to parchment of the deteriorated papyri . . . And the pleasure of annihilating its thirty thousand manuscripts and about as many human lives in October 640 would fall to 'Umar's warriors... (67-68)