December 23, 2006

Keep your forty/ I'll just have an Earl Grey tea

My sister and I watched the video tonight for Chamillionaire's Ridin', following a conversation about Weird Al's parody of the song. From the context of the video, we couldn't tell exactly what "ridin' dirty" consisted of - Chamillionaire just seems to get pulled over a lot and the police hassle or abuse him, but we didn't understand what his confessed "ridin' dirty" consisted of. So in true White & Nerdy fashion, I looked it up in Wikipedia. And there it was!

Wikipedia, thou art the answer to nearly all my questions.

srah | 12:14 AM | Comments (3) | Tags: chamillionaire, weird al yankovic, wikipedia |

December 21, 2006

What, you mean it wasn't a documentary?

RUTH One moment! let me tell you who they are.
They are no members of the common throng;
They are all noblemen who have gone wrong.

ALL They are all noblemen who have gone wrong.

MAJOR-GENERAL STANLEY No Englishman unmoved that statement hears,
Because, with all our faults, we love our House of Peers.
I pray you, pardon me, ex-Pirate King!
Peers will be peers, and youth will have its fling.
Resume your ranks and legislative duties,
And take my daughters, all of whom are beauties.

I bet that in the months following the end of The Pirates of Penzance there were some unhappy younger brothers and cousins and uncles around. I bet the House of Lords was a pretty rollicking place then, too. Yarrrr.

srah | 12:08 PM | Comments (1) | Tags: gilbert and sullivan, the pirates of penzance |

And I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform sort of spell in Arabic

You may be proud to know that I currently have a 4.0 GPA, for the first time... maybe ever. I don't know if I even had a 4.0 after one semester of high school, because I think I took a gym class that semester.

srah | 12:02 PM | Comments (1) | Tags: arabic |

December 15, 2006

I'd just as soon watch a wookiee

I am so conflicted. On one hand, I am really excited that the creator of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and the Indiana Jones movies is going to be the Grand Marshal of the Rose Bowl parade this year. On the other hand, I am really disappointed that the creator of The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Smeaaaaaaghth, Revenge of the Sith, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor and Howard the Duck is going to be the Grand Marshal of the Rose Bowl parade this year. Hmmmm...

Alright, now I am finally upset about being in the Rose Bowl instead of the National Championship. Die, Florida, die!

srah | 12:14 PM | Tags: football, george lucas, rose bowl |

December 14, 2006

Somebody making chili?

There has been some argument over the past few months about what to name the new high school being built in Ann Arbor. The school board then narrowed it down to two ridiculously bland names: Northcrest or Skyline (what skyline? Does Ann Arbor have a skyline?). Well, it's official: the new building will be called Ann Arbor Skyline High School. And I am totally behind this name, provided that they make their mascot the Three-Ways.

srah | 12:04 PM | Comments (3) | Tags: ann arbor, chili |

Sancta nox, placida nox/ Nusquam est ulla vox

I am an inveterate list-maker, so here is a list of some of my favorite Christmas songs, inspired by all of the Muzak and All Christmas All The Time radio stations I've been subjected to during my holiday shopping.

1. "Carol of the Bells"
2. "Sleigh Ride" - Instrumental versions only, and especially the one with horse-whinnying at the end.
3. "The Nutcracker Suite" - No particular song within the suite - I pretty much like the whole thing. It's been my cookie-baking soundtrack lately.
4. "O Holy Night" - Choral versions, because soloists get all divalicious and operatic about it and I would rather have either a soloist belting or a choir loudly singing the "fall on your knees" part. Choral versions seem safest from the divaliciousness.
5. "Angels We Have Heard on High" - Again, choral versions. I want a big loud, festive "GlOOOoooOOOoooOOOoooOOOoooooria inexpensive mayo", please.
6. "Silent Night" - It's been translated into a million different languages so Alfie and I have established the tradition of taking a few pages of translated lyrics to church with us to sing instead of the 18,000 verses in English. This year: Arabic!
7. "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" - For singing. Loudly. With other people so my own voice is drowned out by the crowd. I especially like a big crescendo for "Come and behold him, born the king of angels."
8. "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" - This would not have ranked so high if it weren't for Staples using it out of season, but every time I hear it I remember that commercial and laugh.
9. "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" - But only when it's snowing. Otherwise it's just depressing.
10. "Santa Baby" - But only as sung by Eartha Kitt, because all other versions of Santa Baby really suck. It's a terrible song, but there's something about Eartha Kitt's version that I love, especially when she requests decorations "bought at Tiff-an-y's". I think I might kind of have a crush on Eartha Kitt. Help.
11. "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" by John Lennon
12. "Feliz Navidad" - I like things that are foreign.
13. "Jingle Bells?" by Barbra Streisand - It's bizarre and pretty awful, but it doesn't seem like Christmas until I've heard it. Once. And no more, please. The same goes for Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime", which I like only because my friends hate it with a white-hot rage.

I will not get into a list of my least favorite Christmas songs - coughJingleBellRockcough - because that would be - coughDoTheyKnowIt'sChristmascough - an affront to all that is happy and good - coughAllIWantForChristmasIsMyTwoFrontTeethcough - about the Christmas spirit.

srah | 12:01 PM | Comments (20) | Tags: christmas, holidays, music |

December 11, 2006

No, wait, I live for math

I had my Arabic final exam this morning at 7:30. 7:30? It was still dark out! It was like going to an exam in the middle of the night! I start work at 8am, but that half-hour was enough to make a huge difference in my mental state.

And that mental state was: Huh?

First of all, I thought it would be really clever not to take my normal class bag with me today, because I wouldn't need books or anything. The load was much lighter, but it didn't speed me up any, because I misjudged where the exam building was in relation to our normal class building and went walking around in circles for a while when there was no building where I expected there to be one (it was 7:30 and I was not yet awake). Once I found the building, I realized that I had written the classroom number in my notebook, which I had left at home as part of my Lighten the Load campaign. I was pretty sure it was something like 1 or 2, so I went in the building in search of 1 or 2 or some sort of signage directing me to the correct room. The ground floor was all made up of 100s, so I had to dig around for some stairs. There seemed to be more stairs going up than going down. Eventually I found a classroom with some familiar tops-of-heads (because the exam had already been handed out and they were already bent over it, working).

I sat down at my left-handed desk, which was the only one accessible without climbing over people. The proctor gave me the exam and... I realized that all my lovely array of various pens were in... my bag at home. I found an old, dying felt-tip pen in my coat pocket and got to work, scratching my answers out in progressively greyer ink.

As a little backstory, I will tell you that when my mid-term exam came around, I knew very well the things that we had just covered in the weeks leading up to the exam, but there were things earlier in the year that I hadn't bothered to learn very well, because I figured I would never really need to know the Arabic word for pencil sharpener or eraser. I don't even write with pencils. It turned out that the exam was chock full of pencil sharpeners and erasers and all I could do on the "What's this a picture of?" questions was to write the letter م, because I was pretty sure they started with an "m" sound but had no idea where they went from there.

When I was studying for this exam, I promised myself I wouldn't make the same mistake. I reviewed everything I could think of. I even went through the trouble of learning that an eraser is a ممحاة and a pencil sharpener is a مبراة. I knew how to conjugate verbs up and down, even though we'd only learned them the week before the exam. Verbs would bow down to my conjugation skills!

The only problem was that while I focused really hard on the mechanics of verb conjugation, I neglected to learn what the verbs themselves mean. There was one section on the exam where we had to conjugate درس and سكن. Great, I thought, He's given us two of the verbs we just learned! I am all set in case I have to use those elsewhere in the exam.

And wouldn't you know, there came a time where I had to use those elsewhere in the exam. I knew that one of the verbs meant "to study" and the other meant "to live" but for the life of me I couldn't remember which one was which. We'd thrown them both around so much in the previous week's conjugation exercises that somehow I'd learned the mechanics without memorizing which verb meant what.

In the end, I was so flummoxed that I can't even remember which verbs I wrote in which circumstances. I know now that درس is "to study" and سكن is "to live" but I can't remember which ones I wrote down. It's possible that I got them right, but it's equally possible that I wrote things like, "I live math. What do you live?"

Of course, "I live math. What do you live?" takes into assumption that my attempts at using question words worked out correctly. We learned those in the last week of class as well, and I didn't bother to study them because I thought they were fresh in my mind. So I may very well have said, "I live math. How many do you live?"

Yeah, I am a rockstar at Arabic.

srah | 10:00 PM | Comments (3) | Tags: arabic, exam, in arabic |

December 10, 2006

You say potato, I say dictater

NPR's been pronouncing Pinochet as "Pin-o-chett" all week. I always thought it was "Pin-o-shay." Where did I get this idea from? Am I the only one who pronounced it this way? Is this some kind of Frenchie-ism?

srah | 9:32 PM | Comments (10) | Tags: npr, pinochet |

December 6, 2006

You think... you wink... you do a double blink... then JUMP!

I have always hated Mary Poppins, who swoops into a family's life, announces all of their flaws while claiming to be (practically) perfect, refuses to perform her witchcraft for them until she has an opportunity to show up Bert, later denies that any such witchcraft took place and basically tells the children they're liars, gets them hooked on drugs by making their medicine taste like their favorite flavors (hers is very suspiciously rrrrrrum punch!), refuses to join in a ceiling tea party like some kind of ceiling party pooper, then swoops away again.

That was a long sentence.

So I have always hated Mary Poppins myself, but it's high time the rest of the world realized how evil she really is...

[via Best Week Ever]

srah | 10:36 PM | Comments (3) | Tags: mary poppins, movies |

December 5, 2006

Hello. Is it me you're looking for?

One day back when I was a teaching assistant in France, one of my students called me over to him in class. The students were supposed to be working individually on some assignment, so I assumed he was trying to get my attention to ask me a question about English for the work he was doing. I walked over to him and he quietly asked me (in English, if I remember correctly), "Do you like Lionel Richie?"

Of all the things he could have asked me, I think that may be the last one I would have guessed. Lionel Richie had not come up in class that day or any other day. Lionel Richie was not in town. Lionel Richie, as far as I knew, was not in the news. I gave some non-committal answer about how I thought Lionel Richie was not bad, and this seemed to be enough for him. I was never sure whether this was some sort of cultural misunderstanding where this poor young lad thought that Lionel Richie was the height of American Cool or whether it was some kind of atrocious pickup line.

Now, thanks to one of the most moving and bizarre NPR stories I've ever heard, I realize that this young Algerian-French person may not have been testing the waters of American pop culture or putting the moves on his teaching assistant. It may, in fact, have been an attempt to bridge our Arab-French-American cultural divides through the immense power of the music of Lionel Richie. Apparently Lionel Richie transcends all cultural boundaries and has the power to bring peace unto all the earth. I'm sorry I didn't understand it at the time, kid!

[via The Most Important Blog... Ever]

srah | 8:52 PM | Comments (6) | Tags: assistantship, lionel richie, middle east, music, teaching |

Unsolicited romantic advice

I feel as though I have been plagued for weeks by Young Ladies Who Don't Know What's Best For Them, But I Do. The problem with these young ladies is that they are fictional, so it is hard for me to communicate with them. I can yell into my television and my computer screen all that I want, but they just don't seem to listen and don't seem to understand that they are making ALL THE WRONG CHOICES in their love triangles.

Betty Suarez, you must choose Adorable Henry the Accountant over Horrible Walter the... Horrible Walter. Walter cheated on you with that nasty skank Gina, then came back and keeps embarassing you and making fun of your dreams. On the other hand, Henry is full of trivia and smarts and he seems to really like you. You dream about him and he makes your palms sweat.

Walter WHO?

Elizabeth Patterson, you must choose Officer Paul Wright over Horrible Dull Stalking Anthony With Crumbs In His Mustache. Actually, I don't like Elizabeth enough to foist her on that handsome Mountie who probably deserves better. Paul should run off with Elizabeth's teaching replacement, Elizabeth should join a nunnery and Anthony should get leprosy, then get hit by a car.

Hilda Suarez and Stupid-Ass John Patterson, you are not helping my cause any. You best be stepping.

srah | 7:54 PM | Comments (2) | Tags: comics, for better or for worse, tv, ugly betty |

It's a marshmallow peppermint world in the winter

I am caught up in the baking season!

I went to Kroger this weekend and saw some Andes Peppermint Crunch Baking Chips for sale. Like the excellent savvy shopper that I am, I thought 'Ooooh, neat! I see something pretty and new! I want to buy some, even though I don't know what I will use them for!' Yes, it's amazing that I'm poor. I don't understand it either. Fortunately, I later remembered a recipe that Slashfood published a few days ago, which involved crushed peppermint candies. The baking chips seemed a perfect alternative to unwrapping and hammering at dozens of Starlight mints.

I tried to hold out on baking until I had some occasion to bake for, but I only lasted one day. So last night I whipped up a batch of Chocolate Peppermint Drops and they were awesome. They are ugly, delicious little buggers. I brought them to work and am making a good attempt at devouring them all myself.

If you would like to make them yourself, I recommend doubling the Slashfood recipe, because I now have about half a bag of peppermint chips and half a container of plain yogurt sitting around unused. So now I have an excuse to bake some more later this week!

srah | 6:19 PM | Comments (3) | Tags: cookies, food, recipe |

December 4, 2006

Oh my god, a Mafia-Looking Guy

I meant to remind everyone about The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines as December approached, but December snuck up on me. I am still in December denial. I forgot to ask someone to tape it for me, but fortunately Robin tuned in partway through and Tivoed one of the thousands of repeat showings. She has it waiting on the ol' Tivo till I come home for Chrimbo. Merry Christmas indeed! I hope that you will all have an opportunity to watch it as well.

An even better Christmas present has come my way, though. Indeed, my December now glows with a special radiance after reading that casting is underway for the sequel to one of my favorite movies. Long have I waited - and thought my waiting in vain - for the continuation of that movie which ended so suddenly, leaving us on the edge of our seats to wonder how all the cliffhangers would be resolved.

Everyone raise your spatulas and pay-ers in a toast to the genius that is R. Kelly!

srah | 10:20 PM | Comments (5) | Tags: librarian, movies, the librarian: return to king solomon's mines, trapped in the closet |

December 1, 2006

Aaaaand there goes Miss Gulch on a bicycle

There is a strong low pressure system moving through the area today. It started out as a very windy day and has now turned into a very windy day with ominous dark clouds overhead. No, the clouds aren't really ominous. The sky today can be better described as evil. "Ominous" suggests that the clouds are saying, "You'd better look out or you're going to get rained on" or "Guess what? We're bringing an ice storm your way." These clouds are saying, "You'd better hope you're good at dodging entire trees as they come whipping towards your head at 50mph, sucka, because I am hell-bent on murdering you today."

srah | 12:50 PM | Comments (2) | Tags: readers' choice, weather |