Submitted my abstract for the LSA conference in January... months of coding and banging of my head against walls and other stationary objects come to fruition! There will be more coding, of course. Our n (low, approaching silly) is still a problem, so there's lots more data crunching to do before January, but I don't have to worry about that for a while.
Meanwhile, I'm working on framing a number of my paintings for this art show coming up. This entails hanging out in the basement for hours on end whilst high on spray paint fumes and playing with power tools.
I saw Iron Maiden in concert! Dream Theater opened during a sunshower, which was lovely. Then, just as Maiden came onstage, the sky cleared and a rainbow appeared opposite a pretty sunset. Rainbows are so metal.
Stephen Fry is going to host a BBC series on language! It's called Planet Word, and I am geekgiddy about it. He's a beautifully erudite writer and speaker, and one of my very favorite people-I-don't-actually-know-personally. I can't wait to see what the show will be like.
Here's a teaser, from a blog essay he wrote a while back:
But above all let there be pleasure. Let there be textural delight, let there be silken words and flinty words and sodden speeches and soaking speeches and crackling utterance and utterance that quivers and wobbles like rennet. Let there be rapid firecracker phrases and language that oozes like a lake of lava. Words are your birthright. Unlike music, painting, dance and raffia work, you don’t have to be taught any part of language or buy any equipment to use it, all the power of it was in you from the moment the head of daddy’s little wiggler fused with the wall of mummy’s little bubble. So if you’ve got it, use it. Don’t be afraid of it, don’t believe it belongs to anyone else, don’t let anyone bully you into believing that there are rules and secrets of grammar and verbal deployment that you are not privy to. Don’t be humiliated by dinosaurs into thinking yourself inferior because you can’t spell broccoli or moccasins. Just let the words fly from your lips and your pen. Give them rhythm and depth and height and silliness. Give them filth and form and noble stupidity. Words are free and all words, light and frothy, firm and sculpted as they may be, bear the history of their passage from lip to lip over thousands of years. How they feel to us now tells us whole stories of our ancestors.
Do read the whole thing. It made me all shivery.
Finally, this dates back to his Bit of Fry and Laurie days:
A sad story today: Moko, a dolphin living off the coast of New Zealand, became famous in 2008 when he was observed to guide two pygmy sperm whales to safety after they had become stranded between a sandbar and the beach. He played with swimmers and boaters, sometimes getting so enthusiastic that he prevented the swimmers from returning to shore (playing is serious business). A dolphin carcass washed ashore yesterday and, based on its markings and teeth, it's probably Moko.
Danny Elfman, the mastermind behind the soundtrack of every Tim Burton movie you can name, rocks out with his band Oingo Boingo. The song is Insanity, and it is delectably creepy.
I'd love to take you home with me and tuck you into bed
I'd love to see what makes you tick inside your pretty head
I wish that I could keep you in a precious Chinese box
On Sundays I would pray for you so it would never stop
I'd love to hear you laugh tonight, I'd love to hear you weep
I'd love to listen to you while you're screaming in your sleep
I'd love to soothe you with my voice and take your hand in mine
I'd love to take you past the stars and out of reach of time
I'd love to see inside your mind, to tear it all apart
To cut you open with a knife and find your sacred heart
I'd love to take your satin dolls and tear them all to shreds
I'd love to mess your pretty hair, I'd love to see you dead.
One of my paintings got accepted to an art show at Pure Wine Cafe! It's a swanky little wine bar in Ellicott City, outside Baltimore.
The piece is a 3-panel painting of bubbles rising up the wall.
I'm wildly excited about this - I've never had my work exhibited anywhere before! It will hang in the wine bar for three months, starting in August. Not sure about pricing yet, but I think it will go - if it goes - for much more than I'd been thinking of asking for it.
The theme of the show is "Breath". I just started another breath-themed painting... with luck, this one could make it into the show as well.
This is a WIP - I'll post the finished version later.
