The Tough Coughs as he Ploughs the Dough

My Intro to Linguistic Analysis professor explained that older dialects of English used to pronounce the “k” and “gh” sounds in words such as “knight.” We sadly lost them over time, and their absence hit Dr. Pangolin hard. He spoke of these sounds as if remembering them fondly from his own youth in the twelfth century.

His nostalgia reminded me of the fading words my friend Wendy and I had sworn to preserve in middle school, at a noticeable cost to our already tenuous social standing.

Outside of Dr. Pangolin’s class, though, I reverted to the impoverished modern pronunciations of “knee” and “know” and “Knott’s Berry Farm.” Then, two years later, I learned the hard way that she who forgets her history is doomed.

I needed to speak with a Student Activities administrator about arrangements for a campus organization, and not offending her would have been a really good way to start. Brimming with responsibility and foresight, I visited the department ahead of time to determine her office hours and pick up a business card.

Everything was going swimmingly until I arrived for my appointment the next day, loudly wielding my knowledge of contemporary pronunciation.

Dr. Pangolin would have been deli-gh-ted.

Extra Credit: Further lessons courtesy of Dr. Seuss and Desi Arnaz (from about 2:45).

You better listen to the radio

There’s an amazing weekly program on public radio that is consuming my life.

I discovered it about eleven months ago, and since then I’ve listened to all seventeen years of archived episodes. The show made it into my Christmas letter as one of the six most notable features of my year.

Every week on the program they pick a theme and present a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme, ranging from personal essays about Israeli poultry to investigative reporting on the juvenile drug court system to interviews with embittered professional Santas. It’s difficult to convey the show’s huge range, though my attempts to do so can be measured in the number of people who now run away when I start sentences with, “I heard on the radio….”

The subjects jump back and forth from public figures and major events to ordinary people who just happen to be fascinating. Naturally, since day one I’ve been imagining future episodes in which I could feature.

It doesn’t hurt that the show has helped launch the careers of essayists such as David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, and David Rakoff, all writing frequently in my preferred genre of “I’m rather awkward; here’s how that’s working out.”

For months, then, the voice in my head has been host Ira Glass asking insightful, journalistic questions to turn my perpetual internal monologue into an intriguing radio story.

These self-congratulatory interviews don’t stop at illuminating my creative process, of course. Frequently they spill over into examining the compelling intricacies of my everyday activities.

It turns out that imaginary journalists shadowing you, just like real ones, can bring uncomfortable truths to light. All the hard-hitting nonexistent reporting is leaving me less and less sure of my own striking newsworthiness, and gradually I’m adjusting my vision of episode themes that might apply to me.

Searching the show’s contributor list for comparisons indicates that I am not among the philosophers issuing expressions of such shattering profundity that the only possible reply is a muted monosyllable.

Instead, I’m one of the people who keep eating foods they know will trigger their severe allergies, or at least the guy moved to tears by an American Express commercial on an airplane. The appropriate journalistic response to my statements is, “Wait, what?”

Luckily, like I said, this show tackles an amazing range of topics. They made an hour of compelling radio from an all-night interstate rest stop. Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

P.S.—If you would like to cultivate your own informative, entertaining, and potentially self-doubt-inducing radio habit, you can stream every episode ever at the This American Life web site. If you need more cool stuff to do, I also suggest giving them money for being so awesome.

I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves

In the tenth grade, my Great Books teacher mentioned that she enjoyed telling ridiculous stories to extremely gullible people.

Hoping to provide her with more material, I promptly explained why songs get stuck in your head: Certain radio frequencies resonate well with human tissue, and those snippets of music get trapped inside your skull and bounce around on their way through the air from the local soft rock station.

My teacher was so enthralled with this new piece of scientific knowledge that I felt bad having to suggest that maybe she should reconsider throwing around the phrase “gullible people.”

I can hardly blame her, though. The mysterious force of song-head-sticking is not to be trifled with. My roommate recognized its devastating contagious properties and finally declared that I am not allowed to tell her what’s lodged in my head if there is a chance she knows the tune. One of my friends at work is bound by a similar domestic edict, so she and I started inflicting the brain virus on each other instead.

Of course, music carries other dangers aside from relentless repetitions of “Hey Mickey.”

A few months ago, just before the office radio rolled over to non-stop Christmas music, the awesome power of classic hits suddenly moved me to dance while sitting at my keyboard.

The woman at the next desk did not heed the call of the same muse. She did, however, notice my arrhythmic jerks and strained humming and spring into action.

Next time, though, I know just how to explain the situation:

Turkey

I am sure this paragraph has touched all the internet users

I’ve started getting a lot of spam comments on this site. Of course, it’s perilous to assume—maybe I just have a lot of anonymous fans who really want to get me a deal for online casinos and Spanish real estate.

Most of these comments don’t appear on the blog itself for some reason. Blogger sends them directly to my email, though, and they’re starting to add up.

Of course, with the election is over, I needed something to fill the extra space in my inbox.

By far the most popular post among my artificial adherents is this one I wrote in 2011 about cleaning refrigerators. I never expected my humble message to touch so many lives, but recent responses indicate that I have rendered humanity a great service.

Thank you, robots. I don’t know what to say.

But my vomit-prevention skills are not all that I have to offer. When it comes to frenzied eradication of vermin, I live to serve:

Also, my inability to function without caffeine could set me up for a major career change:

Not everyone is so congratulatory, though. For example, this fellow doesn’t find my pre-barf noises convincing because I failed to cite authoritative sources.

Despite familiarity with the concepts of spambots, internet trollery, and general sanity, every time I read this post I’m tempted to track the guy down and “unite the ideas” for him.

Intellectually I know that none of these comments, positive or negative, come from entities that have even glanced at my writing. That doesn’t keep me from reading them, though. It’s a lot like checking horoscopes—if you try hard enough, you can arrange to believe that they actually apply to you.

That’s why I keep clicking on the notifications—because of the possibility that A. Nonymous really does want to give me a shout out from Porter, Texas via his Russian blog.

It’s also why I’m applying extra vigilance to my spellcheck regimen:

Yet despite it all, jumbled in with the deceptions and false compliments, there lie a few noble spammers who still believe in straightforward honesty.

Extra Credit: http://xkcd.com/632/

In Stitches

This is a pincushion.

The items in it are very useful for sewing projects and pushing tiny reset buttons. They also belong one hundred percent outside of the human body at all times.

I neglected that vital guideline in November and fell victim to the first knitting-related stab wound to hit Albuquerque emergency facilities in 2012. If you are looking for ways to stand out from the crowd, this is not one that I would recommend.

My other recommendations include not leaving sharp things lying in the carpet. The whole adventure began with crouching over some knitting materials, soon followed by overbalancing into a nearby slurry of craft stuff that turned out not to be just yarn after all. Instead, it included a straight pin that promptly sunk so far into my shin that the head didn’t show.

As it happens, self-skewering is high on the list of Things That Can Make Me Faint Again. Since my established predisposition toward fainting is connected to a low heart rate, I spent a few minutes lying on my back doing arm calisthenics until the room stopped looking so white and floaty. Then I drove over to Urgent Care chanting energetic song lyrics very loudly in pursuit of continued consciousness.

After an x-ray, we found out that the pin had broken in half. Emergency was only able to remove the outer piece, which led to some disconcerting conversations with a specialist about the remaining one.

These discussions alternated with sheepish expository episodes every time I met someone new.

They sent me home with antibiotics and painkillers, and I spent several days waiting for further developments while feeling like a victim of the world’s most literal voodoo doll.

My parents, meanwhile, had a nifty time with the whole thing as well. They were driving cross-country during the Great Puncturing, and they did not receive the voicemail I left them from Urgent Care. Instead, they arrived in Indiana where my uncle, who had been following the saga on Facebook, greeted them at the door with, “Is Clara out of the hospital yet?”

Eventually, the doctor and I determined that it was best not to continue carrying the shrapnel from my hazardous life of yarn working. On December 27th they went in to retrieve the other piece—a process that involved many uncomfortable terms such as “anesthesia waiver” and “dissection,” but made up for it with pre-warmed blankets.

Hospital sanitary regulations wouldn’t let me keep the pin, which is too bad. I kind of wanted to make macabre jewelry now that it’s worth as much as several varieties of gemstone.

It’s not all bad, though. Primarily, I no longer have a sharp piece of metal lodged in a major moving part. As an added bonus, since stabbing myself via handicrafts, I’ve accomplished roughly five times as many needlework projects as in the entire preceding year. That means even more of my recovery time has been spent on the thing that attacked me than on NCIS reruns.

I’ve been trying to work out ways to harness this power of irony in my future injury planning. Maybe I can arrange for a concussion while doing sit-ups or something similarly productive.