The Earthquake: A Story and a Perspective

Dear Diary,

Today I felt an earthquake. It was the best day ever.

Sincerely,
Danny

Really, though, it was the awesomest experience ever. I was on the second story of a school building and it began as a low, "are there train tracks near here?" rumble for about 20 seconds; I even looked outside the window to see if a tractor trailer was driving across the rooftop adjacent to the classroom. By the time my mentor teacher (a California-native) was yelling at me to get in the doorway, it had already clicked in my head: THIS IS AWESOME. I can't describe just how awesome it was, but I will give you what went through my head as I was cowering and smiling like a crazy fool:

This was the first day of school for Anne Arundel County. If they had been run by ancient Greeks or Romans, I imagine they simply would have sent everybody home and then re-done the whole first day the next day. This was almost the definition of "ominous" and I can't think of a worse omen to begin a major undertaking on. Unfortunately, as an intern, these are the kinds of decisions I am not remotely involved in.

So good luck, AACPS, because you owe a sacrifice to the Earth Shaker because you have clearly inspired his wrath (and you have a lot to worry about because you're right next to the water). Just a friendly word of advice.

Middle English

Maybe it's because I've spent a bit of time with his parent, Old English, or great-grandparent Latin, but Middle English feels a lot like talking to a distant cousin who speaks with a heavy accent and strong regional dialect (thinking Louisiana; OC, California; or Boston/NE). Yeah, I don't always understand everything he's saying, I miss some of the regional references, and at times I feel like he's just making up words, but for the most part I get the message, and honestly it's just more interesting than talking with somebody from the East Coast.

But man, his spelling is atrocious.

"Maybe just once this is one of those 'internal' problems"

I had to kick a kid out of "reduced distraction" small-group testing today for being too distracting. This... this has defined my entire experience with the school system in one stunning metaphor.

Then and than

Both were the same word in OE: thanne (thaenne, thonne) (spelled with a "thorn", but don't you worry about that). So now, whenever you invariably mess than up, just smile and say you're not going to conform to the vagaries of Enlightenment Era scholars and instead prefer the true English way of using conjunctive particles. Similarly, you could also say you're doing it in solidarity with the Dutch, who apparently only use "dan" for both, but it's probably best not to bring the Dutch into this.

Name of the Day

Xzavier.

His race is "Mu", which I understand to mean he is descended from the proposed "Lost Continent" in the center of the Pacific Ocean whose remnants can be seen in the small islands of the Pacifc, with Hawaii and Easter Island being the Eastern borders and the Philippines the Western.

Of course, according to James Churchward, a leading writer in the realms of hypothetical continents existing before the historical accounts of present man of which there is no geographical, archaeological, or most especially written record, all mankind would in fact be descendants of the Muvites. As such, Xzavier's parents were clearly playing semantic games with the child's racial identification, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Idiomatic != Idiotic

Latin authors do not say "I march," they say iter facio, "I make a way/journey/trip/march" (the same iter as in reiterate, "to go that way again").

This is, of course, absolutely fatuens stupid, and I cannot for the life of me imagine a reason for it. I've even tried to find some article on why they might have done this, but I guess actual scholars have a lot more important things to think about than this. Luckily, however, I realize that if I need a model to explore the development of absolutely insane language constructions, I have no need to look further than my own dear English language.

As such, I can only laugh viciously at the thought of students in two thousand years studying English and trying to figure out why we use the phrase "was like" to mean "said."

Think about it, we totally do.

Fashion 100 years ago in London

Tattooing Is London’s Fashionable Craze, 1910

Interesting article, but I just want to highlight the fact that the author seems to be "The Argonaut" and that is awesome.