I spent these past 12 days at my family's cottage in the Kawarthas. Much of my time was devoted to diligent work on the painting visible above. Other activities included daily swimming; writing; games of Trivial Pursuit, Slang Teasers (aka Balderdash), and Monopoly; a 1000 piece puzzle assembled by half a dozen collaborators; heated conversations about physics, grammatical mood, and the photocarcinogenic components of sunblock.

And, of course, reading.

I didn't devote myself to reading a single text, and so regrettably finished nothing -- rather, I dipped in and out of a multitude of novels and non-fictions, frequently reading passages aloud to my companions (a behavior they tolerated gracefully). I'd like to share with you a series of  excerpts, many of which I did blurt out aloud or mark with a little dogear at the corner of the page.

I like to think that it betrays something of my thinking patterns that, when they are ordered carefully, each of the separately selected quotations shows thematic linkage to the quotation following it.

I've been scarce because I am working diligently on a graphic novel. Stay tuned.

This coming Saturday, Kevin Fortnum and I will be sharing a table at the Toronto Small Press Book Fair. He'll be selling his book, Defamation of a Scoundrel, and I'll have the latest issue of Knives Out along with all of my other little goodies. It's always a great event, so come on out. 

homosexual - homeosexual - bisexual - heteroflexible - heterosexual

There was no word, that I knew of, which described those of you interested most often in your own gender, but not exclusively -- the extremely gay end of the bi spectrum. So I've coined one -- homeosexual.

As you can see, all other general regions of the continuum were named. I understand there to be something jesting in the term 'heteroflexible', and this is a shame, but I'm sure it can be overcome.

Perhaps we don't all need labels, but it is easier to explain oneself when there is a word for it.
Not that I like the word 'homosexual' particularly. Or 'gay', or 'queer'. 'Lesbian' isn't so bad these days, but I've heard it upsets the actual Lesbians of Lesvos. 'Vagitarian' is funny, but too funny. No one uses 'homophilic', but I like it's association with proteins ('homophile' pleases me less).

 

"In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork". Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark". Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork". But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau" words in "Through the Looking Glass". From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature."

-- from The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann, though I found it in the Wikipedia entry for quarks.

Two notes:

-> I've always pronounced to rhyme with bark etc.; true to the origin in the way that double negatives are true to old english, I suppose. 
-> I have not read Finnegans Wake. I gave it a shot on St. Patrick's day, but found it unreadable. If you've read it, drop me a line ... I'm not researching it for no reason.

Remember how I kept muttering about endocytose being a back-formation from endocytosis? Well, dictionary.com has confirmed my suspicion.

I'm going to be honest, I'm pretty ecstatic about having spotted this one. I have a soft spot for back-formation -- it's such an interesting process.

You see, we use this verb often; and everytime I've heard it, I've thought to myself  "that is one beautiful back-formation" and I've felt myself deriving it each time I've said it -- it's breathtaking.




Note, this derivation first took place before I was born, so I likely didn't produce it de novo but, as I said, I feel myself taking 'endocytosis' and clipping it whenever I use the verb, and that was what first made me suspect that it was a back-formation.

When I was in grade ten, I was taking a beginner dance class as one of my credits (art school, right). The strange thing about this class was that it included many girls I had never met before -- this turned out to be a result of their tendency to take applied level classes (while I took academic). Possibly they planned to attend college, but I was given the impression that it was a strategy for avoiding difficult homework. (Not that they were lazier than I was -- I wasn't really into homework either ... I just wasn't willing to base on laziness decisions that would affect my future quite so drastically).

Anyway. These girls spoke differently from how I spoke. They had slang words and phrases that I was unfamiliar with (and not terribly fond of). One such word was custy, an adjective meaning 'gross, unlikeable' -- often used when they were talking about women they had distaste for. When it was used as a noun, it would undergo zero derivation: custy, (pl. custies) -- here it was used slightly differently, between friends ("Let's get going, custies.")

My friend Hendrik hypothesized its origin -- disgust. Often, notice, pronounced /dɪˈskʌst/ (di-skuhst): they were clipping the word and endowing it with a different derivation pattern.

lex. category	standard eng.	vernacular
v.	disgust	---
adj.	disgusting	custy
noun.	---	custy

They were also keeping the devoiced velar stop /k/, not reverting to the original /g/ which had become devoiced as a condition of its environment (after the /s/).

Which brings me to my next observation -- I didn't think about it much at the time, but the gust part of disgust is associated with taste, enjoyment, gusto. Strange that it should have come so far from that meaning.

what's with this cucumber thing ... you know: "cool as a cucumber", "one tough cucumber" ... why are we so concerned with cucumbers?

My sister was the victim of two April Fools Day jokes.

Her boyfriend sent her a text:
"Just got a call from [my co-worker]. He's in jail -- arrested for murdering his wife. his kids are fine, staying with their grandmother."

At 7:45 I walked into the kitchen, to witness her exclaim over her toast, "This isn't honey!"
It was, in fact, concentrated grapefruit juice I had been storing in a honey jar in the fridge -- since February! It would be April first that she mistook it for what the label advertised.

Have set up a new & improved NaPoWriMo blog over here: http://alltheaprilpo.blogspot.com/

For the second year in a row, a very memorable trip to Buffalo for the small press fair. The pace and atmosphere of the weekend, for me, felt very different this year from last, in a way that is well suited to where I am in my life right now -- if that makes sense.



Photo above by Jessica Smith, below by Chris Fritton.

1995

Natalie (5yrs): Hurry up.
Anna (18mos): I'm doing my best, Natalie, I'm doing my best.


2008

Natalie (17yrs): I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
Anna (13yrs): It hurts me when you think.

While I have not finished as much as I had expected to finish, I have started much more than I expected to be starting.

"... on the basis of this information, we can actually figure out how genes are organized in the genome, and we can do this simply by letting organisms do what they like to do, which is to mate ... And then what we like to do, which is to use simple genetic knowledge -- we can actually map a genome, and create a road map for constructing an organism."

--- the brilliant Malcolm Campbell in lecture.

Right now there's a picture of me on the 'participate' page of the Buffalo Small Press Fair site, from my trip last year. I'm sitting at the Outside Voices table fiddling with on of Jessica's poetry objects.

I'm not sure what this is evidence of, but I like it.