i like that this place is called "joeuser." it sounds like a good spot for a jane to be; also, it seems to reference the average drug addict. however, "user" seems to indicate addiction to a harsher drug--one that involves spoons and needles and foil and such. so more specifically, the name alludes to the everyday serious-ass narcotic-taker. the most exciting thing happening right now is that beef and molly are finally together on earth. i hope ray doesn't fuck it up. shun will be...

instant message from other employee: could you print this for me? the printer on this side of the hall isn't working. my reply: sure. just a moment. i print material, which is actually just one page. an ad for pork. heh. pork. i take page to other employee. me: here you go. him: okay. um, i'm actually gonna need all thirty pages. me: ... oh, you're kidding. there was only one. haha, you're funny. him: no. there are thirty pages. i need them all. me: that's great. h...

earlier, i totally had an idea of something to write about... however, things being as they are, it is now later. so, there are no ideas. besides this one--which is basically just to write about not having anything to write about and to use a lot of adverbs to do so. my prose is tortured and overwrought. it is wandering and pointless. i have exited any levels of poignant-ness i may have been on or descending through on my way to meaninglessness. i started compiling ideas for what...

communication, futile as it is, is mostly skewed by emotion--on both ends. interpretations make language shaky and morphous, and interpretation is affected by pathos, a variable.

yeah, i know everything i say on here about language sounds like common sense, like things that everyone knows already so why say them, etc. i just like putting what i think in text and fleshing out my understandings. this allows for futher revelation. that's mostly what i'm going to talk about on here. i'm thinking that this weblog is going to serve as a journal or collection of notes for what will become an article or possibly even a book---no one will want to read it (except maybe fres...

i know i said that emotion skews meaning when it comes to communication. i was thinking about that, in particular, and i decided i should say more. to clarify and to add to that statement, several more ideas should be pointed out. emotion should not be looked at negatively in relation to communication. yes, emotion can skew the message and the interpretation of that message. however, emotion can also inspire communication in the first place--which is usually a good thing. for instance...

am reading mcmurty's PARADISE right now. travel writing, set on the author's journey around the marquesan islands (?), makes connections between life on the islands and life in rural texas. commercialism. capitalism. nationalism. communities. lack of a home. very modernist voice. do people understand each other better if they do not speak the same language or merely speak bits of each other's native language? if you can exist in that environment, it would seem so--you're naturally ...

now, i'm reading SEX, DRUGS AND COCOA PUFFS. since the last post, i read STARDUST. this thing is probably going to turn out to be a great big reading list. fantastic. how interesting. no, no, i'm serious. it's imperative that i remember on what date i finished reading X book. sure. something about last night and rum and solipsism... jeni made a good point about relationships and solipsism: the two people involved do not merge, so there are always two selves in the relationship. tw...

children and language. they learn it quickly, and they display elasticity in language while learning it. witnessing the learning process gives us insight into how languages develop and how they work in our minds. perception, reflexes, emotional responses develop the fastest from birth to age five (approximately), right? the human brain (and thus language, as it is tied to the functioning of many little bits of the brain) has far more potential than science can surmise that it does. ...

not really. it's just that i had that song stuck in my head today while walking around a pond looking at geese and spiderwebs. yes, the pond was looking at geese and spiderwebs. researching ph.d pogroms with rhetoric and composition concentrations. fascinating: a combination of linguistics, literature, pedagogy, sociology, and psychology. this is what i should be doing. in the middle of reading AMERICAN SPLENDOR and still in the middle of ORPHEUS EMERGED. finished ALIAS GRACE ...

reading lately: everything by mark twain, HANDMAID'S TALE by atwood, TONTO AND THE LONE RANGER FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN by alexie, and a book about american girls and their bodies which i think is called THE BODY PROJECT by someone i can't remember and am too lazy to google for. also, lots of student papers. i've been thinking about how i feel about how my classes went this semester and if i would teach 1033 again the same way. there are definitely some alterations that i'd need to make, bu...

I had to read A Sentimental Journey by Sterne in an English class I took as a sophomore at Hendrix College and then again as a senior during our comprehensive exams. I didn’t like it the first time, but the second time (because by then I realized what Sterne was actually doing, juggling sentiment and silliness and sentimental, silly language), I did sort of enjoy it. By then, I was ready for a little nearly-(Post-)Modernist-ish play with language. The same sort of guff appears in Trista...

i used to only love britain from 1830 to 1914. now, i also love it from 1700 to 1800. as much as imperialism and colonization and masculinity and christ as working man are fabulous topics of discussion... i'm going to be a textual critic. i'm going to write about the marketing of books. high culture and low culture. canonicity. genre. the look of books. the rise of the novel. dailies. periodicals. diaries and journals. illustration. editing practices. books as product. skimm...

i'm putting these here so i don't lose them: "Men rarely, if ever, manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child." -Robert A. Heinlein that one reminds me of some lines in nabokov's PALE FIRE. but in that poem, the speaker says something like this: the most man can invent is a "domestic ghost." the next is from the preface to defoe's ROXANA (the full title being ROXANA THE FORTUNATE MISTRESS OR, A HISTORY OF THE LIFE AN...

okay, so the behn story i read after the one about the nun was so lame i barely even remember what happened. it was just drama drama drama and (aptly) very reminiscent of restoration drama (the characters were named after their foppish or coquettish or moralistic characteristics and all). at least it was short. there are two more and then more poetry. so, oroonoko's tale was the most significant of the writings, the end. after i get done with behn tonight, it will be on to ROXANA by defo...