Cass' Haunt

I'm retiring mirabilelectu. I won't delete it, but I also won't use it anymore.

It's been with me since October 2003 or since I was fifteen years old. My grandfather was still alive when I made it. I've changed in a great many ways since then, and not just the obvious ones (finished high school, started uni, moved out...).

If you track it chronologically, you'll see that for all the whining, I've been able to say "I told you so" a whole lot--especially regarding the craziness of trainers--but damn, that was a lot of whining! But you can also track my shifts in opinions regarding, to name three notable examples, Maarten Stekelenburg, Ruud van Nistelrooij, and Henk ten Cate.

I've been thinking about getting a new journal ever since my latest (failed) attempt to organise the mess that is this LJ and its lack of tags, when I read back through my old posts and just couldn't even tell what some of them were about anymore, or when I found stuff that would today make my cringe, headdesk and/or want to punch myself.

And then there's the part where I was just getting tired of looking at the name "Mirabile Lectu", which I blatantly stole from my old high school paper. I should have more originality than that. (Before that, my username was based on my old FFN account(!!), which was the equally unoriginal "Unheard Prophetess", only that didn't fit so I was unheardprophete until I got tired of it and got a name change. God, remember that? No? Then damn why'd I have to bring it up?!)

allangtegek is where my LJ party will continue; please friend me over there. (I'll be adding all of you there, so that's not some random creepy stalker, just me. :D)

PS -- Moving fic journals and stuff to langs_de_lijn's flist. I hardly ever click through to fic not first recommended by one of you guys anyway. :)

If some street you're intimately familiar with has recently changed in some way, it's not a good idea to let your attention slip because you think you know what you're doing and where you're going.

You might then, for instance, run right into some obstacle that wasn't there the gazillion times you've been through that street, wounding your pride and damaging a bike that wasn't even yours in the first place. (Although I guess it al least didn't get stolen...)

Also, I think I hurt my knee. :(

I used to have two wallets. One was my everyday wallet with the most money, my ATM card, uni stuff, insurance card, and my public transport passes and stuff. The other was where I kept all the change that didn't fit into wallet number one, my library cards and all my other membership passes.

I can't find the second one and I need my library cards. Yay!

Bye bye €5 for a new one I'll barely use. >:(

I don't get it. Don't they even want to try to get into the CL (not that there's anything there for us, but it's the effort thought that should count). Or even want to maintain their position in the top 3? (Oh hai H'veen, fancy seeing you on one point behind us!)

Feh.

ADO Angstgegner. -.-

I guess I should've put this in the post I wrote last night, as it's also related to language and this is in a commercial from the government. I'm sorry, but it was three AM by the time I wrote that. This is one of a series of commercial from the national government (I've looked around on the site and it seemed like there was at least one more but the videos won't play for me -- nm, I found the others) which are meant to highlight the need for L2-speakers to have enough of a grasp on the language to get by in daily life, but mostly manage to show an obstacle no L2-speaker can avoid themselves: the asshole native speaker who doesn't in any way attempt to make themselves clearer.

Asshole: So you want to work at the hospital again, mister Youssuf? As a nurse¹ or as a doctor?
Mr. Youssuf: I² one brother³ one two sister⁴ but [can't make this out] I want to work⁵ in hospital.
Asshole: Yes, I know, but as a nurse⁶ or as a doctor?
Mr. Youssuf: [can't make this out again] My brother not a doctor, my brother is a cook. He work. I want work⁷ as well!
Stupid Commercial Narrator: It's hard to explain what kind of work you want when you don't speak the language!

I think my little army of footnotes makes it clear I don't this is any kind of realistic portayal of someone with only a basic grasp of the language (and that Asshole is, in fact, an asshole). It should be possible, dear government, to make the point you want to make without resorting to a caricature of a second language learner.

¹ For an extra layer of fail... I noticed when translating that I wasn't even sure if the word they use ("broeder" lit. brother but in this case nurse) referred to a nurse or a paramedic, so I asked my brother, who didn't immediately know either. We're native speakers. You go, government! I should add that broeder isn't even the preferred term for nurse, which is the much more gender neutral "verpleger" (caretaker).
² He uses the informal form of this pronoun, ikke instead of ik, which as far as I can recall I've never heard an L2-speaker use in this way, because it's used by kids and in extremely informal contexts (because it reads a bit childishly).
³ Using the full form "broeder" instead of the reduced form "broer" is as ridiculously formal as "ikke" is informal.
⁴ Here we do get the reduced form "zus"...
⁵ My doubts that beginning L2-speakers would get both the modals and the word order right to this degree given Mr. Youssuf's fictional (lack of) proficiency, let me show you them!
⁶ Despite both the nonstandardness of this word for nurse and the obvious misunderstanding (which are probably linked, at that), Asshole keeps using "broeder" and doesn't even bother to clarify.
⁷ Not sure if this is supposed to be a noun or a verb. If it's a noun, it's another perfectly formed clause which seems out of place considering the scripted mess the rest of his Dutch is. If it's a verb, the mistake makes no damn sense even considering the stupidity with regard to the rules of Dutch the makers of this thing have already shown.

I just listened to another one. This one is a kid's school mentor mentioning his trouble in Math class to the kid's mother, who first confuses the "concern" ("care", in Dutch) with "caretaking" and his trouble to follow Maths ("to come with"), with a schooltrip. No transcript this time, and no Asshole either, but again "hilarious" but IMO completely unrealistic misunderstandings crop up between the teacher and the mother.

So. I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that linguistically speaking, these commercials make no sense at all.

I'm having trouble writing a more constructive post so have instead a linguistic deconstruction of an incredibly stupid racist 'joke'. (It's not even really a joke. The punchline is "Haha Chinese restaurant owners can't speak Dutch very well".)

So. The situation is that you'll be discussing Chinese restaurants and some wholly original person will jump up and shout "SAMBAL BIJ?!" ("hot sauce with?") and everyone will laugh* because haha, those crazy Chinese people and their inability to speak Dutch, right?

Watch me magically fix this quote into perfect Dutch now: "Sambal erbij?" ("[do you want] hot sauce with that?"), by simply adding a tiny simple little element OH HEY WAIT. I mean, let me explain how "er"** is one of Dutch's strangest features and probably one of the most difficult to come to master as an  L2 speaker and that mistakes like this one are probably common and in no way restricted to any singular group of language learning.

And here's the final thing: "sambal bij?" is an easily intelligible sentence. There's no misunderstanding. The entire extent of the thing is "lol stupid foreigners can't get this stupidly complicated particle right; let's mock them! :D"

It's so full of fail and stupid it actually makes me want to punch things when hearing it. Especially from people who know something about Dutch linguistics and should at least know better from theory.

* My family is strangely fond of this one, despite being part Chinese. The fail can be strong with my family, understand.
** Ok, maybe I lied a bit about explaining. "Er" is a particle with several functions and in this case, it's acting as a reference back to whatever the hell you've ordered that you might want hot sauce with.

Bad, bad, bad NOS.

I know, I know. Wrong RIGHT American. SHANI >>> WORLD.

MY CAPS WON'T GO OFF! ZOMG AWESOME AND CAPSY STUFF LIKE THAT!!!

Our Esteemed Commentators: blablabla a man who can win in Vancouver blablabla track's too fast for him blablabla
Marsicano: *WORLD RECORD OMG*
Our Esteemed Commentators: *fail to shut up for even a second*

Cass: *+42257657 pts for awesomeness for Trevor*

SHANI DAVIS FTMW

<333

So anyone have any theories as to why none of the skaters from ethnic minority backgrounds are Dutch?


YAY SHANI! x2! <3

ETA from beyond the grave: this is how you do hilarious commercials.

But now, that favorite of Dutch people's passtimes: whining about stuff.

First, today I was in another new bus that just broke down. The oldest of these busses were first used when many of the regional public transport companies fused into Connexxion (which is about as stupid as its name implies), which is a few years ago. I hadn't seen the old busses for years so I guess they got shuffled off into the province.

They're back now, though. They don't break down for no reason. Oh, sure, they're not as pretty, comfy, or as good for the environment (busses in Zuid-Kennemerland ride on gas). But they work. Coincidentally, they predate Connexxion.

Second, Conimex apparently has a new product out (or a new and improved, I dunno), with matching annoying commercial. It'd be nice, though, if they would've made the generic chips eating sound match the snack discussed. Guys? Kroepoek does not sound that way. (Let me have my pet hates, I beg of you!)

Oh, and the Belastingdienst and their cutesy "Oh look there I went making a tiny but significant and obvious mistake" commercial can bite me. 

[/whine] 

I'm at uni right now and I'll be heading home in a few minutes, which is not very conducive to making a big post full of thinky thoughts, so I'll just leave you nice link.

Holy Jesus, this post is bad. No, really. It's the same one erjika's already linked to (one of many links; off you go to read her awesome post), and contrary to what I generally do when confronted with something that makes me go grrr admittedly lots of things do, I made myself read the whole thing.

Yeah. This whole thing (compiled by rydra_wong who must be an amazingly patient person) is turning poor Elizabeth Bear (who I'd never heard of before all this started) into a racist. I'm barely paraphrasing here.

Go read the entire thing for yourself (or don't, in case you value your sanity or have heard of her and want to keep enjoying her books, I dunno).

Thinky thoughts of all kinds probably to follow once I get to my dad's.

You can stop moving things around at night now, thanks. Especially at 2 IN THE MORNING, like last night, when in fact most of the flat is probably trying to sleep. We all have class, after all.

Not really any great amount of love at the moment,
Cass

PS - 19th century thinkers? Write clearer please... ;__;

Okay, I hope that fits into the subject line... So someone was just at the door for Doctors Without Borders and I was in the process of getting rid of him because, right now, I'm my own charity. Well, did I have time?
Me: Not really, busy, thesis, blablabla
Him: Oh, we only need 6 hours of your time a week!
Me: Hmm, is there a website?
Him: *gives site*

I really think I'll contact them and see where it goes from there, because HELLO, I have two and every other week three days off apart from the weekend. (Which, as my brother* pointed out, is quite enough time to do my homework in because I've just got to do it.) Most of my time is spent either just staring at the screen or reading things which have nothing to do with anything useful and I really DO need the money.

So, the biggest problem would be that asking people to give money to charities is not something people who need time to work up the nerve to ask their thesis supervisors if maybe possibly they might just be let into a research master's programme (but I've set myself a deadline!). Well, I've thought for the longest time that I'd need exactly something like that to kick my ass in gear.

Also, money. I needs it.

* Yes, my little brother calls me out on stuff like that. Go li'l bro!

I just gave my self about an hour's worth of extra work (NO REALLY) because I entered a total into the wrong cell and completely failed to notice until I turned out to be five ehm, minimal responses (shaddap) short the whole time.

Fail on a MASSIVE scale, self.

't Is dan misschien maar een peiling en Wilders heeft net weer zielig kunnen doen natuurlijk maar het blijft een eng bericht. :/

The first semester's been over for a month now. I still haven't got the results back on two of my courses (I know I passed them, but that's not the point), even though you guys have had a month and a month and a half to grade papers and talk about how good we were in the course groups (lol...).

I would very much like to see those points and my grades sitting on a nice list so I can *gasp* get out a calculator and see how much I fucked up my average last semester.

No thanks yet,
Cass

Yeah, that crack fic I posted the prologue to two weeks ago?

I'm at 1700 words now in the opening bits of chapter one. HELP IT'S TRYING TO GET ME. It needs serious cutting down to size.

Tablet works again and I won't have to bike into town for a new keyboard 'cause Dad needs new DVDs as well.

I? Am so damn lazy.