English Muffins

When we popped the trunk this evening after the North Whitefield contradance, there were English Muffins everywhere. They were waiting to be squished and squashed and handled, like an older dog who gently places his head beneathe his owner's hand, so we didn't even know that they were craving attention. We picked up the little packages and moved them about, but there were 3 fiddles debating for space and so one of the bags was smooshed, much to it's delight. The fiddles were in their caskets, zipped up and arrested, so there wasn't much dialog coming from them. The English Muffins squealed all the way home, and I listened from the back seat, where I sat with my purple scarf.

Polish Monster Language II

The girl wrote a story about an obscure tongue known as (and this is the English translation) Polish Monster Language. No one had ever done that before, and there was a reason for it: it was a banned language in all parts of the world except for a small island in the Indian Ocean (exactly opposite the town of Bowdoinham, Maine, if you were to dig a hole through the earth), an island known for breeding vegetarian dogs. Polish Monster Language was even banned in Poland. The island was one of Poland's old colonies, but is now sovereign. The language is not really spoken on the island, except by the occasional Polish Monster, but it is not banned. The people of this island (there are only two hundred or so, as of May 2006) are mostly of native decent, with a little bit of Polish blood. There weren't many Poles who stayed on the island because the temperatures were warmer than they were used to, and most of the settlers were of the impression that such a climate would "detonate the quality of life that we know and love in Mother Poland (Rufusk 76)."

By writing the story, the girl put herself in great risk. If the government of her home country found out what she had done, they would track her down and dipose of her body in an obscure place reminiscent of the place they store nuCLEar waste, perhaps in the desert. I guess it was pretty foolish of her to post it on her public blog, but she was unaware of the status of the language, and now that it's done, it's done. But the girl wonders, why? Why is this language, which is almost dead anyway, so treated? What harm has it caused to the world at large?

Very Mysterious.

Polish Monster Language

One day, Frankie Tweezers was attacked by a monster who had red, big pupils, green skin and dirty fingernails. The monster covered Frankie with nearly-hot wax, which was still liquid but not hot enough to burn his skin. As the wax cooled and solidified, Frankie tipped over because he burped. The potential energy of the burp caused this, and Frankie thought that was kind of funny, scientists giving a name to something that didn't even exist (potential energy). "This is like claiming to be good at multitasking, and then proving it by standing by the back door of your house while simultaneously NOT standing by the front door, and even still at the same time NOT standing on the side of the road with your thumb pointed towards the heavens in South Dakota." That was what Frankie thought, and since the monster had pretty good mindreading skills, he thought Frankie was offering to be his personal secretary. "Well, I don't really need a secretary. But can you speak other languages?" asked the monster, in Polish Monster Language (PML). Unfortunately, Frankie could not speak other languages, and so he didn't comprehend what the monster was asking. He thought, though, "The monster sounds Polish. My mom taught me how to sing a birthday celebration song in Polish when I was a kid. If I weren't covered in wax, I'd ask the monster if he were Polish."
"Well, I am Polish, but I speak in a dialect only known to Polish Monsters," said the monster, "But I know the song of which you speak, and I wonder what this word 'mother' means. In Polish Monster Language, we have a word that might be of the same root, and it is 'motlehkczek' and it means, in English, 'Green Prada Handbag.'" Frankie only understood the phrases 'mother' and 'green prada handbag,' and assumed that the monster was accusing Frankie of wanting to slay him, sell his hide to Prada, and use the profit to purchase the handbag to give to his mother for a holiday gift.
"No, that's not why I covered you with wax. I covered you with wax because I am good at it, and since you are a stranger to me, I wanted to impress you with my keen skill. I would very much like to see what you are good at, which I assume is multitasking," the monster explained. Luckily, the word for 'multitasking' is one of those American words used 'round the world, so when the monster ended his sentence with it, it was clear to Frankie that the monster must have been reading his mind. Frankie wondered why the monster didn't respond in English, if he new what he was thinking, and it would have made things much easier.
"Well, my English skills are not so good. I know a few words, but really I can only understand you because thoughts are transmitted via energy waves. I can understand the concepts and emotions (even scientific seeming ones) that gad about in your mind, but I can't communicate in English. The mindreading suffices, in most cultures."
Frankie began to figit and the wax shell broke. Although it was a fine wax shell, maybe even the best of its kind, it was not thick enough to contain Frankie for too long, which of course was not what the monster had intended anyway.
Frankie's lips were now free to move, and he asked the monster why he had covered him with wax. Since the monster had just explained that a few minutes ago, he got a little frustrated and smoked out the ears and turned his back to Frankie for a moment, which was a mistake. Frankie took his Swiss Army Knife and murdered the monster. The monster realized that this was because Frankie had perceived him as a threat, when in actuality he wasn't at all, he was just an immigrant. Frankie was relieved to be out of danger, and had also decided that the green Prada bag idea was a good one, so he thought he'd make use of the cadaver. The monster said one last thing before he died: "If you're not going to learn other languages, you should at least learn to read minds."
His mother was very pleased with the gift.

Statler Brothers

I loaded the cd player up to capacity: 5. Billy Joel, The Sound of Music, Leon Redbone, a local folk duo whose names I have forgotten, and the Statler Brothers. I have written a limerick about the latter:


'The Best of the Statler Brothers'
shall not be compared with the others.
But if I were forced,
why they'd be the worst
yet still the best, given my druthers.


I feel that it represents the complex set of emotions evoked when I hear, "Playin' Solitaire 'til dawn with a deck of 51; smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo, now don't tell me there's nothin' to do." I heard these lyrics a lot growing up, because my dad liked to listen to their cassette in the car. I thought they were really nerdy, and I ridiculed them as 'old fogey' music. This is a term I had adopted in the 6th grade when someone accused me of favoring such a taboo-genre after I revealed to them my taste for 50's rock and roll and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. At that point I decided to give more modern music a try (though OF COURSE never compromising the Chatanooga Choo Choo), which included learning all the words to Ace of Base's "The Sign," (and many of their other songs!) and The Crash Test Dummies' "mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm." I was proud of myself for my attempt at high culture. A few years later, my dad started listening to the Crash Test Dummies and I told him they were so over.

One day I went to visit my grandparents and my grandfather, whose name is Pop, had gotten a new truck with a cd player. He had a total of 1 cd, and it was the Statler Brothers. I had no idea that more than one person fancied the group, more than just my dad. But given that is was his dad, that fine a capella family maintained its stigma; this just wasn't music for teenage girls.

Recently a friend of mine had a play list playing on her computer, and a song, those familiar lyrics recited above, began to chime from her bedroom. I immediately expressed intense affection for the song, like this: "I love this song! I can't believe you know it!" But it's not true! I KNOW the song, word for word, and every other song on the album (though she had only downloaded that one). I know the song, it is familiar to me, we are friends. I think of many things when I hear it, sections of my brain change color, and I feel GOOD when I hear it. I now listen to it voluntarily, because it is now such a source for fairly lighthearted memories.

Maybe I do love it, like a brother.

Please Note!

The blog will now receive comments from outsiders, not just folks with blogspot blogs.

Photos

Here're a few photos from Germany. There are more, but I'm having difficulty uploading them onto blogger.


German grafitti is the best I've ever seen.


My teachers, Norbert and Beate, a classmate Jocelyn, and myself in Bamberg, all gussied up for Faschings Dienstag.


SK with Ursula Sowa, the Green party candidate for Bergermeister in Bamberg, whose campaign gimic was Onions.

An Old German Custom

Something else I learned about in Germany, which has also been covered in American press, was the the case of Armin Meiwes of Rotenberg. In 2002, this man was sentenced to 8 years in prison for manslaughter. In January of this year, he was put on retrial and found guilty of murder, and sentenced now to spend his whole life in the slammer. It seems that there is always question of technicalities in homicide cases, which I suppose a is a good thing: you get what you pay for, as they say, or the other way around. But I find this to be a particularly interesting case: Mr. Meiwes had a childhood fantasy of having a younger brother, so that he could eat him and therefore always be close to him. At age 42, he posted an advertisment on the internet, a sort of a personal ad, seeking a well-built young man for "slaughter and consumption." All folks have their fantasies, and Germany is a country of the 21st century, completely westernized and subject to freedom of speech and expression and whatever that might entail. Nobody had to answer this ad, but somebody DID! It was Bernd Jürgen Brandes, another German man, who apparently felt comfortable with this request, and maybe even it was his fantasy to be eaten, in the literal and non-sexual sense of the word. So, the two gentlemen met and, sparing the details, played out this dream. The problem was, that Brandes wound up DEAD!

But wait!

Wasn't that the plan? Did he not enter the situation as a consenting adult? It seems to me that Meiwes is not a dangerous man, he simply has a taste for posh meats and barbaric traditions. I can see that in the definition of murder, there are 2 criteria that must be met: aforethought and malice. Really, both are met. He thought about it first, and he caused harm to his victim (though it was welcome harm - so was it harm at all?). If the world were black and white, then he would be a murderer. But over and over again trials, novels, poems, and many other forms of life-representation and human judgement prove that if we're gonna give ourselves god-like status, where we decide that human lives are more important than all others, we must also admit that there are probably other variables at hand, and every one of those is different in every situation. By law, we cannot generalize, but by law, we do.

I'm uneasy about the verdict. To me, it seems like a violation of personal liberty, on the side of the offender as well as the victim. What happened is what they wanted to happen. Death was a sideaffect, and they knew that too. It seems like one of those, 'I wouldn't do it but it's your life,' situations. Governments should stop interfering with people's personal lives, and I don't mean by not stepping in when a facilitator is actually needed. Rapes, beatings, things that happen when one person's desires overpower the other's - that's when a third party is needed. So my gut says that this guy should go free, but my logic says that he should probably get some punishment, but not life in prison. I think the 8 years would have been good enough, and really only as a model for other people who might try to get away with it because it seems like an easy way to murder someone without getting punished. Argh. I think there is a movie out about it in Germany: Kannibale von Rotenburg. Watch for it in the states.

In That Case

I'm going to take a few moments to talk about cases. Cases are containers for objects, usually specific objects, and frequently resemble a kindergartener's 3-dimensional sculptural rendition of that specific object, and are colored black. Suitcases are boxy, like heavily shoulderpadded, super-professional looking business attire. Violin cases are the picasso-like shadow of the instrument itself, or else the fully-automatic firearm within. Stair Cases are shaped exactly like stairs (infact, I can't tell the difference between the two). Court cases are full of holes and knots, yet still manage to sustain the impression of a real, physical situation. They are very black indeed.

Upper cases, as in A and not a, are certainly physically Taller than their Lower case counterparts, and incase you don't know where those terms come from, I'll tell you, because I've learned it twice in my life: once from dear Dr. Fischer, the most incredible pedagogical master I have ever met, and once from that old and foresaken Gutenburg Museum in Mainz, where there were diaramas set up EVERYWHERE (which I liked). It's quite simple: the Upper Case was where the larger stamps (A B C) for the overbearing, old-fashioned printing presses were stored, and the Lower Case was where the smaller stamps (a b c) were kept. Whenever the printer needed a letter, he would pull the drawer in which that character was to be found from the Great Case and afix it accordingly. You see, it's a very real sort of a case, not just a hoity toity ploy to make people think perplexedly about the social class system of the world (particularly Victorian England), heirarchy in general, and all linguistic representations associated.

In the philosphy of logic, one must frequently consider many different Cases in order to prove that something is always, sometimes, or never true. These are not violin cases, or even glasses cases. These are conceptual roads to venture down, such as Positiverealnumber Street, Negativerealnumber Avenue, and Zero Road. Still though, they are just like the aforementioned boxes, confining the traveling philosopher to existence in one place at a single moment. That's what cases do. Confine. Protect even, by keeping things clear, simple, and in their place.

There are also cases in language, and I don't mean the ol' speaker-verb matching game with our friends I, You, He, They (or Yo, Tu, El, Ellos, whatever your language is); those are called something else, though our brain probably processes them as the sort of case mentioned in the previous paragraph, aka If/Then statements. If 'Yo', then 'tengo'. If 'Tu', then 'tienes'. And so on. No, a 'case' in grammar refers to the subject vs. the direct object vs. the indirect object, and the 4 most common cases in any language are the Nominative case, the Accusative case, the Dative case and the Genitive case. In English, these cases are really only applicable (eg make a change; they are always THERE, but usually invisible (like Radon)) in our use of pronouns, as far as I can see. That is, I or you or he or we are Nominative pronouns, used in referring to the subject of the sentence; me, you, him or us are Accusative, used to refer to the direct object; and my, yours, his, or ours are Dative, used to indicate possession. It's not really very confusing in English, although I know I still occasionally struggle with when to use 'Father and I' or 'Father and me' or other such unimportant clauses. German, however is a different story, and if you want to learn German, or any German-based language (as well as many other languages in the world), it is a little bit important to understand what the hell these things are. I say a little bit important, because I believe that by far the BEST way to learn language is the way children do: listen to it, get comfortable with it, use it, take chances with it, and the grammar will come when it needs to, intuitively, based on your models.

Nevertheless. I am so ANNOYED with these cases that I feel the need to understand them so that I can hate them validly, rather than with ignorance. I think that it's okay to have enemies in the world, as long as they are grammar-based.

In German, when dealing with each of the cases, (and by the way, an example of the Genitive case is 'Survival of the Fittest,' or 'the book of David.' It makes the direct object and the subject swap identities, I think.) it is customary to not only alter your pronoun (der, die, das, den, dem, etc. etc. etc.), as we do in English. No, it doesn't stop there. Depending on the case (and gender of the noun), one must also use a differently spelled Adjective, and frequently a differently spelled noun. That means that in addition to remembering that a Chair is masculine, Math is feminine, and Peppermint is gender-neutral, you must also be aware of which case each part of your sentence takes, and alter the words accordingly.

An example might be helpful. Consider the following sentence: The beautiful woman drinks cold coffee with the large man. The beautiful woman is the subject here, so we can determine that her gender is feminine (though it seems that linguistic gender is not always based on physical gender, so beware), and use the pronoun 'Die.' Now we must make sure the adjective, Beautiful, agrees with that pronoun and the noun itself, which in this case (feminine, singular, nominative), the adjective ends with an 'e': 'schöne.' Frau happens to be an unchangeable noun, I do believe. So this clause is: Die schöne Frau.

Cold Coffee is the direct object of the sentence, so we will use the accusative case. Coffee, we first find, is masculine, so we'll use 'den.' If it were accusative, it would be 'der,' but it's not. If it were dative, it would be 'dem,' but it's not. That means our adjective will end in 'en.' 'den kalten Kaffee.'

The large man is the indirect object of the sentence, so we must use Dative case. The man is masculine, of course, so his pronoun (in dative) is 'dem', and the adjective will end with 'en.' 'dem grossen Mann.' The whole sentence thus becomes: Die schöne Frau trinkt den kalten Kaffee, mit dem grossen Mann. I think. You may even have to change the order of the words and clauses, but Lord knows. Argh! Everything is so frustratingly over analyzed! For your information, it is actually a completely different excercise to SPEAK German rather than write it, because in speaking, one can simply slur and mumble the ends of the words and it don't make a licka diff'rence; they know what you mean.

But the more conceptual cases are really just like the physical sorts, if you think about it. They are like boxes of tools to use: the nominative tools, the non-negative number tools, et cetera. Tools and rules. I like the phrase 'let your tools do the work for you.'

Which reminds me....

Here's is how I skirt the issue:

There is a suffix in German, '-chen.' This suffix makes any noun into a small one. A Hund is a dog, a Hundchen is a small dog. A Mann is a Man, a Männchen is a small man. An additional effect of this suffix is that it always causes the verb to be gender-neutral, so you can see the trouble it saves to simply always talk small. It's a great way to not get overwhelmed with the storms of memorization that comes with learning German, at least in the beginning, but probably no German teacher would ever advocate this. However, I do. There are probably other suffixes that consistently change nouns into masculine or feminine words. I have yet to find them, but if you know of any, do let me know.

So children, I conclude my section on Cases. Cases are great when you use them to your benefit, but they can kill you or harm you severly if you let them. Just remember the St. Valentines Day massacre, all those mobsters 'playing their violins.' Yes, they can indeed be tricky, unwieldy, or even sinfully rotten, but if you learn to handle it wisely, a case will be your best friend.

The Radon Room

Most houses don't have a Radon Room, but we are lucky. This building, our home, was built on a concrete slab, they say, and when a house is built on a concrete slab, there's not much separating it from the bare-bones of Mother Earth. Traditionally, houses in New England are built upon a more three-dimensional sort of foundation, which are known as cellars. Cellars serve many purposes, including protection against geological shifts such as Frost Heaves, the phenomenon which in the wintertime causes our lead-footed friends, family and neighbors to slow down dramatically as they cross over that frustratingly corrugated patch of road down there by the Niles'. Cellars also insulate the house from beneathe, by existing in a state of perpetual emptiness, except when we store our bicycles down there, and maybe the gas grill, which we'll bring up come springtime. Actually, there are usually many items in the cellar, and sometimes they get wet, because sometimes cellars flood. Sometimes there are monsters, too, because cellars are poorly lit. The point being, though, that the cellar is a place where all the things we don't want in the house can go to feel like they're in the house, but really aren't, i.e. cold air, geological destruction, outside things, grimey water, evil, and less notably, yet ever so importantly, Radon.

New England houses are also traditionally furnished with poorly insulated windows. Many in the world might consider this a flaw in such a climate as ours, but there are two good reasons why it's not. Firstly, this feature allows cold air to get in, at least a little, so that we can have fires in our woodstoves in the winter, and snuggle up all cozy and content with hot cocoa and a book, and maybe stay there for 5 or 6 months, which is important to the well-being of Northerners. Secondly, the draught from the windows is evidence that air is flowing through the house, cleansing it of impurities and keeping it fresh as a brand new box of Cheez-Its, in a very 'Feng Shui' sort of way, and everyone knows Mainers won't do anything unless it's Feng Shui compatible. Having a draught going through the house is clearly as good a feature as the basement, and could even be said to be in cahoots with the great cavernous entity below, preventing anything that happens to get into the house from staying there for too long, diffusing potential danger to the inhabitants of the house. You might imagine the sedintariness that might overcome a house, and maybe even kill it's dwellers if the house had properly insulated windows.

So clearly you can see that the early architects of New England were thinking only of The People when they built their 'Cape Cods' and their 'Saltboxes.' Clearly each design that we now take for granted, and even sometimes complain about, is characteristic of perfection. But then some west-coastie comes along with his fancy pants ideas and 'new age' and 'environmental' concepts. He makes the coolest house ever. He makes the house that any creative entity in his or her right mind would love to live in, even if just for a moment. He comes, and he builds this house, our house, as it were, on this concrete slab, which cracks in the turmoil of Maine winter, and the yet-unnoted-upon tightly-sealed windows, and thinks the world of it and himself. But you see, in warm climates, windows do not need to be well insulated, because, well, isn't it obvious? So, this striking young lad from California, who noticed the draught in his cousin's uncle's brother's wife's house in Dover-Foxcroft, thought himself quite wise to build a draught-free house, quite energy-efficient indeed, as if the natives had never thought of it before. You can see why the tourists should watch themselves before getting too keen on making changes to our fine state. It's just like when the Brits colonized Australia and decided to build all the new houses with illustrious and large south-facing windows.

Additionally, Maine is a state consisting of a great Granite pluton. That is, there are rocks everywhere; in the street, in the woods, underwater, underground. Ledge is what we call it when it's underground, and it's fun when it curiously pokes its head up some spring and all of a sudden the children have new terrain on which to set up their GI Joes and Barbie Dolls. Aroostook County Barbie never caught on in the rest of the country. But usually the ledge stays underground, and what you don't realize is that it's toiling. It's coming up with a plan, just like the man who thought of Panama Canal. It's there thinking, not about pleasing the whims of children, but about causing them great medical misfortune, and not just in the form of skinned knees and stubbed toes.

No. The granite is thinking RADIOACTIVELY! It is devising ways to get into the house, no doubt, how to deceive its great enemies, the Cellar and the Poorly Insulated Windows. Most of the time, it fails, but in the event that a house is created with little-to-no cellar, and that little-to-no cellar happens to get a crack in it (as it most assuredly WILL if you live in a region with heavy frost-related ground shifting), and/or the house has poorly poorly insulated windows, such is ours, the granite sends in the Offense: RADON.

Radon is everywhere, but it doesn't matter unless it's confined, just like bad ideas and useless analogies. It is created when Uranium decays, and there is (or was-but now it's dead?) a lot of Uranium in soil and in rocks, like Granite. Really, there is a risk of it EVERYWHERE, and there is a warning put out by the federal goverment that goes a little something like this:

If you smoke and your home has high radon levels, your risk of lung cancer is especially high.

That's right. Especially high. That means that Radon's primary form of attack is a tumer, or at least the augmentation of an existing one, and so we feared only for our lives when we found that the radon level in our house was 7, which is not neutral as a lover of the pH-scale might think. Actually it is very high.

Fortunately for us, we at 9 Pine Needle Alley are a Social Democracy, so we submitted a referendum to the local House of Representatives, and then the Senate, and we all agreed that we didn't want to get cancer, especially from something not nearly as enjoyable as your common, everyday vices, like smoking or drinking too much coffee.

The problem was, though, that the government wouldn't fund us in our not wanting to get cancer. No one organized a walk, or sported green (the official color) ribbons. There was, however, a pretty good suggestion from our local Radon expert, which was to get a radon diffusing system. We did so, and the system is really nice, and works like this: a hole was drilled through the concrete slab, into the soil. The hole was shaped like female Radon to attract the Offending Radon, and lure it up into a Radon Refinery, which is kept in the Radon Room, underneathe the stairs in the house. The Radon Refinery mixes the radon with sugar and bleaches it white, essentially brainwashing it into assimilating with the rest of the air in the house. It works 90% of the time, and so now our Radon level is 4 instead of 7, but we'd like to get it down to at least a 2. Maybe we should eat more Subway sandwiches?

Despite the vague and varying tone of this piece of writing, Radon is a very serious (invisible) problem facing mankind today, especially in radically designed homes. The only invisible problems that are worse than Radon are Germs and Restless Spirits, both of which, unfortunately, we also have in our house. We need to be aware of the number of people who have DIED because of Radon and it's evil clan of overlords, Rocks. If you have stories about Radon, please write in and share. We want to hear your voice!

Dental

Ah, Maine...

I have so much energy that I don't know how to contain myself! I run around the house and make funny noises and wonder how it could ever be any other way, and also question whether it is from being home, amongst my family, where everyone is free to be you and me; or if it's an effect of simply being in Maine, my comfort climate, geography, horticulture, blood; or if it's from traveling and discovering newfound direction in my life. No doubt it is a combination of those, and any number of other factors. It is a warm spring, and that always brings me out of my shell. I have a month to relax at this wonderful house, before I go to Pinewoods to chop vegetables, play music, dance, swim (and get paid!), and sacrifice absolutely nothing for pure bliss. I am learning how to make a perfect soft-boiled egg, which yesterday came out a little too hard, and today came out a little too soft (Yes, I ate a raw egg), and so logically tomorrow's attempt will be just right (if German fairy tales have any substance). I also love toast, and now I have some lovely Marmelade from England, and I die of eating food that tastes so good every time I eat it, because it tastes so good.

I often have dreams in which my teeth fall out. They come out in big bulky pieces and feel like sea shells in my mouth, and I say to myself in the dream (every single time), "Oh no! I've dreamt that my teeth have come out so many times, and now it's REALLY HAPPENING!!!" And I wake up with a jolt and remain frightened until I fall back to sleep. Someone told me once that it was a sign of insecurity, but that never seemed quite right. Certainly, if anyone has insecurities, it's me (in the tradition of my English heritage, I presume), but but but, my TEETH don't know that. I had one such dream the other day, but only ONE tooth came out. I decided that it was finally time to consult some dream interpretation guides, just to see what they say, even though of COURSE they don't apply to me, because I wasn't there when they were written. All of the books said the same thing: fear of growing up, or becoming an adult.

Uh.

So here I am, happy as can bee, and all I can do is express myself by making things up and having most useless (but highly entertaining) conversations about squids and force fields and upsidedownness, and then bouncing from wall to wall at whim and not even being afraid to fart. I struggle to picture myself sitting with one leg tucked neatly behind the other as I sport a navy blue suit and talk about business matters and bar charts with people who wear ties to express their innermost feelings. That is my image of adulthood. No wonder I'm scared.

Just so you know...

I'm back in Maine, staying at Dad and Pam's STUNNING new house (see photos on Pam's blog at fiddlehedz.blogspot.com, though really they do the place no justice). I'm sad to have ended my adventure, and would like to spend much more time abroad, particularly in Sweden. But indeed, I am pleased to be back home. More later.