Thursday, November 22, 2007
Have you got the nerve to give it up at the beginning? And does it hurt you?
Don't you hate it when it's late Thanksgiving evening, and, even though you KNOW that there's a whole refrigerator of delicious leftovers right there, all you can think about is how you really would love a bean burrito right now?

And also, isn't it funny how microwaves always have all kinds of fancy settings to defrost and refrost and nuke a small country, but no one really uses anything but the regular old "set time" features? Just imagine the sort of left-over rehabilitating power is untapped in this country! It's unreal, man. Totally unreal.

I've probably been hanging around to many English majors lately, because I was thinking about the power of language today, and it's always English majors who put those sort of thoughts into my head. You can't see it right now, but I'm shaking my fist at you and also giving you the skinny eyes.

I was thinking about how we--we, English-speakers--should pay less attention to the necessary prepositions which influence the way in which we must feel emotion. We are afraid of. We are surprised and disgusted by. We are sad about. We are also happy about, and we can be mad about, but more often we are mad at, however, it is not appropriate to be happy or sad at, which doesn't seem fair.
If you try to cleverly evade these linguistic restrictions, by just inserting that clever little period in early. For instance, "I'm sad." But, you can pretty much bet that unless you're just talking to yourself, the response that statement will be, "What are you sad about?"

Well, you should probably know that I'm happy at my sister right now. And at my cat. Also, I'm sad at my country all the time. And I'm afraid by the world and how big it is. And I'm mad. I am anxious at my classes this week, because I have sssssooo much stuff to turn in. Oh dear.


4 Comments:

Blogger Ryan Cooper said...

I love how microwave popcorn bags tell you not to use the popcorn button.

I'm confused at that. :D

Blogger grspain said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

Blogger Ryan said...

I enjoyed this muchly.

I'm always quite happy by you.

Blogger Grace said...

Hello, sunshine. I wanted Taco Bell all day Wednesday, knowing we had dinner waiting. I'm happy with you constantly; you're never far from my thoughts.

I promise I will make it to Tuscaloosa eventually. I miss you and the various other roman candles residing in your fair city.

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