i know, i know, i know
A woman who does homebound tutoring in my library, after she asked me where I was from, and I responded Southeastern Kentucky, in the mountains.
This response made me so angry. I know she was trying to be complimentary, but she managed to sound condescending and dismissive of a whole creative and dynamic vernacular because it wasn’t the officially “correct” way to speak. It was a bunch of prescriptivist bullshit. We have employees at our library who speak “country” vernaculars, especially in casual conversation, and I find that they get across the message they’re trying to express, which means that they’ve successfully communicated despite the fact that they haven’t removed all of their double negatives.
I think vernacular and oddities of speech make spoken language extremely interesting and entertaining to hear, and the casual nature of conversation separates it from more formal written language, giving it verve and personality that writers spend entire lifetimes trying to duplicate in novel form.
And who determines “correct” speech, anyway? Editors of major publications? Scholars at renowned universities? Saying that one method of grammar and spelling is correct above all others is ridiculous - language, especially spoken language, is a fluid and abstract concept that adapts to trends and varies from town to town, from family to family, and from byte to byte. “You can’t have” = “You can’t have no” = “U no can haz.”
I realize that there have to be standards so that communication is possible, but I don’t think any tweed-suited scholar in the northeast has any business composing a paragraph in the latest Rules for Writers about how southeastern Kentucky dialects are inferior and incorrect. Weren’t the same scholars who later called Virginia Woolf a genius the same ones who denied her entrance to Oxford library? Scholarly opinion can be a dubious and outright false measurement of what is valuable and correct.
I will have you know that after this comment I, just to be difficult and defend my home region, let my Appalachian accent come back full force.
(via featherloom)
Perfect.
It stopped at the floor below mine, and a guy stepped on. He insisted on trading places with me (I was standing at the back), so he could “be chivelrous and let the ladies off first”.
Setting aside the ridiculousness of that moment, he then turned to the other woman in the elevator and said something like, “I believe in still showing chivalry.” We laugh and play along, the other woman even thanks him. Then he says to me, “You probably don’t even know what chivalry means. You’d probably have to look it up in the dictionary. Do you know what it means?”
“Yes,” I said, in the spirit of the tired I’m-so-young joke, “and I know what a Dictionary is, too.”
“Ha! That’s right.” Then confessing, “I look things up online.” *pause* “Do you know what an encyclopedia is?”
“I have a degree in library science. I know all the books.” By then we were at the lobby, and I could walk away, thank god (hearing the other woman say “I didn’t see that coming!” as I did).
Seriously, what the fuck? Since when is the game that I’m stupider and younger than you, and I just have to giggle and pretend? And if I don’t play along, I’m a frigid bitch? And since when is forcing someone to move an act of chivalry? Apparently I should have referred him to a dictionary, as his definition seems to be ‘treating women as though they’re dumber than you’.
I bet he felt good about himself, too. Like he’d done me a favor.
did you know you can’t “POP your cherry”? In this video i talk about:
what the hymen really is
how this myth is some sexist bullshit
and how to deal with your hymen the 1st time you have sex.<3
Woah, this girl is my new hero.
Great information about virginity and the role the gender plays in the way we construct virginity from the consistently informative Laci Green (no relation to the best of my knowledge).
I now love this girl.
A while ago, Brendan Adkins did this ingenious creative writing project on his Twitter account called #IsawU, in which he wrote out fake personals ads that doubled as 140 character short stories.
I was so delighted by them that I wheedled him into letting me turn them into an illustrated 16 page mini-comic! And by mini, I do mean mini. 2.75″ x 4.25″, to be exact!
You can get a copy this weekend at Table B-8 during the Stumptown Comics Fest!
My diet ended the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.
GPOY
(via troubadourk)
