What in the hell …

I don’t know much about beer, except that the beer I like I tend to like a lot - I like it very much, and I like to drink much of it. I’d like to have a better sense of what I do and don’t like and a better vocabulary to talk about it. I really, really like Newcastle brown ale, and Goose Island’s brown ale. I bought two other brown ales recently, thinking that “brown ale” meant more than it does, apparently. One of the two was okay, not as good as either Newcastle or Goose Island. I can’t remember what it was called. The other, Bell’s Best Brown Ale, didn’t taste good to me. So much so that I gave the other 5 bottles in the 6 pack away. My friend Matt works in a brewery, he tells me that I probably don’t like hops much. Hoppy beers make me unhoppy… ! Ha!

After I gave the beers to my neighbor I started thinking, when would I drink that beer? I’d definitely would drink it if I had kept it around the house but I wouldn’t have liked it. It’d be a first beer that I’d endure, not enjoy. I think it might be an okay second beer, or third beer. Then I got to thinking, what makes for a good second beer? To be clear here, “second beer” doesn’t mean “the second drink you have”, it’s the second type of beer you drink while drinking. So, if you have a pint of Guiness then a pint of Stella, the Stella is both the second drink and the second beer. If you have three pints of Guiness then a pint of Stella, your second drink and third drinks are Guiness, the Stella is your fourth drink and your second beer. I know I have tastes about what I like better in a second beer, but I’m not sure what they are, because I don’t drink very often anymore. I’d say this brown ale that I didn’t like would be a lousy first beer for me (because I don’t like how it tastes). It’d be an okay second beer, because by the time the second beer rolls around I’m in a more charitable mood. I think it’d totally work for a third beer, because the third beer mostly just has to be wet and beer-ish in flavor. Ideally it should be lighter too. Hmm.

Inconclusive. Clearly further inquiry is needed.

Little political or intellectual work but some cool stuff. Climbed a bit, sucked at it but did it. Tried some new beers (I like brown ales so I got two, neither are as good as Newcastle or Goose Island’s brown, one of them was really pretty crap - my friend Matt says I probably don’t like hops - the other was decent. I want to get to know better what exactly it is that I do and don’t like in these beers.) Tried some new cheese at the co-op, apparently there’s a whole world of cheese out there that I didn’t know about. Went to a women’s hockey game with my family, that was awesome, the baby loved it. Wrote two short IWW articles, came up with an idea that I like for a pamphlet collecting some workers power columns and an idea for an introduction trying to concretize our model a bit further. A friend and I did an awesome performance of two great children’s books that display something of a class perspective. Listened to side 1 of a conversational French cassette while holding my daughter. Bought a book on raising your kids bilingual. Bought a bunch of used children’s books in different languages (German, Spanish, Italian, French), figured out my daughter really likes books, already. Cooked a bad ass thanksgiving dinner for my mom and her husband and my grandma and my wife. My mom’s husband said “I’ll be honest, I expect to have to go to KFC afterward, but this was good! I’m surprised that vegetarian food can be this good.” I think the trick is to use lots of butter. I made three kinds of squash, beets, mashed potatos, some awesomely awesome stuffing, baked tofu, and a fantastic onion gravy. Also had rolls and sourdough bread and two kinds of pie (pumpkin and pecan) from the bakery by my place. It was a feast and a half, way too much food. Made a little progress on the doing push ups and pull ups front. Still at an embarassingly poor level of fitness, but better. I think I need to make more of an effort to get exercise, I’m back to insomnia sometimes now, if I got decent sleep the night before. That really sucks, it’s always sucked, but sleeps at an even higher premium now. Been having a pleasant and productive (at least for me!) correspondence with DH recently, and more discussion with my friend Pete on similar issues. Came up with a tentative work plan — a schedule! A revelation, I know. Basically I think I’d do well with more set times for political reading and writing and for when is NOT that stuff, and when is exercise and when is work and when is research for parenting stuff, etc etc. Discovered a new baby soothing hold. She’s less keen on the airplane hold now, she prefers now to be held to my chest facing out, I brace her head with one hand and support her body with the other. I sort of tuck her head under my chin too to give me more ability to handle the occasional sudden dives she makes. Bonus is that I can hum arpeggios and make up tunes to my limited ability, she seems to like the combination of the sound and the vibration on the back of her head when her head’s placed that way. Making more peace with the pace now and the difficulty in predicting how long things take me to do.

I have once again lived a compelling segment of the drama of human history.

Okay so I know I said I wasn’t fucking around anymore but sometimes I can’t help it, too often actually but I’d like to think that some of this sometimes is good for me and not in just a letting off steam sort of way but in a makes me a little smarter in a way kind of way. If you click on that second link, or if you read that post already, you will know I recently discovered garden path sentences. I think these are great, and/but they make my head hurt.

I decided to try to write one that contained global ambiguity (I learned this term today, here’s an example - “I know more scientists than Stephen Hawking,” this could mean either “I know scientists in addition to Stephen Hawking” or “I know more scientists than Stephen Hawking,” without additional context each interpretation is equally correct), and that referenced garden path sentences. Here’s what I came up with:

“The sentence led up the garden path made me very happy, more than my high school English teacher.”

This one isn’t self-referential, but I still like it.

The novel proved to be written by Calvino in a month was eaten by bookworms.

That one works, I think. I think it works… ambiguity because “in a month” could qualify “proved”, “written” or “eaten.” Garden path because of “was eaten by book worms.” It’d be funnier with “just like my high school English teacher” at the end.

I would now like one that contains a pun about the word “sentence”, one that references (either explicitly or more subtly) the Borges story “The Garden of Forking Paths” (which I should read again, because I don’t remember much except the title) - preferably this one will also contain a pun or some other joke of some sort, and one that begins with the phrase “What in the hell.” I’m not sure that last one is possible.

I’m not working on any of this tonight though cuz it’s late and I gotta walk my dog and really above all because that one I wrote made my brain feel tired and knotted.

Question: are garden path sentences paraprosdokians, or just sort of like them?

*sigh*

The “what it the hell elipse question” thing was meant to help me avoid the need to come up with titles but sometimes I can’t come up with a question to come after the elipse. Same problem as trying to come up with a title. Annoying.

I finished reading Hamerquist’s Althusser essay, took very fragmentary notes. I still haven’t even scratched the surface on my post on ch25 of v1, nor have I reviewed my posts on ch23 and 24. I get so little sleep and have so little time to read these days, I’m not sure when I’m going to get to that, let alone all this stuff. On the plus side, my daughter is amazing and beautiful. Yesterday she developed a new laugh, a high pitched squeak/shriek/chirp and today she graced me with it several times.

For now, new reading plan, at least for political stuff. I’m going to read these, in the following order, mostly more stuff by Hamerquist. My friend Pete and I are going to try to talk about this stuff together to formulate questions and responses. This too will no doubt be interrupted (for instance, as I read the last chapter or so of Commonwealth, and as I read Manituana on the bus), but whatever. I accomplish only laterally, by procrastination, and without goals I can’t procrastinate.

1. http://bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/64
and http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/books/fascism/shock.html

2. http://bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/69
and http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-islamic-radicalism-and-left.html

3. http://bringtheruckus.org/node/79 (Akuno first)

4. http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2009/02/paretsky-responds-to-thinking-and.html

5. http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2009/04/response-to-paretsky-21909.html

6. http://bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/63

7. http://bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/73

8. http://bringtheruckus.org/node/83

My new rule is that I don’t reply to electronic communications in which there is some disagreement until I have let 48 hours pass then I have read them a second time, unless it’s a decision making issue and time is important.

I recently stumbled onto the wikipedia entry for “garden path sentences.” Here’s an example of a garden path sentence from that entry:
The old man the boat.

Here’s another:
The horse raced past the barn fell.

There’s more. Reading the above two at first sort made the inside of my head throb (it made my brain hurt).

I mentioned this to an old friend today and he said “oh, it’s mental push ups. Cool.” Then he recommended the following as another version of mental pushups, for people who know how to count to ten in two languages or more.

Count to ten alternating languages. For instance:
One, dos, drei, four, cinco, sechs, seven, ocho, neun, ten.

Neat. The next step, I’ve not tried it, would be to do basic math problems in a similar fashion.

Trick question. It’s a self-evident good. (more…)

You should all go buy Manituana. It’s the latest novel by Wu Ming, at least the latest to be translated into English. I can’t speak to the contents of the novel because I haven’t read it yet. I just found out a moment ago that it was available now in the US, and I ordered my copy immediately on finding out. I’m sure it’s excellent, and I’ll post on it after I get it and read it. Their other work is awesome, though. I like their stuff so much that I used to volunteer a bit with my meager Spanish and Italian helping translate occasionally for their newsletter. I like their stuff so much that I plan to really get my Italian good someday (in like 5-10 years, most likely) and read all their other work that’s untranslated. I like their stuff so much that I’ve gone through some of it in Italian with a dictionary despite the agonizing slowness that makes for me right now.

If you haven’t already done so, you should also go buy their other novels in translation, Q and 54.

Their work is some of the only material in book form that I can think of that I can seriously say about it “this is a cultural product with political uses.”

See here for reviews of the newest novel and news on their book tour (they’re coming to the US but only to New York, sadly).

Now go buy Manituana.