Home means Nevada

Happy Halloween/Nevada Day!

Nevada Day is the greatest holiday in the world because it means we get the day off of school (and work, depending where you work) but we still get mail. And it's an extra day for Halloween shenanigans and, in my case, eating breakfast with near strangers at Super Burrito after sleeping at a strange house with four cats in it and then getting stranded downtown at about 1 pm in your Halloween costume and having to call your roommate for a ride. On top of bars open 24/7, the abundance of strip clubs and porno theatres and the ability to buy hard liquor and play slot machines in the grocery store, it is one of the best things about Nevada.

money money money money

A few weeks ago I had to submit a grant proposal to fund my thesis. I aimed pretty low, honestly, because I didn't really expect to get any money from it. I didn't work very hard on it and I didn't ask for much money. Anyway, I just received an email saying that they are going to fund me in the full amount I requested. Which means I'm going to probably buy about $300 or more in music in the coming weeks. It's going to be great.

Also. German slang is one of the most hilarious things I can think of:
cocaine = Nuttendiesel = hooker fuel.

Lavender Menace

Quickly:

Grant proposals are horrible. I don't look forward to a future in which I have to write a lot of them.

My GRE percentiles came in: my verbal score is in the 96^th percentile and my writing score is in the 97^th percentile. My math score was not quite so great, but I don't suppose that matters a lot.

Today is my birthday. YESSSS

(Hopefully I will have something more cerebral to say someday soon.)

Oh. I can now get a class M endorsement on my driver's license. Finally, I can legally ride my motorcycle.

phantom stripper

I've been thinking a lot about language lately, probably because I spend such a huge amount of time doing German homework, and also because one of my history professors brought something to my attention: dictionaries don't instruct us on how to use language, they catalogue and describe how we use language from other preexisting examples. This began to bother me a lot when I was studying for the GRE because they ask you to identify a lot of little nuances associated with certain words, but that implies that words have concrete and permanent definitions, and I don't think that's true.

Additionally, I was talking with one of my coworkers about grammar and which grammatical errors people use all the time bother us the most. In thinking about it later, though, how do languages evolve other than through the changing grammar and word use patterns of their users? So I say maybe we should be a little less resistant to change, especially if change lets us express ourselves more clearly.

Also: the GRE is over, but I'm not really sure how to interpret my scores. Anyway, that's one small step toward completing my grad school applications, and that's a bit of a relief.

On a personal note: assuming the person I'm dating is dating multiple people (which I assume is true) is it a promotion or a demotion to have been moved from Saturday to Friday this week? I don't know.

Lesson learned

I thought I was supposed to take the GRE on Saturday, but it turns out my registration didn't go through, so I had to reschedule for next Thursday. At least that means I have a few extra days in which not to study.

Today is the first meeting of my honors thesis class, which I suppose basically means milling around with some assholes and trying to convince the honors program director to let me go to faculty recitals instead of lectures.

Something I've been thinking about a little:

Was there any kind of music being produced in colonial Latin America? I mean, of course there must have been, but I would like to know what it was like and how it related to the contemporary classical music being produced in Europe and how it evolved and presumably diverged from European music.

Poor little Bessie may soon starve and die

Who is the audience for a version of "Somewhere Out There" sung by a little blind girl named Courtney on her album "Perfect in His Eyes"? Also, what meaning does a particular audience lend to a song like this?
Louis thinks maybe evangelical suburban soccer moms, but I think maybe widows (also evangelical) with lots of angel figurines and commemorative plates. Or, I suppose, another audience would be people such as me and Louis who appreciate these things in an ironic way or an academic way. What we both found surprising was that many members of the grad seminar liked it from the standpoint that she has a really lovely voice for little girl, and, being as many of them are music educators returning to school for their masters degrees, they wish their students could sing like that.
It also reminded me of a recording of the temperance movement era song "Father's a Drunkard and Mother is Dead" by Mrs. E.A. Parkhurst (or something similar) that I first heard at the beginning of last summer.

rokenroleg

It's my favorite Russian's birthday today.