Meet New Shoes!

If there ever was the perfect time to make a big purchase, it's the after-Christmas sales, especially for a wealthy woman like me. Buying anything on sale makes me happy, especially when it's something I really need. (You could go on forever arguing whether we really need much of anything.)

I figured that if I had proper shoes for winter running, I would no longer have any excuse not to go jogging all year round. Yesterday it was -5 celsius, nothing per se, but too cold for running in summer shoes which have a hole in them.

Besides, the padding has crumbled ages ago, and my feet are very unforgiving when it comes to cushioning the impact. Hence, I got me dese pretty uns:

Icebug Pytho L BUGrip

Carbon rubber soles - and carbide spikes which retract on hard ground and protrude on soft ground! Thermoplastic urethane for keeping the cold out and keeping dry! Nylon mesh lining for transferring sweat away from feet! Heel pad and forefoot inserts for cushioning and responsive toe-off! Midfoot supports for stability! Nylon shanks to provide torsional rigidity! Beautiful and reflective of light to give visibility during dark hours!

Like, !!!!!11111111

A Running Shoe's Anatomy.

A good running shoe should:

* have both heel and toe padding
* be one size too big to accommodate additional socks
* have laces that don't come undone
* have good ventilation in the summer, good insulation in the winter
* have a good grip in the winter
* not get wet in rain or slush.

I've got only two pairs of running shoes, one at least three years old. If you run a lot over the year, it's recommended to buy a new pair every year because the padding loses its effect. I haven't, because I'm such a scrooge. Maybe next spring.

They're both for summer use. I've been running a lot here in Hollola during my Christmas holiday, because it's the only kind of sports that can give me my endorphin fix.

I don't usually run in the winter, since I don't have proper shoes. Summer shoes get wet if there's no snow and it's raining, or worse, slush on the ground. Without snow there's often ice too, and summer shoes are simply too slippery. They're slightly slippery on snow too, but I don't mind it too much. I'm thankful for the snow and it looks pretty too.

I hadn't had a jog in weeks before I came here. Once I got running again I had a huge epiphany about what a wonderful thing it is. It's as close to heaven as you can get. I tend to forget that fact in the winter when I'm too busy with aerobics and circuit training.

Aerobics and especially circuit training are good, but nothing compares to running. If I had to define my happiest moment, it would be running along a country road, watching the fields slowly pass me by in the sunshine, listening to music or the steady rhythm of my feet hitting the ground repeatedly.

It's a perfect time to allow yourself to think. Let your mind wander off wherever it wants to go. Besides, I read that exercise increases blood flow in the brain and improves your ability to think clearly and effectively.

So really, I should get me a pair of winter running shoes. Shoes where my toes didn't freeze up or get wet, shoes which have a good grip. Last winter I gave it some serious thought, but I decided against it. They're so damn expensive and I wasn't sure if I would use them often enough to pay themselves back.

But this time, I got a sizeable sum in tax refund, and for the moment I'm wealthier than usual. All that money, it's just begging to be used! Keep the economy running, eh!

Hölkäsen pöläys.

Who is this guy called Hölkänen? And what exactly is "pöläys"?

I'd like to know.

Tired and tagged.

I'm incredibly tired right now. Incredibly, because I slept quite well. The first thing in the morning, however, I went to the Linna library reading room and read for two hours. It was so dark in there that I could barely stay awake.

Besides, the early hours of the day are the least effective for me. No matter how much this society is built on the assumption that all people just love to wake up early and can work effectively starting from 8 am, it's never going to be a reality in my case. Some people are simply more evening/night creatures, and they never catch the early worm. (Or whatever the hell that saying is.)

I don't remember anything from what I read, except I noticed some Canadianisms in the text. Always good to have ideas for possible new research projects.

So I got tagged by Amoena. I'll make an attempt at doing what I'm supposed to. I'll admit right away that I don't know any other bloggers well enough to tag them. I mean, I do read some blogs. But if I suddenly gave a comment that I tagged them, they'd probably be scared out of their wits. I'm a stalking kind of reader.

Anyhow. The rules, which I copied from Amoena:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

And the facts.

(1) I plan to write a science fiction novel one day. I'm already on page three.

(2) The only thing I miss about last summer are the frequent Messenger sessions with Amoena.

(3) There is a guy in my German class who(m) I'd like to ask out, but haven't worked up the courage yet. (Because let's face it, Finnish men almost never take the initiative. And Italian and French men far too often.)

(4) I'd like to become a mum before I turn 30. To hell with career, I want babies! (Actually I think I could have both.)

(5) I like to spend quality time with my little brother by watching horror movies. We don't care about bad ratings, as long as it's R-rated. If there are zombies, we're going to watch it.

(6) The same brother once gave me edible underpanties for a Christmas present. How sweet of him.

(7) I suck at math, but I was the only one in my class who scored full points in the algebra test. I like the simple beauty of equations.

So there. Over and out.

A Finite jest.

I read about the author David Foster Wallace in the paper. I'm glad somebody ordered his big hit, Infinite Jest, at the main library in Tampere. I have got to read that book when it's available.

I like the thought of a 1000-and-plus-pages book (with footnotes too!). Something alluring about them. If you like what you're reading, it's a wonderful feeling to know that it's going to last for a long while yet.

Wallace is dead now. He suffered from depression for 20 years until he finally killed himself at 46. So the columnist wonders why he did it, since he had a family, success with his career, a wonderful life history.

To my mind, the right question is why he didn't do it any sooner. Can you imagine 20 years of severe depression? How on earth did he do it? It doesn't matter how many wonderful things you have in your life if you're depressed. They don't help that much, sadly.

Sometimes I wonder how it's possible that I'm still hanging on here, and I'm barely 25. I can't imagine living like I have so far for 20 more years, so I don't imagine it. I just don't plan my life that far ahead, but I keep my hopes up. One thing at a time.

I got tagged by Amoena. I'll get down to that soon. I don't really understand what it means though. Is it like those letters that used to circulate among strangers, where you wrote something about yourself and sent it forward?

You know, back when people still wrote letters. In case you don't know, they're these pieces of paper with writing on them. Writing that was written with a pen. Handwritten. Can you imagine?

I'm a little worried about my letter writing hobby. I've exchanged letters with my dear cousin for 16 years now, and we've always written at least once or twice a year. Now that she lives in the same town, I wonder if she'll want to keep it up. Well, maybe we'll continue as soon as we live in different towns again.

Almost left my values at the desk.

I'm a little offended now because I didn't get that ticket in the mail that informs/reminds me that I'm entitled to vote in the local elections. Hello, I've voted before - what are they trying to tell me?

Anyways. I found a candidate after all, and since the university library, Linna (my mind always goes to "prison", instead of the writer Linna), had an advance voting booth, I figured why not.

I'd decided on the person already, but this morning I got an ad from another candidate. He had a special ad for people living in my area, and there he mentioned that he's against a certain project that nobody in the neighbourhood wants.

For a moment, I was tempted. Something concrete like that would be so easy to have as your basis in voting. But I couldn't leave my values at the desk (as some Parisian hotel allegedly asked their customers to do). I can see through his populist tactics.

He probably had a special ad for every region in this town (Tampere is a town, not a city, no matter how much they try to fool us), and had something to be against or promote there, and fish in votes.

Looking more closely at the ad, with lots of text and nice pictures, I didn't get that feeling that I could trust that person. I want the ad to somehow radiate honesty, humbleness and non-populism. Sometimes a dash of populism is refreshing, but only acceptable if the voter is made aware of it.

It's extremely annoying how some people underestimate my ability to see through the visual and verbal rhetoric of their ads. So I tend to go for people who have an endearingly clumsy, simple and bland ad, which nevertheless says everything I need to know. I found the candidate first, and only then did I notice that he's also from the right party too. Perfect.

The last time I voted, it was where I grew up. All the candidates were middle-aged and didn't really resonate anything in me. I voted for a person whose ideals I can't stand nowadays.

Voting is such an ambiguous issue for me. It's so hard to know whether you're truly having an effect on the things you want or not. Most candidates you don't even know until they start advertising, so you tend to know only what the ads tell you, or what they're telling you while they're campaigning. I'd think that they're not quite in their normal behaviour in that position.

Not voting makes me feel bad, because it's not like I'm protesting or anything. It would be out of laziness and ignorance and not-giving-a-shitness. But if I vote, I always feel like I could have known just a little bit more, that I didn't make as informed a decision as I'd like to.

I read about a study that people who are interested in politics and follow up on those issues on a daily basis and know a lot about what's going on, actually think (and probably know as well) that they have a lot of impact by voting. They know the mechanisms on all governmental levels, so they know which people can change which things and where, so they target their votes accordingly in different elections.

But if you're like me who doesn't really know that much, it feels like I'm shooting in the dark. It seems so likely that I might be causing more harm to issues close to my heart by voting than not voting, because I might be voting for the wrong person, simply because I didn't look that much into it.

So it's really more about being able to say that yes, I did vote. My conscience is clear now. But actually I think, hope, that the person I voted can't be too wide off the mark.

Stalking is only human.

I can't believe how much traffic my now-defunct blog is getting. The two that are actually alive, not so much. Not that I really care how many visitors I get. I'm losing my interest somewhat in blogging.

At least it's mostly irrelevant traffic on the old blog. In the sense that Google, or some other search engine, has directed people there, even though it's not what they were looking for. Like someone was searching for Van Gogh or Gallen Kallela, and they end up at my blog. I feel sorry for those people.

Then again, I can't believe how search engine-challenged so many people are. I rarely ever have to click on a link to know if it's relevant or not. I can usually tell after a second or two if the search results as a whole are relevant.

I've noticed some people can waste as much as 20 seconds on looking at their results, before they notice that their search words may not have been correctly spelled, or simply unsuitable for their purposes. It's incredible.

Yes, I stalk my visitors a teensy, tiny bit. I think it's normal.

Like I enjoy watching every move that Avril Lavigne makes. I wonder if it's making me regress a little every time I watch videos or pictures of her. I just can't see anything wrong in being infatuated with a female singer for, hmm, six years now?

I only wish she'd grow up a little more and start dressing like people her age. She's only a year younger than me. Wearing clothes from her own brand, aimed at 12-15 year olds by the looks of them, is simply not cool with me. But I also love the fact that she's so eccentric.

Yesterday the flu that has been trying to get me for over a week, finally got me. I was so nauseous and tired that I didn't do anything else but sleep, eat and watch all the Avril stuff I have on my laptop. So sinfully stupid and silly and oh so fun.

I was too tired to cook, but I had these tea crumpets in the freezer. I had put cottage cheese in them, following a tip from Amoena. I was surprised to find that they were really tasty. Especially with some leftover cheese melted on top.

Oh, Canada!

I'm interested in Canada and Canadians. It's a little difficult to explain why exactly. I can't remember when I got first interested in them, or why.

I can tell you that I like their dry sense of self-irony. I like their nature. I like their literature. I like their music. But Canadians themselves find it difficult to define themselves. Usually it's by defining what they are not - at least not Americans. So maybe it isn't so surprising that I can't put my finger on why they fascinate me.

I can truly appreciate the fact that their government and everything about their country is so well documented. They have all these wonderful sources online, available free for anyone to use! There are archival materials on, pretty much anything you might be interested in.

The annoying thing is, they're usually in pdf files, as you might expect. A colleague of mine (I don't want to describe people I know in too much detail so I'll use such a grand term) complained in his dissertation that there is a worrying tendency of uploading texts online in pdf files, rather than transcribing them at all.

It's something only a corpus linguist would complain about, but I completely sympathize now. For anyone else but a corpus linguist, pdfs are usually good enough. But they're simply not viable for including in language corpora!

I got hold of this splendid corpus of present-day Canadian English. But since I'm going to have a diachronic dimension in my dissertation, it would make sense to have historical Canadian English as well. Sadly, there is only one such historical corpus in existence so far, and even that isn't available to anyone else but its creators.

Since the aforementioned colleague collected a corpus of hiw own for his dissertation project, and since I helped categorize and update it, I'm not too shy about the idea of compiling a corpus of my own.

But finding old Canadian English online in a reliable format is such a hopeless task. If you find something that has been transcribed, there's always the concern about whether it has been modernized or not. If a text is only available as a pdf file, it's pretty much of no use, unless I transcribe it myself.

I'm not really afraid of doing a lot work for my project. I wouldn't mind transcribing texts in principle. The problem is that I know that it would probably postpone the gathering of my actual research data too far in the future.

If I were to do so much work, I would have to take into account so many issues related to corpus compilation. There are numerous different views on how one should compile a corpus.

Some are willing to overlook any bias in the selection of the texts, in their length and text type, register, time of publication, anything that might affect the language of a text in relation to any other texts.

Others believe that especially a diachronic corpus should be carefully constructed so that the researcher doesn't have to worry about distortions in their data sets. Personally I think that such corpora may lull the researcher too much into believing that whatever the corpus throws up, it must be the final truth.

On the other hand, it isn't entirely straightforward to take into account everything by yourself, especially if you want to create quantitative illustrations of your data. It's particularly annoying when you're using many different corpora that were compiled according to completely different parameters, yet you'd like to compare them.

So I suppose there isn't much I can do except try my luck with getting my hands on that already existing historical corpus. Always worth a try.

It's global warming, what is wrong with people?!

Another of those posts where I complain about the excessive heating, the rule here in Finland. You know, the global warming is upon us, so WE NEED TO HEAT MORE! Waste even MORE energy! We have the third biggest ecological footprint in the world - so let's make it even BIGGER! There's a thought right?!

I got a note from the landlord, like everyone else in the building, advising me to LOWER my room temperature to 20-22 degrees celsius, and 18-20 in the bedroom. Sounds reasonable right?

NO. The room temperature in my one-room-plus-kitchen-plus-bathroom apartment is never AS HIGH as 18 degrees! So there's NO WAY IN HELL I'm going to DECREASE my living comfort by RAISING the frigging room temperature!!!!!

I have a little fever now so these things really make my blood boil even easier.

I think I'll start boycotting Koskikeskus in Tampere. Last week I went in for only 10 MINUTES and I had to take off my jacket and sweater immediately because I was about to faint, literally! And after I got what I needed, I went to stand outside for a couple of minutes in nothing but a tank top, because I was still too hot from spending as long as 10 minutes inside Koskikeskus!

Wtf is wrong with people here, seriously?! Who the hell decided that too hot is somehow supposed to be comfortable and necessary?! Do Finnish people not know that there are such things as CLOTHES, that you can, like, PUT ON if you're too cold?! And just put on two sweaters if you need to, what's wrong with that?!

I'm starting to think that living in Britain wouldn't be such a bad thing after all. They may not have all things sorted out as regards comfortable living, but at least they are not trying to fry themselves!

"Suggest argue, because only in a dispute born truth."

Doesn't that almost make sense?

It's the wisest thing a spammer has "said" in my comments section. If only their comments were always this "smart", I wouldn't mind deleting them as much.

We quest for a grail of illusive perfection

I no longer regret joining the Linguist List. Recently a rather fiery discussion erupted concerning a review of the book Chomsky's Minimalism.

The main bone of contention was about whether semantics can come after syntax, i.e. whether the human mind creates syntactical structures first and infers the semantics from them only when reading or hearing them.

Personally I believe syntax and semantics are intertwined from the start, but I'm not really one to comment on the issue with any deep insight.

Be that as it may, it's always exciting to see linguists go ballistic. Most of the time, what linguists write in research papers and books is fairly dry.

It's not because the authors can't write in an interesting way. It's simply that it's practically impossible to use colourful language in linguistics without becoming too obscure. Not to mention that in all likeness you'd end up being frowned upon for not taking things seriously enough.

As in this case, the discussion got heated because someone not too informed in the field was stating their opinions a tad too strongly, not disrespectfully but somewhere along the way.

So of course people get insulted and they retort. Whoever started it will as a result get insulted back, because their pride is at stake. It isn't easy for anyone to admit that they're in the wrong and then apologise.

I sympathise and hope that I'll never be in that position. It's not likely, since I rarely feel the need to persuade other people to see things my way, let alone to inform them voluntarily about my opinions.

This incident reminded me of when I was doing background reading on my thesis. I found a couple of articles back from the 1970s where two authors exchanged extremely caustic language in a couple of issues of a linguistics journal. I recall someone referring to this exchange as some kind of "wars", I wish I could remember the exact term.

It was like reading an exciting story, biting your lip as you read on to see what the other person will have to say next about some particularly hurtful choice of term on the other's part. I shouldn't have fun at the expense of somebody else's hurt feelings, but I did.

It was such a rare, precious discussion because it had gotten so personal. Again, I hope no one will ever start throwing dirt on anything I might publish one day. Of course you shouldn't take it personally when the criticism is matter-of-fact and doesn't attack your person, but usually that's impossible.

I know that even very experienced linguists take criticism personally, even though rationally they know they shouldn't when it hasn't been intended as personal in any way. Especially if someone is questioning your competence in your own field, how could you not take insult. Just human nature I suppose.

It's a fine line to tread in general, making a text interesting and accessible while trying to remain scientific, accurate and credible enough. I think it can be done, however. One of my ambitions with my dissertation (the topic of which I haven't even chosen yet) is to make the text much less dry than in my thesis.

I truly believe that blogging has helped me improve my English. It gives an effortless opportunity and a reason to write more than I normally would.

What's more, my blogs are the only place I get to use less formal English. I think I'm on my way to finding that golden middle road to travel when writing matter-of-fact, yet lively language.

Falstaff's nose and the babble of green fields

Othello by Mikko Viherjuuri was not quite what I expected. It reminded me of why I don't go see plays much.

I don't get the overacting, especially when it isn't done all the way through. At times I was reminded of my favourite soapie, Days of Our Lives. If I want to see overacting, I'll watch that show. And they do it better yet!

The director explains in the programme that he had to translate the play into plain, unlyrical Finnish, because the play is notoriously "mythical" (tarunomainen) and wouldn't make much sense for most people. I don't understand his choice of term there, though I understand what he's saying.

But still, he left some key parts in the play "mythical", so as not to dampen their dramatic effect. I'm not sure what I think about those scenes. They went as over the top as Days of Our Lives, which I love to no end, so I suppose in principle I liked those parts. I guess my problem with it is simply the inconsistency.

The director also claims that de-mythifying the play has made Othello's character more believable. Not in my opinion. I couldn't understand how gullible he was. He was probably pathologically jealous and possessive is all I can think of.

I suspect it also made it harder to understand the characters because the director removed most of the monologues. That's how Shakespeare I suppose showed to the viewer how the characters' logic and thinking worked. Leave them out and you have far less to work from.

What's great though is that it made me realize how soap operas are actually keeping alive 400 years old dramatic traditions! So why are they looked down upon so much? Why won't so many people admit to watching them?

If you really think about it, it's not like they don't have depth of meaning to them. Just think about how everything happens in circles in soapies. The basic pattern is that people hook up, they fall out, they hook up again, sometimes with the same people and sometimes not.

Sometimes they die, and sometimes they come back alive. And again and again. It all reminds me of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. In the play, two characters wait in the same nondescript place everyday for someone called Godot, but he never arrives.

They try to entertain themselves, but their days are pretty much the same. The play really has no ending or beginning because we start from the middle of their waiting, and stop before Godot has arrived. They'll stay in their circular existence for Godot knows how long.

Just like Vladimir and Estragon are doomed to do the same thing over and over, soapie characters are doomed to their lives of neverending drama and love triangles, quadrangles, whatever. I think Shakespeare would have approved, so why don't you.

Random newsflash

I did it. I figured out how to move around the blog title and description.

Not only that, but I managed to move the post footer away from the post's body! I can put my mind to rest now.

How noble in reason, infinite in faculties; Or, what a good Shakespeare heretic makes*

No worries ‒ the earlier post today was just a hoax. This is what I've been planning to post for a while now. The upside about having to wait a week to post anything is that I'll have something in my secret reserves for the whole coming year, if things go as planned. They never do, which is exactly why plans are needed, as a partial remedy.

Even though I may not be reaching my target readership with these kind of posts, I'm going to keep up with this silly Shakespeare-related babble. I find everything about this literary icon endlessly amusing, ever since I learned about the authorship question. Oh, it's almost too juicy sometimes.

Of course, many will be bored to death with this. I realize that my posts look rather long, but why is it that text is somehow less accessible in large amounts on a computer screen, on a website (sorry, blog)? I might shrink the font size in the future, to make my rantings look nice and concise.

But it's my blog, my power, my kingdom and my horse that I'll kiddy up any way I wish to go. In the name of myself, this blog and the holy ghost of Shakespeare, whoever s/he was. Amen.

So the other day it occurred to me to search for videos related to the Shakespeare Authorship question (wholly deserving of the capital letters right) on Youtube. Nothing too original came up, except for this fine piece of someone playing Edward de Vere.

There's also the taping of the mock trial in Washington. The audience will apparently laugh at anything. Some people just listen and wait for anything to laugh at, so as not to give an impression of having no sense of humour. Silly if you ask me.

Then I ran into John Hudson's theory of Emilia Lanier as Shakespeare. Or rather, his "discovery". Finally a candidate I'd love to believe in. What if Shakespeare was a woman? Wouldn't that be so cool?

Seriously speaking, I still know too little of the issue to vouch for any certain candidate. I'm still not sure I have to. The agnostic camp may not be a whole lot of fun, but at least I know I don't have any ulterior motives behind every statement I might make.

("Edward de Vere" from aforementioned Youtube video)

Earlier this week I read a book pertaining to methods in historical study. There were many points that struck a chord in me, thinking back to writing research papers of any kind. There was something about being able to relate to the people in the past, in order to draw the right conclusions about anything they did, to do justice to them when writing about them.

When I was writing on the authorship question, this aspect puzzled me. Who exactly should I try to relate to? Shakespeare, whoever s/he was, and his/her contemporaries, or the authorship question enthusiasts? If the latter, it looks like I failed miserably. It put me off how so many of these researchers were trumpeting their respective candidate without seeming to have much of self-criticism. Once they had made up their mind about their choice of candidate, they turned on the defensive and overly assertive gear.

Now that I think about it, the strong rhetoric is probably partly due to the publicity that the question has received. In addition to multitudes of books by professionals and amateurs (here meaning simply someone without a scholarly background), there are also websites galore that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, any time. In public, you obviously have to make your statement without hesitation if you want to get it through to people. They'll have none of this hedging that is so natural and even imperative in the scientific way of writing.

Another interesting point in the book was something about certainty with your research results. It reminded me of what was said in a book on the history of childhood. Something along the lines that childhood historians often wake up in cold sweat in the dark of the night when realizing how thin a line separates their work from fiction.

(What came up with "hysteria + rhetoric" on Google Image search)

I wonder if there isn't something of this kind of hysteria present in the rhetoric of the authorship scholars and researchers. If you're going to spend years on studying an author's work, you don't want to be held in an eternal state of suspense as to who it is you're studying, even if it doesn't always matter in literary analysis.

It could also be the case that these brits and americans simply write differently from what I'm used to reading. It's strange, though, since I rarely read anything in any other language than English. You'd think I was used to it by now. It must be related to the genre of writing, i.e. books aimed at a popular audience, as well as internet websites.

So don't be fooled by Hudson's less than convincing case on that video. Calling the Stratford Shakespeare "Shaksper" would make anyone sound a little cuckoo. His website is more impressive (takes a while to load, be warned).

Besides, "there are just too many coincidences here"! Wow, I was instantly won over by that particular statement! She was a known feminist, a Jew, used De Pisan as a source as did Shakespeare and ‒ gasp ‒ was mistress to Henry Carey, who was the patron of the acting company Lord Chamberlain's Men, which performed Shakespeare's plays among others. It boggles the mind!

As sugar at the bottom, she even included the names of important people in her life in the plays, in the form of clever puns. To show to the posterity that it was her who wrote them. It can't get any more obvious than that.


It's the cumulative argument all over again. A large number of coincidences sharing one common denominator must by laws of nature entail truthfulness of the original premise! It's like horoscopes: the parameters are so loosely defined that they'll fit any person to a tempting degree.

(Was Emilia Lanier Shakespeare - the most brilliant hermafroditic literary genius in the world?)

Emilia Lanier was not a complete stranger to me. Earlier, she's been identified as the "Dark Lady" of the sonnets. For instance, Michael Wood (2003, In Search of Shakespeare) reckoned that Shakespeare might have had an affair with this woman when living in London, away from his wife and children in Stratford.

Maybe she's the one who gave Shakespeare syphilis (again proposed by mr. Wood), so as a result the 40-something Shakespeare described himself as old and decrepit in the sonnets. Wouldn't that explain everything so neatly? In your face, Oxfordian heretics!

Hudson connects Lanier with Shakespeare because of her background in music, among other things. Her family performed in court. And what d'you know: Shakespeare's plays are "the most musical" in England! Witness "nearly 2000 musical references" and "300 different musical terms" - clearly proof that Shakespeare the author must have been a professional musician, or connected to such people.

Obviously I don't dare to argue on this with Hudson, who holds a certificate in a Shakespeare Institute, who reviews for a Shakespeare journal, and who is writing a thesis on a Shakespeare play. He must know the plays far better than I ever could.

Yet I can't help wondering, how come is it that I keep bumping into these fabulous figures and almost incredible assessments of the nature and vocabulary of Shakespeare's plays. It all makes the (wo)man sound completely inhuman in his boundless abilities and knowledge of everything there is to know in the world.

Taking a wild guess, if I had a look at the list of the references and terms, I would probably find perhaps 50 quotes of the word "music", or some musical instrument. Surely, if you refer to music and musical instruments a lot, it means you must be musically talented. Right?

Music, lute, piano, violin, string, chord, note, minor, major, melody. What if I added a string of musical terms at the end of each of my posts? Or better, sprinkled them here and there to spice up my language? If some day some future historian for some reason created a corpus of my posts and started searching for musical terms, they could conclude that I was a very musical person. There could simply be no other explanation.

*Ever wonder why 19th century novels nearly always seem to have subtitles starting with "or, [yada yada yada]"? I have. Did the authors have trouble making up their minds about the title, or were they just trying to be as informative as possible?

(The first picture shamelessly ripped from the Youtube video; the second picture from John Hudson's website.)

Marred

I strained my transverse abdominal muscle. I think. It's not the rectus abdominis, but it could also be either of the obliques. It hurts to inhale. I didn't think it would be possible to strain your abs, since they so rarely even become sore, no matter how much you try to punish them. It's the most difficult muscle group to work out, because they get used to exercising so easily.

And all because I was so disappointed with the aerobics class yesterday. It was supposed to be the only one during the week that actually can improve my fitness, but the instructor was ill again and her replacement was less than adequate. Most aerobics instructors seem to think that female university students are in a rotten shape, so the classes don't give much of a challenge.

So I go home after spending 1,5 hours on doing practically nothing worthwhile and I have to do a full workout at home myself. Resulting in said trauma on my poor abdomen. I didn't have time to go jogging anymore, which pisses me off immensely. I'm really deprived exercise-wise, and it tends to lead to sky high aggression levels.

If the coming winter is the same as the last time, I'll be able to continue jogging after new year's, so that's kind of positive, even though I love the snow and I missed it last winter.

If there's snow, I could of course go skiing, but going skiing in the nearest Kauppi woods would only make me angry. Skiing Finns are simply unbearably annoying, and since Kauppi is their natural habitat, it would be inevitable to meet many of them. So no.

I'm considering starting swimming this year. If only it didn't cost so damn much.

A Myth that I have to believe in

(If you think this post looks a bit on the long side, you're hallusinating.)

It's that time of year again. Grab a pencil and paper and try to make sense of the syllabi, trying desperately to cram everything into the timetable. Frankly, I'm kind of fed up with it all. It's not that the courses aren't interesting, I've just had it up to here with this student life, going to lectures and everything else just as meaningless. What I really want is a) get a job or b) start my research for real. I can't do all three at the same time. I can be efficient and energetic and hardworking, but only when I'm doing something tangible, like writing.

To make it more annoying, the most interesting courses always overlap. I really wanted to take the art history course on "Love and evil", but at least I can take the one on 19th century Finnish art. There's also going to be a Shakespeare recital by the Arts department, sonnet 116. It's an offspring from a collaboration, "Art and Disease", between the departments of Arts and Medicine, strangely enough.

I ended up reading more about the programme. They have themes like artists and their illnesses, art as therapy, doctors as artists. They mention that Kalle Achté has claimed in the Kanava magazine that depression and hypomania can increase creativity.

It's certainly a cliché that artists are mentally and sometimes also physically tormented, and channel their illbeing into wonderful art. Yet intuitively thinking, there must be at least a grain of truth to it. If you've ever painted or drawn or done anything else creative, you'll know how you need to be completely focused.

The process is immersive, all your thoughts are directed at thinking of what you're going to do and how. There is no outside world during that time, though of course it can remind you of itself in a less than perfect environment. So creating art is naturally very relaxing in the sense that you're forced to forget all your worries. Which can be therapeutic, I guess. What the doctor ordered, not so often.

Personally, I'm not sure if an anguished or depressed state of mind is necessarily useful. Being depressed basically shuts down your brain and you become this zombie that is unable to react to or do anything. If you're angry or angsty, on the other hand, it can spell doom for your brush if you channel that energy into aggressive strokes.

Being excited and happy, however, seems to enable the best results. So hypomania, why not? Just pray you'll have it if you're a professional artist, hmm?

As much as I hate all these romanticized myths about any profession, be it artist, scientist, doctor, I'm slowly beginning to appreciate the conventional, stereotypical views on art and artists. I haven't quite found my golden middle road between dismissing art theory as hopelessly relativistic, self-interested and autoerotic rubbish on the one hand, and devouring and absorbing it completely as something most divine and sublime on the other.

I seem to be treading the muddy soil somewhere along the way across the noman's land, twists and turns aplenty. I make occasional jabs at intertextual, psychological and other kinds of nonsensical interpretations, but always make sure to keep my bearings by glancing back at the beacon of purely visual aesthetical pleasure.

My personality tends towards extremes, but I truly believe in moderation. Yet I wonder if art isn't a playground to allow for excess, to revel in it. By the looks of it, you'd think so today. But was it always like that? Did cave paintings try to create discussion in the society, to break familiar lines of thinking? Or how about still lives, aren't they just about the most controversial thing you've ever seen?

Much of art is still created for the purpose of hanging it up on your living room wall. Few people buy art that is disturbing or unsettling. Artists need to eat too, and since the more conventional art forms and styles sell better, they're here to stay.

I often think back to a visit to Juhani Honkanen's atelier years ago. I didn't care much for his scenery paintings. Your run-of-the-mill, garden-variety landscapes of Finnish woods, thunder clouds on the sky, dark pines and firs towering over the viewer, the random heather bush on the side. To quote the Joker: why so serious? I don't understand why much of the nature scenery has to be so sombre and gloomy, what with all the impending storms on the sky.

I prefer his abstract and surreal paintings, even though I can't usually stand surreal art (which in my opinion is quasi-creative expression at its most contrived, repressed, stifled and boring). He's quite decent at portraits as well, especially the more adventurous ones. But guess what? At the exhibition, he'd only sold many of the sceneries, but none of the abstract or surreal ones.

I don't blame people for not wanting to see pictures of naked people swimming through a starry sky when they're eating their morning cereal. I wouldn't. Only I couldn't understand why the abstract art didn't sell. Few people today are so visually challenged as to not be able to appreciate abstract art at some basic, purely aesthetical level.

Whatever the reason, by way of summary: art and its message lose sight of each other as soon as a work of art is sold to a private person. The message withers away, and in comes comfort and normalcy. So does art have to create imbalance, to unsettle? Does conventional, aesthetically purely instrumental art gnaw away at the foundations of "serious" art, simply by being commercially more viable?

I hope not. Art with a message is usually more fun.

Auld lang syne, Mr. von Schlegel's turn of phrase!

I know it's been only three days since my last post, but I'll soon revert back to my one-post-per-week policy anyway. Take this as a warning that in the future it may not be worth the trouble checking back here more than twice a week, at the most. Unless you want to explore the archives and discover the less than glorious past of this blog. Actually you should, if you only like the paintings. There's much less of these boring ramblings of mine over last winter.

Down to business it is. As I mentioned in my previous post, in Munich I bought an old German translation of Shakespeare's King Henry IV Part 1 AND 2 (I noticed later that both were included). I was annoyed to find no mention of when the book was printed.

I could guess that it must be old, at least -ish, judging by the yellowish paper and the ribbon bookmark (those ribbons you only find in Bibles these days), let alone the very-old-and-Gothic-looking font of the German text. Strangely, the English text is in a more modern font.

The translator, August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845), a poet himself, is still considered one of the best German translators of Shakespeare, according to Wikipedia. Someone else apparently thinks that Schlegel's translation is remarkably different from the original, for example as regards the verse style. Shakespeare often wrote in blank verse, which in his case means he wrote with an unrhymed iambic pentametre. This writer says that Schlegel transformed the blank verse into "the iambic pentametre with either male or female cadence", i.e. 10 or 11 syllables on each line.

Now I'm not very well-versed in these technicalities of poetic composition, but is the iambic pentametre with male or female cadence really so strikingly different from the regular one, which has ten syllables on a line? Anyone care to explain this to me? But be that as it may, I can appreciate the various problems Schlegel must have had, considering how different English and German are when it comes to word order and syllabic structure.

(August Wilhelm von Schlegel)

As for my problem of dating the volume. Schlegel's Shakespeare translations span the years 1797-1810. König Heinrich der Vierte was published in 1800. Obviously there have been reprints, through the 19th century until around the time of WWII. The later reprints, however, all seem to be collections including several plays. But I'm not sure whether that means that they were still printed as individual volumes or as a single book.

Next I tried to find information on the publisher, Der Tempel Verlag. It was founded in 1909, so my book can't be more than almost a hundred years old – not much, eh? Apart from these tiny parsels of information, google really isn't almighty when it comes to finding bibliographical information. I don't mean just old books, but even more recent ones are surprisingly non-existent in the virtual world of search engines. Yet things, or even people, aren't supposed to be important if you can't google them. Fiddlesticks,* I say!

My final resort was the university library's online search engine(s). It's a real drag to go through all sorts of collections on god knows how many different portals, because for each search it takes so long to process. The end result still zilch. I'm slightly disheartened now with my less than resourceful detective skills.

Something good came out of all this though: I stumbled upon a website which has pictures and transcriptions of American diaries from late 19th to early 20th century: www.writtenbyhand.com. Perhaps not eligible for including in a corpus, but interesting nevertheless.

(Picture from Written by Hand Manuscript Americana)

Speaking of corpora, it occurred to me that there might be a possibility of compiling an Edward de Verean corpus for the purposes of comparing his language with Shakespeare's. I definitely need to look into it, since it would make for such an exhilarating research project. I know some websites with transcriptions of his personal letters, draft interrogatories (whatever those are) and memoranda, so all I need to do is find out if they're up for grabs or not.

I do know of one linguistic comparison between these authors, aided by a computer, using statistical methods: Was Oxford Shakespeare? A Computer-aided Analysis. Needless to say, these guys with all their knowledge of statistics still err somewhat in other methodological issues. They assume too much, take so much for granted, and any complexities that don't quite fit are pummeled flat. All in a day's work for anti- or pro-Shakespeareans alike!

*Another Shakespearean term, from no other than 1 Henry IV! Says Falstaff, "Heigh, heigh, the Deuill rides vpon a Fiddlesticke: what's the matter?" Of course, not quite in the same sense as in present-day use.

Hawt and bothered, with every fibre of my being

I'm finally experiencing my definition of a true summer: +30 and sunshine all day long! I wish I'd known earlier that all I had to do was come to Germany. I wouldn't mind at all having a summer house here. Perhaps if I married someone rich. A rich German to be more precise.

I'd love to stay the whole week, to see what the workshops are like, but unfortunately I didn't expect to enjoy myself this much here. I like this a lot better than my usual visits to foreign countries, which almost always are package holidays.

It's nice to combine business and pleasure, or rather, educating the mind as well as your soul. What I don't like about package holidays is that the schedules for excursions are so rigid and you have to wake up very early. Here I am actually fully awake and appreciative of everything because I'm not sleep deprived.

It was a complete surprise to me to see so many BIG names on the programme. I had no idea ICEHL was one of the very few and precious conferences on English historical linguistics, or even historical linguistics in general! Someone said to me that it was very ballsy of me to come here and give my very first presentation in such a prominent conference, without having even started on my dissertation yet. It's funny because I didn't think of it like that at all. I was just trying my luck without knowing anything about this event beforehand. I'm glad I did.

What's also funny is that this nice man came to talk to me the first day, probably because I looked a little lost, and we had a nice chat. His name sounded familiar. Yesterday he gave a plenary talk, and it turns out he's the chief etymologist of the Oxford English Dictionary! The lecture was useful in the sense that suddenly I realized, seeing this actual person discussing his work, how there are real people behind dictionaries. In the end it's their personal opinions and analyses that are often taken at face value.

I bought King Henry the IV Part 1 in English with a German translation. Only 5€ (it's ancient), and I thought I could start learning German by reading one of my favourites. Just for the laugh, really.

Crushed by a cartwheel

I'm getting nervous about the presentation. One week away. I finished writing the powerpoint slides at around 1 am last night. Now I need to write notes or something to flesh it out.

I know that many presenters read straight from a paper in front of them. It won't make for a memorable presentation, but suffices to get your point across. People won't shoot you down for doing that. I wish I could do it like that, it would be so much easier, though perhaps a little dull for the listeners.

The problem is, I find it very hard to read when I'm giving a presentation. I may see the words on the paper, but what my eyes register are some weird scriblings on a white surface. Their meaning never reaches their destination.

There's really no other option for me but to know my subject so well that I can improvise, and hope that I remember to say everything important and in a logical order. What a great way to go about it, seeing that there are millions of other things causing me to be nervous in that situation.

According to my calculations, I've given about five presentations in my whole life. None were longer than 10 minutes. Now I have to go on for 30 minutes! I wake up around 5 am every morning in cold sweat because I've been imagining in my sleep how horrible it could be. Not only am I dreading being in front of an audience (with luck though, most will leave when it's my turn), but I'm very insecure about my topic.

Whatever happened to my self-confidence in my research? Only a year ago, I was so sure I knew what I was talking about. Now I question every single statement I write down. What if there's some elementary error in my thinking? What if there's an asshole in the audience to point that out?

I still don't trust people to be civil about it. I still expect them to mock me in every possible way they can think of. I'd probably crumble even if someone simply asked me to speak louder or more clearly, though perfectly understandable requests as such and nothing to fret about.

I hate it how in such situations I seem to regress back to a 15-year-old with a crushed self-esteem. I simply can't help myself, it's a gut reaction and I wonder if it'll ever completely go away. In my opinion, it's long due for me to move on from that. I wish I knew how.

All things equal though, I do look forward to seeing Münich, learning more about historical linguistics, and with any luck getting feedback for my topic.

When I come back, a cousin of mine will pay me a visit because she still hasn't found an apartment in Tampere. Will be nice, I see her so rarely. She's starting studies again, even though she just graduated as MA in the spring. She sure does enjoy the student life.

All this means that I probably won't update in about a week or so.

No expression

They roll off my tongue so easily. I don't mind. I don't care. All the same to me. Fine and dandy by me. Whatever you say.

It's true. See this face? There is a reason why there is no kind of expression whatsoever. All things equal, I really, truly don't care. I could give it all up just like that. I believe it's all temporary. Not because of the obvious, but because the obvious will arrive sooner than you think.

Or it won't. Surprises around every corner. You never know, I just might be fit after all. What do I think of that? Let me think. I don't know.

The flames of doubt again. Do I or don't I? Should I stick around or not? Is it worth it? Should it be worth it? Can it be worth it? It is all too much to handle. So no expression. Leave me alone, I'm just building a ruin.

Ruins are what I'm feeding off. Somebody else's blood and sweat. I won't make my own. I doubt I will, but I hope I will. I'll have to see about it. I still have hope, apparently. Another sign of no true logic.

Warning: ranting ahead

I got a job. A small one.

I won't get paid for it. That's just how stupid I am.

Well, no. As the Joker would say, it's not about the money. Not only will I get valuable experience in translating, but also something to add to my CV. My CV's a big fat joke; it's mostly just a slew of assignments for the department. I don't think of them as "real" jobs, because they're so closely related to my studies and research.

I've done a little bit of proofreading and checking some data for my professor. It helps to improve my own English when I correct somebody else's. I get useful references to interesting works, and sometimes even gain some theoretical insights. What's also comforting is to notice that his English isn't infallible, either. Maybe I can cut some slack for myself.

Once I got paid for gathering texts that I found and wanted to use for my thesis, something I would have done anyway. It led to me landing another corpus-related job where I categorized a corpus of historical texts according to genres. I'm not sure I was terribly successful, after all how could you possibly have texts from say the 16th century under the same genre as texts from early 20th century! For the most part, there's obviously not much overlap in that respect.

In any case, naturally it was helpful in thinking about methodology in corpus linguistics, because categorizing and the makeup of corpora are at the heart of it, in my humble opinion. Being forced to take into account so many issues in corpus creation, it often made me wonder about how little it's talked about in courses and seminars.

Based on that kind of job experience, however, I wouldn't hire me. Thankfully some people are easy to fool.

As for the job, it's creating English subtitles for a Finnish documentary. I'm lousy at translating from English to Finnish, but the other way around I'm actually quite comfortable with. I know that even professional translators shy away from translating into a foreign language, for good reasons, but I'm not too worried about it. I've received some pretty good feedback for my English translations. Should be fun anyway.

What's terrifying about translating though is the fact that it's so public. Translators are fair game for anyone to bash. They're flamed for the slightest slip or error. Of course it can be fatal sometimes, but often it doesn't really affect your understanding of what's happening.

Take for instance the new Batman film, Dark Knight. I only spotted one translation error. Fair turned to fear (in Finnish), but it didn't really matter for that scene. Only if you're a die hard fan of the Batmanverse and want to know exactly what's being said, how each and every word might tell something more about a particular character.

People don't often realize just how many things you have to take into account in audiovisual translation. The space and time available for each line place major restrictions on translational possibilities. Often you don't get a transcript but have only your hearing to rely on.

Sometimes you don't even have a whole day to work on it, let alone several. What's even worse, since anyone can call themselves a translator, those who've actually gone through an academic training and rarely make errors may nonetheless get the "credit" for poorly done work by amateurs.

I don't think I've ever seen any translator get praise for a good job on a tv show or film. Prose translators, on the other hand, are occasionally lucky enough to get acknowledgement or praise for their good work. So they should, because we need translators and translations. Nobody can learn every language, and even those foreign languages that you know well (or think you do) you'll never know as well as your mother tongue.

You may come close and you may not need translations most of the time, but I'm not convinced it can ever be the same experience as it would be in your mother tongue.

Thus spake Elina, eternally annoyed by overblown criticism of translators and their undervalued but necessary work. (Thus spake Zarathustra is a good book by the way.)

The thing about chaos - fear?

I know this is not enough. Everything is unfinished. Nothing has come out of anything, yet. What's even worse, I don't even clean the seeds from the floor. I spill soup on the floor and I leave it be. I shouldn't, right? Because it makes me something you're scared of. One of the worst things that could happen to your dear sweet pea. So I may not be tired. I have to keep up the charade.

Doing it for you is enough sometimes, don't worry. But sometimes it isn't. You are so dependent on me that it scares the shit out of me. I don't like the way our roles got switched. I hate to see you vulnerable. I hate to see you so human.

Like your own mother. The tears that burst out when you realized she was really going to leave you. Even though I never heard a good thing about her, you needed her there. Whatever she was like, better she was there than not at all. The same way you want me here, there and everywhere. Be, no matter what. Keep on being. To be or not to be is not the question, ever. Don't even go there.

I know I should let you go first. The only decent thing to do. But I find it so hard to wait that long. How can it be so easy for you? How can you still be going so strong when I still haven't, once? When you've seen ten times worse of life than I have so far?

Or is that the reason? It's been too easy for me? I don't have enough respect for my being here? It's a distinct possibility. To give more shame.

Sometimes I wonder about all this drama.

Only sometimes? All the world's a stage you know. I'm one of the players who will probably get pushed off the edge.

Where does that settled state of mind come from? Can I buy one? At my corner grocery shop? It's open everyday until 11 pm. I'd like to have some peace of mind, please. Oh and can I have some confidence, too? Would you have something to back up that confidence, like skills and brain perhaps? Ten euros fifty thank you. Here, have some water to wash that down.

I wonder about the survival of the fittest. How would you define fit? I read that intelligence is a big part of it. I thought I had it, some of it, but it's not doing me any favours. It plays tricks on me. It heightens everything.

All thoughts, feelings, become long spindly thorns I try not to touch. They prick me anyway. I bleed and I bleed but I won't bleed out. Endless reserves of agony. Thank you sweet Lord for my ability to think. Shame is what is keeping me here. Killing me softly.

Analytical, yes. Logical, no. Logic can become a vicious circle. You lose sight of your starting point, and before soon the end justifies the beginning. I don't know how to cut it off.

Obviously I'm one of the least fit. Too bad mum and dad. Don't they say that everything good leaps over a generation?

Streched across my shame

Some people feel no shame. Lucky bastards.

Think about it. They are content. Happy, even. Confident. They've found peace. They do what they do, and they'll keep doing it, never questioning.

No doubts means no shame. What a blissful state it must be. The unattainable.

Time heals all. Right? Right? I wish. So much. In the meantime, what am I supposed to do? Burn? I don't believe in purgatory after death, but there is definitely one in this life.

It's licking the flesh off my bones. The gentle flames. Such humble thoughts, so much praised, but demeaning and cruel. They expose and undermine everything I've built on. They lay me bare in front of everyone, yet nobody appears to notice. How do I fend them off? They keep coming, stinging. I'm tired of fighting them.

So tired. Am I allowed to be tired yet? May I? Mother please? I didn't turn out the way you wanted, but could I please let go anyway? I promise I'll... I don't know what I could promise you. I have nothing to offer.

I want to see the starlight again

I am possessed by the thought. Typical of me. I don't care what it is, as long as I can obsess over it.

I look out the window. Trees. Birches, to be exact. Their long, skeletal branches loll to and fro slowly in the night. Between their black spidery fingers I can see a light. My neighbour is... I don't know what it is he is doing. His hand reaches forward.

He turns off the light and I am in the dark again. Traitor.

I turn away. My apartment is unsightly as ever. I should get cleaning, but with the birch seeds storming in all day long, I don't see the point.

It's the point that's missing. The infamous point that is on everybody's lips when they talk about meaning. The point, the king of meaning. Or the emperor, even? Empress.

I decide that the seeds dotting my floor more and more are actually welcome. A living presence, in a way. Organic. But is organic the same as living?

I let trees sow their seed on my floor, yet I let my cactus slowly wither away from lack of moisture and new dirt. I turn away from car windows because I can't see the people behind them. Empty cars I like. Empty houses and empty buildings. Empty yards are nice.

Anything abandoned and cold. Dark, I like too. Darkness is like a warm blanket protecting me from all eyes. The ones I can't see throught the windshields.

Come a person and I jump. I hurry away. At home I look out the window to see another one.

If only I could see the starlight from here.

Don't you go all postmodern on me

I've always wanted to say that to someone. Because it would be such an annoying thing to say.

Let's up the postmodern in this blog a little.

Since many people associate postmodernism with randomness, here's a random quote for ya.

To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.

Wallace Stevens

Actually it isn't random in the sense that I believe in this and that's the reason I chose it.

Mr. Stevens was a modernist. How many people in the end have moved on from modernism? How many even know about postmodernism on a global level? Can you even employ the postmodern as an era? Are eras ever truly global?

Maybe the irony of postmodernity is that we're living in postpostmodernity now. Nobody outside the academia noticed.

I've been really exhausted lately. I can't get no sleep. I've tried running longer and faster and more often to help me sleep at night, but all it does is kill my leg muscles.

I blame my lack of sleep for my recent penchant for reading whatever seems to confuse the hell out of me.

Being groggy after a bad night's sleep blurs the distinction between reality and thoughts even more than usual. Somehow though, it helps me focus better on reading.

I rediscovered some interesting books I'd forgotten I owned. One of my old favourites is Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory.

It's a somewhat ancient book as is its author, but my 2004 reprint volume by Continuum is simply beautiful:



I've found a couple of interesting points there that just might be useful in nailing down the aesthetics of urban exploration. Even though Adorno apparently tries to defend modernism. He didn't know of anything better.

This book is surprisingly readable, unlike some of his other works. Like the one on englightenment reverting to myth. The gist of the idea is easy enough to fathom out, but boy can he write ridiculously long sentences.

I know his writing style is supposedly part of his overarching argument, but I can't help but wonder if he couldn't have written with the same effect a little more lucidly.

Aesthetic theory is another matter. It's mostly transcriptions of his speech, written down by his wife. It's a posthumous work, so his chaoslike writing style is in a way still present in the disorderly disposition of the chapters.

Beyond that however, it's almost a pleasure to read. The font is so beautiful too. And don't you just love to say "Adorno"? I think it's a really cool name.

Things you should know

I've run into all kinds of interesting tidbits of information when reading that book on 19th century Finnish families.

The author quoted some source that defined the ideal qualities in a wife. Among other things, a wife should have "good, big nipples".

I wonder what it is that makes nipples "good". And as if the size of them mattered in breastfeeding, or in other kinds of activities for that matter. Well, maybe it does. I'm not an expert on nipples and their various functions.

But what's truly puzzling about that quote is, how on earth did men know about the goodness and the size of women's nipples before marrying them?

I mean, did men ask women to flash them? Did women wear see-through clothing? Wet t-shirts, perhaps?

Hmmmmmmm.

Wake up and smell the...fruit?

I had a dream last night.

I came up with the perfect name for a baby girl: Bananina!

Ah, the creative potential of dreams.

Enough of it already

I've been thinking about something a certain nice Serbian girl asked me at the Helsinki conference.

She asked what linguistics mailing lists I'm on.

Erm, listS?!

I'm only subscribing Linguist List so far and I already feel bogged down by all the mail that I get.

It's mostly redundant. I find myself clicking delete delete delete oh that sounds interesting delete delete deletism to my heart's content* and then even more deletage!

It's annoying too, all these calls for papers to conferences I probably won't be able to visit. I need to figure out my financing before I start running all around the world. I need to dig too much out of my own pocket for the upcoming trip, even with my professor's kind assistance with getting a grant. Thankfully I know how to live hand to mouth.

Besides, the travelling aspect makes me uneasy. I hate it. Please someone develop a teleport right now!

In any case, I think I could aim for ICAME 29 next year. I found about it too late to send a paper this year. Of course they'll accept my draft next time, it's a given. Based on my hefty experience with conferences, they'll take anything they can get. (Hint: sarcasm in the air.)

By the way, ICAME 28 in 2007 took place in Stratford-upon-Avon! That would've been wonderful. The home town of the lowly actor who dared (or durst, since we're talking about ancient people here) to claim the works of the mighty Shakespeare as his own. Some nerve, huh!

Anyhow. I started looking for more interesting mailing lists. There's one about corpora that should be useful. Lately I've been thinking a lot about all these methodological issues related to them and it's very unnerving.

There seems to be no rhyme nor reason** to any of it among more experienced linguists, so I'm not too worried about it. You can always make up some ad hoc arguments for your choice of corpora if it comes to that. If your ethics so allow. But I don't mean to sound disillusioned or anything.

One list focuses on medieval texts. I'd like to find one specified in historical linguistics, but not that historical. Early modern English is as far as I'm willing to go.

* Originally used in Henry VI and The Merchant of Venice.

** As you like it.

My bookshelf to me a kingdom is

Since I have a crappy camera in my cell phone, I thought I could take pictures of all of the books that I own, to be used as decoration when I discuss each of them in turn. Bar any embarrassing ones, but there are very few of those anyway.

So let this be an introduction into a series of posts where I bring to the public eye the contents of my bookshelf (and the floor next to my desk, where I keep my favourite ones). Because what could be more interesting than seeing tiny pictures of books in bad quality and reading about my take on them? Absolutely nothing, you guessed right.

But before I get down to business, I must bring to every reader's attention an interesting point that I found out about only recently.

The title for this post was derived from the poem My mind to me a kindgom is, published in 1588, traditionally attributed to Sir Edward Dyer (1543(?)-1607). I always try to come up with titles that have some pretentious, quasi-artistic literary allusions in them.

Dyer was a contemporary of Shakespeare's, a courtier poet whom inter alia George Puttenham praised in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), an account of notable English writers at the time. Which by the way I absolutely had to have on my laptop at home in its original spelling, so I can read it over and over so my heart with pleasure fills.



Wordsworth is quite alright you know. And I like linking every other word to a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is a good source for trivia that you don't want to memorize, especially if it doesn't matter whether the information is in the end accurate or not.

Now here comes the funny part. More recently (in 1975 in The Review of English Studies Vol. 26, to be accurate), the poem has been attributed by Stephen W. May to the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere (1550-1604).

(Young Edward de Vere)

Before that, Alden Brooks had proposed in his 1943 book Will Shakspere and the Dyer's hand that the above-mentioned sir Edward Dyer was the true William Shakespeare. In other words, Brooks claimed that Dyer wrote the works of Shakespeare, not the man who went by that name at the time.

You may wonder what's so funny about that, because surely it makes sense that authorship questions often arise with several hundred years old texts? Well, in this case the question is of considerably more interest than in general.

I wrote a paper on the Shakespeare authorship question, and one of my sources was a dissertation by one Dr. Roger Stritmatter. He is a proponent of the Oxfordian theory which claims that it was Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who wrote the works that are generally attributed to a man called William Shakespeare.

Dr. Stritmatter had included in his appendices the aforementioned poem, with the intention of demonstrating how similar Edward de Vere's and Shakespeare's writing styles were.

(On the cover of the dissertation is a photo of Edward de Vere's Geneva bible!)

At the time of writing the paper, I didn't realize that the poem wasn't even originally attributed to de Vere!

I was aware that the traditional author of the poem, Sir Dyer, was an alternative Shakespeare candidate himself. But I never realized just how eager the so-called Oxfordians were in appropriating all the works in English literature to Edward de Vere.

Even without knowing about this, there were several problems with the analysis of the poem, and I simply dismissed it as one more of Dr. Stritmatter's farfetched, uninterrelated and badly argued points. In all fairness, though, he was relying on Stephen May's analysis.

As if there weren't enough reasons to doubt anything that Shakespeare authorship heretics write, I was confronted by yet another. The more I learn about the issue, the more ridiculous it becomes in my eyes.

I wish it didn't have to be like that, as in the beginning I was very sympathetic to their cause. But the fact that I like to call it a cause is itself telling. It aggravates me how political the issue is and has always been. Many people probably see no evil in mixing scientific research and politics, but personally I find it disturbing. I'm too much of an idealist, and politics really isn't for idealistic people.

So what I'm trying to say is, stay tuned for more discussion on the Shakespeare authorship question. I've got files and folders full of goodies related to the issue, just waiting to be ridiculed.

(My "souvenir" from Edinburgh. It has served me well.)

I'm not going to make fun of anything on purpose even when it's begging for it, since I'm fighting teeth and nails against becoming partial to any particular candidate.

I don't think I mind it either way, whether it was the earl de Vere or Shakespeare from Stratford, or anybody else for that matter, who wrote those famous plays and sonnets. No reason to mix 'n' match the author and the works, right?

I'm learning, me of all people

I never expected a test book to be so interesting as one dissertation on 19th century Finnish family life.

When I read history books, I'm constantly surprised by how different things were even in the recent past. I suppose that shows how little I know about history. Even hearing from my mum about her childhood simply blows my mind.

Her aunt ruined her teeth because she thought that a lump of sugar will heal a toothache! I'm so glad that most people these days are much more health conscious. Even though not that many are willing to live accordingly.

Anyways. So far I've learned, among many other things, that until late 19th century marriages were arranged (EDIT: only among upper class families I should add) so that the husband was at least 10 years older than the wife. If the age difference was any smaller, it was actually frowned upon.

By the end of the century, general attitudes were already changing more towards the present-day atmosphere. Now it's the complete opposite, for most people.

But it's interesting how different opinions people have on this. My mum for instance almost had a heart attack when she heard that my cousin married a man 10 years her senior.

To be fair, it was partly due to the fact that the guy had become bald very young, and in the photo that my mum saw he was on crutches, having had broken his leg recently. But still, it definitely has made me wonder if my mum would ever approve a similar situation in my case.

But it's not all bad. I discussed this with an old friend of mine and she thought 10 years is perfectly acceptable - because it's worked for her parents so well! So it seems that everything is relative.

Another friend prefers younger men, as does her sister. I can see the temptation. Being in the position to corrupt an innocent young man. But seriously speaking, all these differing opinions just go on to show how there can be no consensus on age differences today.

The bottom line seems to be that whatever floats your boat, you should go for it. In this age of relativism, I guess it makes sense.

Generally, I don't really care about it that much myself. If it works, why worry about age. I've noticed that if I'm interested in someone, I just don't care. The only reason why I'd be worried is if I became a widow for 20 years.

But honestly I don't believe that a huge age gap can work that often. And could the older person really be interested in someone much younger?

It amuses me how calculating I am sometimes. I just want to be in for the long haul.

A Million dead poets would gladly attest - or would they?

In my view, the Shakespeare Authorship question is a tangled web that would probably take a lifetime to unravel in its entirety.

I was rather disheartened when I tried to find accounts of the matter which actually would have tried to remain objective. I'm still on a hunt for an author who's genuinely trying to find the truth, rather than trying to defend his or her respective candidate as the true Shakespeare.

But maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Maybe you're not supposed to be objective. Maybe the only reason why anyone would be interested in the matter is that they actually care about who the author is.

Be that as it may, personally I still believe that you don't have to have a "favourite" candidate in order to be interested in the question. All this "bitter trench warfare", as it's been called, is entertaining and amusing in its own right.

I admit that my notion of "entertaining and amusing" may differ from the more generic meaning of those words. For instance, I couldn't resist a chuckle when I read the description of the Oxfordian Richard Whalen's 1994 book, Shakespeare - Who was he?. (There's an imaginative title for a book if I ever saw one.)

Let me quote whoever wrote the description:

Most intriguing are the many direct parallels between Oxford's life and Shakespeare's works, especially in Hamlet, the most autobiographical of the plays.

To elucidate the terminology for everyone: Oxfordians believe that Edward de Vere (1550-1604), the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare. Their candidate is usually called Oxford, though the man himself preferred to sign his letters as Oxenford. At least we know he had a sense of humour, or it's just another manifestation of the flexibility of Elizabethan spelling. Which is also one issue I must touch upon in the future.

So Hamlet, "the most autobiographical" of Shakespeare's plays. The "direct" parallels between the play and the earl's life are used as an argument on his behalf, because – here comes the gist of it – the play is the most autobiographical of them all.

Of course, whether a work is autobiographical or not can only be determined if you know who the author is. Please, please correct me if I'm wrong on this one! If I'm not, I've just found another ridiculous circular argument from the Oxfordian camp. (Not that the "orthodox" Shakespearians haven't excelled in that area for their part.)

To drive home the point of this post: even with a quick 5-minute search on the authorship question, you're bound to run into irrational, silly or just plain stupid arguments.

In countering the inevitably ensuing frustration from all that, my weapon is to make light of it. But even my sense of humour has its limits.

I was going to present a rough draft of all the issues that I'm going to cover in my forthcoming series on the authorship question. Turns out that instead, I was once again amused slash annoyed by an Oxfordian statement, and consequently thrown off course. This is going to be an interesting journey, I can tell.

[Insert witty title]

(WARNING: If you don't feel like reading a lengthy post about the author's boring life, this isn't for you.)

The yayness factor has re-entered my life again.

Let's conduct a detailed analysis of what that means exactly.

Since I like FPS (First Person Shooter) games, I chose bullet points as a method for structuring my post. (For the record: I'm a pacifist, but I like to shoot and kill pixely effigies of various kinds of animate beings.)

Yayness is a notoriously challenging concept to break down into distinct ingredients, hence the need for great care and caution when formulating the statements. In plain terms, this entails vigorous soulsearching.

• I finished relinking the pictures. My blog looks pretty again. Sort of.


• The sun started to shine yesterday. I can't get enough of it. The winter will be long and dark enough.


• I came up with a new topic for research.


• My feet aren't sore anymore. I can go back to jogging almost everyday.


• It's only 4 weeks to my conference presentation and I finally got round to writing a draft.


• I have several writing projects, which is infinitely better than just sitting down and reading books and panicking about not being able to focus for five minutes.

Each of these points merits elaboration. Well, not the first one. Nor the second. Let's take point number three first under the microscope.

(a) I try very hard not to get too excited about my new idea for research, because I don't have much extra time at the moment (except for blogging, there's always time for blogging!).

Long story short, I'm not entirely happy with expanding the topic of my thesis into a dissertation. One reason is that it doesn't seem important enough as a (set of) research question(s). Another is that I feel as though it lacks challenge.

It was definitely a challenge when I first started working on it. The literature was full of studies on it, yet no one had anything particularly enlightening to say about it. By the time I finished my thesis, after tremendous amounts of working hours, I felt like there wasn't much more to say.

After 120 pages, claiming that you've only scratched the surface seems overkill. I plan to write an article or two on some particular issues related to it, because my results deserve to be published. But overall as a topic, it looks like a dead end.

As for my new idea, once I'd thought about it, I started wondering why I didn't think of it before. It's a topic I stumbled upon two years ago when doing background reading for my thesis. I never quite realized what a great topic it would make.

Now that I've been pondering on it, the possibilities and the breadth of what I could do is simply mindboggling. Finally a topic grandiose enough (to grammar geeks at least), and challenging enough for driving me up the wall. I don't see a point in researching something unless it's a challenge; something that seems impossible to make sense of at first sight.

The rest of the ingredients of my newly found state of yayness don't need that much explaining.

(b) I could really use new trainers.

(c) I've been avoiding the thought that I have to give a full 30-minute presentation in ICEHL in Münich in about a month. I go through these periods when I'm extremely antisocial and I hate the thought of any kind of social interaction. But the key in getting excited again about the presentation was to remind myself why my topic is so interesting, to me at least. If I focus on how interesting my message is, I don't even mind the fact that I'm in front of an audience.

I looked at the time table, and noticed that there are not only many many Finns, but also two more people from my university: my professor, and another senior colleague. I've never met him. We come from the same university, and I finally get to meet him - in Germany.

(d) Last but not least, I'm happy to have found some time finally for writing. For quite some time now I've preferred writing to reading.

I feel like I've partially lost my ability to focus on reading. It's not as bad as it was in the past, but it's still difficult for me. It's strange. I can literally stare at one sentence for 30 minutes, then move onto the next one. It's not convenient when you're trying to read several books for a test. I can manage, though - it just takes me months to read two or three books, that's all.

But writing I find very easy to focus on. Being able to arrange your thoughts in the process is a definite plus. More and more, I'm falling in love with writing for a blog. Even though I barely have any regular readers, it's therapeutic and exciting and useful for developing my writing skills.

In the name of preserving the sanity of my dear reader(s), I promise I'll keep it short(er) in the future. What's more, one of these days I shall post a new painting as well

What is and what never should be

This has been a strange summer. Too much rain, too little sunshine. Too much paranoia, too little sanity. Too much to do, too little accomplished as of yet.

I've been strangely emotional lately. This morning I cried when watching my usual Days of Our Lives show, while sipping my morning coffee.

My excuse for watching a soap opera is that they're very funny and entertaining, and I genuinely believe that they tell you something about the culture. Take Salatut Elämät, for instance. There's a grain of truth to whatever's happening. Big issues - drugs, death, abuse, alcoholism, school bullying, gambling addiction! So it's a little exaggerated - what would you expect from a tv show?

My excuse for crying over a fictional character is that I'm not in my right mind until I've had my two cups of coffee in the morning.

On Days of our lives, they had the funeral of a young boy who got killed off in a hit-and-run. You often see children killed in soapies, because they don't have much of a role. It still sucks. He was so cute!

The driver was incidentally the boy's newly found stepsister. Being a police officer, the poor father had given her a temporary license to drive, even though she'd just been in a car accident! Gotta love the irony in that, sick as it may be.

The American Catholic funeral is different from the generic Finnish funeral, but it was still touching. The actors and actresses are really good. Many of them have been acting on Days for most of their lives! I wonder how weird that must be, playing the same character for 30 years.

Wandering off: It looks like it won't take that long after all, to relink my pictures. One third to go.

I noticed that the quality of the bigger versions is not terribly good. I blame Photobucket. Apparently I had a setting on which resizes the pictures that I uploaded, so they're not as big as the originals. To add to the misery, I don't have the originals available in Tampere, and it took forever to upload them!

Nonetheless, I added the phrase "click to enlarge" underneath all the thumbnails, so from now on everyone will know it's possible to do so. Just don't expect anything fancy.

Still spindrifting

As my faithful reader Amoena already knows, I visited her last week. (Or the week before that, I'm getting confused because of so many things happening in my life lately.)

It was the first time ever since I've known her. I've only known her for, what, five years?! It was about time I saw her humble abode. It was really nice of her to let me stay at hers during my conference trip.

I don't know how she felt about it, seeing that I had to hog her bed due to reasons of practicality, while she had to sleep on the couch.

On top of that, her work mate thought she was a lesbian because I was staying overnight and, you know, I'm a female. The situation calls for a lol, even though I try to avoid that expression elsewhere but in online chats. The thought still cracks me up. I didn't do wonders for her reputation.

Personally, I thought it was a surprisingly nice visit. Even though we've only met "in real life" a couple of times, it felt comfortable and not at all awkward.

We didn't do anything special. I came back from the conference so late in the evening that we didn't really have time for much. On Monday, we watched Desperate Housewives with a friend of hers, then Californication, followed by some Bible channel show. I've got to find out if I have that channel here - it was hilarious.

Amoena has often commented on how cosy my apartment looks and feels. I could say the same of hers. It had so much space, soothingly white walls, and there wasn't as much stuff lying around as in mine. She also had some interesting decorative items, and an impressive bookshelf. I usually keep my own books on the floor out of convenience.

She had so many classics as well as some praised contemporary writers there. I admire so much her ability to not be a genre reader. You'd be hard pressed to label her taste in books. Eclectic, perhaps?

She had stowed in her closet a big box full of some old books that she was willing to give away. I came back home with several kilograms' worth of books. They're all written in Finnish, so it's going to be fun to read books in Finnish for a change. Here are for instance two poetry collections of Viljo Kajava and Toivo Laakso that she gave me:



It's a strange experience to read something in your mother tongue as though it was a foreign language. I'm a little concerned about this. I think I should try to find an opportunity to write more in Finnish, and more often. Chatting on the internet doesn't count.

There is this article I've been trying to write in Finnish for weeks now. All I can come up with are English sentences. It's not that my English is better than my Finnish by any accounts, but for some reason I find it easier to sort my thoughts in English.

It probably also has something to do with your mother tongue feeling more personal, and consequently you pay more attention to your choice of words.

Besides, there are just too many choices because your vocabulary isn't as limited as with a foreign language. But since Finnish teachers think that you have to master your mother tongue before you can master any other languages, I suppose I must do my utmost to practise it more.

Oh and may I point out to Amoena that I finally took heed of her advice: I shrank the banner. See, I'm not completely stubborn. I guess my honeymoon period with that picture is over, since it no longer pained me to distort its proportions.

Afterthoughts

I'm still trying to gather my thoughts regarding a recent linguistics conference visit to Helsinki. It was my first time in a conference, and I didn't really have any idea what it would be like.

Thankfully, I didn't give a "real" presentation just yet, but only a poster presentation. Even so, I had to quickly introduce the topic of my poster in two minutes, and by the end of those longest minutes in my life so far, I could barely get the words out of my mouth.

But it wasn't critical, as I could explain everything without stress afterwards during the poster session to anyone who was interested. Quite a few of the people there were, probably because they couldn't hear anything from my stuttery introduction. But I don't really care. I'll just practise more for an actual presentation in August in München.

Maybe I should take lessons in producing speech properly, as one Scottish woman thought I absolutely should in order to survive in this world. Or not.

The conference was held in an old auditorium where they used to cut bodies open to show medical students what people look like inside. Fascinating. I've always wondered how doctors can understand anything of what they see inside a human's body. To my eyes, the viscera are just a bunch of some red stuff all jumbled up together.



The makeup of the auditorium wasn't too ergonomic, though. If you sat in the front row, your neck would be really stiff because of having to look so high up on the projection screen. And if all the listeners where sitting in the highermost rows, the speaker would get their neck stiff from having to look upwards so much.

I was quite nervous the first day, and drinking a glass of wine into an empty stomach in the evening didn't help my mood much. But by the third day, I was already trying to chat up other people. I congratulated myself on that.

The first day was very computational, and I couldn't really make sense of anything because of my non-existent background in statistics. However, I think I understand better now why many linguists these days have endorsed number crunching.

I suppose I was preinclined to think it's all rubbish to play around with numbers too much, in a way distancing yourself from actual manifestations of language use. I had let myself be influenced by other, more experienced people who didn't see much use in statistics. One more reason why you should look up to your elders and betters, but always take their advice and opinions with a grain of salt.

It really isn't about distancing yourself from language. I think it's just about linguists wanting to gain more credibility for their field of research, a problem I suppose any subject in humanities must face. In a twisted way I'm even looking forward to learning more about statistics. This from a girl who wanted to escape mathematics forever by studying language.

(Don’t laugh. It’s hard to come up with pictures that are actually related to the topic. I'm doing my best to make this post more reader-friendly.)

The second day was more about syntax, which is a field I'm sort of working in myself. Alas, I was still tired from sleeping only 5 hours on two previous nights, so I can't recall much from those presentations. To my relief and joy, the conference organizers emailed today to announce that they're going to put up the presentation slides online for everybody's viewing pleasure. Plus a plethora of somewhat amusing photos.

On the third day, there were some presentations about cross-linguistic typology. It's immensely intriguing from a theoretical point of view, and kudos to all who are courageous enough to try and create some rhyme or reason into such an endeavour.

It all made my own research project seem so small and insignificant. At the moment, I'm fervently trying to develop the topic so that it would seem more worthwhile. One of the linguists at the conference even plain laughed out loud at my poster and then walked away. So officially of course I'm proud of and confident in the importance of my topic, just in case I ever run into more people of his kind.

It didn't really help though to hear from my French friend what his doctoral thesis will be about. I often think he's a jackass (and he doesn't mind me saying so), being French and all that, but he's also a bit of a genius. It boggles my mind how different it is to study history in France. Let alone English. Yes, they do study English over there.

(Picture 1: www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/qitl)