Go to www.mysonabsalom.com, and please change your bookmarks to www.mysonabsalom.com I’m not sure where I am going to land, but if you want to follow the changes please bookmark www.mysonabsalom.com

My supervision meetings have gone a little bit like this:

1. Stephen thinks he has made great progress.
2. Stephen begins meeting by outlining great progress.
3. Supervisors start a line of questioning that begins with, ‘Have you thought about~?’
4. This line of questioning ends in Stephen asking, five or ten times, ‘I’m sorry, who did you say wrote that?’ quickly followed by, ‘I’m sorry, how do you spell that?’
5. Then there is also a line of conversation that follows ‘I think you need to read more about X term’ which means more-or-less,
6. Supervisor is not convinced Stephen knows what the word Stephen has been using again and again really means.
7. This is of course true and leads to
8. Stephen trying to defend his careless use of the word or phrase or idea and realizing he doesn’t know what he’s talking about in the middle of the statement
9. resulting in Sarah Palin-style answers.
10. Stephen leaves with notebook full of names and articles to look up and feeling deflated.

The network is in our house! I am alive!

Dylan on the stereo, bagel in my stomache, baby with an umbrella. Everything is okay now.

This weekend was very good. (more…)

(A) The larger the deviation from reality, the greater the certainty of ironic intent.

As an example, consider the following utterance:

(2) ‘What lovely weather!’

If (2) is uttered on a warm, sunny day, there is no deviation from reality, and the statement may be interpreted literally. If (2) is uttered on an overcast day, the statement becomes a bit more ambiguous. For example, if torrential downpours had occurred every day during the preceding week, then a day without rain might indeed seem ‘lovely’. In this case, the use of the heuristic specified in (A) is problematic; there is a deviation between the utterance and reality, but because it is not extreme, an ironic interpretation may not be warranted. Finally, if (2) is screamed at the hearer over the howling wind, as speaker and hearer crouch in a tornado shelter, the use of (A) allows an ironic interpretation to be made with some certainty. (Kruez 1996)

in Mio, J. S. and A. N. Katz (1996). Metaphor: Implications and Applications. Mahwa, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

This book, ‘Metaphor: Implications and Applications’ is really getting me going (intellectual excitement as sexual arousal; intellectual excitement as physical excitement; books as women).

It seems to me that irony is going to play a larger role in my study than I thought originally, especially if I go with my ‘pope of youtube’ data, which is built entirely on an ironic, metaphorical statement.

Apparently Gillian Welch wants to do right, but not right now.

I originally was hung up on understanding and misunderstanding, but I don’t think this really has much to do with anything in my data. The data has to do with animosity more than anything else, and trying to insult in the most interesting and entertaining way. In my data, I don’t think there is any confusion about who is insulting whom and what is intended in the insult.

Finally, if I hear anyone ever describe anything but a long trip without the intention of returning as a ‘journey’, I am going to jump off a building. Just saying something is a journey does not make you any more thoughtful. Give it up.

Do you like potatos? No?

Do you like sandwiches?

Good article at Politico, although a bit scary. Let’s not get carried away now:

The unmistakable momentum behind Barack Obama’s campaign, combined with worry that John McCain is not doing enough to stop it, is ratcheting up fears and frustrations among conservatives.

And nowhere is this emotion on plainer display than at Republican rallies, where voters this week have shouted out insults at the mention of Obama, pleaded with McCain to get more aggressive with the Democrat and generally demonstrated the sort of visceral anger and unease that reflects a party on the precipice of panic.

Even some metonymy for us metaphor people:

“When you have an Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there gonna run this country, we gotta have our head examined!”

Cameron, L. (2007). Confrontation or complementarity? Metaphor in language use and cognitive metaphor theory. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 5, John Benjamins.

Cameron, L. (2007). “Patterns of metaphor use in reconciliation talk.” Discourse & Socitey 18(2): 25.

Cook, V. J. (1988). Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, Inc.

Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The Poetics of Mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Gibbs, R. W. (2006). Embodiment and Cognitive Science. New York, Cambridge University Press.

Gibbs, R. W. and L. Cameron (2007). “The social-cognitive dynamics of metaphor performance.” Cognitive Systems Research doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2007.06.008.

Larsen-Freeman, D. and L. Cameron (2008). Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

I just voted. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I ticked the box for ‘That One’. I’m sure it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things, but I feel a little bit better.

To the library to read.

I had my first supervision meeting, and it was productive, although I left sort of thinking I didn’t have things quite as figured out as I thought I did in my mind. My supervisor is going through a rather prolific time in her career it seems as she has all sorts of articles and books she seems to be involved in. I was also in a seminar today with one of (if not the) preeminent discourse analyst. I had heard was on staff here, and he is, apparently. I thought he was going to be on my supervision team, but I misunderstood and instead he is (although I have to double check) my examiner for my MRes.

There are a lot of good feelings in life, but wanting to go to work in the morning is a pretty good one.

(Come on skinny love just last the year, but I hear: Come on, Skinny love, just let us/it see you.) (more…)

The first week of my course in Introduction to Social Research is all about objectivity and subjectivity. (more…)

• Read for class
• Read about Univerisal/ Generative Grammar
• Get guidance from lead supervisor
• Think about running pilot study for gathering data
• Eat less chicken

This weekend was pretty successful and now, I need to start focusing on my studies. A couple of people have asked about what it exactly that I am doing, so here is the quick and dirty version: (more…)

I am living the life. Woke up late. Took the bus into town with wife and daughter. Went to the market downtown. Ate good street food. Ordered the Internets finally (Oct. 13th, we get connected, allegedly). Drank a lot of tea. Took bus back to house. Rode bicycle to work.

After all the nonesense of getting what we needed was finished, it’s been really relaxing. Naomi, also, has been doing much better now that I am putting her to sleep and not Yoko. The first night she screamed and screamed. Last night, just a little crying, but when you tell her (and you have to tell in Japanese, fortunately/unfortunately), she repeats what you said and lies down. She won’t, however, go to sleep unless I am lying next to her and will wake up if I try to leave. So I am working on my stealth departure, but not quite there yet. It’s nice though–I should enjoy it while it lasts.

If we can’t afford to fly to the States for Christmas, we are thinking about going someplace warm: either Portugal or France. We’ll see. Going home would be best, but it’s like $1,700.

I am finished with orientation and I couldn’t be happier. Well, now I am not going to get free food, so that is one thing I will be missing, but otherwise, it is nice to be finished. Now, I can move on to doing my actual work.

But one week, and the magic is not gone yet.

I can’t believe I’m listening to this. I think it should be against the rules to say, ‘You betcha’ or ‘gosh’ or ‘gosh darn it’ in a debate. And oh sweet baby Jesus, won’t someone–SOMEONE–think of the children!

It’s strange how similar my feelings moving to England have been to when I moved to Japan, minus the two or three weeks of absolute bliss. When I went to Japan, I was wicked happy for like two weeks, and then fell into a terrible depression for about three months. Then it started to turn around.

Since coming to England, I missed out on the two weeks of bliss and have been feeling the difficulties of moving a lot quicker than last time. It hits mostly in the morning, and you have trouble getting up and going. After getting moving, it is usually okay, and I have been feeling that way. The first week was especially hard. Having been to school and gotten up and moving as far as my work goes is helpful.

It’s strange—even when I was in Shibata and feeling like I needed to get the hell away, I remember thinking, I will remember this place—the bed, the nightstand, everything where it needs to be—and want to come back. I do want to go back, not to the life, but to having everything settled and understood and clearer than it is when you move away.

I think Yoko experiences it all very differently, although being ‘morning’-sick and having Naomi to take care of… It’s a whole different set of problems.

I can’t find my watch and I suspect that Naomi has taken it somewhere. I don’t know what to do. Naomi has been acting up too—throwing things and hitting us on the face. It’s all playful, but it’s getting super annoying to see that she has destroyed another book, or thrown something else at the wall.

What newspapers or magazines do you read?

Yeah, this is totally unfair.

Famed older brother and famed sister-in-law have brought forth Asher Samuel Neeraj this last Monday.  Oi!

We have been in England for two weeks now, and time really seems to be flying by. Yesterday, I got my bank account, so once I get my debit card, I can finish my Internet order sometime on Saturday. Plus two or three business days and I should be connected in the house. We’ll see if that actually happens. I shouldn’t complain though because when we first went to Japan it took something like six weeks to do.

Today I get all of my books for my program and then finish up orientation tomorrow and Friday. After all that is done, then I think we can move into the more steady day-to-day living.

The weather was really nice until yesterday when it started raining. Today is shaping up to be nice though.

I can also say that I think I was able to make it to England for (very roughly) what I thought it would cost. Still far, far too much, by my estimation.

I saw the SNL parody of this and I thought, well it couldn’t be THAT bad. Apparently, it was.

When I moved to Japan, I famously had two bags and a guitar. I will probably tell this story the rest of my life. When I moved to Niigata, I had added two more boxes. When Yoko and I moved to Shibata, it was some forty boxes and furniture. When we came to England, we checked 14 bags (3 free, one free bike, and ten extra bags) and carried on 6 bags. We were also supposed to have a stroller, but we left it in Mito by accident. (more…)

I am at the library at the OU and finally, finally, finally connected to the intranet. Here’s what I have been up for the last week.

• Basically living in Ikea. I was in Ikea for my whole life it feels like. Famed older brother’s earlier comment set me straight. So I went and saw a vision that helped me create a closet.
• Putting stuff away.
• New student orientation which has been pretty incredible. I am wicked lucky to be at this school. Our little class is pretty international. Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Holland, South Africa, China, Bangladesh, Palestine, Germany, Cyprus. Some other ones too.
• Yoko is still feeling ill.

I have a lot left to do, but now that we don’t have a car, things are going to settle down and I can start to work on a little bit more academic things.

Okay, now I have to go.

I am going to disappear from the Internet for a couple of days, only it is installed in the house. I suggest you continue to hit refresh on this page until I reappear.

Look, if you are in the Clay Aiken fanclub (a ‘Claymate’ as you’re called) and this is a surprise for you, I feel for you, really I do, but today’s a new day.

There is something about Europe in Autumn with a morning sick wife…

We are moving in on Thursday, address after the jump.

Today was about 50% successful.

• Didn’t get a bank account.
• Ordered the Internet.
• Got some needed furniture and the rice cooker.
• Took a pass on the first car I have looked at.

When the Internet does comes I will be able to call the US for free.

We will be blacking out on Thursday for a couple of days (or weeks, depending on the availability of the Internets).

I will let you know.

News in Britain seems to be revolving around Gordon Brown and how much people think he sucks. And knife violence.

In Japan, Taro Aso (Xenophob, wicked ugly dude) has been elected Primer.

I miss the quirkiness of Japan.

England is so much more straightforward.

(more…)

I am on a roll now, and secured the apartment for Thursday. Thursday we will move in and get to level the next level of settling down. This means I can now set up a bank account and then order the Internets. Then a car. Then we are finished. Or then I can start getting to work. I have a meeting with a fellow student and professor, and then orientation on Friday.

Oh yeah!

Explanations in the photo descriptions:

Okay, we are rolling now, and you know, not in that sense you dirty-minded minds (if you don’t know what that means, carrying on). Here’s what happened today. We got up late. And then we went to check out this church service that Yoko had seen on a blog or something. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but Yoko said there might be Japanese people there so we went.

When we got into the sanctuary, it was bizarre–like we had suddenly re-entered Japan. Everything was exactly the same: the same songs, the same people, the same organ. The welcome card in Japanese. The service started and we began the first song. Yoko started crying and suddenly I was crying too. Naomi wandered around the whole time, and afterwards, there was tea and Japanese snacks and we all chatted in Japanese for about 30 minutes. I have now met more Japanese people in England than English people.

And suddenly, before I knew it, I was saying that I was willing to teach English privately to the Japanese community there. I am back on the horse, but come to think of it, between teaching English and working at the supermarket, maybe teaching English is the best thing for me. I make about four times what I would doing anything else, and it’s much easier.

It’s looking likely that we will get a car as it is not as expensive as I thought and will probably help us out a little bit getting around here and there and going where we need to go. Now to find a reasonably-priced car…

It’s Sunday now and the first day I have not had anything that I need to get done immediately. I’m going to be happy when we get to our own place and have a bit more privacy and quiet. We are going to a church service this afternoon that might be in Japanese, but we aren’t quite sure.

I still need to get a bank account and sign up for the Internets, but this can’t be done until they clear my application for the apartment and we move in. So I gotta hold off for another three days or so.

I put my bicylce together though and rode around a bit yesterday. Really easy to get around on a bike here. Really, really easy. And beautiful too.

from Sarah Lang’s The Work of Days

[The City has drawn a blank. How big]

The City has drawn a blank. How big
you are; a tarmac in the cool summer.

You pretend to love them all. Let
is a word like a creek in spring.

We are strangers; there are ways
to lie. There are trees, there are

trees, there are trees. The wind
does many things. A Hungarian sign

is not unlike your mouth. I never claimed
gravity, strength. From the left, a cot

has great significance. Like the city
we squeeze in tight for a photograph.

Well, we have a flat. I’m not sure I made the right choice, but it was within our price range and the best thing I saw out of four. Not as much looking as I would have liked, but given the time crunch (we must leave the B&B by next Friday), I’m happy taking the hit and just getting it done straight away, rather than having to move to another hotel. It is cheaper than I expected, about a ten minute walk from the OU, and about a 15 minute walk from a huge shopping center that has a large Tesco (the UK Jusco or Wal*mart). So we won’t need a car. It about a three minute walk from a bus stop that can also take us to the hospital and city centre. I am happy enough with it and it’s only a one year lease. After that, we can find something bigger when my grant payment goes up.

It is smaller than I would have liked and am a bit concerned about that. I was thinking about everyone who is intending on visiting us here, and whether it will support two kids (once our second child is born) and four adults. But, at the end of the day, I think it is the best choice for us, and we gotta do what’s right for the day-to-day life, I think.

Everyone here asks, ‘You alright?’ as a kind of greeting. I always feel like saying, Uh, yeah, I am–do I look like I’m not alright? Japanese has this same nuance–asking someone ‘How are you?’ sort of implies that they might not look well. I remember this because Dan and I used to ask the pastor of the church in Fukuoka how he was every morning and he always looked a bit confused. Someone finally explained to us that we should probably lay off that.

I have a problem greeting people with ‘Howdy’ (something I picked up when the famed older brother went to Texas A&M and I was terribly jealous).  This is not a good greeting in the UK, though, as today I said, Howdy to someone and they responded, Fine, thanks.

We also went to Ikea, which I had never been to and was amazed by. It’s like Disneyland for furniture. I made me immediately aware that our apartment is too small.

• A mobile phone (44 07596 931031)

It’s just a pay as you go phone, so this number may become Yoko’s as I hope to get an iPhone eventually. But until then (or probably not ever, given that we will be poor for the perceivable future) you can contact me there.

We have been around Milton Keynes now. It’s a very green place and very, very wooded. In fact, it’s hard not being able to see anything because of the trees. There are also no billboards or store signs, so it’s like a maze of trees until you come upon one of the estates or villages. And there are almost no traffic signals. Only roundabouts. Everywhere roundabouts.

We went up to the Open Unversity and it is, in fact, a real place. Much, much bigger than I thought, much more professional looking than I imagined. I don’t know why I felt like it wasn’t a real place or that it would be some shoddy, hole in the wall where diplomas are printed on Inkjet printers. I’ll put some pictures up, eventually.

Yoko and Naomi are holding up well, although Naomi is just very confused looking and little ill. I think the change in food, time, everything is tough on her. Yoko is doing very well, too. I am going to count all the times I hear someone say ‘Oh, like Yoko Ono?’ when she is introduced. The count stands currently at 1.

I miss Japan.

I have been in the car for five hours today and have driven 300 miles in the last 24 hours. But all of our baggage is now at the B&B and I saved about $700. So I can’t really complain.