on language evolution:

as recently as 10-15 years ago, i was taught that "disrespect" was a noun, but not a verb. you could not disrespect someone, but you could show disrespect to someone. even so, everybody used "disrespect" as a verb--"yo, why you disrespectin' me?"--and now, "disrespect" is widely accepted as a verb, and hardly ever used as a noun. i just think it's interesting that i can measure syntactic change in my native language in such a short period of time.

assorted frustrations

it's about time for another installation of "things i'm too frustrated to post to facebook about."


1) chik-fil-a. i've gotten into more than one conversation over on fb about this nonsense already. basically, if you give money to an organization that is known to give money to hate groups, you are giving money to hate groups. i don't understand how people can justify their patronage of organizations like this, especially by saying "the minimum wage workers in their restaurants will feel the heat faster than the COO." that may be true, but if they had $11 million to give to hate groups, i'm sure they're not sharing all of their money with their minimum wage employees anyway.


2) gun control. i've seen a few posts in the wake of the Colorado movie theater shooting suggesting that if more people owned guns, things like this wouldn't happen. that's just about the stupidest, most illogical thing i've ever heard. maybe if our gun control laws were stricter, a single civilian wouldn't be able to amass dozens of ASSAULT RIFLES. you don't go hunting with an assault rifle. you don't protect your family with an assault rifle. you use it to kill a larger number of people, very quickly. there is no reason anyone should have one of those. i'll make a possible exception for those in the military who are being actively shot at by others with assault rifles. but really, i just don't think guns should be a thing, and it saddens me to live in a world where they already are and there's nothing anyone can do about it.


i also don't buy the argument that if we outlaw guns, the only people who will have guns are criminals. that statement is necessarily true, which makes it a stupid argument. the fact is that guns are not outlawed, and criminals have much easier access to guns than they would if guns were outlawed. then they cry Second Amendment, without remembering that the Bill of Rights was authored at a time when there was no organized military in the U.S., and it fell on individual citizens to arm themselves and then show up when called to shoot at Indians, the British, wild animals encroaching on their farms, etc. the Second Amendment is obsolete, because we have an established military to defend civilians. see my comments above.



3) rental agents in my neighborhood. i live in a section of Boston that is primarily populated by immigrants/speakers of languages other than English and college students. there's some overlap there, too. as a result, landlords and the people who work for them expect that they can treat everyone like shit and no one will try to do anything about it. they also, as a general rule, don't show their own apartments. they hire brokers to show available units for them, and then usually (unless you wait until the last minute like we did, and like the person who will rent our apartment in september is apparently going to do) they make the tenant pay something called a "broker fee" which is essentially a finder's fee/commission for the brokers.

i am fucking sick of disrespectful brokers trying to force their way into my home. i am more familiar with the law as it pertains to non-tenants entering an apartment than most of them seem to be, and i know that the law requires "reasonable notice" before landlords or their agents enter a unit, and that although the law does not specify, court cases have established that reasonable notice is generally between 24-48 hours. i just expect everyone to follow the rules, which is difficult when so many rental agencies advertise that they accept walk-ins, and then think that leaving a voicemail while i am at work and my partner is sleeping because he works the night shift saying that they want to give me a "heads up" that they're showing my apartment within the hour  counts as "reasonable notice." NO! i should not have to explain the details of our personal life to each and every stranger who thinks they have the right to enter my home, and i don't think it's a stretch to assume that someone who works for a living might not be able to answer their phone/check messages at any given moment during the day.



*sigh* 4 days until we move....there will still be a month left on our current lease at that point, and i'm seriously considering posting friendly notes throughout the apartment about the awful experience we've had here.

moment:

"keep smilin'. it looks good on you."
-neighbor on the stoop

note:

i've already filled a third of the notebook i bought a month and a half ago. this is a good sign.

moment:

nothing delights me in quite the same way as filling the crevices of your ex's dining room table with flour and sugar.

poet's tongue

i want to hear your poet voice again

not your patience
not your acceptance
not your quiet reassurance that the world is beautiful

i want to hear your anger
your frustration
your fear and your shame;

i want to hear the passion you reserve for justice.
i can see it in your writing and i can feel it in your soul
i want to hear that unleashed
i want your spit in the mike and your hair in your face
i want you to forget that others are watching

i feel i may have missed that stage
or at least arrived late;
i want to know that someone, somewhere has heard that voice
that they have taken something of it with them
that that has been released to the world to make change
somewhere.

ripples don't always have to start with pebbles.
sometimes they start with boulders.

(sometimes, when they need to be big enough
they are even begun by earthquakes.)

observation:

if one song has changed meaning more than any other since meeting my fiancé, it is "maps" by the yeah yeah yeahs.