Cat on a leash.

I'm coming back from my long pause in blogging by sharing my feelings on a subject I've been thinking about lately. It's not that I have chosen not to blog; it's just that I didn't really have anything to say until now.

Have you ever tried to teach a cat to walk on a leash? I have heard that it is possible with at least one breed of cat, but I can remember well attempting to teach my cat to lead. As soon as I clipped the leash onto her collar, she stretched against it and tried to get her head out and wouldn't even change her mind for the treats that I offered. I gave up pretty quickly and she never did learn to lead.

Sometimes we people can be like that too. When presented with a rule or restriction, sometimes we are so busy fighting against it just because we want the freedom, that we are much less productive than we could be if we just followed the rule. We are so interested in having independence that we jeopardize the trust that others would otherwise have in us.

The ultimate example of this, in my mind, is learning to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Jesus taught, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." (John 14:15) It sometimes seems counterintuitive that submission to God's will and obedience to his commandments makes us free. But that is exactly what happens. When we make any choice the natural consequences of that choice go into motion. With some choices the natural consequences lead to captivity and death; with other choices the natural consequences lead to liberty and eternal life. (2 Nephi 2:27)

It seems like a big waste of energy to strain against my leash and complain about how I am cheated and restricted when I could be enjoying a walk outside.

Some amusing things that have happened in the past two days

1. I went to a town about an hour south of my house yesterday to visit a friend who is staying there. Not being particularly familiar with the town, but knowing the Utah grid address system and sporting a handy Google Maps printout, I didn't worry about being able to locate the place. So off I went toward the address I had on my paper, which looked like this: 1337 West 140 North. (Address has been changed to protect people's privacy.)

When I arrived at the cute little house at the address, I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. A nice young mom a babe in arms and three or so other kids curiously gathered around her answered the door.

"Hi, I'm ," I said. She looked at me blankly. "S's friend," I said. When she didn't seem to know what I was talking about I realized I must have the wrong house. So I got back in the car and called my friend, asking for the address again. Turns out that the address was really 1337 West 140 SOUTH. What a coincidence that there just happened to be two 1337s!

2. Last night I was visiting with my mom and my "sis" in the latter's bedroom. We noticed a quiet but audible high-pitched sound and were trying to figure out where it was coming from. We searched the closet, moved our heads around to sense the direction of the sound, unplugged things, turned things on and off, and even branched out into the hallway and other rooms to try to figure out the source of the sound. After 10 minutes or so of a confusing search my mom finally realized where the sound was coming from: the electronic mosquito repeller in her pocket. She had it at work and had put it in her pocket to bring home. Every time my mom moved, the sound moved, which explains why it was so hard to locate.

3. I pulled into a local quick-lube place to get my emissions test and inspection. Hey, it's the last day of the month; no time like the present! Since there were a couple of people in line in front of me, I parked over to the side where directed and went into the waiting room. After I perused a magazine for a while, one of the workers came in and asked for the person who brought in the Corolla. "Can I borrow your keys?" he asked.

"I thought I left it in the car," I said.

"The car is locked," he said.

I realized what had happened almost immediately: upon getting out of the car I left the key in the ignition so the workers could move it, but habitually pressed the power-lock button so the key was locked inside the car.

Luckily I was able to reach my mom at work and she could bring me a key. While I waited for her to come in the waiting room, another customer told me a funny story about her 16-year-old daughter, who called her once from outside her boyfriend's house. "Mom, I just broke up with Billy, and I locked my keys in the car." Talk about ruining your exit.

An open letter to boys I chat with online.

Dear boys on online dating sites,

I have been using online dating sites because I don't have many avenues to meet more people. I actually enjoy the experience because the online scene is one in which I feel comfortable interacting anyway. I also appreciate the fact that it allows me to get to know a lot of people. Here are a few things that hopefully will help our online experience go more smoothly:

1. I appreciate your compliments. Thanks for letting me know that you think I'm good-looking. I haven't gotten a lot of that in my life.

2. I don't need more pen pals. Of course we are going to exchange messages to see if we think that we might be interested in each other. But I have plenty of friends to chat with on the Internet. If our conversations are not progressing toward us getting together, I'm probably not going to engage in a lot of flirty banter with you just for the heck of it. So if you want to go out, ask me out.

3. If you're interested in me, be interested. Don't just message me every other week when things aren't working out with whatever girl you've been working on lately. Corollary: I'd rather not hear about what the last girl was complaining about. I try to keep a positive attitude and I like having positive conversations.

4. There is no need for a "No thanks" message. Just don't write me back. The fact that you took the effort to send out a "no thanks" makes it feel like a rejection, whereas a non-reply is simply part of Internet life.

5. If you want to impress me, don't try to ask me "spicy" questions or refer a lot to making out and so forth when we get together. If you're interested in having a girl just to make out or talk dirty with, I don't think I'm what you're looking for. Don't get me wrong: I enjoy expressing myself physically, and I believe that the man I end up with will be very satisfied. But I'm not here to be used and I deserve better than that.

6. If your age has a 4 or 5 in the tens place, I'm not the girl you're looking for. I'm only 32, after all. In fact, I feel more comfortable with people who are younger than I am most of the time.

I am looking to enrich my life through making more social connections that ultimately lead to personal meetings (i.e. dates). If that's not what you're into right now we'd probably both be a lot happier talking with other people. On the other hand, if you think we might click, give it a chance! It's only one date, after all, not the end of the world.

Sincerely yours,
ww

Tornado anniversary

I just saw a news story in remembrance of the 10th anniversary of the big tornado in Salt Lake City. Yes, it was August 10, 1999 when the F-2 tornado went through downtown Salt Lake City, killing one, injuring others, uprooting trees, etc. The news anchor said something like, "I think if you were living here at that time you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when the tornado happened."

Watch one of the news stories here

I definitely remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the tornado. I was going door-to-door on the streets of Winnipeg as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As we walked the other direction on a street we had been visiting, a woman I had talked with before came out of her house. "You're from Salt Lake City!" she said. "There was a tornado! You better call your family and make sure they're okay!"

Of course being from Salt Lake City, my first instinct was to say something like, "Excuse me, I thought you said tornado." Because, of course, tornadoes are not high on the Utah natural disaster list. Scientists have been predicting The Big Earthquake ever since I was a child, but we don't usually worry about tornadoes doing much damage in our mountain valley home.

But sure enough, the next day someone showed me a map in the newspaper that diagrammed the path of the tornado through downtown Salt Lake City. After that I didn't give it much more thought; I knew that my family was far from the path.

And so today, they remember the tornado in a news story. Must be a slow news day.

Thanks for your votes!

This blog was nominated for the Top 100 Language Blogs 2009 contest in the category of Language Professionals. Voting for the contest ended a couple of days ago. Click here to see the results. While I didn't make it into the top 20 professionals or the big top 100, I appreciate everyone who voted for me, and I think it's great that bab.la/lexiophiles.com is compiling groups of blogs that have interest in language, language teaching, language learning, and so on, and I'm honored to have been nominated! I appreciate my readers (even those of you who skip over the linguistics stuff -- you know who you are *grin*).

Do you think I'm going to fall for this?

Below see the text of an e-mail I got recently. I'd never seen one quite like THIS before...

REFERENCE: SNS/NL/0671341/09

BE ADVISED ACCORDINGLY

Be informed that my previous mail to you was not responded to. I found it necessary to write you once on the subject matter because of the importantance.

It may interest you to know a comprehensive search revealed your last name to be same with a customer of the SNS Bank (now deceased) whom my bank’s efforts to locate his relatives/family members have been unsuccessful. The benefit from this dormant account worth millions in dollars is awaiting payment to a potential heir/beneficiary.

Putting into consideration this, my job as head of compensation and benefits and the legal requirement of claims like this, your last name can pass for a heir to this huge amount. You need not worry about the legal requirement as you shall be closely guided and directed on this.

Kindly respond with your name as stated in your driver's license or international passport and your direct telephone number to signify interest.

Be advised to keep this very important notice to yourself until advised otherwise

Yours Faithfully,
Chris Veenstra

Seriously, are you kidding me? I especially like the part about how I am supposed to "keep it to myself until advised otherwise"...

A conversation analysis of IM

Just another example of how once you turn the linguistic machinery in your mind on, you can't turn it off...

Some of the important seminal articles in the field of conversation analysis study the structure of telephone conversations. Among the findings of this research are that the beginning of telephone conversations has a slightly different structure from face-to-face conversation. Face-to-face conversation always involves a period of negotiation at the beginning of the conversation where the participants signal their mutual agreement to start the conversation, such as the following:
A: Hello, how are you?
B: Fine. How are you?
A: Good, thanks. How was your weekend?
B: Oh pretty relaxed.
A: Good. So, what's the latest news on the Berman report?
B: Well Berman called yesterday and...

and the conversation on the chosen topic continues on from there. In this conversation, both A and B signal their mutual consent to have a conversation by following the standard moves listed in the first four turns ("Hi, how are you" etc.) In this example, A requests B to have a conversation by initiating this sequence of turns and don't agree to participate in a conversation, the conversation might go like this instead:

A: Hello, how are you?
B: Good. How are you?
A: Good. How was your weekend?
B: Pretty good. Gotta run! See you later!

And in this case the conversation is ended, since B did not indicate agreement with A's request to have a conversation.

Telephone conversations are very similar in their structure, except they are usually missing the first part.
B: Hello?
A: Hiya. How was your weekend?
B: Pretty good. So, what's the latest news on the Berman report?
...

If you compare the turns in this conversation to the turns in the previous conversation you will notice that the turns are very similar, except appear to be offset. That is, the order of turns seems to be the same except for the first turn is missing. Conversation analysts have identified that the ring of the telephone seems to neatly replace the initial (missing) turn of the conversation:

A: (ring)
B: Hello?
A: Hiya. How was your weekend?
B: Pretty good. So, what's the latest news on the Berman report?
...

The initial turn of the conversation, then, whether it is a stated "hello" in a face-to-face conversation or the ring of the telephone, serves as a summons to the conversation, an initial request for the conversation to happen. The other participant responds with a series of turns that indicates his/her uptake of the summons and agreement to participate in the conversation. With the conversation fully initiated, the first participant is then available to propose a topic and the conversation will continue.

So far, this has all been summary of some work that has been done by some important researchers in the field of conversation analysis, such as Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson.

With this background in mind, I noticed that when I began a conversation by IM recently, I did not use any conversation initiator. I simply began the conversation with, "I miss you". No "hello" or other standard conversation initiator.

My guess? Since both people have already indicated that they are "online" by means of chat indicators, there is no need for the first part of the chat by which both participants mutually agree that they are willing to have a conversation, since the online indicator takes care of that.

However, I have also noticed that not all IM conversations begin that way. Sometimes they begin with something like "hey" which certainly seems like an initiator. Perhaps in these situations, even though the people are both online, the person still feels a need to verify that a conversation is wanted?

Feel free to respond with your thoughts...