I found someone's "to do" list on the ground near our local post office parcel delivery substation thingy*. I was impressed by the extremely general nature of the items on the list. But my main thought was sympathy for the poor person who lost the list, sitting in a house full of boxes, with a hire van parked outside, and no idea what to do next:

TO DO!!!
Pack up house
Clean up
Collect van
Move
Unpack
Return van




* We "missed" a special delivery on Saturday because the weekend post officer didn't bother to ring or knock. So I had to cycle a couple of miles to the aforementioned post office parcel delivery substation thingy, then wait a half hour or so while they looked fruitlessly for the missing envelope. They were able to tell me many things I didn't care about, such as the fact that the weekend post officer only works on Saturday and has braids, and that the missing delivery was indeed returned to the post office at the end of rounds on Saturday. "So it's probably around here somewhere, or else someone has picked it up by mistake and might find it in their bag at the end of their rounds today". Grrrrrrrrr.

For many Americans whose dialect doesn't include the handy pronoun "y'all" or "youse", the phrase "you guys" serves as a very handy second person plural of perhaps a rather informal register. But it also has the interesting property that, at least in this particular form, the word "guy" no longer necessarily refers to men. "You guys" can refer not only to a group of men, or a mixed group of men and women, but even to a group only of women:

I’m not here to make friends with you guys. -- contestant on season 7 of America's Next Top Model engaged in light conversation with some other (female) contestants.

As far as I know, UK English does not have a comparable phrase deployed in similar situations (although of course there's no shortage of ways to express second-person-plural should the need truly arise); the closest equivalent I can think of is "lads" which is obligatorily masculine.* Indeed, I've seen some female UK-ites take offense to being addressed as part of "you guys". This is no surprise, because it seems to me that only this particular use of "guy" permits female reference. (Not just "you guys". "Guys" can also stand alone in this manner when used for second person reference: "Guys, you'll never believe this forwarded email I just got")

For example, it would not sound at all right** to say "a guy" to refer to a female person (assuming one is not making a specific point about masculine appearance or manner, e.g. "one of the guys"). Plural "guys" also doesn't sound right when used to refer to a group ("All the guys were there. Bob, Mike, Tom, Donna, and Louise"). If I start talking about "sexy guys" there is no possibility that I am talking about a group that includes women. In fact, modifying "guys" with any sort of adjective seems to remove women from the equation, even in the pronoun(ish) sense:

"You guys" = can include women.
"You sexy guys" = doesn't include women.
"Sexy guys" = doesn't include women.
"You stupid guys" = doesn't include women.
"You female guys" = doesn't make sense.

Quantification, hmmmm, this seems OK in the female-permitted sense of "you guys", but only when used in the second person. Third person female guys are still a no-no:

"You three guys" = can include women.
"Three guys" = none of whom are women.

Of course this subject has attracted more scholarly attention, and at least to some, "you guys" is a hugely big deal. The excitement practically drips off the page in George Jochnowitz's 1983 article "Another View of You Guys" (appearing in American Speech, 1983) "The rapid spread of you guys through the United States during the last decade [i.e., the 1970s] is the only major change in the prononimal system of English that has occurred since the loss of thou and thee four centuries ago". At the time of writing, (Jochnowitz claimed) "you guys" was the most frequently used second person plural pronoun in the United States, although I'm not sure whether he includes the ambiguous "you" in his count. He also points out that the pronoun is somewhat broken compared to others (you can say "You linguists" but not "you guys linguists"). So, what do you guys think?


* There's a wikipedia entry here which (at the moment) claims that "chaps" is "increasingly used for people of either sex". But I can't think of any cases in which I've actually heard the word "chaps" used in this manner (except perhaps where someone has used it in a weak attempt at comic effect, complete with faux upper class accent).

** All judgments are according to my own intuition only. Your mileage may vary. If so please leave a comment.

*** How can I not mention Guy Fawkes, the etymological grandfather of "you guys"?

Overheard on the bus today:

HE: Are you saying you want me to give you some space? Cause I'll do that if that's what you want.
SHE: Yeah, that's what I want. Space.
HE: Well OK, you just had to say so.
SHE: Only, it has to be space with someone else in it. Not you.

OUCH!

This weekend the Dunces said goodbye to a couple of old friends, two large Ikea bookshelves (one "Leksvik" and one who-knows-what) which have been with us for ages and together offered us a dozen (much-needed) shelves of book storage. Unfortunately as we've moved the shelves from place to place, their structural integrity has gradually decreased (despite our efforts to take them apart very carefully, and just as carefully store all the hardware necessary to rebuild them successfully). And now they can probably be best described as "wonky"; they are fine if carefully propped in a corner, but tend to slouch if left to their own devices. But they've been happily slouching in the back bedroom for some months now, loaded with books and showing no signs of imminent collapse. Perhaps I've exaggerated their lack of structural integrity (although I'm irritated by their tendency towards "disposable", like many Ikea products [Sometimes you do get what you pay for]); the real problem is that they don't really fit anywhere in our flat. They've remained in our back room just because we've abandoned the room, leaving it as a disorganized storage area where we hang our clothes to dry, park an extra bike, and so on.

But now things are changing. Mrs. Dunce is spearheading the effort to make the room usable, which includes building a set of shelves* from floor to ceiling in a fairly wide alcove next to the chimney breast. These shelves should have just about as much capacity as the two bookshelves, and will allow us much more space in the room. So we dragged the two old shelves outside, leaving them next to the bins in the hope that someone else might consider them useful and take them away. I didn't think there was much chance; they looked even more wonky sitting on our crooked pavement in the front garden. But surprise, surprise, this morning they were gone. So now there's no going back. We have to build the shelves, or get rid of a dozen cartons of books!**


* We should be up to the job of shelf-building, having already completed a small test run in another room using the same style of shelf mounting.

** While I was clearing off the old bookshelves, I was also going through the books with an eye on getting rid of those we didn't need any longer. But I only found a dozen or so that I could really do without (to give you an idea of my hoarding tendencies, Battlefield Earth made the cut). So it was hardly worth making an effort to get rid of any books this time around.

Earlier this summer I made a pilgrimage to the family home, where (as is my custom) I went through quite a few cartons of absolutely essential items I stored for the brief time I would be spending overseas. As the "brief time" is now approaching seven years, I have started re-evaluating the notion of "absolutely essential", discarding or donating many items once considered "absolutely essential" but which have now slipped to just "essential". Such as badly dubbed cassette copies of albums my brother owns (or once owned, perhaps copies themselves), VHS recordings of matches from World Cup 1994 (and way more pro wrestling shows than you might think), kitchen implements that were originally obtained from garage sales (or more likely, salvaged from streetside on "moving day" [the most important day of the year for the discerning scavenger who happens to live in the vicinity of a large university]), assorted food products slightly past their best-by date (and which have somehow escaped the attention of any vermin in the vicinity of Dunce Parents' Manor), ten-year-old batteries that still might have a bit of zap left in them, ... well, you get the idea. In any event, I plowed through quite a few cartons of such treasures, but also managed to find real treasures in their midst. This time there was one truly precious find which I brought back with me and triumphantly presented to Mrs. Dunce....

It's a music video (VHS format) dating back to my high school days. During which, I must admit, I loved me that heavy metal music (And here comes quite a digression indeed). I sneered at anyone who played a "real" guitar (i.e., acoustic guitar), believing that the only true music came from electric guitars (ideally two or more at a time), played by proper metal musicians (in contrast to the pretty boys who were all about fashion and stuff, and didn't play, you know, REAL metal [erm, you could be all about fashion and stuff as long as your metal was real enough, such as Twisted Sister, Stryper {ummmmmm, yeah, I know}, and the like {Really I'm just trying to claim I never liked Giuffria, Motley Crue or Poison}]). Now I had to be careful about my selection of proper heavy metal music, as metal too heavy ran the risk of parental involvement (see for example the unfortunate birthday present from a much-beloved aunt, who made the mistake of giving a gift certificate. Which I quickly spent on Defenders of the Faith by Judas Priest. Which in turn was inspected and parentally confiscated for some unknown reason [and, in turn, un-confiscated at a later date, through a highly risky stealth mission]). But the occasional copy of magazines like Creem and Hit Parader did appear in our house, and it was from these that I learned about which bands were REAL metal and which bands were total posers or worse*. In any event, I brought back a relic of these days and proudly presented it to Mrs. Dunce....

The music video is Hear 'n Aid: The Sessions:

Which I believe I purchased for the full retail price (perhaps $19.99) despite its feeble length of only 30 minutes. Recorded in 1985, it's the Heavy Metal world's answer to "We Are the World" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?", a single entitled "Stars" featuring many of the day's hottest metal musicians (and some less hot... the guys from Rough Cutt and Vanilla Fudge) (and some less metal... Y&T? Journey? Night Ranger? although I guess they ROCKED!! on the song) (and some less real... Derek Smalls & David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap), to raise money for those poor starving African children (a complete list of the participants appears on the Wikipedia page [where else?!]). The song begins like a ballad, with teensy-weensy Ronnie James Dio crooning the lyrics "Who cries for the children? I do......" before launching into the full metal power of who-knows-how-many metal guitars crunching away at your heartstrings (and for the record, I do not believe Mr. Dio actually cries for the children). How can I continue to wax lyrical about it, when the music video itself is a mere click away at Youtube. If you haven't seen it, you have no excuse. Don't worry, I'll wait....

HEAR 'N AID: STARS

If you want to analyze the lyrics in more depth (or perhaps have them tattooed on your person) they can be found here (along with a clear indication of exactly who sings what, something that is quite important since they almost all sound the same). It's also rather impressive to see how some of the best guitar solos (by this I mean the ones I thought were the best back in the day) actually appear to be unrelated to the song, but could actually be included in just about any heavy metal song without sounding any worse. The video tape includes not only the song itself, but builds up to it with a "making of" video. Yes, it does look very much like a parody (particularly given the presence of two gentlemen from Spinal Tap) but it's deadly serious. And now it's part of our household!

I am actually kicking myself now for discarding its original sleeve; used copies (ex-rental!) sell for $50 (link if you'd like to buy one).


* My favorite letter-to-the-editor of all time appeared on the pages of one of these magazines. It was quite customary for young fans to write in and explain which bands they liked (and why), and more importantly, which bands they didn't like (and why). Usually in the most anoraky style possible (yes, they could have been me). But the best of all was a dramatic put-down of Kevin DuBrow (frontman of much-regarded Slade rip-off band Quiet Riot) who (it was alleged) "couldn't kick ass if he wore butt-seeking boots" (a passage which sadly receives zero hits on Google [until now]).

Last weekend was London Open House, a once-a-year event where members of the public can get inside buildings that are not ordinarily open (or see parts of buildings that are not ordinarily accessible, etc.). For free, I should mention. This year we decided to trek to the extreme northwestern part of London, to the town of Pinner (birthplace of Sir Elton John, onetime home of Simon LeBon and setting of the BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave. But we were not there for any of that. Instead we were there to see some old houses.

Our first stop was Sweetmans Hall, a 16th century timber-framed house. The present owners have only lived there for a couple of years, and have been spending most of that time restoring it (using more traditional materials than previous "restoration" which they have had to undo before their own restoration, in order to prevent disaster). We thought it would be a very lovely place to live, if only we had a couple million to spare. The view from the rear gives a good indication of its structure (see the nice exposed beams, including the brand-new beam on the rectangular extension on the right side of the picture)

And some very nice angles are quite visible in the closer view (it's amazing this building has stood for around 500 years)



Our next stop was Headstone Manor, "former home of the Archbishops of Canterbury and Middlesex's oldest surviving timber-framed building", parts of which date from 1310. It's surrounded by a moat (for purposes of ostentation rather than defense), and like many old, old buildings has been built onto in various ways over the years. Some parts were destroyed by fire hundreds of years ago, and in fact the building is currently still undergoing major restoration work (including massive metal supports from which the structure of the building now hangs). There's still quite a bit to go (some of the interiors have still been untouched from the building's recent previous life as council housing). Here's a view from the rear (the front is less interesting... it's all covered in brick, which apparently disguised the building's age for many years)



And then it was back into Pinner, this time to see the East End Farm Cottage (which has its own website, here, with much more information). It was built in the 14th/15th century, and the present owners have a list of every owner since 1429 (PDF link). As you might expect it's a lovely little cottage, with crooked angles everywhere you look.


(I don't mean to call Mrs. Dunce a crooked angle!)









But perhaps the highlight of the day was the interior which contained a large wall painting (~turn of the 16th century), featuring a hunting scene with a dog in action and the lower part of a stag, complete with dripping blood. Needless to say Mrs. Dunce was incredibly excited about this very unusual medieval remnant.



We were extremely pleased to have a chance to see these buildings, especially Sweetmans Hall and East End Cottage which are privately owned, not museums. Thanks to the owners of these houses who were willing to open them up to the public (and act as tour guides too).

Well, after a long blog-free interval I finally have a few minutes to spare here and there, so it's time to see about getting back on the blog-entry train. Because there are way too many blogs that just petered out but still remain visible evidence of the short attention spans of their writers. Not this one. Hang on a second, I see something sparkly.

Quite a while ago I posted some photos of my London cycle commute (link). You might get a different perspective on cycling in London from the video linked below. Please note, the movie file is 70mb, and it's accompanied by a heavy metal soundtrack. So turn down the volume if you don't want to ROCK!!!

London Calling (From digave.com, Lucas Brunelle Productions).

My own commute is somewhat less aggressive, and may have a different soundtrack. It also doesn't involve any parking garages.

I consider myself to have quite a decent array of Web searching skills. I'm quite up to speed on the various options Google provides, and tend to use them in complex combinations in order to try and get useful information with a minimum of chaff. I also have a tendency to do searches in parallel, popping up multiple tabs/windows at the same time to allow quicker cycling through the possibilities (something that infuriates Mrs. Dunce to no end when she's shoulder-surfing). Anyway, I tend to be pretty successful at finding what I'm looking for.

Or at least, when it comes to text. Or information that can be found using text, such as identifying a song from a snippet of lyrics (even when they're almost entirely in an unknown language, like this catchy number (link to lyrics). But when it comes to non-text searches, let me just say "Ouch".

For example, Mrs. Dunce is a big fan of a certain plant that grows well near us. It's a flowering tree with some lovely bluish-purple flowers. As pictured here (with Mrs. Dunce wondering about its name).


I've certainly tried text-based searching to find this sort of thing (text-based search tricks work just fine in Google Images, as long as you know the right sort of terminology), but it just isn't happening. Searching for things like "purplish-blue flowers" gets you similar plants but they just don't look quite right. And I get really tired of lavender, lavender, lavender, lilac, lilac, lilac which don't look right either. I've managed to find a nice online flower identifier but its questions assume a level of knowledge/attention well beyond my own (in addition to referring only to northeastern and north central US and adjoining bits of Canada). And there's no way I'm going to admit my ignorance by going into a flower shop and asking questions that reveal my ignorance, or posting the picture on a plant identification forum where no doubt it would be instantly identified.

Of course, by creating this post, I'm revealing my ignorance after all. But it's related to the more general question of how one might go about using text-based search techniques to find out information about an image you are having trouble identifying. This does not just apply to plants or flowers. Say for instance you see an image like this one. The man in the blue shirt is very famous, but who is he? You might get some hints from the name of the website, and the people standing next to him, but then what? Or maybe you see this picture and want to figure out what kind of bus it is (there is a very precise answer to this one which can be found using a different set of simple search tricks).

Anyway, it would probably be much easier to ask someone. But that would take the challenge out of it.

Impossible?! Never. But sadly, this time it's true.

Some time ago, I decided to try and find a legal cycling route between home and work which allowed me to avoid every single traffic light on my way. The original post where I set out the challenge is here and here is a follow-up post where I successfully reduced the total to five (or six, but then it hardly matters if it's not zero).

In the past few days I've been working tirelessly to solve one particular vexing problem: the iron curtain around my workplace. You might get an idea of the situation by peering at this Google Map. My workplace lies in the center of the map, and home is north by northeast. The blue place markers indicate intersections that are controlled by traffic signals.

Unfortunately, a careful survey of all the possible (legal) crossings seems to show that my challenge is impossible. It appears that a rectangle bounded by the A501, A420, A401, and A400 is a nearly inescapable trap, at least for any cyclist hoping to avoid all traffic signals and still ride legally (one apparent possibility is actually pedestrian-only). Today I tested my last hope, a circuitous route heading southwest (indicated by the blue line in the above-linked Google Map). I did manage to get across the A400, but only just. It takes me to the massively nasty traffic system around New Oxford Street, High Holborn and so on, the last place a traffic signal avoider wants to be.

So this is a challenge that must remain unsolved, at least until some of the traffic signals are removed.

A gazillion days ago I mentioned the Glasgow Necropolis, and that I'd write about it soon. I just have to stop making statements like that. Although I've been busy, I could have dashed off an entry or two about something other than necropolises (or necropoleis for those people afraid of sullying the language by using English regular plurals on Wörter borrowed from other Sprachen). Anyway, today I bring you a few words (and fewer pictures) about the Glasgow Necropolis.

The term "necropolis" really just means "cemetery" (preferably large, fancy and ancient). The Victorian craze for impressive burial monuments led to an enthusiastic adoption of the concept, and wealthy Glasgow was no exception. In 1831, land near Glasgow cathedral was converted into a cemetery, modeled upon Père Lachaise in Paris. Some 50,000 are now buried there; I believe 100% of them are dead. At the top of the hill stands a monument to John Knox, hero of the Reformation in Scotland. Built 253 years after his death, it features a brief summary of his anti-Popery heroism. Broken floodlights around the monument are a not-so-subtle reminder that not all residents of Glasgow are pleased with this substantial monument to anti-Popery.

On our first day in Glasgow, we were too late to visit the Necropolis; large iron gates prevented us from crossing the Bridge of Sighs to the Necropolis itself. But we were very eager to get there... here's a picture I already posted, featuring Mrs. Dunce's enthusiasm for the Necropolis. The Knox monument is at the top of the photo.


But once Sunday morning came, we had time to visit the Necropolis. We had it mostly to ourselves, at least if you only consider the living. On our rambling way up the hill, the less serious of our group felt compelled to pose before a particularly impressive monument:

There was quite a view from the very top:

 

As we were looking around the Knox monument, we were further reminded of Glasgow's sectarian heritage: the sounds of a drum and fife band began playing somewhere off in the distance, probably warming up for the Rangers match later that day. No, we weren't planning to be anywhere near the Rangers match, but were instead using our few remaining hours to see the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (I'll try and convinve Mrs. Dunce into writing a guest post on that topic. I think she probably has more to say than I do).

I took a bunch of pictures at the Necropolis too (all the above are from Mrs. Dunce) but have somehow misplaced them. Par for the course, really. Fortunately others have succeeded where I have failed; for example, there are some very nice black&white photos here. And a very good (brief) article by Glasgow Necropolis expert Ronnie Scott here. Or there's always his book. Or even his very recently unveiled theory that the Necropolis itself is a giant Masonic emblem, symbols within symbols within symbols (article link)

Another substantial delay, sorry about that! Work has been frantic lately: I've been centrally involved in setting up all sorts of new experiments with various different people. I'm feeling quite productive, but little time is left for frippery. Especially since I've also been fighting off a nasty cold/flu sort of thing (my immune system should really get in gear). Anyway.... back to Glasgow.

We took a morning train from London, somewhat loaded down with a bunch of posters/flyers/information sheets for my work presentation. The trip to Glasgow was pretty quick, less than 5 hours up the West Coast Main Line on a Pendolino train. Once we ditched the luggage, we scrambled up the hill for some quick touristic activities before closing time. First stop was Provand's Lordship, Glasgow's only surviving medieval house. But just across the street from Provand's Lordship stands Glasgow Cathedral, so we had to make a quick visit there as well. And of course its surrounding churchyard. We Dunces always seem to find ourselves wandering around churchyards, graveyards, cemeteries, and this was no exception. The graves surrounding the cathedral were quite substantial, and many were surrounded by iron cages (perhaps this was to protect the recently dead from the bodysnatching craze?). One of these cages also contained a Dunce.





But wait, there was more. Up on the hill above the cathedral was a the Glasgow Necropolis! Mrs. Dunce was almost uncontrollable with excitement:


But we were too late to explore the Necropolis (without scaling fences, tunneling or some other similar non-standard means of entrance, so we would have to wait. We took a detour back to the hotel (where I met with my Deaf colleague for a briefing about the next day's event), then made a beeline for the pub. The Babbity Bowster is quite well-regarded (and was quite near the hotel), so we made it our first stop. It's quite small, with fairly minimal decor & lots of hard surfaces which made it noisier than we might have liked. But we managed to get a small table which was no mean feat on a Friday night. Decent ale, and quite good pub food (including vegetarian haggis, neeps and tatties). After that it was a very short wander to another pub, the Blackfriars. This was a much larger place, with quite a mix of people and a larger range of beers (many of which we'd never heard of). There's a smoking ban in Scotland (unlike England, at least for the moment), so the pubs weren't smoky either. Everything was quite pleasant; we didn't see even a hint of trouble, much less the famed Glasgow kiss.

The next day our paths diverged: I spent the day working, and Mrs Dunce hit the museums. Our next joint venture was navigating the complicated and overcrowded Glasgow subway system.


St. Dunce: Patron Saint of the Glasgow Underground:


After a quick drink in a nice enough campus pub, we made our way to dinner. Much to Mrs Dunce's delight we were headed to the Ubiquitous Chip, a very highly-regarded restaurant. Or more accurately, restaurant-bar complex, as it's subdivided into various separate entities, including the Restaurant, the Upstairs, Big Pub, Wee Pub, and Corner Bar. We ate at the upstairs part, which had a sort of fancy gastropub menu, not as expensive (or as unusual) as the restaurant proper. Again vegetarian haggis made an appearance, but the highlight of the meal was probably Mrs. Dunce's smoked haddock salad.

After dinner it was back to the Blackfriar again (told you we liked it). This time we tried some of the unusual bottled beers. Most of them were from the historic ale range by Heather Ale and contained unusual (but historically accurate) ingredients like gooseberry, pine, seaweed, or heather (not all in the same product, thank goodness). We had a good window seat, so we were able to see the Saturday night street traffic. Loads and loads of people out on the town, but we saw nothing even remotely resembling carnage.

The next morning we headed over to the Necropolis, which probably deserves its own entry.

Mrs. Dunce and I spent the past weekend in Glasgow, my first trip to Scotland. I was representing my workplace at a large Deaf event, trying to spread the word about the research we are doing, and to possibly recruit some Scottish BSL signers to participate in some of our studies. It was also a really great opportunity to practice my signing.

But I discovered something rather unfortunate when I started introducing myself to people. In BSL, as in many other sign languages, people often have "sign names", sort of like a signed nickname used in place of fingerspelling someone's actual name. My own sign name was given to me when I first met with a group of deaf researchers, after suffering an unfortunate broken-glasses incident which left me peering through the one remaining lens. It looks exactly like this: LINK.¹

In the southeast (including London), this sign also means "to peep" (as in peeping through a keyhole, and maybe something like a peeping Tom). Perhaps with a vaguely naughty connotation, but nothing too extreme (unless everyone has been having a laugh at my expense....). In Scotland, however, this sign means "pervert", and not a nice, amusing sort of pervert either. When I introduced myself to a Scottish signer for the first time, I got a classic double-take. He asked me if that was really my sign name. When I told him that indeed it was, he proceeded to explain that I should really think about changing my name (maybe something more like "tea", a similarly shaped sign, but at the corner of the mouth. Or maybe something more like "monocle", which is in front of the eye, but with a more open hand). The Deaf equivalent of "Bill, or George, or anything but Sue", I suppose.

Other than the embarrassment of introducing myself "Hi, my name is Pervert", things seemed to go quite well. I chatted to lots of different people about our research and the different things people here are working on, maybe 3/4 of the time in sign language, and only 1/4 of the time in English. I'd rehearsed quite a bit of my patter about the research, but was most worried about not being able to understand people (especially unfamiliar people, in an unfamiliar setting). But as my co-workers predicted, it was no trouble at all.

Next time I'll write about Glasgow itself; we thoroughly enjoyed our long weekend there.


¹A curious coincidence: this same handshape positioned on the forehead means "know-nothing" or "dunce". But I got this sign name before I chose the name of "Dunce" (that only happened when I started up this blog, and found myself faced with the difficult challenge of coming up with a title which, I felt, had to fulfill certain characteristics).