Monday, November 30, 2009

Aloha is Just A Secondhand (Accusative of) Motion

Judd's chapters 5 and  6 introduce the the perfect (I have done) and pluperfect (I had done), although it does seem rather odd the Chapter 6 exercises do not include any sentence which contain the pluperfect. The pluperfect tense, in languages which possess it, is much less common then the perfect or past tenses, and possibly even unnecessary, but onwould think even a rare tense would appear in the exercise of the relevant chapter.

The matter which appears more prominently in the Chapter 6 exercise, despite its introduction in a footnote, is the indication of the object of the verb by the preposition i, or "to". The use of a directional marker to indicate the direct object is not unique to Hawaiian - in fact it is fairly common among the languages of the world as an as an easily grasped metaphor for an occasionally abstract concept. In Latin, for example, the accusative is used both as the case for the direct object and the case for motion towards a city (or small island). Although obscure hamlets and large islands require a preposition before the noun in the accusative case, the accusative case alone suffices for cites and small islands. This distinction provides a  middle ground between the use of accusative as a prepositional phrase and the accusative as the direct object; in other words, herein lies the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs.

Chapter5
1. Ua hahai lakou. They have followed.
2. Ua paani makou. We have played.
3. Ke hoole nei oukou. You refuse.
4. Ke nana nei au. I observe.
5. Ua kamailio makou. We have conversed.
6. Ke minoaka nei oia. He smiles.
7. Ua aloha olua. You two have loved.
8. Ke holoi nei laua. They two wash.
9. Ke wehe nei oe. You open.
10. Ua maa oia. He is accustomed ("is accustomed" is a single verb).

Chapter 6
1. Ke ike nei makou i ka hale pohaku. We see the stone house.
2. Ke wehe nei oia i ka puka. I open the door.
3. Ke nana nei kakou i ke keena moe. We observe the bed-room.
4. Ua ike lakou i ka puka aniani. They have seen the window.
5. Ke hoopaa nei oia i ka hale maluna. It holds fast the roof.
6. Ua nalo ka hale pili. The grass house is out of sight.
7. Ua hana lakou i ka hale laau. They made the frame house. (A fait accompli!)
8. Ke pani nei laua i ka puka. They two shut the door.
9. Ke holoi nei oia i ka lanai. He washes the porch.
10. Ke imi nei oia i ka hale kuka. He searches for the kitchen.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Last Trial of the Templars!

The hills are not alive with the sound of muezzin. The Swiss have voted against the further construction of minarets in their tidy little country. This vote applies not just as a regulation, but as an amendment to the Swiss constitution. The Swiss Constitution, based on what I have learned about Confederate govenment, probably does not possess the sanctity of that of the United States of America, but it is no doubt a serious matter to amend it if it requires a majority vote by population and canton. The resident right-wing party celebrated, as one might expect, and the media have forgotten that Swiss neutrality never meant Swiss tolerance or niceness.

What do the Templars have to do with this matter? There is no doubt that the Templars vanished quickly and quietly away in the aftermath of their dissolution, since many of those that did not were slaughtered by their creditor, the King of France. One possible destination of the missing Templars was the Alpine mountain range, a region whose importance derived from the limited number of passes between Germany, France, and Italy thorugh which armies and merchants traveled. I would never equate probability with certainty, but the presence of Templars in that region would explain the sudden appearence of a local sophisticated and secretive banking industry and a sudden rise in regional military success, both of which were specialties of the Templars. The military successes of the Templars, however, were never long-term, and their history was a series of stepped strategic retreats.

If the Swiss hypothesis be true, then the growing presence of Muslims in the last redoubt of the Knights Templar indicates the final defeat of the order which started in a Christian Jerusalem, an ultimate insult after the recent breaking of their banking secrecy under American pressure.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Foxy Luvers

In accordance to the familial mandates of Thanksgiving, I consented to accompany my progenitors to The Fantastic Mr. Fox. The difference between those who have a car, however, and those who do not, is greater than most imagined. I cannot claim a surfeit of virtue in this case, since I was briefly the sole passenger on the bus, but the mode of transportation still determines how much consideration is given to time of travel. In short, I arrived ludicrously early at my destination, a situation with which I am intimate. Since it was a familiar situation, I resorted to my default plan: find a coffee shop wherein I might abide. There were several other culinary establishments near the 4-Star, but all of these were either proper restaurants or involved drinking of the Dionysiac kind. I went to Luvers, which (contrary to what might be gleaned from its name) was a coffee shop rather than a business rival for Good Vibrations. Its interior is well-appointed, although I do not know what their usual customer profile is.

As for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, I enjoyed it greatly and did not find any indication of the Uncanny Valley in the stop-motion animation. I must confess that I have never read the book - my preference was The BFG - but one of the endearing traits of Roald Dahl's fiction is his refusal to pander to the "Children's Hour" censors. The anthropomorphised  animals of British fiction are less sentimentalized than their American counterparts, and that tradition shows in Fox. It also lacks the mandatory unqualified victory with which the American audience is besotted - or perhaps the American film industry, since Lord of the Rings made plenty of money.
George Clooney was an excellent choice as the titular Mr. Fox, although one does wonder if there were not less high-profile names who could perform the voice equally well. The bitter antagonism between Ash and Kristofferson, which had been added to the script to lengthen the still short movie, was a realistic portrayal of adolescent strife.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

You and Me, Baby (or Maybe Not)

I love languages with duals! For those unfortunate enough to lack grammatical education, the distinction between dual and plural in relevant contexts is that the dual indicates exactly two items (with the possibility of innate pairedness, such as eyes) whereas the plural indicates more than two. One the memorable uses of the dual in Homeric Greek is the reference in the Iliad to "the two sons of Atreus" (Agamemnon and Menelaos).

I realize that the book I am using (The Hawaiian Language, by Judd, which I bought many years ago as a visiting keiki on Kaua'i) is somewhat deficient in the okina and macron department, but I'm planning a paper using Kaua'i legends and figure I'd better get used to those very deficiencies characteristic of some older source material. Besides, this grammar fits neatly in my pack.

So far, there are only four other grammar points. the first is the distinction in the first person, both dual and plural numbers, between inclusive and exclusive forms. The easiest way for you, dear reader, to understand this distinction is reminiscing on some occasion when a misunderstanding of "we" led to the awkward clarification that the addressee was not accompanying the speaker on his task. If you and your friend spoke a language (such as Hawaiian!) which distinguished between inclusive and exclusive uses, you would not have encountered this problem. If you had used an inclusive we, your friend would have basked in the assurance of your affections because he was coming with you; if you had used an exclusive we, your friend would have understand how callous and self-centered you were in departing without him.

The next two points are the forms for the verb. The verb comes first in Hawaiian (and Welsh and Klingon) and the surrounding words determine the tense, although I lack sufficient linguistic prowess to determine whether this analysis is too dependent on Western grammatical paradigms.  The indicative present in Hawaiian consists of ke verb nei subject-pronoun and i verb subject-pronoun Thus ke holo nei au means I run, ke holo nei lakou means they all run; i holo oe means you ran and i holo olua means you two ran. I suspect that the nei in the ke holo nei construction is actually the adverb nei, meaning the present time or place used adverbally, limiting the particle ke, which appears to have many particular uses, all of them verbal.

The placement of the subject pronoun (au, lakou, oe, olua) after the verb may seem strange to speakers of most European languages, but it ought not to cause distress. At some date in the distant past, the endings of the familiar Latin conjugations must have been more substantial separate pronouns which followed the verb.Over time, the pronouns eroded to the conjugations I know and love.

Now for the data (otherwise known as the chapter exercise):

Chapter 4
1. Ke ai nei oia. He eats.
2. Ke holo nei lakou. They all run.
3. Ke noho nei oukou. You all sit.
4. I hana oe. You did.
5. I olelo laua. They two spoke.
6. Ke imi nei au. I search.
7. I lohe makou. We all heard.
8. Ke haule nei oia. He falls.
9. I kali olua. You two waited,
10. Ke hoopaa nei au. I hold fast.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Not My Thuper Thweet Thirteen

There are certain distasteful elements which I had anticipated I would encounter when I agreed to go to a bar on Eddy, but I did not expect to find a birthday party for twin 13-year-olds in the reserved part of the bar, leading me to believe that I had been misinformed by the organizer of the group I had come to meet. Although the confusion over my meeting did not last too long, I remain baffled by the presence of 13-year-olds in the reserved section of the bar and the lack of wisdom of their parents. I am assuming that it was a legitimate party, and not one of the teen solicitation parties which I have heard about from TV programs on urban teen prostitution rings in the Bay Area, even if the girls (according to one of the members of my party) were dolled up in a manner similar to Britney Spears: the extreme propinquity of a hotel does raise my suspicions, since I did pass a massage parlor, the Century Theater, and a streetwalker before I climbed on the 38 Geary.

If it was a legitimate operation (which seemed to be the explicit thesis of my companions), what combination of coddling parents and self-involved teenagers leads to a celebration in a bar? It occurred to me that it could be some cut-rate double post-bat-mitzvah party, but I have no proof either way.  I am assuming this party was an indication of the solipsistic seeping down of the "super sweet sixteen" and the quinceaƱera, without any redeeming rite-of-passage value. Such parties, however, do seem consonant with the pandemic of minors in YouTube videos acting inappropriately. It almost makes you think that Grammie from Hounddog has a valid point!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Myth-understanding (I need an Aspirin)

Hollywood's remake machine has set its sights on Clash of the Titans. The remake itself is not what bothers me, since this movie was never a favorite of mine, despite my love of myth and legend. Strange versions of the Arthurian mythos bother me more. I am, however, concerned that this adaptation of an adaptation, like the light of mirror in moonlight, will have myth-obsessed fanboys up in arms about its (no doubt gross) misrepresentation of the mythological canon.

Let me say this up front: I love myths and have been reading them since I was eight years old. I started with Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, and Norse myths; moved to Yoruba and other African myths; and once was mocked in grade school for reading the tales of the Aboriginal Dreamtime in a book which featured Aboriginal art (which lacks the same modesty taboos as contemporary pseudo-Victorian society). Once I had moved on from Bullfinch, however, I learned from Graves and translations of the Greek tragedies and epics that ancient authors and poets felt no compunction at changing the narrative of a myth in order to illustrate their desired point. The backstory of Oedipus at Colonus cannot be exactly the same as the ending of Oedipus Rex, and the version of Oedipus in the Iliad is less flawed than the Oedipus of the tragic stage.

The outrage of the mythological fanboy, therefore, is not only unwarranted, but even untrue to the spirit of the nature of myth. The last outburst of such outrage I can recall occurred at the release of Disney's Hercules, which made the radical change of having Hercules as the son of Hera and therefore a god without terrestrial access to his own godhead. At the time, many complained that this was some desecration of the Herculean canon, although that canon includes Hercules as sage and barbaric, irredeemably stupid and unexpectedly crafty, in love with women and in love with boys. The syncretism of the Herculean mythos from the tales of strongmen of many cities prohibits a single interpretation of his character.

This lack of canonical exclusivity, it seems to me, is characteristic of myth in general. Although there may be general outlines, the teller of the tale is free to stretch or diminish portions to suit the point which he desires to make at that telling. Since Hollywood desires only to entertain (as judged by ticket revenue), it is natural that it would bend the tale in the ways most suitable to that purpose.

Fanboys have no right to complain that something as fluid as myth should conform to their preconcieved standards, although they are free to dislike it.

Monday, November 16, 2009

The (White) Lost Generation

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091115/ap_on_re_eu/child_migrants_apology_4

I was already familiar with Australia's disgraceful treatment of Aborigines by taking children from their families and placing them in the care of white familes in a ludicrous attempt to incorporate the obviously Aboriginal chilfren into a highly racist society. I was also aware of the British policy of colonization by deportation, although my collateral relatives actually reached Australia as chaplains rather than convicts. I was even aware that the last official blackface show in Britain was canceled in the Seventies, shortly after my birth. I had not known, however, that the United Kingdom had sent (effectively deporting) many white children, sometimes orphans or bastards (in the technical term, although not legally anymore in the UK) guilty of no crime to the British colonies, where they often ended in institutions or as cheap farm labor without any inconvenient family ties. No doubt this infusion of unfortunates allowed the Australian government to stave off for a time the specter of Asian immigration, since they were white, whatever their other sins might be. Every time I read about these sorts of cold calculation regarding human stock, such as Australian adoption policies, American eugenics, African slavery, or Asian denial of the existance of outcast castes, I wonder how many more I might not have discovered.

Friday, November 13, 2009

A Word on the Street

I'm sure many of my readers are aware that this year marks the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. As a child born in the late '70s, I was weaned on the first decade of "classic" street, before Elmo came along and "RUINED IT FOREVER!", as the idiots on the internet would say. I'm also a big Jim Henson fan (a Muppethead? I'm sure there is a term.), including some of his more obscure stuff.

In honor of the 40th anniversary, I decided to suppress my Elmo allergy and actually watch a current episode. The results surprised me. Although (rather predictably) I was not fond of the current remix of the opening theme, at least it's still "Sunny Days". I doubt the current songwriters can top Joe Raposo's classic compositions. The fifteen minute segment, a feature unknown in my youth, featured Elmo, the little pink fairy, and Big Bird arguing who would play the roles in the story which Gordon (the core human cast sure changes slowly!) read to them. I have to agree with the statements of some of cast members that a solid fifteen minute segment allows a slightly more complex and memorable storyline - I certainly couldn't identify any of the narratives from my childhood, although I remember many of the skits.

It became that the theme of the episode was the Wild West/Cowboys. The Bert and Ernie skit was animated, which seemed peculiar until I reflected that the episodes I had watched contained many animated segments, just not ones which featured Muppets. I always thought Bert deserved a better rep - but I like watching pigeons too, even if I don't collect paperclips. The presentation of the letter of the day (T, which had gotten dirty and been thrown in the wash) was mildly amusing, but the song and dance number celebrating the letter T was in the vein of classic Street. The presentation of the number of the day (a chorus line of Ones!) had me chuckling. Since I had only watched Sesame Street on television as an adult, I had not realized how many jokes the show contained to keep the parents or nanny amused (e.g., a foal named Wilbur). My favorite was the announcement for the upcoming "Desperate Horseflies" on the Horse Channel. I wonder if it takes place on a horse named Bree! Although I do wonder what happened to Forgetful Jones. Did his performer pass on and Grover inherit his horse? (Ah. It's not Buster - it's Fred the Wonder Horse).

One of the changes my generation most vehemently protested (other than Elmo himself) was the creation "Elmo's World", particularly because the use of crayon creates a set which appears not just simple, but crude. I found this segment a bit blah, but maybe that's because I have no emotional investment in Elmo as I do in the classic Muppet cast.

Sadly, there was no Oscar in this episode.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

...In Excelsis Deo!

On Monday night, the Commonwealth Club speaker was Tim Brown, from IDEO (an innovation-minded company, rather than a terrorist organization from a Saturday morning cartoon). Brown was advocating "design thinking", although his interlocutor seemed skeptical and was hardballing the interview. I found that attitude a refreshing change from the much softer Commonwealth Club interview at the Fairmont of the authors of Superfreakonomics, at which I felt the interviewer could have coaxed the authors to talk about matters above and beyond that which could be found already in their book.

It seemed to me that Brown presented a convincing case of his own belief in his idea, but was not going to seduce the entire audience, but just the majority. The problem was not so much the validity of the idea and the associated strategems, as the zeal with which he pitched it, and possibly a detour into overhype, the boom of the idea economy. This reminded me of the way that new academic paradigms, even if they are applied initially to a subset of the discipline, become the new, best way to analyze anything within the discipline and a rebuttal to the intellectual status quo. Sometimes the status quo is so firmly planted that it becomes necessary to use excessive force to dislodge it; but such vehemence can mask the mediocrity of an apparently brilliant idea. "Design thinking" seems to be a valid and effective methodology, but perhaps not as earth-shattering as its most zealous proponents would claim.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Recent Reading: Music: A Very Short Introduction

One of the benefits of using public transport intensely is the opportunity to read copiously. I do not own an iPod or similar device, and therefore cannot descend into that form of solipsism while navigating the Bay. I bought Music: A Very Short Introduction, by Nicholas Cook, in Berkeley on Saturday at University Press Books after much debate between it and its fellow books in the same series. All of them possessed the advantage of convenient portability (which is one of the flaws of newspapers I have never understood). I decided that I would read up later on Kantian philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis.

Cook's writing is clear and concise, but I doubt anyone who has never learned or forgotten how to read for information could quickly absorb much of it. The Introduction was more oriented towards an understanding the underlying philosophies of musical practice and language rather than musical history, which has its own formidable challenges. Cook seems to be trying to educate the reader how to think about music without allowing the very same reader to fall squarely and finally into orthodox thinking about music. This is a difficult task, and Cook succeeds at the price of some cognitive dissonance. Music: A Very Short Introduction is a dense, thought-provoking libellum, and well worth the time of the intellectual who is not a music major.

Monday, November 9, 2009

I Am Curious (Green)

The intriguing premise of Loren Rhoads' now-defunct annual magazine Morbid Curiosity and , more specifically, my attendance at the Friday reading of the magazine story collection Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues at the Castro Books, Inc. inspired to write up this incident, since it would have been both suitable and has never been told in a well-composed style.

I had taken a course at Carleton called Introduction to Islam with Professor Khalid, on the theory that I should know more about the Abrahamic faiths I was likely to encounter during my earthly sojourn: since I already belonged to one, I decided that I would take both Introduction to Judaism and Introduction to Islam. I greatly enjoyed Khalid's course, and still have the textbooks on a top shelf for reference. I am afraid that certain people in this post-9/11 environment do not appreciate my attempts to refine their distinctions between Muslim groups, clothing, and principles. I don't do it as a bleeding liberal, either, but as an academic who requires some degree of accuracy - I am not knowledgeable enough to make the finest distinctions of Islamic doctrine.

Khalid's course had created in me a thirst for knowledge about Islam. I must stress, again, that my interest in non-Christian religions arises not from a desire to convert, but rather a determination to acquire accurate and relatively unbiased information about each faith tradition. So I signed up for a e-mail list about Islam - this was in the late nineties, so I do mean e-mail list, nothing more. It had no profile section, and certainly no place for identifying pictures (although that last feature would have caused some problems for certain Muslims).

After a short time on the list, I received some spam from the Nation of Islam. I had not (yet) visited the University of Chicago and therefore been near the Nation of Islam headquarters, but I had seen Malcolm X (where I shouldn't have bought a large soda because of the long run time) and I had gone to high school with a Muslim girl.

I was a bit baffled and bemused by the spam. I find that there are two kinds of spam: that which is spam in the truest sense, and that which rises above spam by virtue of the recipient's expectation of it. I was not surprised that a list dedicated to Islam would receive such spam, and I was amused at the (necessary) assumption that the members of the list were African-American. Here I feel I must remind those much younger than I that effective google-stalking did not exist at this point and Friendster happened post-millenium (I should have taken up the jobbing erotic maid's offer to get in on that trend). I did google my name, however, and discovered that the only people who shared my name and appeared in the news were African-American petty criminals; this onomastic statistic (which is by no means a commentary on race and law) suggested to me that it was not unreasonable to assume someone with my name who was interested in Islam had West African ancestry. It also seemed to me that if I had been African-American and they had asked my race, I would have been more offended. I briefly considered signing on their list, but quickly came to my senses and refrained. As a last note, I have to say that even an organization that boasts Louis Farrakhan scares me less than the "Church" of Happyology, whose test I once took from a public computer where I did not have to sign in.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Michael and Me: A Personal Story

On Saturday night, I went with Georgina to the prophetically named Michael Jackson vehicle This Is It. I had forgotten how charismatic Jackson was on-screen, and I especially appreciated the exposure which the footage gave to all the people who work so hard on set and (at best) are reduced to a name in the list, which nobody except their grandmother notices. Several of the interviewees displayed a peculiar, yet not unexpected, mix of adulation and professionalism.

My first exposure to the Gloved One was in the early eighties, before his disgrace. This period saw the birth of MTV, but my parents were and are conservative in their judgments of how much television a child should watch, so the first really big impression of Jackson I received occurred during my first visit to Disneyland. At that time, Jackson had made a short music video (new and exciting technology at the time) called Captain Eo, in which he played a space captain contesting against an evil, loveless alien queen. It would be prudent, perhaps, to point out that Jackson was hardly the only pop star of the day who could portray an androgynous space captain convincingly. Captain Eo, naturally, vanquishes the queen through the power of music/love - Jackson appears to have conflated the two. This video disappeared from Disneyland, although I couldn't tell you whether this occurred before or after charges were levied against Jackson. If it was after the charges, the cause for removal is clear; the most mercantile land on Earth, however, has a habit of periodically demolishing and replacing its attractions.

After the infamous Neverland charges, I began to feel uncomfortable saying anything about Michael Jackson. Although my interest in his music had started at the height of his solo fame and my youthful impressionability, I was concerned, as a youth leader, and particularly as a Boy Scout leader, I would be misinterpreted and ostracized (although the current meaning of that word lacks the implication of temporary exile). One of the factors which has always bothered me about any charges involving misconduct against youth is the presumption not of "innocent, until proven guilty", but rather "guilty, even if proven innocent". I'd rather save that argument for later. I've wondered why the family accepted an out-of-court settlement, but I shall be discreet and avoid possible libel charges. This blog, after, is merely a personal one.

I was surprised as much as anyone by Jackson's marriages and procreation. This surprise does not derive from an assumption of homosexuality, but rather from an assumption that Jackson filled his own niche of sexuality. Years of reading Savage Love have educated me to the existence of many "perversions", from those common to much of the human race down to exceedingly rare fetishes.

They say the best promotional tool for an artist is dying, and in this case it's also freed me from one of my many insecurities that prevented me from enjoying the soundtrack of my youth.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Kauai Tales

Most people, when they travel to exotic lands, collect knick-knacks such as clothing items or useless objects that soon are retired to a drawer and completely forgotten. I prefer to buy language-themed items, which is how I have come to own many Teach Yourself Language X books and dictionaries over the years. This time, when I went to Kauai with my family, I was looking around an antiques and Hawaiiana store in a Hanalei and discovered a book of Kauai legends and folktales. I already owned a Hawaiian dictionary (which I had forgotten, oh so foolishly, to bring with me to Kauai) and a book on the better-known Hawaiian legends, such as Maui and Pele, so I was excited to obtain a book with more provincial legends.


What particularly appealed to me about Kauai Tales was the glossary in the back that explained the meaning of the names in the stories. It pleased me not only as a practitioner of the "secret vice", but also as a student of myth and legend. The names in such stories, unless they are drawn from a historical person, are not chosen randomly; knowing the meaning of the name, therefore, illuminates the point of the story and may yield cultural information otherwise hidden. Many of the stories in Kauai Tales are aetiological, spanning form the time of night before the colonization of the Hawaiian islands to semi-historical periods. The author-collector is very careful to point out that this is a collection of stories from story-tellers, rather than genealogist-historians, and is intended to entertain first and be useful or historically accurate secondarily.

I devoured the tales in the first book so quickly that I returned to the shop to purchase the other two collections. The shop was still there, since it wasn't magical, and a book that appeared in the back of an antiques shop did not seem the sort of literature which would be easy or possible to find on a return voyage (I'm still kicking myself for not picking up the Adam Link collection in Many Waters bookstore in Northfield).

The second volume, Polihale, unfortunately lacked the comprehensive language index of the first volume, but it contained much more material. Now that I have returned home, I have access to my Hawaiian reference material. Much of Polihale appears to be derived from an Kauai oral epic involving several characters in a war between the chief of Kona (yes, the coffee place) and the chief of Wailua, near the sacred birthing stone of the chiefly class. It reminded of the Iliad and Odyssey, in that the cycle contained an overarching war narrative, personal narratives (from both sides), aetiologies, and stories about the aftermath of the war (involving a were-octopus).

I have not read the third yet, but I am looking forward to it.