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Friday, May 09, 2003
On TV This anecdote demonstrates a) the importance of actually paying attention to the news, and b) the importance of capital letters. I was half-listening to the local news and heard the anchor say, "Will snow be back?" And I thought, "Jeez, isn't it finally too late for snow?" (This was not the stupidest thought in the world; for the past month or so the weather's fluctuated wildly between 30 and 80 degrees.) And then I realized the sports reporter was answering, and that the anchor had actually asked "Will Snow be back?"—the 76ers basketball player Eric Snow. (This is also not the most ridiculous mishearing I've had in the past few days: when I was half-awake and listening to the news on the radio a few days ago, I heard "tomatoes" instead of "tornadoes.") I also did some talking back to the TV (which J. and I engage in from time to time), when a U.S. soldier was talking about a detained Iraqi who was suspected of being a spy: Soldier: He was answering our questions in a suspicious manner. Me: In Arabic. (Probably unfair, but it amused me at the time.) Then we watched the Discovery Channel's David Attenborough series, The Life of Mammals (the first three of ten hours, anyway). Amazing filmmaking: I can hardly imagine how they got such great footage of such rare animals. I mean, he was frolicking with platypuses. (Platypi?) I had a complete Cuteness Overload for much of it. J. had to keep telling me "no, we cannot have [x] for a pet" (echidna, raccoon dog, numbat, serval...). (A raccoon dog, incidentally, is not the same as a coon hound: it's a wild dog that looks, well, like a raccoon, with thick fur and short legs; J. said it looks like a "walking ottoman.") I also had one of my bonk-on-the-head revelations: I realized halfway through the third hour that David Attenborough and Richard Attenborough are not the same person. I'd sort of lumped them together as one eccentric gray-haired knighted British guy who somehow found time to act and make nature documentaries. J. opined that they were brothers; I did some on-line research, and, yes, they are. (Also, Richard is no longer a "Sir," but a "Lord.") (As I write this, my boss, who also works as a professor, is chewing out a student who turned in a plagiarized paper. I'm very glad I'm not at the other end of that phone line: "Why would you think you could get away with that? Why would you jeopardize your college career for it? In my opinion you no longer belong at the college. It's useless to talk to me at this point.") I have some other things to write about, but I'll do them in separate posts. And, oh yeah, my lunch break is over and I have to do that Work Thing. [ at 12:15 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] |
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