From Paul comes the news that Jesus C. Mezquia, the man who raped and killed Mia Zapata, was found guilty and is expected to serve between 22 and 30 years in prison. I hadn't heard of the case until I read Cunt some years ago, and I was saddened by this too-common story. What disturbs and angers me more than anything, though, is that okay, he is serving over 20 years in prison, and that's justice, but he raped and killed Zapata in July 1993, and he wasn't found and arrested for it until January 2003. I'm sure other women suffered at his hand in the nearly ten-year interim. How many? Is justice being served for them?

Sotto voce: "Hey! Download Johndan Johnson-Eilola's new book!"

Via Arete. (P.S. Arete, I hear ya--I would like to see some actual documents on how to deal with publishers and secure a more progressive copyright model too. Maybe when you get here in the Fall, you and I and Jeff and Logie can write some.)

Soon I'll be doing a little weekend jaunt to Fargo, at which I'll be presenting on the now-defunct Invisible Adjunct. I need to get my paper, which is now around 15 pages, into manageable, presentation-friendly chunks of information. I think I'll use the collaborative book module of Drupal for my presentation this time. Ah. It's Saturday night, and I'm sitting around feeling guilty over being so unproductive. I've been doing laundry and talking to long-distance friends on the phone, and now that it's after midnight, I've decided to go through the very helpful comments that Carol and Art gave me. I hope to be able to get some comments from IA herself too; I sent her the paper a few months ago but haven't sent a gentle reminder for some feedback yet.

Heather James called my attention to some conversations about gender and Wiki use. For example, there are issues of safety surrounding using one's real name or a pseudonym (of course that's an issue with anything one writes online, but in this case it's gender-centered). See also Girls Don't Wiki and Girls Do Wiki. My interest has been officially piqued.


Cross-posted at Kairosnews.

Torill, your red ankle boots and red Mary Janes are fab and all, but you simply must see my red crushed velvet boots. :D

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla



This is coming from the weird little girl who, in kindergarten music class, when having to sing the obligatory folk songs that children of the 70s have to sing in school (think "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver), would cry if she had to sing a line that had bad grammar--especially double negatives. Those really used to upset me. The teacher would try to soothe me, saying, "It's just a song," but I was inconsolable.


Via Cindy and AKMA, also grammar gods.

So often I find myself getting all cock-a-hoop over my students. They give me permagrin. Take yesterday, for example: Right now they're working on group presentations, and the assignment is to do a collaborative rhetorical analysis of a famous speech and present the results of the analysis to the class. Yesterday, I gave them time in class to do brainstorming. I was very pleasantly surprised with the enthusiasm they brought to discussing the effectiveness of speeches. I was afraid they'd think the assignment was dry, but WOW--one group has chosen to analyze the Michael Moore Oscar speech. They were excitedly talking about the rhetorical situation--Moore was supposed to give an epideictic speech, but we knew he wouldn't, since it's Michael Moore. They instantly understood all the implications of the situation, the way Moore deviated from the genre and decorum and the audience's reaction to that, what can and can't be said in a given rhetorical situation, etc. They rock! (Not just that group, to be sure. All of them.)

As Charlie has said, Google's new email service, Gmail, has its problems. But, it seems some people like it. Like Twain said, "You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."