#but actually great for like. weird verb forms and prepositions.

[essektheylyss]

New fun language learning activities: read Wikipedia pages for philosophical and political theories in your target language, just for kicks.

[cargopantsman]

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

Trigger warnings: All of them, because I am lazy. Also none of this is sensical.

Utter, hyper-caffeinated brain noise.

The problem with the concept of a "sense of self" is it already tries to concretize an amorphous abstract. It makes us want to point at some thing and say "Well... that's me." Whether it is a set of ideals that we try to live by, a set of activities that brings us a sense of joy or fulfillment, or, gods forbid, and entirely different and other person that "completes us."

I've always had an affinity for trickster figures and shapeshifters. The wearers of masks, the truthful liars, the artisans of duality, yada, yada. Since I was a child my first instinct has always been to blend in. If into the background, great, but if need be, if I needed to blend into the social fabric around me, I could do that too. To throw this into the high school backdrop; I wasn't a social butterfly, I was shy as could be, but I got along with the jocks, the goths, the nerds, the art freaks, the band kids, the preps, the whatever. Where ever I was I could fake that I belonged there. I was comfortable drifting in between worlds. (Looking back, I could have caused a lot more chaos with the information I was privy to at the time...[Oh, there's a constant point. I'm good at keeping secrets, keeping confidence. I'll lie my ass off to keep a secret.]) Does any of that really help drive a sense of self though? When your natural instinct is to mirror, to blend, to fade? When your point of pride is walking into a room unnoticed and, even better, leaving a party unseen? Does being a ghost count as an identity?

"Expression of Will" comes to mind... what does that mean? Ok, so some abstract thing is inside of you and you manifest it objectly outwardly. I was an artist. I made images in my head and "kind of" manifest them on paper. Some times people see that paper...  I was a writer... images in my head "became" words and some people saw that. I combined them into comics. Some people Saw that. Is that a lasting affect? Maybe the fights I've been into?! That time in 2nd grade someone was picking on a friend and I laid them out... the time in 8th grade someone was picking on me and clocked them down. Or in high school when someone decided to start some rumors and I held them up by their throat in the air until they turned blue? That was an inward thing that manifested outwardly. Nevermind good or bad, but was any of that... me?

Hmm. The beast. The primal... come back to that later.

"Expression of Will," "Expression of Will," "Expression of Will" ... What the fuck even is "Will"? Is this why philosophers get their heads so far up their ass? Is it a desire? The will to live.... living requires eating and the amount of times I forget to even do that... Maybe been looking at the phrase all wrong...

Will to Live (noun) It isn't a thing.

Will (verb) to (preposition) Live (verb)

Why does that sound better?

Desire to Live (noun)

Desire (verb) to (preposition) Live (verb)

Okay, that feels better even, but still... Sense of self, will, desire, expressions thereof. Are these just the aimless desires and wills? The fleeting flights of frivolous fancies festering forlornly in frontal cortices?

The self with the will can direct the desires towards living. "Get in the fucking robot Shinji!" "I don't wanna"

The (ghost) with the (strength) can direct the (impulses) towards (being). Getting too close to a concept of a soul on that one huh?

Forget self. It's a useless moniker right now. There is no self. It's just this mind alone for the first time in its entire life. (Not alone alone, there are friends, but they've learned more about me in the past two weeks than the past 6 years so...) "What did they learn?" asked the projection of self that defines itself by interactions with other.

I thought we were forgetting self.... not an option really. Sentience is a bitch like that. But they've learned I'll put up with a lot of bullshit under the guise of strength and integrity when I should've callously called this whole thing ages ago. That I can shut myself down completely in the interest of bodily-self preservation. (Not Self-self preservation, fuck the English language). What did I sacrifice? What did I shut down?

Everything.

That is less than helpful.

The Beast. Vince. Your Shadow.

My Shadow...

What do you desire?

Blood in the cut, tears in their eyes, power over someone that wants that power over them...

Do you want that? I don't want it, I just need it. No... I want it.

Is that all you are? A sadist? An animal?

Maybe... probably not though. A caretaker, and a sparring partner. A trickster and a shapeshifter. A crafter whose tools are destruction.

Next problem, grandeur. Mythologizing everything. But how to see a thing if you don't blow it up/magnify it?

You lack a sense of self because no one ever tested your sense of self. No one actually fought you for who you are. To find out who you are. The ex didn't. An old friend did until she got scared by what she found there.

You don't want to be yourself because it's not nice is it? You were raised to be nice.

College. I controlled the group. Never hit anyone after high school aside from set matches in classes or sparring for funsies. They all saw my eyes and stopped if they were getting out of hand.

The Dom-Friend.

Don't use the d-word on me.

Destroyer? Yeah, that one's fine. That one fits. He says as he carelessly tosses lit matches around his entire life. Can we bring up the phoenix or is that too grandiose? Why shouldn't it be grandiose? We spend every day of our lives going through the same kind of tedious bullshit all the time why not make our inner lives a bit bigger, a bit richer?

A bit darker.

Why do you want them to bleed? Hurt and comfort. That's a big theme, a trope if you will. Why not have both at the same? Why not let her think that I'm about to kill her but let her rest in the trust that I won't? Why not let me think that I'm about to break her while believing she is the most precious thing in the world?

Caretaker. A caretaker kills all the time. Tearing out weeds, uprooting the prized plant to move it to a better place for its growth.

Growth.

The self isn't going to be found just in ones self... not in another either. No, the self has to be found in everything. The things one wants to run to and run from. The soul (oops) is formed by what it crashes into right? The mind recoils from traumas races towards panaceas, why not, if one can, flip the polarity on the two. Bring the darkness screaming into the light so you can see it, bring the light quivering into the darkness so it can loose its terrifying brillance. Balance in all things right?

You're not a very positive person, they say. No... I'm not. It lashes out in bad ways sometimes, sure. Control, control, you must learn control. But being negative isn't bad. Not if you can grow from it. No plant can survive the sun for 24 hours. Trees sleep in the winter. We sleep, we heal, we grow.

Self-Destruction!! That's a fun one... seven fucking months downing a bottle of whisky a night. Whooo boy. Do Not Recommend.

Got a nice stay in the underworld though and trudged up a lot of shit. Now I'm sitting here with my ears ringing because I finally hit the personal limit on Monsters and my brain is overclocked enough I can finally see shit at 4 angles at the same time. I am a god damned quantum supercomputer of emotions right now.

Faith and faithlessness are the same thing. Have faith, trust the future, don't expect anything, don't plan your now for your future. Sounds sadly like live in the moment type bullshit, but life is weird and people are complex. Shifting drifting clueless animals that want to be safe but don't want to get stuck in anothers arms even when there is one whose arms are so safe.

The damage runs deep... and two people with damage running that deep. Hmm. How much healing can falling do? The other just puts a bandage over a puncture wound and both try to ignore it, but then the blood gets pumping, the heart pounds and poisons surge to the surface. It's neither one's fault really. Life is a trial of knives and we don't always have time or concern to tend the wounds properly. There's always something else that needs to be taken care of first.

Divorce is a helluva drug. It is maddening, the freedom to finally to be yourself is line having the lineart stripped off, there is a terrifying infinity in front of you and the only thing to do for awhile is melt. Let the slings and arrows just pierce and sink in. Anyone else tries to push the sludge of you into a shape might get hurt when they find the arrows. I want to go absolutely feral in a way. In a way the whole COVID mess is keeping me under lock and key so I'm just prowling around the empty house like I always have been, but now there's some sense... of purpose.

I'm raging against any depression, the executive dysfunction is going to have a talking to. The sense of self is going to be found in stripping this house down to bare walls and making a blank canvas. Bring everything down, ruin it all, start again.

My self is emptiness, it always has been. I can be anything, but I should be wary of ever wanting to be something. (My career options are AWESOME). But this is a different emptiness than before. Before I pulled the trigger and splattered the brains of the marriage across the floor I was just a void, and inky black pit of nothingness. Somehow, having the Shadow rise up and finally start getting along with the rest of me, the emptiness isn't.... void. It's just nascent possibility and that shouldn't scare me.

It does, of course, terrify me. First time in 40 years being legitimately alone is terrifying, should have done this kinda thing when I was 20, but... I was an idiot back then (60 year old me laughs from the future). But I think I can get a grip on the concept that "I" don't exist, but I'm real... ever changing ever dynamic, not who I was while I was married, but a mix of the me before, a angry beast now, and something yet unseen in the future.

[nothingeverlost]

Fic: Bored (Lenny/Midge)

This was supposed to be a short little comment flash fic but Lenny and Midge are chatty people and so it turned into actual fic. My first attempt at this fandom and Lenny/Midge.

Smut under the cut.

For @phoenixwrites because. 

II

“You know what bothers me about this?  I mean really bothers me more than anything?” Midge sat on the bench and leaned against the bars, her back to the second cell.  She knew Lenny was listening, though. It wasn’t like he could go anywhere.

“The violation of your first amendment rights?”  Lenny was using his own bench as a cot, sounding half asleep.  “The over-reaching of government control?”

“It’s boring.  I’m bored,  You’re bored.  The walls are a boring color and there’s nothing to read except the wanted posters on the wall and those pictures are not flattering.  Would it kill them to have some magazines in here?  There has to be a prison digest magazine doesn’t there?  Prison guard weekly?”  Even though she knew he wasn’t looking Midge gestured at the empty area on the floor in front of her.  “They could have a nice coffee table right here.”

“I’m pretty sure the goal isn’t to make you comfortable.”  His voice was a little closer, nearer to her ear.  He wasn’t laying down anymore.

“They should do something.  The people might riot if they don’t have something to keep them entertained.”

“’The people’ is you and me, and I’m not much in a rioting mood tonight.  I might be able to help with the entertainment, though.”  Midge was about to ask what he meant when she felt the lightest touch of his finger down her back, along the path of her spine.  It made her shiver.  “We always said ‘someday.’ Any reason that day can’t be now?”

“We’re in a jail cell.  Not just a jail cell but two separate ones.”  It was a weekday, and late enough that no one else was around and likely wouldn’t show up, but it still didn’t make sense.

“I didn’t say it was the best idea, but it certainly would make things interesting.  Stand up, Midge.  Come to me.”  She could swear he put just the slightest emphasis on ‘come.’  When she looked over her shoulder he was standing against the bars, close to the far wall.  From where he was they wouldn’t be able to see the door.  Anyone coming through the door wouldn’t be able to see them, not right away.

“Are we going to dance?” she joked.  It had been almost a year since they had, that night in Florida.  She’d been home, after the disaster of the tour ending.  By the time he’d come up north she’d been playing clubs on the west coast.  They’d met up in Los Angeles for a few days, but there hadn’t been time for dancing, or even dinner alone with him.  

“You could say it’s a sort of dancing.  They call it the horizontal tango, though for obvious reasons the horizontal part is out of the question.”  He leaned against the bars with his whole body, one hand on her side from the wrist up.

“You can’t really mean…” But he did, clearly, because she’d lost track of one of his hands and suddenly found it caressing the inside of her thigh, just an inch or two under her dress.  “Lenny.”

“You don’t sound bored anymore.”  The tips of his fingers were stroking her, and gentle wasn’t a word she applied to Lenny but he was being very gentle with her.  At least he was until he tugged her hand through the bars and bit the inside of her wrist just above her wrist, scraping his teeth along her skin.  She’d never thought of her wrist as being an erogenous zone before.

“Someone could come in.”  She glanced in the direction of the door.

“Let them find their own girl.”  His fingers moved higher and she squirmed, but it had more to do with what he said than anything.  His girl?  Did he mean for just this moment, or… “Tell me now if you don’t want this.”

“Will you still respect me in the morning?” she joked, taking a half step to the right so her legs were spread a little wider.

“Who said I respect you now?” he fired back.  He kissed her arm before tugging it to rest on his shoulder.  Her dress was cut just low enough that he could slip a finger between her breasts and caress bare skin.  She wished there was time to turn around and let him undo the zipper and unlatch her bra.  She had a feeling he wouldn’t need half of the latches undone for him.  It was funny to think that a room full of strangers - and Suzie - had seen more of her breasts than he had.  She couldn’t risk being that naked if the guards came back; profanity was hard enough to explain to her parents without adding a second count of public indecency.  Did jail cells count as public?

“This is only my third arrest.  Is this one of those things you pick up when you spend more time here?”  She wasn’t sure how he’d gotten his hand inside her underwear but there he was, cupping her, palm grinding lightly against her clit.

“I can honestly say I’ve never thought about fucking anyone in here before.  Fucking someone up, maybe, but ‘to fuck’ and ‘to fuck up’ are completely different things, as you well know.”

“I’ve thought of this.  Not here, though I’m not complaining because you really know what to do with your fingers.  But doing this, with you.  Someday.”  That someday had been haunting her for a year.  There were nights she’d picked up the phone to call him.  Nights she’d contemplated just showing up at his hotel.  Nights, too, where she’d convinced herself that it was never meant to be and they’d missed a chance before it had even happened.

“I would have been happy to have you right against that doorframe, if you had asked.”  His fingers curled inside of her, rubbing, probing, stretching.  When was the last time she’d had anything inside of her other than her own hand or one of her special toys?  Had it been a year?  Had it been since before Florida?

“Door open or closed?” She shifted her hand from his shoulder to his neck, pulling them a little closer.  Was it too soon to kiss him?  Would it weird him out?  Would it weird her out?  Considering the fingers in her pussy was it strange that she was second-guessing a kiss?

“Closed, but us on the outside.  You liked the look of the pool.  Maybe after we finished, all hot and sticky, we could have jumped in to cool down.”

“I liked the look of you.”  She tugged on his tie and decided that she was done thinking and over-analyzing.  She’d thought too much that night and nothing had happened.  The steel of the bars was cool against her forehead when she tilted her head enough to line up their mouths.  Thankfully he didn’t seem to object.  Or maybe he was distracted but he seemed to be matching her tongue stroke for tongue stroke.  When his fingers started moving quicker she was glad for the kiss to muffle the moans she couldn’t quite silence.  Her legs were starting to tremble as he found that overly sensitive spot inside that most guys didn’t take the time to seek out, or denied completely.  

“Fuck me,” she moaned against his mouth when his thumb made tight circles against her clit.  She shifted her hand to the bars to support herself better, and was amused to look down and see Lenny’s whole arm was under her skirt.

“Careful, someone might have you arrested for profanity.  Or prostitution.”

“You know, I think my mother would prefer prostitution to comedy.  It would be a relief.”  the only relief she cared about right now, though, was the one from the building tension between her legs.  

“Why not do both?  You could be a pioneer for a whole new form of entertainment, a two for one kind of deal.”  He was smirking at her, and she might have laughed except that his fingers moved faster and his fingers worked their way just far enough that he was able to pinch her nipple.  

“Oh fuck,” she shouted, not at all mindful of where she was.  It was like when she was standing on stage and everything was just flying.  The pot she’d smoked a few times didn’t give her nearly the same high as performing - or having Lenny Bruce’s fingers in her cunt.  What would it be like to have all of him?  And none of the clothes?

“Better than a magazine?”  He was coky and gave her a grin.  If not for the very obvious tenting of his pants she might think that he was completely in control.

“I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”  She didn’t want to think about what might have happened on this jail floor as she slid down to her knees and nimbly undid the fly of his trousers.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“You didn’t have to do that for me either.  It’s not about tit for tat.  I have great tits, by the way, but unfortunately you’re going to have to wait to see them.”  She didn’t push his pants down, not when someone could come into the room.  It made things a little trickier, but this wasn’t her first rodeo and she was confident in her skills to make him come. “Tell me, Lenny.  Tell me what it means to come.”

“To is a preposition; come is a verb.”  She let his words flow over her as she sucked his cock into her mouth and felt him hit the back of her throat.  She wasn’t bored anymore.  Clearly she just needed to make sure she only got arrested if Lenny was around to join her.

[arabellaflynn]

My response to extended periods of stress is to distract myself by cramming new things into my head. I had a terrible semester at college once and front-loaded the entirety of the sci.electronics.repair FAQ into my brain. It wasn't useful at the time, but I can repair the shit out of a VCR now, so I assume I'll use it someday. I am so overloaded I am about to claw my own face off, so naturally I am teaching myself Hebrew. I've been using Duolingo to do it, which is frankly a very bad idea. (I should really be using Ha'Ulpan, which is where you'd typically go for a crash course in Hebrew before emigrating to Israel, but that costs money, so no.) Duolingo is billed as a way to teach yourself a language, which it is not. It is a way to memorize a bunch of interactive flashcards. This might be effective for people who don't care how language works -- which is most people -- but it's awful for people like me, who hang all of their memorization off of a framework of base patterns. Duolingo explains nothing. The "lessons":

Do not teach the alphabet. Hebrew is written in this sort of half-assed abjad, where most but not all vowels are not marked in non-teaching texts, and some but not most unmarked vowels are actually represented by a placeholder Alef. 'Aba' is father and 'ima' is mother, but they are both written Alef-something else-Alef. Look at that and imagine how the vowel change looks totally mental to someone who spells things in a full alphabet. Alef comes out looking like it says about six different things, one of which is nothing.

Do not explain the orthography. There are several pairs of letters in Hebrew that do, or at least can, say the same thing. Tet and Tav both say /t/; Kaf and Qof both say /k/; Yod and Ayin are both sort of /j/ and sort of not; Vav and Bet can both say /v/, although both also have other readings; Samekh is /s/ and Shin can be read that way as well. Some other apparent character pairs are actually the same letter that has a 'sofit' form when it comes at the end of the word, which on the Hebrew keyboard is a different key (as opposed to the Arabic IME, which auto-corrects to the final form when it kerns all the cursive joining). I still have no idea if there is a rule behind Tet vs Tav; Yod vs Ayin and Kaf vs Qof are almost certainly because they once represented different sounds (Yaa vs 'Ayin and Kaa vs Qaf are still separated in Arabic), but I don't have enough context to guess which is likely to be which in Modern Hebrew.

Do not consistently read new vocabulary words out loud. If you're not going to explain the letters to me, the least you can do is read me the word so I can figure it out myself. Of course, it also never explicitly mentions that you read all this right-to-left, which seems like an important note to give when you're using a left-to-right language for instruction. You would think it would be obvious when everything is right-justified, but this is the kind of stuff you shouldn't take for granted when building beginning lessons in anything.

Do not use any nekkudot. A nikkud ("point") is a diacritical mark, mainly underneath the consonant but occasionally beside, inside, or above it, that explicitly indicates ('dagesh') a pronunciation change or ('nikkud') an unwritten vowel. This is how you teach people to read Hebrew, in Hebrew. You use it for small children. Or, if you have any sense, novice adult learners.

Do not explain any grammar. There is no explanation of why "you" is sometimes 'at' and sometimes 'atah'. No explanation of why sometimes the present-tense verb has an '-et' on the end and sometimes doesn't, even when the subject is 'ani' in both cases. (Answer: Hebrew inflects according to gender of both subject and speaker, which seems like a thing that should be noted for anglophones.) You are left to guess at wtf to do with prepositions and particles like Ha, V', Be, Le, and others. 

Do not consistently account for the direction switch of Hebrew input. Firstly, there's no warning that the thing expects you to type in Hebrew; I installed a Hebrew keyboard before I started, but I also have six other keyboard layouts on the phone, because I'm me. If it wants you to type a full sentence, it can get the text running consistently right to left, but there are exercises that want you to fill in just one word, and that breaks it horribly. The words run right-to-left as intended, but they are arranged left-to-right in English order.

Do not listen to its own internal dictionary of synonyms. I have run into this in other languages and it drives me crazy. There are exercises where it asks you to translate a sentence in the target language into English. If you tap 'derech', Duolingo tells you it means a way, a path, or a road. Translating 'derech' as anything other than "way" in the English sentence gets you marked off. If there is some reason why 'Ha'yeled roah derech' could not mean "The boy sees a road" isolated from context, Duolingo does not give it.

I am already cheating by being a linguist who has some idea of how Semitic languages work. My one attempt at an Arabic class was a disaster for non-Arabic-related reasons, but I do know basic things like the idea behind an abjad, handling regular transformations of letter shapes at the end of a word, and how words are constructed by adding vowels/prefixes/suffixes to a triconsonantal root. These would be completely alien to most English speakers. There is a systemic way to accomplish transformations like the one from "(male) child" ('yeled') to "(female) child" ('yaldah') or "children" ('yeldim'), or from the noun "food" ('okel') to the verb for "to eat" ('le'kol'), but it is never actually pointed out.

I also have a living resource who grew up speaking Hebrew and enjoys teaching people things, usually at great length. I can ask the Eccentric all the weird stuff and he'll give me a long, detailed answer, fully 60% of which will have something to do with the original question. Technical grammar questions can be Googled to good effect, but the answers to cultural questions are, at best, unreliable. (Example: "Does Modern Hebrew have regional accents?" Google answer: "Modern Hebrew is very young and spoken in a contained geographic area. While there are some tiny variations in pronunciation and vocabulary, these are so slight it is unlikely a non-native speaker would ever notice them." Answer from actual Israeli person: "Absolutely, remind me next time I see you and I'll do imitations, some of them are hilarious.") [The question of accents is especially pertinent; I am never comfortable in a language until I sound like myself, and since I don't sound like a textbook all the time, this usually means picking a dialect to drop into. My informal Japanese tends to stay Tokyo-standard in grammar but in tone is rather bokukko, for instance. It's marked in speech (although often the actual pronoun boku is used in internet Japanese by female blog authors who don't want to be explicitly female in text), but I am clearly a non-native speaker, and I feel it conveys a proper warning that I am not going to do well by Japanese standards of femininity. There are a few potential accents I could wind up with in Hebrew. American is fairly far down on the list; I'm usually pretty good at not sounding like a Yank. The letter Resh is most universally difficult for non-native speakers. I could probably use the French or German R and be understood (both voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/, the French one higher and more nasalized), but the Resh as given in the only explicit explanation I've found is actually supposed to be a uvular trill /ʀ/, which occurs more towards the hard palate than either of those, and with a rounder sounding chamber behind it. It comes so far forward that it is the closest thing I have ever seen to the theoretically-impossible velar trill. Wikipedia says this is an Ashkenazim thing, which explains why you hear it so much in Yiddish. I would definitely be understood if I used the Arabic alveolar trill /r/, which is noted as a variation common among the Sephardim, but it's also associated with Arabic-speaking refugees, and I feel like that might not be the accent I want if I'm going to be practicing this on Israeli friends. I've no idea which one the Eccentric uses; I gather he has one parent from either tradition and they lived in Jerusalem, so who the fuck knows. It's impossible to pick up from his English. He's made no effort to zero out his accent, but he has had three decades to nail the English retroflex alveolar approximant /ɻ/, and more or less does. Chet is voiced /χ/, and undotted-Khaf is unvoiced /x/, both of which I have.]

An irksome aspect of learning Hebrew is the transliteration system. There isn't one. You notice that my Japanese is italicized and the attempts at Hebrew are in single quotes? This is because the Japanese is brought straight across using a standard Japanese-to-Latin alphabet system used in some textbooks and on the internet. (There are other, more precise systems, but they involve diacritical marks that can't be typed on a pure-ASCII keyboard.) The Hebrew is... uh, approximate. There is no way to unambiguously transcribe Hebrew text in Latin letters that is immediately readable to people whose languages use the Latin alphabet. Duolingo doesn't even try. I type things using the Hebrew IME whenever possible, because I'm trying to learn to spell, but when the Eccentric explains things to me he does it with the regular QWERTY keyboard. It has quirks. Words whose transliteration ends in '-ah', as in the new year's greeting 'shanah tovah', are words that end in He, a letter which normally says /h/ but when word-final represents /a:/ for grammatical reasons. He also consistently writes his Vav as "U'" when it's used as a conjunction, even though it's pronounced /v/. My guess is that this is how it is taught in Israeli schools. There seems to be a system behind it, but it does not make sense unless you also read the original Hebrew.

This is all somehow working anyway, probably because I'm me. I made it to Day 18 of my first ever stab at learning Hebrew before I started scaring up podcasts. It only took me that long because I had to figure out how to search for the word for "Hebrew (language)" in Hebrew, because searching in transliteration gets you nothing. Day 20 I picked up a series of linguistic interviews put out by Leshoniada (לשוניאדה, a word which gave Google Translate shitfits, but which the Eccentric informs me is a portmanteau that comes out something like "Grammar-lympics"). The details escape me completely, because I lack vocabulary, but because Hebrew has a very regular stress pattern (word-final, almost always) individual terms are easy to pick out. Between that and a lot of straight-up imports from Greek, the topic of the first episode was easy to get.

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