Autobiographical

HAVE SEEN

4-26-09    You Look Nice Today/ The Sound of Young America at Bridgetown Comedy Festival

(2010 or 2011) Cort & Fatboy Live at the Bagdad

2-21-11   Doug Loves Movies

3-30-13    Doug Loves Movies

4-1-13     The Moth

12-17-13   The Moth

1-25-14   Superego Live at SF Sketchfest

1-31-14   The Dana Gould Hour at SF Sketchfest

 

WOULD LIKE TO

Dead Authors Podcast
RadioLab
Sex Nerd Sandra
Talkin’ Toons with Rob Paulsen
You Made It Weird
Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me (technically a radio show)
WTF with Marc Maron

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April 2, 2013

in Autobiographical,podcasts,you look nice today

1. Spent all summer writing a dissertation, got a masters in Linguistics.
DSCN5764

2. Recorded 30 cover songs in 30 days and uploaded them to Youtube.

3. Finally went to Germany.
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4. Had a volleyball spiked hard on my face twice. No nosebleeds.

5. Had an excellent birthday party in a foreign country.
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[and then suddenly…]

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January 1, 2013

in 2012,Autobiographical,Movies

My initial reaction to the announcement that Oxford Dictionaries US had chosen gif as a verb as its 2012 word of the year was one of underwhelmtion. Previous winners of the American Dialect Society’s WOTY have been occupy, app, and tweet, which seem to encapsulate the trends of a whole year more completely than gif does, which I initially felt only represented a small corner of the internet.

…but then I thought about it.

2012 is the first year that I’ve ever been in a gif. I’ve been giffed! I was roped into this gif, peer pressured by the enthusiasm of 4 ladies with dialects different from my own. Oh the foreign lifestyle! Being swayed by someone’s argument based solely on their vowels… So yeah basically I’m in this dumb gif where we’re trying to have attitude and be sassy with snapping, but just looks silly. I don’t know how they got me to be in the front of the group, but there I am.

[and then suddenly…]

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November 28, 2012

in 2012,Autobiographical,elsewhere,internet,Words & Origins

In my trek up the mountain of internet superstardom (is that my goal?) I’m in an episode of A Show with Ze Frank, a lovely youtube programme. My favorite episodes of A Show are Chase That Happy and the Kickstarter video. Other Ze Frank-related videos like 5 Things and Young Me, Now Me may also bring joy to your day.

Basically, at the beginning of every episode, a fan (sportsracer) introduces the show, and at the end, another viewer sings their own version of a ‘bye bye song.’ I provided this episode’s bye-bye song. If the embedded video is not working, you can find the video HERE.

Internet famous! *happy dance*

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September 17, 2012

in Autobiographical,elsewhere,Music,websites

This is about the last editing my dad ever did for me, in January 2009, in an insignificant email to my boss, telling him I wouldn’t be returning to Portland for another couple of days. I’d flown home for an emergency, which led to a surgery, which led to my dad coming home from the hospital and learning to walk around with an oxygen tank.

It wasn’t important what I wrote in the email, but I just couldn’t phrase it right. I asked my boyfriend at the time, my brothers, my mom. They said “Just write something, it doesn’t matter.” But I wanted to write the right thing, so I went to my dad, laying in his bed, and I asked him what to write. And he told me. And I wrote it.

No one cared what I wrote, and it didn’t change the world, but for a moment we got to be the old editing team that we’d been my whole life, the team that got broken up by an undeserved disease and hospital visits and medicine that fogged him up and forced our dynamic to deteriorate from equals to a caretaker and a patient who were both miserable from the change.

Why did I go to grad school for linguistics, knowing that I hadn’t written anything since he died, knowing that I would have to write all year, ending with  a 15000 word dissertation? I guess I thought it was time to stand up, even if some parts were still broken. This year has been so hard. I haven’t produced any great academic works, and now, the night before my dissertation is due, I’m aching for my reliable editor to help polish my abstract and bring the message home.

Here… write this.” There was a pause, and he squinted and stared out at nothing, and maybe bit the side of his moustache with his bottom lip, or maybe he suddenly stretched his arms out and back to intertwine his fingers behind his head.  I can’t remember that day exactly, but he did those things a lot when were brainstorming. Then he told me what to write. “This has been a week of transitions.”

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September 13, 2012

in Autobiographical,career,Words & Origins

1. Cowboys vs Aliens (2011)

2. 3:10 to Yuma (2007)

3. Shanghai Noon (2000)

4. Blazing Saddles (1974)

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August 31, 2012

in Autobiographical,movie lists,Movies

1. The Amazing Spiderman (2012)

2. The Avengers (2012)

3. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

4. Thor (2011)

5. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

6. Iron Man (2008)

7. Batman Begins (2005)

8. Fantastic Four (2005)

9. V for Vendetta (2005)

10. X-2 (2003)

11. Spiderman (2002)

(listed chronologically)

Top 4: X-2, V for Vendetta, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Batman Begins

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August 31, 2012

in Autobiographical,batman,Comic Books,movie lists,Movies,nightcrawler,superheroes,v for vendetta,x-men

1. I Never Loved a Man (The Way That I Love You) – Aretha Franklin

2. Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth – The Dandy Warhols

3. Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby – Dinah Washington

4. It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) – Duke Ellington

5. One For My Baby (And One More For the Road) – Etta James

6. Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part To Save The Scene And Stop Going To Shows) – Fall Out Boy

7. At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used to Be) – Fun.

8. Rock and Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) – Handsome Boy Modeling School

9. Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning – Irving Berlin

10. I Wish I Was a Lesbian and Not a Hetero – Loudon Wainwright III

11. Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off – Panic! at the Disco

12. I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever) – Stevie Wonder

13. Seven Days of the Week (I Never Go to Work) – They Might Be Giants

14. Live Life Like It’s the Last Day of School – WyldeBunch

 

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August 10, 2012

in Autobiographical,Music,Playlists

Conn and Anjel loved it so much that they married it on May 7, 2006. Then they designed cabbages. Then they started on a dangerous business. Now they are enjoying 35 summers. They are currently celebrating their 6th year of matrimony, so I made them a video:

If you had some trouble catching all the businesses, here they are:

  1. alaskan fisherman
  2. crocodile wrangler
  3. nanny for quintuplets
  4. axe handle fastener and tester
  5. crash test dummy
  6. pinboy for tron bowling
  7. coal mine explosive fuse lighter
  8. beijing water department quality control
  9. bomb inspector
  10. food tester for evil dictator
  11. circus dentist
  12. jackie chan stunt man double
  13. assistant to blindfolded knife thrower
  14. extreme wedge shoe foot model
  15. window washer for dubai tower
  16. killer whale pool cleaner
  17. hyena dog walker
  18. hot potato juggler
  19. artichoke picker
  20. deaf rodeo clown
  21. bungee jump inventor
  22. wampa manicurist
  23. nepalese mountain pilot
  24. ringwraith dance partner on dancing with the stars
  25. drummer for spinal tap
  26. eiffel tower bulb changer
  27. tightrope unicyclist
  28. spacepizza deliveryboy for reevers
  29. wells fargo stagecoach shotgun
  30. nudist camp grill master
  31. in-flight propellor mechanic
  32. anthrax delivery service provider
  33. red shirted enterprise crew member
  34. medusa hairdresser
  35. shark portrait artist
If the embedded video does not work for you, find the video here on Youtube. 

 

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May 8, 2012

in 2012,Autobiographical

I comply with the right-hand head rule. I am a good compound.

Hi there neighbor. I’m doing something about compounds in English and Spanish for my MA Linguistics dissertation, and I’m 2-weeks in, and already knee-deep in books and articles about Romance compounding, exocentric synthetic compounds in English, deverbal complex words and right-hand-headedness. It’s crazy-go-nuts.

LOOK! LOOK AT ALL THE LARGE BOOKS!!

Just today I was thinking to myself, “Brianne, you’ve really gone down the compounding rabbithole…” and I immediately responded, “RABBITHOLE! ANOTHER COMPOUND!!” And then the first Brianne shook her head.

I love compounds... and meat-flavoured crisps.

I’m learning some really interesting things that make me say “OH!” outloud in the quiet fairhurst building, (sorry fellow students), and I’ll share them when I have a more concrete direction that will make some of this preliminary research unusable, but for now this post is just a friendly resource for me to point new acquaintances to when I ooh and aah over compounds that appear naturally in conversation. Foolproof, handbook, footprint, pickpocket, straitjacket. I’m going to do this for the next 5 months…. at least.

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

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April 29, 2012

in Autobiographical,compounds,dissertation,University of York,Words & Origins