So, I have drastically changed my Directed Reading course. Instead of doing Language and Sexuality as planned, I will be studying approaches to Discourse Analysis, particularly Critical Discourse Analysis (Norman Fairclough) and Conversation Analysis. And some other stuff. It should be good.

Why not Language and Sexuality? Well. I am already taking Language and Gender, which is (surprise!) largely the same subject matter. Also, there is a certain amount of stress in constantly re-considering your ideas and worldviews and such, and I've done way more of that in the last three years than I expected to (i.e. Jesus got the boot), and well... sexuality is a loaded topic, and I think I shall take some time to let it marinate, rather than plowing right into that bulk of literature. I am still interested, I am just taking a bit more time with it, and trying to wade my way carefully through the feminist side of it. While I appreciate where radical feminism got us... well, sometimes extremism is necessary to counter the opposite extremism, but perhaps it isn't the greatest idea in the long run.

I'm working on this Linguistics project where I listen to interviews and proof the transcriptions, and sometimes the interviews are really funny or bizarre, but today, the guy was talking about how this other guy raped a girl, but it was okay because she "wanted" it, oh, how funny... (!!) and there was another interview a while back where a woman talked about her sister being beaten to death for being attractive and her boyfriend (?) being jealous or something... It's either stories like that or long tirades about how the world is coming to an end because God is angry that "children today is wicked" and people don't go to church, and the last days are coming, and blah blah blah weird Christian eschatology. I have learned so much about the Bible! Like, did you know that John was suspected of being a witch because his prophecies came true, so they boiled him in oil for 24 hours and he survived, so they concluded that he WAS a witch and exiled him to the Isle of Patmos? Or that Satan fell from heaven in 1914? Amazing stuff. I have no idea where they get these stories from -- they're certainly not in the bible. Maybe missionaries back in the day got some stories mixed up? I have no idea.

My job is rather monotonous, and sometimes it's disturbing or irritating on top of it. Of course, sometimes it's wicked funny and I really like the people being interviewed, like the woman who had 10 children and insisted, "Me ain't sleep a night wi' a man yet!" because she always met with her 'baby-father' in the bush and came home before her mama caught her staying out late, beca' you will get licks for that! I'm finding it hard not to incorporate "ain't" into my vocabulary because they use it so often. When I was taking French, I would come home and be tempted to talk to everyone in French. Now I get home and want to speak a Caribbean dialect of English. Tha's what me day be like, man.