I wanna play the part of Eddie in The Stranger Dance.

Furthermore, for some ambiguities, there is evidence that linguistic and visual context can override syntactic preferences that exist in the absence of a context from the earliest stages of processing that can be measured with current methodologies.

That's from a chapter I was reading on ambiguous sentences. Thought I'd share.

***

I'm really tired right now, but I still have quite a few dozen pages left to read before tomorrow, so I'm not sure what will happen. Either way, I'm not too worried about it. Things tend to work out naturally, for some reason, all the time.

***

Oh! So get this: my (grad. student) teacher in mythology told us how to write the first essay she assigned:

"So, uh, you need an introduction and a conclusion. Make your thesis the first sentence of the intro, and for the conclusion, you can just restate your thesis. Then, list your three points in the intro paragraph, and then make one paragraph for each of those points. So you'll have the intro, the three paragraphs, and a conclusion. And don't use 'I' or 'you' anywhere in there."

I slapped my forehead about 25 times during her explanation of the essay. Mr Hammond would have burned a hole straight through her with a condescending stare and haughty expression.

Then I realized that the most depressing part was... somewhere in that class at least one student probabaly need those crappy, ill-informed, simplistic, mundane, uninspiring, limiting guidelines on how to write an essay.

"Just restate your thesis for your conclusion."

::sigh::