pet peeves

(written in the order that I think of them and not necessarily in the order of most annoying, although number 1 is one of my peeviest pet peeves.)

1) People walking on the sidewalk and smoking (or sitting in a crowded area and smoking as the case may be). Pisses me off. Especially in the winter when you are in a hurry to go somewhere and you have a cold and have to breathe through your mouth and these people walking in front of you are earnestly smoking their lungs to a crisp and you can't get away from the smoke. So, today i'm standing on a street corner with about 7 other people waiting for the light to turn, and this one guy is smoking. I see everyone's nose crinkle. One girl puts her notebook in front of her face. I begin to feel sorry for the smoker in his outcast aloneness. Even hours later, the smoke still lingers in my hair.

2) Little petite girls who self-referentially dwell on their daintyness and how they can't lift things and how small they are and how they need help with this or that and subtly make tall independent-minded women who lift large unwieldy things, whether they should or not, feel like giant uncouth amazons.

3) People who walk in the bike lane rather than in the walking lane of the bike path.

4) Young women are too tan and too blonde (and too made up) in the winter (you know what I mean...?). The same sort who wear pajamas with university logos across the butt to class... I think this is an American thing?

5) Drunken people who shout what they think are clever witticisms on my street at 2am.

6) AT&T.... Internet was supposed to be transferred three weeks ago, and I'm STILL have no wireless. I have been on the phone with them for at least 6 times, and was placed on hold for two and a half hours one night before the system hung up on me and an hour and a half another night. Tonight I JUST found a very weak wireless signal wafting in from somewhere (most networks in my building are secured), and I pray it sticks around for a few more days.

7) Overly flirty people....

8) Condescending/patronizing/smug people...

9) People who are just generally unhelpful...

10) People who start dating someone after a lapse of about five months of being out of a relationship and two days later are sighing about and saying things like "it's so wonderful to be in a relationship. i don't know how (you) single people do it. you really should try having a boyfriend sometime".... erm....

11) Married men or men in serious relationships who continue to hit on women

12) HUMMERS!!!! (the vehicle, not the people who hum. I like a little hum here and there, myself.)

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And what am I doing these days of no internet and no time? Teaching, preparing for teaching, and here and there trying to get a bit of reading done. Will try to be back when I have some more interesting things to say, when my computer that is in the shop is fixed, or when I think of some more of my pet peeves

Photo credit: http://blog.gruby.com/2006/08/

STUPID MICROSOFT!!!!!!!

Arghhh!!! I am in the middle of trying to prepare for a conference paper that I am presenting at a conference next weekend, and my powerpoint is crashing. This is only one in a line of microsoft products that are not correctly working on my computer.

About two weeks ago, my internet explorer started giving me an error report and closing the entire programme if I wanted to shut down one window. Additionally, I use outlook express and when I try to click on a link from one of my messages opened in outlook express, internet explorer will open and immediately crash. So I can't open any links from outlook express anymore.

Now, I am editing an old powerpoint presentation for my conference presentation. When I click on the embedded video in the powerpoint frame, powerpoint freezes up, and I have to use control alt delete to shut down powerpoint. So, I clicked on the troubleshooting link after sending about 10 error reports, and Microsoft recommended a bunch of updates. So, I downloaded about an hour's worth of updates, and it still hasn't made a bloody bit of difference to either internet explorer or powerpoint. What am I going to DO about my conference presentation!? I can't even put together my presentation if it keeps crashing.

Any computer experts out there who have had similar problems???

The stupidity about removing ajami from the naira

OLD NEW

Ok, I've been following the controversy about removing the "Arabic" from the naira for some months now (see the following articles and here and here and here, and I'm annoyed by the lack of historical knowledge behind this decision....

First of all, it is NOT Arabic that appears there in that beautiful flowing script at the bottom of the N500 pictured above. It is HAUSA written in AJAMI, which is the name for the Arabic SCRIPT that was brought to the region that is now northern Nigeria probably around 900 years ago. Therefore, to take the "arabic" off because it is a foreign imposition is just nonsense; it precedes Roman script in the region now called Nigeria by about 800 years. Hausa has been written in ajami script for at LEAST since the 17th century (See John Edward Philips article "Myths of Twentieth Century Hausa" also "Hausa Orthography in the 20th century" or Hausa Roman Orthography: Reform). And for a far longer time, historical records were kept in Arabic (just as official business and writing in Europe was often conducted in Latin). So is Arabic even a "foreign" language? (Here is another link to the importance of ajami to the study of history)

Second of all, Hausa in roman script was introduced by Lord Lugard at the beginning of the last century, because he made Hausa the official language of the army (according to Philips because it was already widely spoken as a trade language from the north to the middlebelt where he was trying to recruit soldiers) and wanted his colonial officers to have an easier time of learning the language... and apparently it would have been too hard on them to make them learn ajami... (I know... I started learning ajami and have forgotten it all... but plan to start again.) So, really, if one is worried about foreign impositions, the roman script is a far more recent imposition. And the anxieties that pushed the colonialists to make the change to writing Hausa in Roman script seem to be the same anxieties that propell this "nationalist" decision to remove ajami from the naira. Does that mean roman script should be tossed out and ajami reinstituted. No. But does the fact that the colonizers preferred Hausa mean that all Hausas colluded with the colonizers? Any more than the warrent chiefs mean that all Igbos colluded with the colonizers? Obviously not. The issue with the naira is... what of the people who only read ajami? which brings me to my third point....

Third of all (not proper grammar I know), my impression is that the ajami on the naira was to communicate with those people who were literate in ajami but not roman script. There are still quite a few people in the north who recieve Q'uranic education (and not government education), for whom the ajami lettering is helpful.

I understand the argument that it is not fair that Hausa is the only non-English inscription on a national currency, but then Hausa is the only language that has another script. Now that there are Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo roman inscriptions, what does this say to the other 400 or so languages in the country? Too bad for you?

Anyway, the rant continues in this article and also this very excellent article....

For more information on the introduction of the roman script and colonialism see John Edward Philips' Spurious Arabic: Hausa and Colonial Nigeria