bright copper kettles & warm woolen mittens!

{lovely tree in belgravia park}

I have never really made this sort of list before in my blog, so here are link to a few of my (current) favourite web-based things:

Becoming an anthropologist is a blog by a Finnish anthropology PhD student studying in Chicago & conduction fieldwork in Brazil. The main focus of her study is candomble; read here an interesting post on the ethics of interviewing spirits.

I also enjoy the Language Log, a blog by linguists at U Penn. Their posts are full of comments on neologisms, language use in popular culture, serious reporting on new theories, as well as stupid linguist jokes like this one. The bloggers Liberman and Pullum also have a collection of blog entries compiled for non-web reading pleasure.

Cat and Girl is a webcomic that I find quite amusing, especially this particular strip. It is always making clever references to post-structural & post-modernist theory, pop culture, and politics, whilst always being quite silly & full of wordplay. It also makes fun of both 'hipsters' & beatniks, & so I appreciate it that much more. As Girl once said, "A beatnik is just a misogynist with a typewriter." HA.

Speaking of beatniks & hipsters, I am hoping to read some of my poetry at this gathering, the Blood Ink Summer Benefit Show & Open Mic -- providing the audience is not full of hipsters & beatniks. Because they sort of scare me. But either way, if you would like to hear poetry from U of A creative writing students & perhaps others who will take advantage of the open-mic, it's at 7:30 on August 30th at Hulbert's, which is just down my street. It has potential, I think. I really do want to start allowing my poetry to take on its oral/aural form -- over the years I am seeing how acutely attuned I have become to the sound of words in my writing & how phonology is playing an increasing part in my poems. In my more confident moments, I am also attracted to the idea of a captive audience. Because it seems paper (or screen) just can make people read sometimes... perhaps I can make them listen.