Author: Josh Philip Ross

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[is that a pillar in your cornerstone, or are you just happy to see me?]

SENTENCE: The NPT is today more important than ever. Since its inception, this treaty has served as the cornerstone of global security and peace in the nuclear field, based on the mutually reinforcing pillars of non-proliferation, disarmament and the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

WHERE: Draft statement on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

CORRECTION: The NPT is today more important than ever. Since its inception, this treaty has served as the cornerstone of global security and peace in the nuclear field.

Vital to the Treaty’s integrity and viability is the delicate balance among the three pillars of the NPT: non-proliferation, disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

CRITIQUE: The problem with this sentence is a mixed metaphor: a cornerstone rests on the ground, in the corner, so it can’t be balanced on three pillars.

Fixing this sentence was actually fiendishly difficult, and I’m not entirely happy with the results. Unfortunately, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is widely accepted as the cornerstone and as having three pillars.

Worse yet, it was about a paragraph down that disarmament and non-proliferation were described as balancing on the fulcrum of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. I was expecting them to start doing circus tricks by the end of the speech!

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[giving thanks]

This year has been a very, very difficult one for me, but there is still a great deal I have to be thankful for. I am thankful for my friends, old and new, who have helped me through the crisis. I am thankful that I have a home and a job and a loving family. I am thankful for hope, even in great sadness.

There is more — much more — for which I am thankful, but that I don’t want to talk about here.

Instead, it’s time for my annual reposting of I Am Thankful for my Wear: Celebrating Thanksgiving with Korean Kids.

Yesterday for reasons having nothing to do with Thanksgiving and everything to do with inept management, Jenny and I had middle school classes for which the lesson was not pages from a textbook, as usual, but “ACTIVITY.” When I asked our boss, Yu-jin, what the ACTIVITY was, she sort of laughed and said, “You make.” So among other things to fill the hour, Jenny and I decided to teach our kids about Thanksgiving and have them write what they are thankful for. It ain’t as good as eating turkey and stuffing, but reading the results was good fun, and here are the best of them.

In the category of family relations:

I’m thankful for mother.
I’m thankful for father.
I’m thankful for brother.
I’m thankful for sister.
I am thankful for my cousins
I’m thankful for uncle’s son here.
I’m thankful for my dog here.
I am thankful for my parents because they help me for grow up and they care of me.

In the category of the religious:

I’m thankful for GOD.
I am thankful that I can go to church
I’m thankful for God Almighty.
I am thankful for my zezus.

In the category of the undeniably useful:

I’m thankful for my pen.
I am thankful that I can buy things.
I’m thankful for oxygen.
I am thankful that I can walk
I am thankful that I can eat
I am thankful that I wear clothes.
I am thankful that I can speak Korean
I am thankful for house
I’m thanksful for my air
I am thankful that I can learn
I am thankful for weather forecast
I am thankful that I was born, I have family and I live in Korea.
I am thankful that I can take a shower.

In the category of things yummy:

I am thankful for foods.
I’m thankful for eat many food.
I’m thankful for I eat past food.
I’m thankful for chicken.
I’m thankful for pizza.
I’m thankful for ice-cream.
I’m thankful for cookies.

In the category of the (accidentally?) poetic:

I’m thankful for my favorite thing.
I’m thankful for my hate thing.
I’m thankful for moon
I thankful for my life
I thankful for earth.
I thankful for many scientist.
I’m thankful for HOT.
I’m thankful for many trees and many rivers.
I’m thankful for mountins.
I’m thankful for earth.
I’m thankful for windy.
I’m thankful for a red sky.

In the category of fun:

I’m thankful that have good time
I am thankful that I can see B.S.B.
I am thankful that I can watch TV.
I am thankful that I can play computer games
I am thankful that I can run.
I am thankful that read a books.
I am thankful that I talk with my friends
I am thankful that I can listen to music
I am thankful that I can play the piano.
I am thankful that I can go to the beach
I am thankful that I can swam in the ocean
I’m thankful for Christmas.
I’m thankful for my birthday.
I don’t thanful that I have to do my homework

In the category of things that warm a teacher’s heart:

I am thankful that I study English
I’m thankful for go to the academy.
I am thankful for that my teachers are give a knowledge
I am thankful that my English teacher are teach me.
I am thankful that I can study
I am thankful that I have to do my homework
I’m thankful for Josh teacher

And in the category of silly English, which reminds me how much work there is to do:

I am thankful that I can see anythings
I’m thankful for many money.
I’m thankful for born in 1990.
I’m thankful for my wear.
I’m thankful for car, because we ride a car, we go fast.
I’m thankful for shoes, because we don’t wear shoes, we hurt our feet
I’m thankfor for telephone, because we say hello for our freinds for telephone
I am thankful that pencil because write a English and Korean letter
Because I learned a lot with they.
Because I can see anything.
Because I learn at books.
I’m thankful for air, rice, head, eye, computer, clothe, money, my house, Korean, pencil, brother, glasses.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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[countries: afghanistan]

PA ZANY MAY TAZA
Shakeela Naz
Mastana.netMORAD E DIL
Fawad Ramiz
Kamnoma

MUSLIMS 4 LIFE
Kandahar Prince
Mastana.net

There are 192 countries in the world. Today begins my alphabetical musical journey through all of them. Some, like the United States and the United Kingdom, will be overwhelming in their wealth of material. For others, like Kiribati, it may be hard to find anything at all. Nevertheless, here we go.

It’s fitting that we begin with Afghanistan, which is more or less in the middle of the vast landmass that is Eurasiafrica and has long been a global crossroads. It’s fitting, too, that the music has a rhythm that throws us off balance. Indeed, it’s not just the rhythm: the music itself is a disorienting cross between Greek bouzouki music and North Indian light classical, tied together with the plinky-plinky sound of Central Asia. The merging of Greek, Persian, Central Asian and Indian influence is more or less the story of Afghanistan in a nutshell.

“Morad e Dil,” by Fawad Ramiz, has more of a pop sound to it, but still that whirling rhythm that sounds like it’s from everywhere: the Balkans, North Africa, Pakistan.

The last track, “Muslims 4 Life,” is by the rapper Kandahar Prince, aka Hamid from Upstate, who likes to name-check Schenectady from time to time. I acknowledge that he’s not very good, and one could quibble about whether a rap in English by someone living in Schenectady is genuinely the music of Afghanistan. But as we set out on a musical journey around the world, it’s good to remember that borders are fictions and that cultures are malleable and endlessly overlaid and intermixed — as they have been in Afghanistan since the dawn of time.

I am grateful to Mastana.net for its vast collection of Afghani music, which is provided in an easy-to-browse interface that I thoroughly recommend checking out.

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[happy diwali]

DEEPAVALI NEE (MP3)

DEEPAVALI DEEPAVALI (MP3)
Balasaraswati
Old Telugu Songs

THE DIWALI SONG (MP3)
Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson
Nirali Magazine

Tonight begins the festival of Diwali (or Deepavali, or Tihar), the South Asian festival of lights. This seems like a perfectly good excuse for digging up a few Indian songs from various corners of the web. I don’t know much about any of these songs, but here goes.

“Diwali Di Rat Deevay,” by Bhai Kanwarpal Singh, is part of Gurmat Sangeet Project, “a grass-roots level effort dedicated to the preservation and propagation of the Gurmat Sangeet tradition, which can be traced all the way back to Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of the Sikh religion.”

“Deepavali Nee” is on a website called TamilBeat.com and seems pretty contemporary, but I couldn’t find anything beyond that. Info is welcome.

“Deepavali Deepavali” is a mournful song, which seems odd for the holiday, but it’s part of a movie and presumably has something to do with the plot. Sung by Balasaraswati, a famous South Indian dancer (or at least I think it’s the same Balasaraswati; for all I know, finding Balasaraswatis in Hyderabad is like finding guys named Anthony in Brooklyn).

And finally, we come to The Office and its loopy celebration of Diwali. Have a happy, happy, happy, happy Diwali!

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[the origins of g-funk]

FUNKY WORM (MP3)
Ohio Players
Pleasure

DOUBLE DUTCH BUS (MP3)
Frankie Smith
Children of Tomorrow

Let’s start this off right!

Welcome to my new blog dedicated to music. The Ohio Players’ Pleasure is a good place to start, since pleasure is at the heart of my love of music, and few forms of music give me quite the gut level of pure pleasure that funk does.

“Funky Worm,” from 1972, is narrated by Grandma and tells the story of “the funkiest worm in the world.” Naturally. What makes the song really stand out, though, is the astonishing synthesizer noise that takes off at 0:45, from which the entire edifice of G-funk was built. I only recently discovered this track, but it demonstrates definitively that Dr. Dre owes his whole career to about 10 seconds by the Ohio Players. As Grandma says, “Like nine cans of shaving powder: that’s funky.” A statement like that brooks no argument.

While we’re at it, that whole wacky Snoop Dogg “Izzle” language also has a point of origin: the proto-hip-hop song “Double Dutch Bus” by Frankie Smith, from 1981. The Izzle kicks in at around 1:51.

Enjizzle.

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[trod and true]

SENTENCE: It’s Alive! Creature Trods From Grave to the Stage

WHERE: New York Times headline.

CORRECTION: None.

CRITIQUE: This headline, sent in by a reader, has a very odd word in it: trods. Isn’t trod the past tense of tread? Isn’t saying trods the grammatical equivalent of saying walkeds?

Well, yes and no.

It struck me as possible that trod might be not only the past tense of tread, but also an admittedly obscure present-tense verb in its own right. So I looked it up in the OED, and sure enough, it’s in there, though labeled “Obs. or dial.” What does it mean? “(U.S.) To pursue a path.” Returning to the headline above, it would certainly make sense to say Creature Pursues a Path from Grave to Stage.

Even more germane, perhaps, is the most recent usage reference listed in the OED: a 1909 headline from the New York Observer, “Trodding to Self-Support,” about church finances. Not only is trod a word, with a suitable meaning; it also has a pedigree in New York newspaper headlines.

I hope this won’t be the last time a reader sends in a tip. There’s a great deal of awkward English out there just waiting to be parsed, and I can’t possibly find all of it myself. But no cheating: Engrish.com is officially off limits.