Minh’s Notes

While I’m not surprised at the backlash that has accompanied the debut of “Nuestro Himno”, I’m taken aback that most of the criticisms are that they’ve taken our national anthem and sung it in Spanish, Heaven forbid. The Wikipedia article on the song notes that the anthem has been adapted into at least four other languages, and that the State Department has been providing a Spanish-language rendition of it anyways. It’s not as if anyone’s being “unamerican” by singing it.

Why didn’t these naysayers make such a fuss when our flag was notoriously, shall we say, adapted:

No one has forgotten the gloating, undignified celebrations of the US sprint relay team when they won gold in Sydney four years ago. On that occasion, Maurice Greene, Bernard Williams, Brian Lewis and Jon Drummond performed a lap of honour in which they stripped off their tops, arranged themselves in ludicrous flexed-muscle poses and adorned themselves in their national flag as if they were a team of male models. The absence of humility back then clearly still rankles today.

And how’s ’bout the same people who criticize “Nuestro Himno” form a boycott of all the people who misuse the flag on a daily basis. Ever seen a pair of American flag flip-flops? Ever brushed your teeth on our flag? Ever get the feeling that our star-spangled banner is being used solely to gain your patronage?

There’s probably something to be said about uniting under one song as our anthem, but “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, right? Which would you prefer: a new generation of Americans embracing a national symbol as their own, or a new generation of marketers embracing one as a commercial gimmick?

Entry №1021, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 10:17 PM | Edit | Permalink
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Don’t worry, this will not become a daily diary of drivel. I’m just posting everyday because there’s so much to write about – more than I’m going to write about.

We started looking at our scheduling options today. When we moved into our dorms on Tuesday, we were already told which IHUM course we were going to take, but nothing else. And yesterday, I submitted my preferences for my Fall Quarter PWR 1 course.

But it wasn’t until today that I got to hear about the multitude of options from the various departments themselves. First of all, I’d like to thank Mr. Lamping on his effective Spanish language instruction last year: after taking the Spanish placement test for non-native speakers yesterday, I apparently got into SPANLANG 11, second-year Spanish.

I would’ve gotten into that course based on my AP score anyways, but I know I could’ve done better if I had the time to review for the placement test. Had I taken this test directly this June, I would’ve aced it, which speaks to how well Mr. Lamping prepared us. I brought my Schaum’s Spanish Grammar workbook with me, but I didn’t have enough time to even crack it open, because my schedule’s been so jam-packed.

Although I reviewed regularly during the summer, yesterday’s placement test made it painfully clear that I’ve gotten rusty with my vocabulary – I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to say “post office”! Hopefully I’ll start recovering lost ground as classes begin; maybe I should start practicing my Spanish with my roommate, who’s fluent in the language.

Supposedly Stanford freshman are only supposed to take only three courses per quarter, which seems unnaturally low: at my mother’s school UNO, taking only three courses designates you a part-time student – they used the semester system, however. Although I’ve been assured that the workload of three courses is plenty enough, this three-course restriction limits my options immensely.

Already my Fall Quarter is taken up by IHUM and PWR. That leaves me with only one more course, and CS106X, which is designed for students who already took AP Computer Science, is only offered during the Fall. That would be a no-brainer, but I’ve been advised to start my Spanish and math as soon as possible, too, before I get too rusty.

Entry №895, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 7:17 PM | Edit | Permalink
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Phil’s not the only one with an ax to grind. Here are ten things you probably say or write a lot that’ll really get to me (I just numbered them to make it seem like the list has any rhyme or reason):

1. Criticizing someone or something for being “unamerican.” What in the world’s that supposed to mean? This country’s so diverse (or so we’ve been taught), that there’s gotta be something in here for everyone, all Made in America. And if not, there’s always California…

2. Calling anything “one of the best,” “one of the worst,” “one of the most,” “one of the least,” ad nauseum. You’re not saying a thing when you call an evening news show, for instance, “one of the best evening news shows I’ve ever watched.” How many evening news shows could you have possibly seen? I know it sounds incredibly obvious and all, but… be brave and actually say something about it.

3. Going out of your way to misspell its as “it’s.” That requires you to type out an extraneous, incorrect apostrophe. Why go out of your way to show how little command of the English languge you have? I mean, it’s not like “teh,” which you misspelled with the frivolous hope that you’d look cool. Using “it’s” as a pronoun or adjective just looks awful.

4. Calling a jaguar a “jagwire.” When my eighth-grade English teacher warned us all against pronouncing it that way, I figured that I wouldn’t ever so much as hear someone say it that way in my life. Then my brother started saying “jagwire”; he probably would’ve started spelling it that way too, had I not pre-emptively chastised him for it.

5. Writing without punctuation. I’ve used IM and browsed the Internet long enough that I’ve gotten used to putting everything in lowercase, but I still can’t take unpunctuated text. If you went through and read every single Xanga entry posted within the last 24 hours, you’d think that the government just issued a recall on the period and comma keys of every keyboard manufactured since 1985.

6. Similarly, never using the Enter key to break up paragraphs. Remember way back in second grade, when we would be assigned to write a three-sentence-long paragraph, and since we couldn’t think of enough to say, we’d go up to our teacher and ask how long the sentences had to be?

   Ah, the days before stream of consciousness. Nowadays, we have so much to say that “paragraph” just doesn’t do it justice. It’s just a hunk of text (the teacher’s hypothetical term for it, not mine). Seriously: if you’re going to do stream of consciousness writing, at least press Enter at a set interval, to make it look like you were actually doing real writing.

   Really, imitation is all I ask for. But if that’s still too much, go all out and avoid pressing Enter to submit your post, while you’re at it.

7. Writing IN ALL CAPS for anything longer than a sentence. Unless you’re an aspiring IP lawyer – in which case you shouldn’t be on the Internet or risk repercussions down the line – you really have no business gluing your Shift key down. We’re no longer in the age of chiseling Latin into stone (unless you’re angrily cramming for the next Latin exam), so there’s no reason not to use lowercase letters once in a while. Just as long as you punctuate.

8. Using add as a noun, as in “Thanks for the add.” You’re welcome; now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hit the Remove button. Next time, thank me for adding you. If there is a next time.

9. Rhyming in poetry. Unless you really know what you’re doing (you don’t), it’s going to sound corny. Terrible. Worthless. Creative Writing teachers might like it when you rhyme or use other primitive tricks like alliteration or iambic pentameter, just so you get the practice, but it quickly gets out of hand because, like the dubious Five Paragraph Essay, it’s just an easy way out. Free verse, my friend, free verse. We’re not in the Renaissance anymore. I’ll even let you stop punctuating. With that said…

10. The Five Paragraph Essay, or any form of complex-deductive writing for that matter. This tired form of piecing together a paper is only useful for copy-pasting facts from the Internet late in the night, meaning that, although your teacher is pleased that you followed directions, you’ve now raised suspicions of plagiarism.

    Most irritating: “in conclusion.” Use “In conclusion…” to start off your last paragraph, and you automatically sound like a classroom documentary on glaciers in prehistoric Ohio. Use something more interesting, like “Unless the previous paragraphs have put you into a deep sleep, you should’ve figured out by now that…”

…this rant is over. And now, for a little disclaimer: this is not formal writing; I rarely do any of that these days, because it serves no purpose. There is, in the strictest sense, some “nonstandard” usage of the English language. So if your response to this entry is that I started each item with a fragment, or that I began many sentences with a conjugation, my reply is: “¡Deja de molestarme!” Excuse my French.

Entry №887, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 7:42 PM | Edit | Permalink
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