Two shank's mares walk into a bar

A friend dropped by briefly today. He laughed when he saw me. I thought that was odd, but didn't say anything. We concluded our business. Later I happened by a mirror and saw that my hair was sticking straight up. I looked like Don King. Or a shocked Bride of Frankenstein. Since I stopped coloring my hair (brown), it's now reverted to it's natural color (mottled grayscale). Not only is the color different than it used to be, but the texture has also changed, which accounts for its vertical tendency. There was a time when I would have killed for hair with the ability to stand up and salute. I guess it just proves the maxim that if you wait long enough, all your desires will eventually come to you.

Take climate change, for instance. Hot, is all I can say. Hot, hot, hot. I'm loving it, although I admit that I start to wilt a bit when the thermometer nears 100°, especially if I'm outside hiking from store to bus stop with a heavy sack of groceries. Oh, woe is me, I have to walk. Alas, alackaday, and all that folderol.

Speaking of odd idioms, I called my mother on the phone tonight to tell her I would like to borrow her car on Wednesday. “Shall I come pick you up?” she asked. Part of me would like nothing better than to have my mother drive over to loan me her car. Part of me thinks walking might be beneficial for my butt.

“I'll walk over,” I said.

“You'll use your shank's mare?” she said playfully.

I was like, what? My what? I'd never heard that expression before. I Googled it while we were on the phone and read some background on the term. Ha! Shank's mare! I love language. I should probably have studied English. But then I'd be unemployed. Hey, wait! ...well, whatever. I still love words.

Speaking of words, I've spent the past four days editing a train wreck of a dissertation proposal. At first pass, I despaired. I didn't think there was much hope. The structure was there, thanks to the institution's template, but the content was fractured and bent, with huge gaps (the theoretical framework is completely missing!). A plague of perplexing grammar gaffes sent my brain grasping for meaning... every paragraph had some sort of bizarre arrangement of words, kind of like those magnetic word games you seen on your friends refrigerators, where people before you have spelled out cryptic sentences like closet cats pee dark secrets. I've seen this kind of language abuse before from native English speakers who somehow absorbed just enough in high school to produce phrases like “On the same token,” and “as it relates to them being able to hit the ground running; hence being prepared.”

I am starting to develop a systematic process. First I wrestle the format into submission. If you've ever used Word styles and section breaks, you know what I'm talking about. Once I've got the styles, headings, and pagination nailed down, I generate a Table of Contents to reveal the bones and help me navigate the paper. Then I scan the paragraphs for main ideas and shuffle them around so they fall in line with the subheadings. Next, I take paragraphs apart to nudge ideas next to their buddies. And then I go word by word, semi-colon by misplaced comma by missing bracket, to wrench meaning out of each sentence. I go round and round in circles, finding statements that are repeated, or should be repeated but don't agree, shoving things hither and thither, sometimes working with the paper zoomed out to 30% so I can see two pages on the screen.

I highlight all the 4 billion instances where she should have cited a source (can we say plagiarism?). When I've combed the paper for dead commas and excessive spaces, I save the wreck as a pdf file and get down to the task of digging for meaning. I check my edits as I go—I always find errors, some of them egregious. Argh. As I work, I add comments in the margin, berating the hapless would-be scholar for thinking her feeble research question is going to pass muster with her reviewers.

Then again, she's attending an online for-profit university not unlike the one I attended, so all bets are off. Maybe her reviewers will be inexperienced and lackadaisical and wave her on through to the IRB review. Or maybe she'll get the Nazi mentor who blocks progress because of misplaced commas. I will probably eventually find out what happened: This is her proposal. If she's satisfied with my edits, she'll likely submit the dissertation. I can hardly wait.