overthinking, overanalysis

Time goes by way too quickly, just a minute ago it was 9:00 and now its 10:06.. ?!?!? and yesterday it was Dec 1st and now all of a sudden its the 12th??? I think time is cheating me.

This post will have two parts
1. Semantics:
I just had another thought about semantics. The way we always say "they" to refer to that group of others who produce our material culture, decide which courses to offer us at school, basically anyone who has decided what we have the option to consume and how we consume it as well. We all do it. We'll be standing in front of a magazine stand and one of us will wonder out loud "I wonder why they decided to put so and so on the cover?" and the other will respond with some possible theories or simply think "Do they ever have a reason for doing what they do?" We talk as if "they" are looming above us sending things down for us to consume... or at least that is how the idea manifests itself into my head. But why do we imagine this "they" as sort of higher up individuals, they are most likely walking among us as we gaze at the magazine stand. We could even be they. In fact, I know some 'they's. But for some reason the word, in this context, signifies a mysterious other. Someone we don't know, have no control over but has some sort of omniscient power over us.

Language is just such a big cultural signifier. In this "they" case I think it says something about the way we perceive power structures in our society today. "They" in many of our minds do loom above us giving us a sense of powerlessness to make change. We take they for granted as if they were always there and the decisions they make out of our control. Some people aren't even aware they exist.

2. English:
Since France, I've started to see English in a completely different way. Sometimes I'll look at the way I've spelt a word and second guess myself thinking it looks completely foreign (for example I actually did just dictionary.com 'they' because for a second there the combination of letters looked really bizarre to me). This happened a lot in France. I'd be teaching a class and then I'd look on the board and think my god English is a bizarre looking language. Having a bunch of French students spend a whole class laughing because "I put my foot in my mouth" is a common phrase really makes you look again at what you say. Like 'phrase' I mean why on earth did we put a p and an h together and make it go ffffff?!? Anyways, French makes more sense to me even if I'm not fully bilingual. I'll look at French and think yes yes that makes sense and I'll look at something in English and think it looks like a bunch of gibberish if it weren't for the fact that I understand it. What an awful Latin/Germanic bastard language that I somehow was born into. Oh but I love it. What an awesome language English is and what a horribly biased thing to say. It is so much fun. As this article  states " no masculine, feminine, neuter, acute, grave or cedilla" give English  "its witty flexibility, its gift for pun and double meaning". I'd like to see the exhibit that article is talking about. A bunch of words on old paper aaahhh what a beautiful site that would be.