YCQ #16: Get yer own durn theme song

YCQ #15: The most unwanted blog post

Welcome, welcome, to today's episode of the Yellow Card Question Show! We have a show today of such amazing and grotesque character that it will surely haunt your nightmares for months to come! I guarantee it, and stand by my guarantee. And I won't even pretend that it's just coincidence that I'm standing by my guarantee, and have never even actually met the weirdo. If you are not struck speechless by this awful show, then you can go ahead and say something, and you can have a full refund! Be brave, and step right up folks!

Let's start things off with today's theme song: The most unwanted song! (Here's some background explanation.) Pinker, this one's for you.


And now let's have a yellow card!
!!!!!!


Well, I would want to say "No thank you," but I suspect an invitation to tea with the Queen is sort of invitation you can't refuse. And as everyone knows, when having tea with the Queen, you must not speak until spoken to, so I think I would simply be answering her questions. And I have no idea what she would want to ask me. Perhaps you should go talk to her about that first.

YCQ #14: Going to the Moon

Well folks, we've come around again to that best of times, time for the wonderful widely acclaimed program, back by popular demand -- The Yellow Card Question Show!

The theme song of the day is 十月 (October) by that underground sensation 阿楼 (A Lou). Hit the button to start that going, and you can read my translation of the lyrics here.



Are you ready for this?! Can I hear you say "yeah"?! No? Is that not how this medium works? Oh. There are some really cool people who have a plugin to do voice comments. But I think that's just for Wordpress. Livejournal has voice posts, but I don't think they have voice comments. So yeah, I guess I'm not going to hear you say "yeah". I'll have settle for hallucinating it then.

Are you ready for this?! Can I hallucinate hearing you say "yeah"?! Maybe with a little more coffee and candy canes?!! Or maybe not. Okay I'll settle for a comment after the fact. Go ahead and type "yeah".

Um. So where were we? Yeah! The moment you've been waiting all month for, the all new Yellow Card Question! Here you go folks, the one and only Yellow Card that can cure all your ills and give you new ones, write your tests, take them, and grade them for you!

Well, if I could go on vacation to the moon for free, I think I might like that, but otherwise there are other things I would rather spend my time and money on, and other places I would rather be. You can go, and send me a postcard.

YCQ #13 / New Years' Resolution

Since my time has expired this month, and my life has clearly been too boring to have anything to comment about, we now have what I know you all have actually been most hoping for: an all new episode of the Yellow Card Question Show!

Tuturuturu!

To make your life a little easier, I am also choosing your New Year's resolution for you. And today's theme song is also your New Year's resolution: Wear Sunscreen.


And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. With great gravity and ceremony, magnetism and antimony, I spin the stack and flip the wheel:


There were lots of good places to play when I was a kid. Wild grassy fields, big branchy trees, a lake for swimming and canoeing, clay hillsides and dirt drainage ditches. When I was living in this house:

there was a valley just off to the left there that had lots of entertainment. There was a small patch of jungle (including bird-of-paradise flowers, termites and cowkillers, porcupines, ...) and grassy little hill that we frequently had campouts on. I remember one summer (I think it must have been 1988) my friends and I must have camped out there several times in just a few weeks, and we got mad at our sisters when they did too, because they were copy-catting us. (A clear violation of childhood etiquette.) We also played a lot of tag and hide-and-seek games in that yard, and the bushes around the edge of the yard (gone now) were just the right height for jumping over. And when the wind was blowing good, you could stand at the edge of the hill and lean really far into it, especially if you tied a sheet to your ankles and grabbed the other two corners with your hands.

When we lived in this house:

we were a lot closer to the lake, and the neighbors had a canoe we could borrow. I spent a lot of time out in that canoe during the summertime. For some reason I can't articulate, it was particularly fun to be out when it was windy or rainy. That ditch in the foreground was also great for building a dirt city. Me and the neighbor kids made quite a town carved into the side of that ditch, with roads for matchbox cars, little lawns made of moss, and a couple high-rise buildings made of fresh mud. The brush and palm trees along the lake had parrots and cranes, boas and iguanas, and an occasional fox. In the lake we caught cool fish (mostly for the fish tank, since the largest ones were dogfish and piranhas, which generally had worms) and sometimes turtles. In the old days, there was a giant mango tree right in front of the house that was pretty good for climbing, and there was an even better one up the hill on the left.

There were so many different good places to play in those days, I think the best I can do is say that the whole area was my favorite.

YCQ #12

Welcome, welcome! The month of July (or was it June?) has sped past, and it is indeed time for a new episode of The Yellow Card Question! The theme song of the day is from 二十分可乐 (something like "20-minute humor"), a TV show produced by the local TV station, all in Jinhua dialect, with a lot of references to local culture and places. If you use Windows with IE and ActiveX, you can watch all 117 episodes online.

So! On with the show! For your entertainment today, we will have a bit of a twist -- I will pull the yellow card with my left hand! That's right, I am ambidextrous (or ambi-sinister?), capable of equally clumsy movements with my right and left hands. So, here we go -- wait for it -- the yellow card question!

How about that folks?!

Well, my main purpose in life is to keep my audience entertained. Or at least that's what a couple friends have told me recently. How am I doing?

YCQ #11 / January: Linguistics in Song

Today I have a special treat for you listeners. It's time for a yellow card question, but instead of our usual theme song, we have a podcast in production since January 2007. That's right, like finely aged wine, very moldy cheese, or those dirty socks that got lost behind the dresser, this podcast is of the finest caliber producible by dusty musty forgotten dark corners.

Launch it in a separate player, or just open the mp3
Billy Joel - If I only had the words
Leonor Dely - Para todo hay un signo
Tito Gomez - Aunque no lo digas
Los Amigos Invisibles - Gerundio
Los Aterciopelados - Complemento
Rouge Rouge - Attention
Pablo Mayor - Dobladillo a la lengua
Miriam Makeba - The Click Song
Blackalicious - Alphabet Aerobics
Gilberto Gil - Lingua do Pê
K-G, Sideshow, Musah and Neno - Analyze
John Benjamin Band - More Science

And now, while that plays in the background, let's get on with the show! The one and only yellow card question of the hour, pulled from this perfectly normal deck of electronic cards -- there's no computer special effects here, folks -- well, not very special anyway -- I mean, it's just like a really short python script that picks a random element from an xml file full of questions, and formats it in a yellow-background div element floating in the center of the page, pretty kludgey, really. The text is generally formatted badly, because there's an extra space for some reason in places where there is a line break in the original printed cards, but the actual line breaks in the electronic version is just dependent on html formatting. For example, take a look at this one:

In the printed card, there was a line break between "make" and "the", and so you can see here a little extra space between those words. And then we end up with "place" on a line all by itself. It really loses the poetry of the question. So I would like to make the world a better place by fixing the yellow card script to make the formatting a bit prettier. If I could do that, my life would be complete. I've heard it said that there are other issues in the world, riots, flooding, earthquakes, drought, fires, more flooding, violence of diverse kinds, and even diseased kittens dying slowly. But I can't change the world or rescue every kitten, so I gotta take small steps with what I've got.

YCQ #10: Om

Good evening, my children. The time has come once again, that special time when we stop to meditate on the omissions of the past and the looming shadow of deadlines to come. Today we celebrate this time of the month by the ritual of the yellow card question, when I reach into that fabled stack of digital question cards, and enlighten you with random bits of wisdom.

The theme song of the hour is 轮回 (Reincarnation) by 盛噶仁波切 (Singa Rinpoche), a Tibetan lama and living Buddha.¹ Calm your mind by listening to him chant.



I don't understand the lyrics, but I think there was more to that song than a mantra. How am I ever going to reach enlightenment when they make such complicated poems for meditation?

Okay, so now that our minds are at one with the universe, it's time for the yellow card!



And the teacher replied to the student, "Tweet tweet!"


1. Did you know Steven Seagal is a living Buddha too?

YCQ #9

It's the end of another month, and I haven't had anything to say. So guess what that means! It's that time again folks: It's the Yellow Card Question Show!

For today's theme song, we are going to borrow one from another show: Chibi Maruko Chan, aka 櫻桃小丸子, aka ماروكو الصغيرة, aka 마루코는 아홉살, etc. Choose your language and start the music playing: Japanese, German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Korean. I'm sure there are Bahasa and Tagalog versions out there and perhaps some others, but I can't be bothered to find them at the moment. You'll just have to cope with these options.

So what now? What we've all been waiting for -- let's have a question! Do your happy dances for a moment while I spin the wheel, roll the die, shuffle the deck, and blow on the tea leaves.



Hmm. This question was meant for Chinese students who have three to five roommates in their dorm rooms. It doesn't quite make sense to ask it of myself, but then who said these questions had to make sense.

Well, the simple answer is that I would go crazy. I don't have much furniture in my room, but I don't have much floor space either. I have just my one bedroll on the floor, various items of furniture and boxes along the walls, and a section of bare floor that I like to be able to walk on. I don't like walking on strangers, or friends for that matter. I suppose that if my "roommates" included those sleeping in my living room, than I would perhaps go a little less crazy, but there's not much out there to sleep on either. This silly building doesn't even have places to put hammock hooks! With no bunk beds, no hammocks, and shortage of couches, I just don't think there is any way 6 more people could live here, unless they slept in shifts. That might work. Both my current roommate and I do tend to alternate hours awake. For example, I sometimes sleep 7 PM to 9 PM and 2 AM to 8 AM, and my roomie might sleep 9 PM to 1 AM and 6 AM to noon. But still, a general increase in the average level of insanity would be unavoidable.

YCQ #8

I am clearly not doing a very good job of keeping up with my posting quota, so I am resurrecting the yellow card questions. Yay!

And we need a new theme song! I nominate "我愿意" ("I am willing") originally sung by Wang Fei (王菲, aka Faye Wong), but lots of others have done covers. I recommend you start the video playing, but don't look at it for a minute, just listen. Then listen and watch for a very different experience.

I have a translation posted on my other blog, if you're curious.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, eagerly anticipating for the past umpteen months, willing to read, wanting to read, waiting to read: the all new 8th yellow card question! (Okay so it's not all new, since it's been there in the virtual deck this whole time, but it's the all new time it is appearing here, on this blog, in special blockquoted yellow on green background, as opposed to the black on yellow background, see. Believe me, it really is kinda all new, so be excited.)

And here it is!

If the whole world were listening, what would you say?

I honestly haven't a clue what I should say, but from the perspective of behavioral observation, I think a highly relevant data set is the corpus of blog posts I have written. Now, we must qualify this by noting that in practice, the whole world is not listening, or even reading, but in principle, any member of the world population on this side of the digital divide could wander through, and in fact a non-negligible portion of site hits come from foreign lands like Tennessee and Canada. They come looking for pictures of chickens or donkey riders, and seeking information about "umlatt" and holey jeans, and we do our best to meet their critical needs. It is for this reason (the benefit of lost internet travellers) that we have devoted so much of our time to wandering, the internet, and the world, alongside the essentials like food and underwear. Always be prepared, as they say. And I do all I can time and weather permitting, to help the whole world out.

YCQ #7

Clean cup, clean cup! Move Down! The theme song of the day is 中国话[mp3], by S.H.E, a Taiwanese girl band. It's one of the most popular hits these days, occupying place number 7 in Baidu's list of most popular songs. Play it the video below, or open the mp3 link above.

So what is it about, you ask? Here is a complete translation, but the chorus says

全世界都在学中国话
孔夫子的话越来越国际化
全世界都在讲中国话
我们说的话让世界都认真听话

The whole world is learning Chinese
Confucius's words are gradually globalizing
The whole world is speaking Chinese
The language we speak makes the world all listen carefully

It's celebrating the rise of Chinese as the next global lingua franca! (In case you missed the CCTV news, it's just a matter of time. China is doing a lot to promote Chinese language and culture worldwide, most notably the Confucius Institutes. Many of my students major in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, a field that is growing, but not as quickly as the government and these students hoped.) The more off-the-wall lines in the song are references to tongue twisters, classical tone scansion, and philosophy parables.

So what were we doing here again? Oh yeah, the question!

If you could live perfectly well without sleeping at all, what would you do at night?

Well, I have often wished I didn't have to sleep so much. I've never managed on less than about 8 hours of sleep average, unlike some older brothers we know. This means that they have dozens more hours each week to make bank working long hours, read lots of books, shop online, and still have time for a family/social life. All I seem to have time for is reading the internet and watching youtube movies. If I didn't have to sleep at all, I might find the time to grade papers, write a thesis, or even take a shower occasionally.

[Edit: 中国话 is actually the top song in the list of popular new songs.]

The Yellow Card Question, Episode 6

Some of my fans didn't care so much for my theme song, so by popular request, we have adopted a new one! It's from goldenox, and you should just hit the play button now.

powered by ODEO

Yes, that is correct. It is Reggaeton. In Chinese. Chinese Reggaeton. What will they think of next: Turkish Reggaeton? Uzbek Salsa? Apparently a couple of the lines are kinda crude though, so I wouldn't recommend singing those catchy lyrics in polite company.

Oh, so yeah, time for the show! w00t!

Today, without any pomp or circumstance, I draw a yellow card. But just before beginning to read I remember the exciting news! You can play now too! That's right, the best yellow card questions in the world are now in their first public beta release! Check it out! Practice your spoken English, entertain your friends at boring parties, or add content to your abandoned blog! (Yes, I'm talking about you.)

All right, where were we. Oh yes.

"If you had to choose, would you rather give up your sight or your hearing?"

I would certainly miss listening to good music, spoken language and the sounds of nature, but I don't think I could handle not seeing. So much information in my world is presented visually rather than auditorially. I'm color blind and near sighted, but also lacking musical sense, so I think I understand visual art better than music.

And I've been wanting to learn sign language anyway.

The Yellow Card Question, Episode 5

And now, it's time for the SHOW! (Scroll down the page and start the theme song playing now, okay? Go ahead, I'll wait.)

Today, for the first time in history, I will first demonstrate a new and amazing magic trick! As you can see, or as you will have to trust me on this anyway, I am holding in my hands this perfectly unremarkable hat! So unremarkable in fact, that it has the name "Visalia" across the front. And as you can see, or as I assure you, there is nothing in the hat! But watch (or imagine) closely now. My hands are empty and the hat is empty, but with a simple flick of my wrist and a reach into my backpack, !!!yellow cards!!! How was that folks? All without any mirrors or camera tricks!

Thank you, thank you.

And now, ... the question for today:

"If you woke up suddenly because your building was on fire, which three things would you save as you ran outside"

Well, I don't have much of value here, neither sentimental value nor monetary. My lippy-loppy, of course, has my entire life on it, so even though much of it is backed up elsewhere, that would be the first thing I would grab. After that, I think I should grab my various IDs (Does that count as one thing or as a dozen? Seriously, how did I end up with so many ID cards?). And for the third thing, ... I would grab a pair of shoes. I could manage in my sleeping clothes for a while (or there's a fair chance I would not have changed out of my normal clothes before falling asleep), and I could borrow or buy others easily enough, but shoes in my size are the stuff of legend in these parts.

The Yellow Card Question, Episode 4

Three two one roll it!
♫It's Howdy Doody time, it's Howdy Doody time♫--
Cut! That's not right. Try that again.
♫Em Eye See! Kay Ee Why! Em Oh You Es Ee! Mick♫--
Cut cut cut! That's not right either! Where did our theme song go? Oh, we didn't have a theme song? How did that happen? How did we already get to our 4th episode without a theme song?! Well, we don't have time to put anything together now. How about we just adopt one. Okay, here it is:
Skullcrusher Mountain from the crazed mind of Jonathan Coulton.

Let the show begin! Doopity doo! Bring forth the cards of golden hue! Voila! Exclaim some more! Woohoo!

And the one and only card of the day!

"If you could speak any other language that you don't speak already, which language would you like to speak?"

Ooooh! This is a good one. Well, if Standard Chinese counts as a language I already speak, the next ones on my list would be:

- One or more Wu dialects. There are a bewildering number of mutually unintelligible Chinese languages spoken in this province and in the area just north of it. These Wu dialects maintain some interesting features of Classical Chinese, and of course do all kinds of interesting things different from each other and from the other Chinese languages, while the vocabulary is apparently mostly cognate with the other Chinese languages. I would at minimum like to understand better how the phonology of a couple dialects work, and it would be cool to actually be able to communicate in one.

- An Amerindian language. Mostly because they are morphologically and syntactically so different from the languages I know now, and I need some balance.

- Arabic. I took a semester of Arabic, but it wasn't really enough to get much beyond the phonology and spelling. Arabic has really cool morphology, and it offers an interesting language & power comparison with Chinese, in the coexistence of colloquial and standard languages.

- An African tone and/or click language. An African language to add to the typological balance, clicks because they are just awesome, and tones so I can understand comparisons with Chinese.

- All the other ones too.

The Yellow Card Question, Episode 3

Well, seeing as how it has been two weeks since the last yellow card question, it must be time for a new one. But I'm kinda tired, so I'm not feeling up to putting on my clown suit and magician's hat. All right fine, I'll put on my yellow raincoat and rollerblade onto stage. Okay? Are you happy now?

Now, it's time for the yellow card. (Applause) Here, from my amazing stack of questions, special for today, exclusively for this audience, we have a question! (I try a bit too hard to look excited, and almost lose my balance. Audience applauds.) A special question that you've all been waiting for, chosen randomly and without the possibility of a rigged card draw! (Applause)

"If you were given one million dollars, what would you buy?"

Well, I think I would buy two things.

One is Liner's system of mail tubes, so we could climb into little capsules and be sucked to another continent in a few seconds. I think that wouldn't cost very much if I drove a hard bargain and had it made in China.

With the money left over, I would assemble a linguistics (or cogsci) department that pays attention to neuroscience and cognitive psychology and explores language in its cognitive and social context, that neither ignores linguistic theory nor takes any of it too seriously, that does take real languages and linguistic diversity seriously, that has plenty of quantitative experimental research (both corpus-based and psycholinguistic) but still has room for more exploratory (but still empirical) research, and that has people working on the whole spectrum of phenomena from phonetics to discourse structure and pragmatics. Oh, and they should let me study there.

Is that too much to ask?

The Yellow Card Question, Episode 2

And now, what you've all been waiting for -- this week's episode of:

The Yellow Card Question!

Pretend now that I actually didn't leave my deck of yellow card questions in Jinhua and planned ahead by queuing up a few here, but rather am pulling the question now live, before your very eyes! Feel the suspense! Gaze in anticipation at the beautiful bright yellow rectangles! Read a few extra exclamation marks!!!

And a few more: !!!!

And now, the question:
"You have been captured by cannibals. How would you like to be cooked?"

Well, if I'm going to be eaten, I would like to be eaten good, slow cooked in a deep pit barbecue or roasted over an open fire with lots of tasty spices. I've heard cannibals often know how to make a mean barbecue sauce and are pretty good at cooking with open fires. So really, I trust them to cook me right. Just so long as they don't leave any as microwaved leftovers I'll be fine.

A new tradition: yellow card questions

So, today I'm missing my third estimate of when I would finish grading exams. If I lower my standards, I may still finish tomorrow. In celebration of that realization, I am blogging.

You may recall that I have recently started a couple traditions, which seem to be suffering some continuity problems. Well, in the spirit of lowering my standards, I am starting a new tradition, and this one is easy, so if I can't do this one, I will officially be a failure, and you can banish me to Hainan forever. (Pretty please? Seriously, that used to be a not uncommon punishment, back in the good old days.)

And now for the show! In this activity, I draw a random question from the stack of conversation question cards that I use for my oral English classes, and then I answer it! Isn't that exciting!

So, the "yellow card" question for today is:
"If you could have any car you wanted, which car would you choose?"

Well, that one's a lame question. Especially here, since a car would be pretty pointless. (Where would I drive it? Where would I park it?) Oh, and apparently I'm not allowed to get a driver's license, since I'm color blind, and according to the legal code here, color blind drivers are unsafe, perhaps because (it is said) they can't tell the difference between the red and green lights. (1) I can tell the difference between red and green lights. I've never had a problem with it in the US. (2) People here don't pay much attention to the lights anyway.

Um, so where was I. Oh, if I could have any car... I would want a car that is clean enough that I wouldn't feel wasteful driving long distances, and small enough that parking wouldn't be too hard. The main reasons I might prefer a car over a moto is for long drives, or in bad weather. Although the convenience of being able to carry around more than a backpack amount of stuff would be nice too.

In view of these factors, I think I choose a Smart Car. Plus it's super cute, isn't it. I would like to show you the picture of Slowlane and Jeorge with one we saw in Berlin, but that photo is not digital, and is sitting in a box in San Diego. Please imagine it. Thanks.

Tune in next week for the next episode of The Yellow Card Question!