Pride

Gay Pride Weekend happened in Brighton in August, which includes a big parade and a bunch of events and such in the park. It's one of the bigger celebrations of the year. Ed and I sufficed with the parade, though, as you had to pay to get into the stuff going on at Preston Park, and we probably wouldn't find much of interest anyway.

The parade went through most of the downtown (city centre) area, and there were quite a lot of people there. They were selling penis balloons, hahaha.

Here are some shots that show the size of the crowd:

The theme of this year's parade was Out of This World, or something. Consequently, there were celestial bodies and such represented with all the rainbows.

There were quite a few elaborate costumes (fancy dress costumes) in the parade, though it wasn't always clear who or what the person was trying to be.

It's GAY-lien, get it? HA!

Dykes on Bykes:

Bis on bicycles?

This was a pretty cool costume:

It must be awkward being a merman on land, or on a bus.

 Political gay humor (humour):

It's Princess GAY-a, get it? HA!

This guy was funny because on the back of his little motorized wheelchair slash parade float, there was another sign that said, "The oldest gay in the village!"

Calling this lady a space D-Gay might be pushing the pun a bit too far.

I think this next shot is from the group of Harry Potter and the Street Full of Gays, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the parade theme...

This picture is for Dana. I think the shark's name is Brian, and he may represent a swim team in the next picture.

Here you have to wonder if it's the puppet that's gay, or the puppeteer, or both.

This was the best, because there really IS a Fairy dish soap (washing up liquid). HA!

I can't think of anything having to do with gaiety that rhymes with stilts.

This is a famous green party activist, Peter Tatchell, that Ed recognized, but of course I didn't.

Here's a post-parade crowd shot:

This sign is funny because the wording makes it seem like the feeling of gay pride caused the office to be closed, rather than the event.

Lewes Castle

In August Ed and I went to Lewes Castle, in the neighboring town of Lewes. This was the third castle I'd been to so far. I arbitrarily decided at some point that four castles would be enough. Here's me enjoying a posh lemonade outside the entrance to the castle, which is not that towerarch in the background, but which is out of frame to the left.

Just inside there was a little model of the castle and grounds. It has two mottes, which is uncommon, one at each end.

I had evil plans for this castle, as you can see.

Stock photo:

Credit for the above caption goes to Ed's friend Neil. Thanks, Neil.

Where I was a more dejected and perhaps remorseful prisoner, Ed seems stubbornly indignant.

Here's the grassy courtyard. Before leaving we played this game called quoits, which is a game of rings tossed onto a peg, like horseshoes. On the right you can see the peg and a quoit. We both sucked at it, bad. It's harder because the quoits are made of rope with a small piece of wood, I assumed to give it weight and to hold on to. It's not a lot of weight, though, so they are subject to winds and weak tosses and such.

What not to do if your cannon fails to fire:

From the top of the castle keep, we took some views of Lewes and the surrounding cities. Lewes is very quaint. Walking through downtown was like being in the 1800s or something.

 

 Striking a Riker:

At the base of the keep is a yard with a tree in the middle, and a few around the perimeter, where it was very windy, but cute.

Although the castle seemed pretty complete, if you climb up to the second level and look over the courtyard, it becomes evident that some is missing. You can see only the last remaining wall of the smaller motte, which is next to the very well preserved barbican.

Across the road where you buy tickets and visit the gift shop, they have a cool model of the whole town of Lewes, with a short documentary running every twenty minutes or something, which gives a history of the town. Sometimes the parts of the town that are talked about in the video light up on the model. Ooooh.

We spent quite a long time studying the model, looking at all the tiny houses, trees, the occasional person, wagon, ladder, etc. It was fun. Then we went home. The end.

Dissertation Complete

Almost exactly a year after I arrived here in Brighton, I turned in my dissertation, on time, complete, and with a good chance of getting a high grade. It was quite an ordeal, and I'm glad it's over now, though it was mostly a fun project. Here are some stats, for those who like stats:

Words in main text (excluding example sentences with like): 17,574
Number of example sentences: 93 (some repeated)
Pages of main text: 68
Pages of cited sources: 5
Number of figures: 4 (one table, one organization chart, two bar graphs)
Number of appendices: 3
Pages of appendices: 43

So this thing ended up being 121 pages in total, once the title page, table of contents, etc. were added. Neato.

My research question was about the pragmatic and social features of nonstandard like, as in "That's like, really weird," and what about this word has made its interpretation and classification so difficult for researchers in the past--i.e., why are there so many different theories floating around. I ended up expanding the number of uses attributed to the word, forming a coherent classification system that explains the links among all the different uses, and found several factors that contribute to the problems in analyzing it. My dissertation supervisor thinks that my ideas are original enough to be published, so he wants to work with me on altering the final paper into something suitable for linguistics journals. That would mean taking out most of my literature review, in which I summarize and criticize past studies, and focusing more on my own theories, with probably quite a lot of editing down. So I think that might be next on my card.

Before starting that project, though, I'm going to catch up on my sleep, catch up on my blog entries (I have quite a backlog), and take a short trip up north a bit to the Peak District with Ed. It's good to no longer have any major obligations for a while.

Last Week to Finish Dissertation

Standby.