Blog of Life-Affirming Anecdotes: Ben Munson

The Mystery of the Appearing Water Bottles

I always wanted one of those fancy Nalgene bottles, but they charge an arm and leg for them. So it was incredibly good fortune when I was teaching in 133 Tate Lab in Fall '04 and a student in the class the night before left one there. The lesson we learned in grade school still applies as adults: finder—keepers; losers—weepers. I don't know if the poor sap who left her/his bottle was weeping, but I was keeping. I took it home, swirled bleach around in it, and boiled it for two hours to get rid of any residual germs and bad karma. Then, I put it in the dishwasher for good measure. Unfortunately, I put it on the bottom shelf, and during the heated dry cycle, the cap melted slightly—so much for taking it on my trip to Mount Everest. Still, who am I to complain? I didn't pay a red cent for the thing. For over a year, it served me well. Then, earlier this week, I noticed it had gone missing. Meh. Another grade school lesson: easy come, easy go. Of course, I wasn't about to go out and spend my money on one of those things. If there's one thing I learned from my dad (other than how to conduct DNA electrophoresis for various high school science projects examining the influence of household chemicals on DNA) it's that a real man is cheap, cheap, cheap. I'm nothing if not a real man. Whether I'm stocking up on Splenda brand sweetener at my local Starbucks brand coffee café or stocking up on dollars pilfered from purses in the coat room at a dinner party, I know that a real man saves money like it was 1933 all over again. Of course, I mentioned to my classes that the bottle had gone missing, in the hopes that it would show up. Another swirl of bleach, another boiling, and the thing would be as good as nearly new once again. Who am I to turn up my nose?

Then, on November 2, 2004, a University of Minnesota Nalgene bottle, puce colored, shows up in my mailbox in the department, with only a mysterious note attached:

Ben Munson's New (never-been-used-by-another-person) Water Bottle (Use it in Good Health).

A free Nalgene bottle? What is this, Christmas and my birthday combined? I was suspicious. I took it home, swirled it out with bleach, boiled it for 2 hours (actually, more like 1 hour 15 minutes), then filled it the cap with water and let my cat drink out of it. She didn't die, so I figured it was OK. Then I cleaned it again—cat germs, you know—and brought it to school today, 11/3/05. Well, I made a big deal out of it in the morning phonetics course. Then, about 2 hours later, BAM, -> ANOTHER <- water bottle shows up in my box with the same message. I'm running out of bleach here, guys!

I haven't been this flummoxed since the whole canolli fracas back in '03.

Who are the suspects? I think they know who they are. Let's call one of them "Ms. H from Bloomington." Another could be referred to as "the former Miss Munson, currently of Afton." "Poëlle Nadgitt" is the code name of another likely suspect. Also there are two guys in phonetics—I think their names are both James—who seemed veeery interested in the whole business. They're on the list FOR SURE. The font in the first note was Comic Sans, a favorite font of Dr. Peggy Nelson.

There is a reward for any information that leads to the definitive identification of the perpetrators. The reward is a couple of singles and a bunch of packets of Splenda. I can spare them.

"I saw Carrie Munson at Ciro's last night," A poem by Kevin Burk.

Kevin is a poet from Bloomington, Minnesota. His work has been rejected from a variety of major publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry Nation, Poetry Review, Cat Fancy, Cat Fancy Online, and the Learning Annex Schedule Supplement.

His latest work is a beat-style poem re-imagining a time gone by in the LA of Joplin and Morrison. He has given permission for it to be posted on this blog. Snap your fingers for "I saw Carrie Munson at Ciro's last night."

I saw Carrie Munson at Ciro’s last night,
She was young and frisky in the LA twilight.
“Hey, doing gospel” she said with a grin,
She gave me her paw, and I gave her some skin.

“Hey, what you doing here”, I said with a smile,
So I sat down and we talked for a while.
She said, “Daddy’s in town for a big seminar
And 2000 bucks will sure take us far.”

I guess I look startled, must have been a sight,
And then she was gone in LA’s morning light.
Go far sweet kitten on Daddy’s two grand,
Be at peace, find treats, as your tour the land.

I saw Carrie Munson at Ciro’s last night…………………

Is anyone else having shivers? That's an amazing piece of talent. There is some pretty oblique imagery. I have no idea what the whole "2000 bucks" thing refers to--must be symbolism.

An open memo to the producers of the show "Wheel of Fortune"

To: Producers of the show "Wheel of Fortune"
From: Benjamin Munson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (BRM)
Date: September 30, 2005
RE: "Before and After" puzzles

Gentlemen:

Like most good patriotic Americans, I make it a point to watch the show "Wheel of Fortune" whenever it is convenient. As someone who studies probabilistic phonotactics, I enjoy the opportunity to see how my knowledge of the likely and unlikely sequences of sounds helps me solve the puzzles.

And, like most people, I enjoy the "before and after" category the best. Unfortunately, I find the puzzles in that category distressingly lowbrow. To remedy that, I suggest the following "before and after" puzzles. You should feel free to use any of these, provided that you give me the proper attribution.

I am curious (yellow submarine)
Aguirre, Wrath of God and Man at Yale
Lonely are the Brave New World
Heavenly Creatures from the Black Lagoon
The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and Her Lovers and other Strangers
I am curious (blue velvet)
In the Mood for Love in the Time of Cholera
Night of Shooting Stars in my Pocket, Like Grains of Sand
Long Day's Journey into Night of the Living Dead
I am Curious (George)

Thank you for considering this request

It's Spayday

Bob Barker told me to do it.

Carrie turned 6 months old, and it was time to get her spayed.

Wednesday morning it was raining. I got up at 4:45 am so I could go to the gym and do my 2-hour leg-and-cardio workout, shower, and get back to my apartment by 7:45. I put her in her carrier and took her in the pouring rain. She hissed. I drove to Animal Medical Clinic on Snelling and St. Clair (kitty-corner from the Saint Clair Broiler, arguably the best restaurant of its kind in the Twin Cities).

I dropped her off, and told the vet tech "this is suprisingly difficult."

It was.

The morning was long. I submitted my R01 grant (the academic equivalent of running a marathon is writing your own sole-authored R01 application), making the copies myself and walking it over to the Office of Sponsored Projects Administration in the U of M Gateway building myself, in a plastic tote (a brilliant idea, Noelle Padgitt) in the pouring rain.

I came back to Shevlin hall, and waited for the call from the vet. It came at about 11:45, during office hours. She was OK. I picked her up the next day.

I thought it would take a little of the "yowzers from her trousers," as Grandpa Simpson would say, but it didn't. She was back to biting me like she usually does.

Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual Speech Styles, Oprah Winfrey, and the Influence of Lexical Frequency on Sociophonetic Variation

This is a follow-up to the entry that I posted on August 5, 2005. I have been planning for a number of weeks to write a blog entry on intonational meaning, using audio examples from a spoken word audio CD by Lynda Barry called "The Lynda Barry Experience" (see my August 5 posting if you don't know who Lynda Barry is, and see my review on amazon.com if you want to know what "The Lynda Barry Experience" is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1882543173/102-4366587-6936920?v=glance). That blog entry was focused on the concept of "uptalk," and how it provides an opportunity for a tutorial on intonational meaning, at least as it has been theorized by Janet Pierrehumbert and Julia Hirschberg. I have been working hard on this blog, making pitch tracks using Praat (http://www.praat.org) and writing text that my legion of blog readers will find interesting and digestible. Of course, I have also been working hard on a grant application (see my August 5 blog for whining about this, and thank you to Richard Wright for commiserating and empathizing with me about this endeavor), and my grant writing has understandably interfered with writing my magnum bloggus on intonational meaning.

Tonight, on the eve of going away for 10 days to be in my sister's wedding, I realize that the 'uptalk' blog probably won't be making on the web anytime soon. I thought, then, that I should address an issue that came up in response to my August 5 blog, which reported on some preliminary data I have suggesting that the expression of sexual orientation through speech is constrained by word frequency and phonological neighborhood density.

In a recent E-mail, my friend, former dissertation member, and coauthor Mary Beckman correctly pointed out that my findings regarding lexical frequency and sociophonetic variation are not new. Norma Mendoza-Denton, Stef Jannedy, and Jen Hay reported similar findings in a series of research reports on the likelihood of monophthongization of the /ay/ diphthong in the speech of popular talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. Norma, Stef, and Jen acoustically analyzed digitized broadcasts of Oprah's syndicated talk show, and examined the extent to which she turned the /ay/ diphthong into a monophthong. Monophthongization of /ay/ is a characteristic of African-American English (AAE). Oprah's variable use of monophthongal /ay/ arguably reflects her variable use of AAE. Norma, Stef, and Jen found a number of factors that influence Oprah's diphtongization. One of the factors that influences Oprah's use of monophthongal /ay/ is word frequency. One of the reports of this study can be found at http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~jannedy/DOCS/icphs.html. A more comprehensive report can be found in the volume that Jen, Stef, and Norma edited called Probabilistic Linguistics (MIT Press, 2003). The Oprah findings are consistent with my (unpublished-as-of-yet) finding that word frequency mediates the expression of gay-lesbian-bisexual speech styles. Thank you, Mary Beckman, for pointing this out.

(Of course, my first-hand knowledge of the Oprah study comes because it was conducted during a time when Jen, Stef, Norma, and I were all working in the Ohio State phonetics lab. I remember a certain cold fall evening when Stef and Norma were analyzing the Oprah data, and I was analyzing kindersprache data, and my arm was twisted to drive to Lane Avenue Mall to get us all take-out Indian food. I'm certainly not complaining. The Indian food take-out counter at Lane Avenue mall was wonderful.)

Inaugural Entry, by Benjamin Munson

Welcome to my blog. I have been wanting to start a blog for a long time, primarily to supplement my classroom teaching. In the past few years, I have developed a habit of writing long, rambling E-mails to my students after lectures. These function as a sort-of 'debriefing' about the lecture, and often elaborate at length on points made in lecture. Crucially, I think that these musings are often worth archiving, and ought to be available to people outside of my courses.

The upshot: I finally started a blog, and this is the inaugural entry.

This blog will be specific to my research and classroom teaching. Don't expect to see long discussions of topics that are not directly related to work. For example, I will spare you the details of my new cat, Carrie, as interesting as they may be. I hope that you will be a regular visitor to my blog. To those of you who have stumbled on this blog who don't know me, you can expect me to be talking about topics related to speech and language development and disorders in children, and to socially conditioned variation in speech production and speech perception in adults and children.

Cheers,
Ben