I'm going to be visiting Erin's family until August 18th. If you need me, e-mail me, and I'll respond in a "timely" fashion.

Since doing surveys is "fashion"-able and in "style"...

1.Where did you take your default pic?
In my office.

2.What exactly are you wearing right now?
I can't remember, and the picture doesn't seem to give any clues...

3.What is your current problem?
Too many things to do, and very little time to do all of them (oh, and they all have to be done perfectly

4.What makes you most happy?
Anything I feel like.

5.What's the name of the song that you're listening to?
"All Blues"

6.Any celeb you would marry?
I don't know any Celebs. If I did know a Celeb, chances are it'd be a guy (name seems like a guy's name).

7.Name someone with the same birthday as you?
I choose not to. (This should not have a question mark after it.) Unless I'm mistaken, though, I believe George Burns had the same birthday as me. He either had the same birthday or died on my birthday one year.

8.Ever sang in front of a large audience?:
Yes.

9.Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity?
Yes. (Jonathan Brandis, R.I.P.)

10.Do you still watch kiddy movies or kiddie TV shows?
Why not?

11.Do you speak any other languages:
I'm not sure how I'm answering this question anymore.

12.Has anyone you've been really close with passed away?
Yes.

13.Do you ever watch MTV?
No.

14.What's something that really annoys you?
Money.


Chapter 1: (So, was that the Prologue or something? These surveys, I swear...)

1.Middle name: J

2.Nickname(s): Dave

3.Current location: La Jolla, CA

4.Eye color: Brown.


Chapter 2:

1.Do you live with your parents: No.

2.Do you get along with your parents: Yes.

3.Are your parents married/separated/divorced: I believe I've only ever had one parent that hasn't been divorced at least twice (that would be a count of 3 to 1).

4.Do you have any Siblings?: Indeed! A little sister named Natalie who's twenty years younger than me and will be five on August 3rd!


Chapter 3: Favorites

1.Ice cream flavor: Something with a vanilla base and lots of "things" in it (chocolate, hopefully).

2.Season: Summer!

3.Shampoo/conditioner: I gave up on conditioner.


Chapter 4: Do You..

1.Dance in the shower: No. Very dangerous.

2.Write on your hand: No.

3.Call people back: Who would say "no"? Editors, I suppose...

4.Believe in love: This question betrays at least two philosophical assumptions.

5.Sleep on a certain side of the bed: When alone? Nah.

6.Have any bad habits: That's up to other people to decide.


Chapter 5:

1.Broken a bone?: No.

2. Sprained anything?: All the time.

3.Had physical therapy?: Yes. My wrist nearly broke down in tears, and discovered that all his angst could be traced back to the love he never got from his father, Papa Wrist. It cost $4,320 for two and a half sessions.

4.Gotten stitches?: I have so many stitches in so many places it's not even worth listing.

5.Taken painkillers?: I took one vicodin when I had that one surgery on my toe, and I still regret it.

6.Gone SCUBA diving or snorkeling?: Yes. Bahamas.

7.Been stung by a bee?: Nope. We have an understanding.

8.Thrown up at the dentist?: No.

9.Sworn in front of your parents?: Yes. Only once accidentally, though.

10.Had detention?: I can't remember, but I want to say yes...

11.Been sent to the principal's office? Yes.

12.Been called a ho?: I called myself a "ho" right now just to make sure I could say "yes" to this stupid question.


Chaper 6: Who/What was the last

1.Movie (s) you saw?: Pot O' Gold, but I've seen it before. The last new movie I saw (or the last movie I saw that I haven't seen before) was A Prairie Home Companion, and despite the totally unnecessary character of the angel, I highly recommend it (Lindsay Lohan and all).

2.Person to text you?: Probably my mother. It costs me money to receive text messages! No one text me!

3.Person to call you?: I don't have my cell phone with me, so I'm guessing Jugar.

4.Person you hugged?: Erin.

5.Person you tackled?: See above.

6. Thing you touched?: Mouse.

7. Thing you ate?: Chinese food.

8.Thing you drank?: Water

9. Thing you said?: "Ho".

10.Friend you consider really close to you?: This question is weird: "Who was the last friend you consider really close to you?" Huh? I will answer that weird question: The last friend I've considered to be really close to me was good ol' Jugar, when he promised to take me to the airport. Can't wait for the next.

The Pop/Rock Star You scored 69 Variety, 69 Skill, 82 Knowledge, and 50 Abstract!

The Pop Star loves the simple side of music. He or she knows what people like, because he or she likes it too. As a pop star, you probably have a lot of CDs by bands you have heard on the radio. You probably sing and play an instrument, because that is what good pop stars do, but you definitely sing.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 62% on Variety You scored higher than 74% on Skill You scored higher than 81% on Knowledge You scored higher than 77% on Abstract

Link: The Music Lover Test written by Fairlysexy on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

I had a supernatural dream that I was writing the following:

I hate children's cereal commercials! Why? Because they never fail to use the most expensive CGI and come up with the most uselessly convoluted plots to get children to get their parents to buy cereal. You know, the ones where, for example, Barney takes Fred's Fruity Pebbles, only to have them stolen by some mad scientist riding a pterodactyl. Then Fred turns to the screen and asks, "Can you help me find my Fruity Pebbles?" And the commercial even has a "To be continued!" at the end of it. Just disgusts me.

And it's not that I begrudge cereal companies trying their darnedest to sell cereal (since the product never changes, but the competition grows ever greater). I'm not sure what exactly it is. I think it's that there's so much effort put into these commercials--both the technical design aspects and the "story". It upsets me. This effort and money could be put to better use. Much better. Plus, the commercials make me feel uncomfortable. The stupid cereal characters want me to care, but I don't want to! Leave me alone, cereal men! Or else!

Brought to you by polydextrose!

I just noticed that, awhile back, I'd intended to write the sentence:

"There goes my shot at being on ..."

What I wrote instead was:

"There's go my shot at being on..."

So I took the /-z/ off of "goes" and put it on "there", but put it on in such a way as make it acceptable or expected (i.e., no "theres", which would have been bizarre, but a contraction of "there is")! How weird is that?

Answer: 17

I love the web, and all that, but sometimes it gets on my nerves. Everyone on Earth should have a top-of-the-line computer. And when a better one comes out, we should all get one in the mail, free of charge. But tell that to Bill "I don't know what else to spend money on!" Gates. Frigglesnurk...

Anyway, here's the thing. Pages with a bunch of images and flash and all that take a long time to load; this we know. What's more problematic is when pages have too much text. Why? Because they take a long time to load on all computers. And further, if the text is that weighty, lord help you if you want to add images!

So, relevant to the here and now, I have this page with my book reviews on it here:

http://dedalvs.free.fr/read.html

It's pretty much just text, and it's almost 400KB. That's huge. And I haven't even finished half of the books I've read, and I'm still reading! At some point in time (the date depends on when I update the page), the format will have to be changed. A 600KB page takes forever to load, and no one wants to wait for that--especially when they just want to glance at a couple reviews. (Want to see how annoying it is to load an all-text page that's huge? Click here. I don't even get it, actually... Maybe that's a separate issue; whatever.)

So, the reason for this blog is since the format has to be changed, how can it be changed? Here are some possibilities:

(1) 1 Review = 1 Webpage: This means having 124 webpages to update (i.e., if I change something on the navigation bar on the left, I'd have to update every single review by hand). This prevents people from glancing around easily at every review very quickly. In order to read a review, they'll have to choose the title first, and then see if they're interested, and not the other way around.

(2) Frames: I hate frames! HATE frames! But they might do the trick. This would still involve 124+ webpages, but they wouldn't have to be updated, since one frame would be the navbar, requiring only one update. The lists would have to be on a different frame, though, which might be annoying. For an example of what this might look like, go here.

(3) Hidden Sections: Not actually a solution, since the pageload time wouldn't change, I think. All the text would be loaded, but only certain portions would be visible at a time, which would make it a smaller-looking page, as opposed to a gigantic list. For an example of that, go here (notice that this page and the previous are different. This one has a longer pageload, but no frames).

(4) Larger Pages: This would involve three or four html pages: one for each list, and one for the reviews. You wouldn't be able to see both at the same time, but you could see all of each section at once.

(5) Alphabetical Listings: Most likely solution, I think. This would involve breaking the reviews down into alphabetical sections by author's last name (e.g., A-D, E-G, etc.). This would produce five or six pages that look just like the current one, with the sole exception being that only a portion of the reviews would be shown. The lists would still be on there, and the intro would still be on there. The only difference would be a little navigation list at the top saying which section of the alphabet one was on. The disadvantage is I either have to do 26 sections (one for each letter of the alphabet), or risk breaking up the sections poorly, so that I'd have to make further subdivisions later on, which would be a nightmare to have to update (having to change each link so it points to the right place), etc.

So, that's the story. I love having it on one page, cause it's all there. It can't be done, though, so now I ask your opinion. As a web surfer, which options sounds the least annoying? As a web savvy person, can you think of a better solution? I'm open to all suggestions.

[Incidentally, y'all listened to Gnarls Barkley yet? It's good, man!]

Usually things about language that get me excited are not interesting to anyone else, but this just may be. This dude Gary Shannon that's always coming up with kooky projects came up with his kookiest project yet, and it's really taking it off. He created a language called Kalusa that began with four sentences with made up words and four English translations. The words themselves weren't defined; there was no grammar that was given. From there, anyone who visits the site was allowed to add any sentence they want and define it however they want. What counts as correct? Visitors to the site get to vote on it. And so, in less than a week, out of nothing, a language has a emerged. Check it out here:

http://kalusa.fiziwig.com/

And, if you want, vote on some sentences, and add a few of your own! (But, Lord help me, if you use ku as the accusative marker, I'll vote your sentence down so fast it'll make your head spin! Mark my words!)

A friend of mine posted the bulletin quoted at the bottom of this message (go and give it a read to see what I'm responding to) regarding national elections. To sum it up, the author is despairing over the state of the two party system in the U.S. Specifically, he details the contradictory beliefs of both the Republican and Democratic parties, and how there are many within each party who can agree with, say, A and B, but disagree with C, D, E and F. At the same time, there are those that will die for C, D and F, have no opinion about A and E, but are staunchly opposed to B. However, if the Republican party espouses G, H, I, J and K, which both either have no opinion on or disagree with, then the Democratic party is where their loyalties rely, and they just have to deal with B or C, D and E. I think it's something that every person affiliated with either major party can identify with.

In the end, with a national election, it seems that everyone is always disappointed, and the difference is who is disappointed more.

Essentially, then, what the author is disturbed by, I infer, is that the parties are not defined by any kind of cohesive ideology, but, rather, are defined in opposition to one another. The reason is that any issue which means something in the U.S. must be taken up by one or the other party. Why? Because if it isn't, the issue won't be taken up. It can be taken up by a third party, but that is, realistically, meaningless. Thus, each party has ballooned, becoming a gigantic amalgam of issue and ideologies, some of which conflict with one another. If you look at each issue historically, it makes sense how contradictory issues came to be housed in a single party (e.g., ever since Teddy Roosevelt, the Democrats have been the champion of the working man and unions, yet humanitarian issues cause the Democrats to oppose Republicans on the issue of illegal immigration, even if it's anti-union [which itself is an opinion, it should be noted]). The result of this diachronic change, though, is a synchronic state that appears unsystematic. Any attempt to account for the synchronic state of a party without acknowledging the history that led to it is simply going to be an abstraction not based on reality. (Chomskyan linguists and OT theorists: are you reading this?)

The question, then, is whether or not this is a good thing. The author has obviously decided that this is a bad thing. I won't pass any judgment at this point, but operating on the assumption that this is a bad thing, here's a possible solution.

If you take a look at local government (for example, I just filled out my absentee ballot for a bunch of Garden Grove issues), there are a bunch of people running for lots of different offices. Their political affiliations are not listed (unless they chose to make a point of advertising it). You just get their name, their job, and a statement. The result? You have to decide on who to vote for based on what they say about their beliefs modulo the office they're running for, and why they're qualified for the job they're going to do. There is no sense that two of them are the main candidates that are diametrically opposed to one another, and the others are just taggers-on. Some of them may not have a chance, that's true, but there are plenty of races for which, three, four or even five chance have an honest chance at winning the election. This is in no way possible for President of the United States.

Not to totally trash the system we have. Local elections can work with party affiliations because they're small. You don't need the backing of a huge party to win a local election, and if often isn't relevant. It's kind of like applying for a job where the public is the employer. The stage is small enough that you can submit a "resume", as it were, and hope to be heard. This simply isn't the case for the presidential election. No one person can just up and decide to run and hope to get the attention of everyone in the country. Parties are an absolute necessity.

So if we need parties, the issue that needs to be addressed is how the parties can be fixed. Right now, there are two enormous parties that just about everyone agrees in part with (i.e., everyone agrees with either Republicans or Democrats on most [?] issues, simply because they represent just about every angle of ever issue). In order to create parties that people can agree with more (so, say if John Q. Democrat agrees with the Democratic party X%, there is undoubtedly a possible party with which John Q. Democrat will agree with X+n%, where n > 0), the peripheral issues that have been coopted by both parties that are kind of tangential to, or even contradict, the core issues of each party, need to be shed. The result will be new political parties and leaner Republican and Democratic parties.

Why hasn't this been done already? Because the two major parties have to take on every issue. Why? Because the third parties really don't count. Why is that? Because with the electoral system we have, a third party can never win, unless it becomes a new major party. In theory, this could happen by a party gaining a following, picking up 4% of the electoral votes, so it can get national funding, then it can participate in the televised debates, etc. In other words, in fantasyland. In practice, this could never happen, because no matter what stance on any issue a third party takes up, it will either: (a) be the same stance as the Democrats (or differ only slightly); (b) be the same stance as the Republicans (or differ only slightly); or (c) be totally unpopular (which, of course, is self-defeating). Even if they came up with a stance on an issue that was new and popular, either one or both parties would incorporate that stance into theat campaign. In this way, a third party can never gain national prominence.

One way to fix this is to change the type of elections we have. Currently, when voting for the president, you get a list like this:

Vote for No More than One

• John Brown, Republican


• John Green, Green


• John Blue, Democrat


• John Red, Peace and Freedom


• John Silver, Independent


• John Black, Libertarian

Then you vote for the one you want to win.

Then, unless you live in some place like Maryland, the tally comes back as follows:

Results

• John Brown, Republican: 43%


• John Green, Green 4%


• John Blue, Democrat: 45%*


• John Red, Peace and Freedom: 2%


• John Silver, Independent: 3%


• John Black, Libertarian: 3%

At this point, the state's elector goes and checks "John Blue" on his electoral college ticket, and John Blue gets all the states electoral votes. (If this were Maryland, it'd be split up by district, and the winner of each district would get all that district's electoral votes.) This is kind of like a race in the Olympics where only gold medals are given out.

Then, after all that's done, the electoral votes are counted up and whoever has the most wins.

The result is that if you voted for the Republican candidate, your vote is meaningless. Conversely, if you live in a Republican candidate and vote for a Democrat, your vote is meaningless. And, if you live in any state and vote for a third party candidate, your vote is meaningless. If, say, there's a narrow margin of victory in the electoral college for candidate A, but candidate B has more popular votes, then you can walk around for the next four years feeling cheated if you voted for candidate B. (Those who voted for Gore in 2000 know what this feels like.) And if you support (or are) a third party candidate, you can really feel cheated, because the only way a third party candidate can affect national policy is by coming up with an issue or stance that is taken up by one of the major parties because it becomes popular enough. There are some that think this is the way the system should work. I think it's stupid, personally, but opinions are opinions.

So, what to do? I realize I've been putting off the possible solution I'm suggesting forever, so here it is: switch to a condorcet electoral system. This is how it works.

Take our list of candidates again:

Vote for No More than One

• John Brown, Republican


• John Green, Green


• John Blue, Democrat


• John Red, Peace and Freedom


• John Silver, Independent


• John Black, Libertarian

The above is the kind of electoral system we currently have. A condorcet election changes the system simply as follows:

Rank the Following Candidates in Order of Preference, Marking Your First Choice with 1, Your Second Choice with 2, etc.

• John Brown, Republican


• John Green, Green


• John Blue, Democrat


• John Red, Peace and Freedom


• John Silver, Independent


• John Black, Libertarian

At this point, one way of determining the condorcet winner is to simply take the number of entrants, and give each ranking a number of points that's in an inverse relation to its rank: e.g., rank 1 = 6 points; rank 2 = 5 points; rank 3 = 4 points, etc. Then, add up the points, and the candidate with the most points is the winner.

There are ways to fine tune this system (e.g., just give points to the top three or top four, no matter the number of candidates; give unranked candidates either the next available rank, the last rank, or no points, etc.), but the result is that it reflects the actual opinions of voters more.

So, take the 2000 election as an example. We had Gore, Bush and Nader as the top three candidates, with some others that didn't have much of a following. Many who voted for Gore would've liked Nader second. Some who voted for Gore would've preferred Nader first and Gore second, but voted for Gore out of fear of their vote being wasted (and rightly so--it would have been). There were also a number of Republicans and, especially, moderates, who voted for Bush, but would actually have either preferred Nader, or would have listed him as second, and ahead of Gore. In this situation, if you have ballots that look like the situation described above, you could have Nader winning as the single candidate that is preferred most when compared to all the other candidates running. This can happen either when you have a strong third party candidate, or two really weak major party candidates (which is what many considered to be the case in 2000).

The immediate result of this kind of election is you get a compromise president, rather than an all-or-nothing president. The long term effect, though, is that suddenly all these issues co-opted by major parties from third party candidates are left to the third party candidates. The major parties can focus on a single ideology, and not feel pressured to take a stance on every issue, or, more importantly, to oppose a particular party on every issue. Why? In this situation the cost of adding peripheral issues outweighs the benefits, which is not the case in the current system. By adding peripheral issues, you can turn off some of your constituency, and dilute your message. This is preferable today because the only alternative is a party that can't win, or a party that's diametrically opposed in many ways. In a condorcet system, if a vote is turned off by a diluted message, there will always be a party with a candidate that has more that they agree with, and whose message is clearer, and, more importantly, who has a realistic chance of winning, even if they're not anyone's top choice.

The end result would be a focus on issues. Candidates would take strong stances on particular issues they feel strongly about. Candidate X may agree with Y and Z 100% on one issue, and disagree with them 100% on another. They may share many things in common with candidate A, but differ in several crucial respects. In order to make a name for oneself, the candidates would have to talk about the issues, and make it clear what their message is. They couldn't count on anyone's backing just because they're a part of party X or Y. It would be a real election where the best man would really win. That's my opinion.

Now let me tell you why I think this will never happen in the near future.

The Founding Fathers designed this government so that it would be really difficult to change the government's fundamental principles. Proposing a Constitutional amendment (which is what this would require, as election procedures are specified in the Constitution) requires 2/3 approval of both houses, plus the President's signature, and then 3/4 independent approval of the states--i.e., a special election to vote on a Constitutional amendment that 38 states have to agree to. This is nearly impossible to do, and takes forever. This is because there's no time table at all for a state to vote on a given constitutional amendment. There are actually constitutional amendments out there that have been passed by Congress that are waiting to either be ratified or rejected by the states--seriously! I think one is to change it to "all men and women are created equal". If you google it, you should find some.

The reason the system was designed this way was so that the public couldn't totally screw up the government because of some passing fad. (And yet, we had prohibition, and the repeal of prohibition...) They wanted it to be difficult and take forever. They wanted to make it so that literally everyone in the United States--the Congress, the President, the people, and even the Supreme Court, who could review it--agreed that a given amendment is sound and necessary. So to change the election, every one has to be in favor of it. And many people are in favor of some sort of change. But a change to what? Well, that would require a committee which would submit proposals, and a committee to decide how those proposals would be disseminated to the public, and a committee to decide how the public would vote on which proposals should try to be passed by Congress, and then it would go to Congress, the President, the States...

And here's the thing. If Congress is suggesting it, who's going to want to change the ways elections are run? The party out of power, of course. The party in power is going to do whatever they can to keep elections as they are--after all, they were able to manipulate it to make it work for them (see the 2000 election). Their opinion will change when they're out of power (maybe), but then the other party will want to keep it the same, since they think they've figured out the secret. And so on, ad infinitvm.

The only way I think real election reform could ever happen is if a third party candidate actually won. Why? Because then the Republicans and Democrats, who would still hold the majority of the seats and all the money and the sway, would join forces to make sure that a darned third party candidate would ever win again. But in that situation, who's to say they'd move to a condorcet system...? The change might be even worse...

So, there you have it. That's my opinion about the problems with national elections, how they could be fixed, and why they never will be, in the near future. If you read all this, kudos to you. I'm not even sure if I'll proofread it...

The Original Message to which I've Responded:

The problem with the Democrats is they have long been a party made up of interest groups, with no unified ideological message. The Republicans have had the same problem for a very long time as well. What that has done is made elections a contest between personalities rather than philosophies, with a great number of people voting based on one or a couple of issues. Both parties have become "big-tent" parties, with the result that there are so many differing opinions within the party ranks that there is always a large number of party faithful who are unhappy with any decision their party makes. In short, we are fooling ourselves. How else can you rationalize the Republican Party?

1. They are "pro-Christian" and yet "pro-military might." Of course, they are also against providing the military with proper pay, equipment and care, something they share with Democrats.
2. They are "pro-China" and yet "anti-Communism" with regards to Cuba.
3. They are "pro-Isreal" but against national homelands for the Kurds, Basques, and others.
4. They are "pro-national security" but against a fortified border with Mexico.
5. They are "pro-individual freedoms" and yet try to legislate what consenting adults do behind closed doors, spend millions every year criminalizing recreational drug use, want restrictions on the types of movies and music that is sold to the public, etc...

Now obviously, many Republicans do not believe in those things, and yet no one can deny that people who do think that way are part of the Republican "big-tent." The Democrats have similar problems:

1. They also claim to be "pro-religion", and yet constantly seek out new ways to limit it in our schools and public places.
2. They are all for military intervention in nations that have no strategic benefit for the US (such as Vietnam, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia & Kosovo) but bristle at the thought of using that power in places where it really matters to national interests.
3. They are in favor of stamping out racism and persecution, but seek to limit US support for Israel, and oppose the war on fundamentalist Islam, even though fundamentalist Islam is currently one of the most oppressive and dangerous religions on the planet.
4. They are "pro-worker" and "pro-union", and yet they oppose strict immigration enforcement, even though many of those immigrants are cutting into the job base of lower income workers.
5. They also support individual freedoms, but let's not forget that Tipper Gore is a liberal, many of the folks supporting digital copy-protection are Democrats, and Democrats have long supported the Federal Government as superior to the individual and the State Governments.

Again, not all Democrats agree with those, but clearly there are large portions of their "big tent" that do. So what's the answer? I have no idea. The parties are no longer designed according to an ideology, but rather a spider's web of individual constituencies cobbled together to try and gain an upper hand on election day. It's a shame, and a sham.

Hey, what do you know: This is about writing and poetry! I feel so cardboard!

I don't usually like to toot my own horn, but I finally wrote up my review of Milton's Paradise Lost, so I thought I'd encourage everyone to go read it. You can go to it by clicking here (I wanted to link straight to it, but apparently MySpace can't handle the pound sign. What the heck?!). The darn thing is just too good to be ignored, and the man too good a writer to be ridiculed from all sides. And if you have a spare month, I recommend picking it up and reading it. It'll be worth the time and effort.

There really needs to be a "Languages" or "Conlang" tab under the category dealie...

To warn the many of you reading this ahead of time that have no interest in language, this is all going to be about language. A made-up language, no less. If you're still reading (i.e., if your name is Doug Ball), here's a problem I came upon recently.

Perhaps out of sheer laziness, Kamakawi, until yesterday, had no way of expressing the following concepts:

1. "Have"-like possession
2. "Want"-like verbal idea (e.g., "to want to do x")
3. "Need"-like verbal idea (e.g., "to need to do x")
4. Comparison

None of these had been done yet. These are usually something you take care of first. Oh well.

For (1), I had two options: Use a copula construction where you'd say something like "X is of Y", meaning "Y has X". I didn't like this, and it didn't really fit in with Kamakawi, so I elected to use the verb/preposition for location (kind of like "at") to do it, so that now it's more like Arabic:

(a) A ala nawa i'i.
/PRES be-at fish OBJ.-1sg./
"I have a fish."

For comparison, I decided to, again, put it on the verb, and created a word like "surpass/exceed". I think it works.

The one I was wondering about was the "want/need" solution. I decided to conflate these into a single word, "fule". It stems from the idea of lacking, kind of like English. I decided to have two separate senses of the verb. The primary sense is "lack/need". So if a table needs an extra leg, this is the verb you'd use, and this is how you'd use it:

(b) A fule lelea ti nawa.
/PRES need water INST. fish/
"A fish needs water."

The strange thing I think is that for the second sense ("want/desire"), you use the exact same deal:

(c) A fule nawa ti'i.
/PRES want fish INST.-1sg./
"I want a fish."

It seems to me like this really shouldn't be, but I was translating at the time, and couldn't really sit down and think it out. So here I ask for help.

Is it the case that what I've set up with the first sense of the verb in (b) is essentially a passive verb without passive morphology? I think I'd like the two senses to be morphologically distinct without using any verbal morphology, and I don't think they are right now... One possible solution would be to have V NOM. ACC. for "lack", and then V NOM. INST. for "want". But should the arguments be the same? For some reason it made sense to me to make the lacker be lower down on the argument chain (so, if a table lacks a leg, the leg will be the subject, the table the object). Does this make sense?

All right, that's it for now. Time for some more translation. I elected to do a kind of language exchange with Arthaey Angosii. Arthaey's writing to me in Asha'ille, and I'm writing back in Kamakawi. Thus, these issues have come up.