I think the learning Latin thing has been going rather well overall.  That is, aside from the frustration provided by my substance dependency issues which appears to inhibit my ability to engage in rote learning as easily as I once did.  For the most part it has been an interesting and engaging endeavour and I’m wondering why I never did it years ago… oh yeah, that’s right.  My school never taught Latin (Go! You good Catholic things! Go!) and my previous University never taught Latin either.  We have been learning lots of useful vocabulary – furcifer – rascal; sceleris – villain; lumbrīcus – worm; merterīx – prostitute; serua – slavewoman… and all good stuff like that, which will no doubt come in handy when buying a ticket on the Metro one day.

But the one thing I have been finding excessively frustrating is the umpteen different ways of saying a single word depending on whether it’s masculine, feminine or neuter, singular or plural, whether it’s in the nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative or ablative case, whether is past or present tense, what mood it’s in, active or passive voice and oh dear gods immortal, save and protect us!  So there’s literally 36 different words that can be used to say ‘my’ or ‘mine’… that we’ve been shown so far.  And instinct is telling me that we haven’t encountered all the variations yet!  :S

This week we were told we’d be learning Latin numbers and and counting, and I thought, surely here we’d be in the clear.  I studied French in highschool and later at Uni, and if memory serves the ‘un, deux, trios, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neruf, dix’ was simple and straightforward enough, and foolishly thought that would be the way of it.  But no, no, no!  Even though French is a gendered language to the best of my recollection (which admittedly is fuzzy at best), numbers in French do not possess gender.  In Latin they most certainly do… and fucking ‘huzzah’ for that!  😐   So anyway, I figure that it sort of makes sense, the ‘ONE’ in question could be referring to a masculine, feminine, or neuter object so we’ll just have to run with it.

Unfortunately that particular thought (however fleeting), was a stupid, stupid rookie mistake!  Because ‘ONE’ can also be in the nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative and ablative case!!!  Argh!  So, I was thinking… 3 by genders, 6 by cases that’s 18 ways to say the number ‘one’, how absolutely ridiculous and completely redundant is that?!?  So while I wrestled my indignation to a more manageable incredulousness, I idiotically thought we had landed and would be safe with that, only to find that further insult was to be added to injury, because…  wait for it, there’s more!

Somehow in Latin, there are specific circumstances where the number ‘ONE’ is PLURAL.  That’s right!  The very word whose inherent meaning refers to a singular item or object when counting can be PLURAL in bloody Latin!  Which means now we have the 3 gender options, as well as the 6 case options, and singular and plural options, giving no less than THIRTY-SIX DIFFERENT WAYS to say the number ‘ONE’.

How fucked up is that!  I am now thoroughly convinced that I am destined to never to master this language.

So what’s the deal with Klout?  I can’t quite figure it out.  Admittedly I only joined up about a week or so ago and only to find out what it is, but alas… I haven’t the patience to wait until it becomes clear, not the inclination to research the internets to find out what it’s about so I’d rather bitch about its excessively vague purpose over here.

From what I can tell you have a profile, just like on every other social networking site, and you can add friends, just like every other social networking site, and your friends can approve or disapprove of your input, just like everyone other social networking site.  :S   So far, I’m not seeing a great deal of value adding here.

If I click on their website it gives me little orange +K Klout points that I can distribute to my ‘Influencers’.  Whereupon I can add a topic to my list of topics, which one assumes are supposedly areas of expertise or interest, or I can distribute those +K points to people in my network.  Problem is that it restricts what you can add as a topic of expertise and/or interest and I found I was unable to add any of the following:  Art, Art History, History, Medieval History, Medieval Philosophy, Medieval Politics, Political Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Studying History or just about anything else I tried that was related to my current field of endeavour.  But I can add Britney Spears or Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber as an area of expertise?!?!  Go figure  O_o.

The other way of using up your +Ks are to give them to your friends, however you seem to be restricted in how you can do that too.  I can give a friend +K for a topic they may have ‘influenced’ me about over the last week, but then I can’t give them more +K for the same topic until the following week, even if that person’s ‘influence’ has been far reaching and therefore worthy of many more +Ks!!  So, what’s a girl supposed to do with all her superfluous +Ks???

Well, the only thing I could think to do with them was to go adding topics to my brother in law’s Klout page, being sure to very carefully and thoughtfully choose topics that I know he is sufficiently expert in!  😛   Like Interior Design, Circus Music, Twilight, Puppies, Skin Care and all good things like that.  But beware: when you attempt an addition, sometimes the program is ‘buggy’ as all shit… why, just yesterday I was trying to add ‘Midwifery’ to my brother in law’s specialty topics and it took all my +K away and didn’t add the ‘Midwifery’!  I was like, totally ripped off man!    😛

And so, I conclude that just like everything else on the internet, it would appear that Klout is for porn!  No wait… I meant to say ‘trolling’.  Klout is for trolling!!!

My heartfelt commiseration to all those die hard Diablo fans who, after months of anticipation, are experiencing technical difficulties at this time.  I understand how frustrating and aggravating the inability to log onto the server can be and my thoughts and prayers are with you all at this difficult time… awwww.