I'm busy marking exams for TESL 33 (Teaching Grammar and Phonology, part of the U. of S. Extension Division's CERTESL--Certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language--program).

"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."
-Vladimir Nabokov


Today is believed to be the birthday of William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England (1564). He used one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, almost 30,000 words, and he gave us many of our most common turns of phrase, including "foul play," "as luck would have it," "your own flesh and blood," "too much of a good thing," "good riddance," "in one fell swoop," "cruel to be kind," "play fast and loose," "vanish into thin air," "the game is up," "truth will out," and "in the twinkling of an eye."

John Clifford Mortimer, who wrote the "Rumpole of the Bailey" stories, once said that comedy is "the only thing worth writing in this despairing age, provided the comedy is truly on the side of the lonely, the neglected and the unsuccessful, and plays its part in the war against established rules."
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Humourist Josh Billings said, "There are many people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them."
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Naturalist John Muir said, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

I hope that this time the Burmese dictatorship is telling the truth about releasing Aung San Suu Kyi. When I was in Burma in 2002, I saw her on television (BBC World on satellite TV) saying that she was optimistic about Burma's political future. However, a few months later, she was injured when government supporters attacked a National League for Democracy gathering. Then she was put under house arrest.
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(CNN) -- Myanmar [Burma] opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi may be freed from house arrest in the coming days, the chairman of the National League for Democracy said.

"We are hoping that Aung San Suu Kyi will be released in a day or two," chairman Aung Shwe said in the capital, Yangon [Rangoon], on Monday.

Myanmar officials have detained Aung San Suu Kyi, 58, in an undisclosed location for nearly a year since a bloody May 30 clash between her supporters and a pro-government group.

While Myanmar's military government has said previously that Suu Kyi will be freed, it has refused to specify when.

Aung San Suu Kyi, whose pro-democracy efforts in her country earned her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, and party vice chairman Tin Oo are the last senior NLD leaders still detained since the clash.

Monday's optimism on the democracy leader's release follows the reopening of the party's national headquarters over the weekend.

Officials broke open the lock on the pro-democracy party's door near the Shwedagon Pagoda in the capital Yangon on Saturday.

The office was shut down the day after the clash last year.

The move comes one month before a convention aimed at producing a draft constitution to move the country toward democracy, scheduled for May 17, as part of its road may towards democracy.

However, the NLD has refused to consider joining the talks until Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin Oo were freed and had met with other senior party leaders.

Myanmar's military has ruled the country since 1962. The government remains largely isolated with the United States, the European Union and Japan either imposing sanctions or withholding aid.

In 1990, the nation's military rulers refused to acknowledge an 82 percent landslide victory by the NLD. But many people outside the nation consider the NLD the legitimate government.

In March, Myanmar's appointed prime minister, Gen. Khin Nyunt, met with U.N. special envoy Razali Ismail, on a mission to bring Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition NLD and the regime closer to an agreement on restoring democracy.

I have nothing interesting to say today. (Hey, at least I'm being honest!)