DarrenConley.com

I'm posting this video to use for a presentation that I'm giving on international pronunciation of English this Tuesday.  If you're not in my class, you don't have to watch this.  Of course, you're more than welcome to check it out anyway.

My presentation will involve analyzing the English pronunciation in this video in order to determine the key features which may contribute to possible misunderstanding.  If you want to play along, you can try to transcribe his speech, then figure out what pronunciation features hindered your understanding of it, and what features had no effect.  If you enjoy this kind of stuff, you may have a possible future in Linguistics.  If not, feel free to read this post about drinking your own pee.

Courtesy of this website, and in defience of all manly conventions, I present this poem.  May my female readers swoon, and my male readers find something nice to write on an anniversary card.

Thomas Moore (1779–1852)

Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
   Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow, and fleet in my arms,
   Like fairy-gifts fading away,
Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,
   Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
   Would entwine itself verdantly still.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
   And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear
That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known,
   To which time will but make thee more dear;
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
   But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
   The same look which she turned when he rose.

Special thanks to Julie Lewis for showing me this video.  The best commentary on the Britney Spears situation, and a good reminder for all of us.  It's just over 12 minutes long, and well worth your attention. 

Well friends, it's been almost a month since my last post, and while I'm sure you love watching Christian music videos, I know many of you have been dying for more Darren Conley-produced content.  And when I say "many of you", what I actually mean is the 7 people who have not given up on this site and who still occasionally use it as a handy way to watch 80s cartoon openings or to research the finer points of modern time travel technology.

I'd like to say that this lapse in regular posting is a one-time occurrence, and that lots of flashy new posts will be splashed across this page in the very near future, but the truth of the matter is that right now, school is kicking my wanna-be-Master's-degree-holding anal-zone, and unless I focus all of my writing skills on completing my assignments, this program is going to vomit me out faster than Jesus pulling a "Laodicea maneuver" (see Revelation 3:16 for that lovely piece of Biblical imagery).

On the other hand, I've had no problem keeping up with the latest episodes of Heroes.  In fact, the last episode I watched actually made me cry.  Both times I watched it.  [This is the point in the post where I usually make some snappy remark about "defending my manliness".  But I'm giving up on doing this, because if I'm truly a man, then my actions should actually DEFINE what manliness really is, and believe me: I am truly a man.  My wife says so.]

What I'm trying to say is that my lack of writing here is not to be taken as a sign of laziness, but rather as a sign of my being extremely NON-lazy in other areas of life (i.e. school and Heroes watching).  And my writing of this post is not to say that more posts will not follow, but just to let you know that I am alive, and I'm not giving up on this site.

This will not become one of those abandoned blogs that clutters up cyberspace with the forgotten remembrances of days long past.  DarrenConley.com shall live on, and yea, shall indeed thrive one day, when one of my entrepreneurial ideas changes the face of the internet, or if I ever decide to re-vamp the content of this site to something more addictive, like "Pretty Girls Who Don't Care About Looks, Have Questionable Moral Fiber and Don't Have STDs", or "Videos of Stuff Blowing The Heck Up".

But for now, you're going to have to settle for another post about how busy I am at school.