flemmings | (no subject)

I have to stop reading the Guardian, not merely for its TERFery, but because it keeps announcing the imminent demise of Boris Johnson's political career, much as it keeps announcing the imminent demise of Trump's, and I believe neither will actually happen. Please prove me wrong, but this is serious Teflon/ Green Bay Tree time.

On the domestic front, nothing but disaster. Large domestic is a convoy of COVID vaccine-mandates protesting truckers who block ambulances, steal from homeless shelters, harass store clerks who wear masks, piss on monuments, and disrupt residential areas at all hours of the day and night. Small domestic is my furnace filters being delivered in an unusable condition, me ordering new ones in the wrong size, and me having to order again.

Then I was adjusting sofa cushions and knocked the lamp from the side table. Broke one of the figures on it and shorted the bulb. Picked it up, got bulb out, put in second last of my remaining trilights, turned it on, and bulb blew. Fetched lamp from bedroom, put on table, lamp's shade is so dark that a 100 watt bulb doesn't give enough light to read by. Can't get shade off old lamp to swap over because obviously something got bent when it fell. Shouldn't be reading on couch anyway because I still can't get up off chairs without both knees screaming at me. I swear my knees were in better shape six weeks ago than they are now, because then I didn't have to do fifteen minutes of stretching to get my operated knee to bend and take my weight.

Cell phone absolutely refuses to charge so I keep it turned off in case of emergencies. And it snows just enough that no one sees the need to clear their sidewalk so I can't get down to the store on Bloor to get a new cable or even a new phone. Bah humbug.

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I hope - well, I have to, given the alternative. But I agree that given Johnson's career and "getting away with it" so far, Teflon is a good term for him.

Much sympathy on matters domestic, large and small. I hope things improve soon.

'Hope deferred maketh the heart sick' time. Because even if they bounce BoJo, what will they replace him with? Sunak? 'And the last state of that country becometh worse than the first.' As with May before him and Cameron before her and and and.

(One of these I'll figure out how a cradle Catholic who heard nothing but the Douay translation at school and at Mass comes by all these King James tags. Am inclined to blame Dorothy Sayers.)

As the Dog returns to his Vomit, as the Sow returns to her Mire,
As the burned Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire...

At that rate of descent, we'll be elevating Nadine Dorries to the rank of Prime Minister soon. Gah.

I may have probably told you this one before (apologies if so), but there was one time back at school where the five of us doing A level Greek were for some reason translating chunks of the New Testament - in particular, the Gospels. Now it happened that three of us were also in the school Chapel Choir, and as such we got regular exposure to the standard readings from the KJB. Result; when presented with particular texts, we immediately started reeling the KJ version off from memory. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was..." Etc. The teacher was most displeased. We were supposed to be _translating_.

I suppose a general turning away from the Tories might help, but the opposition doesn't inspire me with confidence either. I suppose we're lucky here. The Liberal devil we know is at least moderately leftist, which is how Canadians generally like it on a federal level. Provincially-- well, that's another very sad story.

No, I hadn't heard that story- didn't even know you took Greek even. But sheesh: the beginning of John sticks in the head even if you don't sing in a choir, which I didn't, and the KJV translates it pretty much word for word IIRC. She should have realized that.

I believe koine Greek is more staightforward than classical, may be why she gave you that. I of course cut my teeth on Xenophon's Apology for Socrates which is at least easier than Plato's. Otherwise it was a slog slog slog look up every word exercise.

Current Labour is extremely bland, its main virtue apparently being that it's not the Tories. Which is very depressing. We really need a cleansing of the national media as well as politics, I think.

I think she did realise that, and shifted us to the Nativity instead. Exactly the same problems. "... watching over their flocks by night ..." IIRC, it was the end of term and she wanted to give us something other than our set texts, something that we'd find a bit easier.

I can't even remember what our set texts _were_, now. Sad. I think we did some Plato at one point (Crito?) but to be honest, I remember more of Plato from Mary Renault than I do from any translation in class.

Nothing will happen to the media, alas. Sound bites and filter bubbles are what we're used to and what they provide. I suppose it's no different from previous centuries when one's political affiliation was set in stone from a young age- 'I am a Tory because my family has always been Tory and I would never listen to Whig arguments.'

Somehow I always assumed that after eleven you chose an area of concentration and that was it. If you were on the science side it was math, physics, and chem; if humanities, language and lit. Was it more varied than that?

I was trying to remember what Greek courses I took (the Xenophon was for the prof who taught me Greek one summer.) Can't remember if it was Plato's Apology or the Symposium. So long ago... I had a philosophy course as well in my first term at uni, with all of The Republic, right after reading The Last of the Wine, so I was pretty much up on Plato from the start.

It was more varied than that at my school (Christ's Hospital); as I remember it, everyone took a standard set of subjects for the first three years (English, Maths, French, History, Combined Science, and either Latin or German) and then took O Levels (later GCSEs) in most of those (English, French, Maths, History, Science) plus two optional subjects from a range of (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, Geography, Art, and probably others I can't remember). That was years 4-5. Then we did A levels in years 6-7 - 3 A levels, our choice of subject, though I don't think they would have let us do something we'd done badly at earlier. I did A levels in Latin, Greek and Mathematics.

... and then I went on to do Maths with Statistics at university and didn't do very well, then I ended up in clinical information (the current clinical coding job) and writing fiction in the evenings, which probably all goes to show something, but I don't know what.

Ah well. I'm sure it all comes in useful somewhere.

The system at my old school is probably a bit different now, too, 30 years on...

Thank god I never had to do maths for any official exam. There were no state-set exams until the last year of high school and they were like your A levels: three subjects from the eight or nine we'd taken previously. Mine were English, Latin, and Spanish, and I got a modest scholarship from it. (In previous years it was five or six subjects, I believe, and much more stress for that reason.)

But I do envy you starting Greek early. If I'd begun at 13 instead of 19, I think more would have stuck. Then again, I started Latin at 13- required subject in Catholic schools of the time- and very little of that has stuck either, probably because we spent three and a half years rote memorizing declensions and conjugations and only read things for a year and a half.

Well, it's all grist to the mill. I must have mentioned the American guy at my language school in Japan with his however many degrees, replying to the Scots girl who was describing the Robbie Burns evening she'd been to, 'I don't think I ever heard of him. I took business administration in university.'