Off the Cliff

Half the time I think going back to the looseness of spelling that Shakespearian (Shaxperian, Shakesperian, Shaksperian, Shaxberdian) English had would be cool, and half the time I think chatspeak and the net have done exactly that and hate it with an unyielding passion. (Pet hates, in no order: to instead of too ('I want one like that to.' To what, is my automatic response); alot as one word; and the apostrophe'd plural: 'many country's are feeling the credit pinch.' Dear god, what *do* they teach them in these schools?)

And in between I have random moments at the front lines, where written English yields to spoken, and am inclined to be charmed by things like 'without more adieu' (no use in long good-byes) and 'waiting on tenderhooks.' Tenderhooks sound rather pleasant, in fact.

And then I think it's just because I'm a suck for a pun, and 'tenderhooks' is quite as bad as 'company's.'

I'm at the supermarket today when I suddenly register that the black jacket on the guy in front of me (grey blow-away hair, ancient hippie, rather like myself) has a pattern of the four guardian beasts on the back. Some HK import product, I assume, available maybe in Chinatown? A distinct step up, quality-wise, from the stock imports with mythical beasts on them. 'Scuse me,' I say, 'where'd you get your jacket?' 'I'd tell you but I don't know,' he says. 'Someone left it in a bar and never came back to claim it, so I took it. No idea where it's from except this--' and he shows me the zipper pull which, contrary to all logic, says Nike.
( And was it? )

And there are people who advocate getting rid of daylight savings? Madness. That would have the sun rise at 4:30 this time of year, which means I'd be up at 4. You know who gets up at 4? Tofu makers. No one else should be awake at that hour except the insomniacs like me who're about to go to bed.

Three days in a row awake before 6, two of them at 5 am. Awake. Unable to get back to sleep because my body says "Light! Look there's *light* in the east! The birds are singing! It's morning!!" Ohh for the wintertime when 5 am was the middle of the night and I got more than 5 or 6 hours rest (it doesn't have to be sleep-- an hour or two's float in the dark will do just as well.) And my eyes weren't too tired to read Japanese the rest of the day.

Because when I'm not too tired to read I can divert myself with ( these sites )

I've had a nagging feeling for several months that puzzling through Chinese sentences was somehow having a bad effect on my Japanese. Didn't really seem to affect how I read manga, so dismissed it as an illusion. Until today when I tried reading a fan novel- one of the Goujun x Kenren ones avalonjones sent me- and discovered I was right. Basic problem: I don't read hanzi as Chinese, I read them as English. Give me the same character in Japanese and though I know what it means, my mind now struggles to remember the Japanese word-- since it lacks the not quite seen but definitely *there* furigana of the manga. 'Kobamu-- yodomu-- no, *hasamu* what-the-hey-does-that-mean-in-this-contxt?'

It's a bitter struggle, I tell you.

With the clarity of the insomniac I suddenly realize what this reminds me of: this of course being 'watching a foreign series in a language I don't know at all from a culture I don't know well with specific cultural references I've never heard of through the medium of curtailed and uninformative subtitles.' It reminds me of Lacan's dictum about women and language: "they don't know what they are saying." Sure, women can *talk*. but we don't comprehend the symbolic order of language so we don't know what our talk means; and yes, I can discuss and interpret what I see on the screen, but what I see is an unclear, distorted, and culturally deformed version of what's there.

One argues from ignorance, always. Argh.

( Nostalgia: Oncle Jacques makes the children's heads spin )

Finished The Fortune of War (Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander series) and in my grasshopper reading fashion have begun Treason's Harbour, third along from Fortune. Having just moaned about being spoiled by other people's chance remarks, I agree it makes no sense that I spoil myself in this fashion. FortuneofWar spoiled the whole of Desolation Island- which is actually OK, since I can't read my copy of Desolation Island: the typeface gets between me and the words. Yes, princess and the pea. Treason's Harbour is currently spoiling The Ionian Expedition, and that's OK too. I shall read Ionian in any case because it sounds like the prototype of Black Powder War, or portions thereof.

This has all left me wishing Novik had borrowed more- much much more- from O'Brian than she did. Novik's settei is so lovely, I feel it deserves the same solid satisfying feel as O'Brian's work, the same weight of narration and unquestionable sense of place and period. I love Temeraire, yes, but there's a lightweight quality about it that makes me sad.
( Of O'Brian and Novik )

And this is last day of Diwali, I see. Does one wish people Happy New Year tomorrow? Happy New Year tomorrow, if so.

Back when I was taking Intro Psych I nearly had an anxiety attack when I read about aphasia and the related conditions in which the brain refuses to process words passively or actively or whatever. To be stripped of one's language seemed to me the ultimate nightmare.

Many years later I was sweeping leaves off the walk in Tokyo with a broom/ houki/ 箒 in my right hand and- a- a- a thing for sweeping leaves into in my left. I looked at the nameless object and realized I had no idea what it was called in any language. Weird but not yet panic-making: the glimpse of a world without names was intellectually intriguing, like a view of a real Flatland. Granted, the nightmare feel was also brushing my neck: what if I never remember...? (Took my roommates to remind me it was a dustpan, after which I remembered myself that it was a chiritori.)
( Cut for Richard Wilbur excerpt )

Am reminded of all this by this passage in this larger entry. Anomia, not related to anomie. Interesting experience, in what's still an unpleasant kind of way.

I weep.

Maybe I'll make a cat macro: OMG it's not English! Get back in the car!

And this gem:
"I too hate beowulf LOATHE it, i just don't GET it. Its as if a geek wrote an poem with bad spelling about a tabletop game of d&d they played."

Bet she can't read Tolkien either, 'cause the man was just so derivative.

Those people who decry the use of a thesaurus are young whippersnappers. There's a perfectly valid reason for using a thesaurus. It's that maddening tickling sensation that I *know* there's a word for this, the precise and exact word, but my aging hormone-fuzzed brain no longer supplies it automatically the way it did twenty years ago, or even ten. I hate that feeling, and I hate trying to find the near-approximations under which the real word might be listed in Roget's, and I hate it worst of all when it's phantom word pain: the word doesn't in fact exist, I only remember it doing so. Ths must be what athletes feel like when their reflexes start to slow down. Mournful: Omukute darui jinsei dake datte sa. (Is distracted by the shiny: are you serious about who sung that? Wow, the man gets around.) (Is distracted by the geeky: why is there no good English translation for darui? Possibly because we don't have a common-use word, any more than we do for the extended uses of genki. I think we say 'I feel bleh' instead, or at best 'lethargic'.)

Mind you, the people who read the original pixel-stained technopeasant rant and sneered 'The guy must have worn out his thesaurus' are beyond whippersnapper and into infantile. It may pass the understanding of those who learned their vocabulary from television and Sweet Valley High, but truly, some people know all those words, and use them, from their own quite genuine reading experience.

That said, more cheerfully, there's nothing to restore vocabulary like reading Aubrey Maturin: and ohh there's so much of it to read. (Goes off to restore vocab.) (And that's an example right there. My mind gave me only 'revive' and 'return', and I had to find 'restore' in the thesaurus.)

I learned a new loanword today, from the French- piton. To quote the source for this useful phrase, 2metaldog

The best translation I have for it is: the little thing that doesn't have a name on the end of the bigger thing that does have a name. An example of this would be that little plastic thing on the end of shoelaces. That's a piton. Or the little bit of rubber that sticks out after you tie a knot in a ballon that you've just blown up. That's a piton, too.

Someone in the comments mentions that the plastic thingy at the end of the shoelace is actually an aglet, which is fine, but piton will do as well. Especially in these latter velcro days. (BTW-- do not put your toddlers into lace-ups, ye who have or will have toddlers. No eighteen month old can resist the urge to pull on the laces, run away, trip on the things and wail mightily. To be consoled by their caregiver- 'Aaron Elliot, tell your Mummy- velcro.')

Those who have dealt with amazon.wherever in its many avatars, what does it mean when their wp says a book has not yet been released that two people you know have already read?

1) amazon doesn't update its wps enough. If you preorder they will have the thing in stock already and send it along.

2) amazon doesn't know its virtual fundament from a virtual hole in the ground. Do not deal with them unless you must.

The various wank communities make for dispiriting reading lately, hence my icon. From the behaviour on both sides I can't help feeling that HP fans deserve their fandom and may it choke them; from reading HP (nice but no big deal) I conclude that my feelings are right. 'But for Wales, Richard?'

This is clearly going to be a weekend without the net. A long weekend without the net. Connection was faster and stabler with my dial-up modem. (spits) But to our other demons.
( Thoughts on Cortege de cent demons: because lj cut changes accents )

In comes the regular metafandom masspost. I am immediately discouraged from reading any of it, and for why?
( Hideous examples )

Reading A Great and Terrible Beauty on Emily's recommendation. It was the Utena mention that pulled me in. I've just realized that, fan as I am of the series, the memory of Utena gives me- here's that word again- the fantods. (My fantods are a milder and more dark-dank-ineffable-British version of the creeps.) The whole of the late-90's does, for various psychological and (oddly) political reasons having to do with reverse culture shock and returning from half a decade away to find your happy socialist homeland taken over by a right-wing dictator who regularly has social assistance programs taken out and shot every morning before breakfast. Also hospitals and schools and little infrastructure institutions like that.

(The Harris regime left deeper scars than I'd realized. In local news, the police officer who shot the Indian protester over a decade ago died in a traffic accident before he could testify at the continuing and much delayed inquiry. Would that the guy who gave him implicit orders to do so had done the same, because I have no confidence that Mr. Harris will ever be forced to take responsibility for any of his actions, and his continued presence in my city and government offends me.)

Well, fantods are a good background to reading Great and Terrible Beauty because fantods are what it's about.
( But there's always a fly in the ointment )

There's a longstanding and deeply unfortunate convention over here that translates the word for female Taoist Immortal (sennyo in Japanese, 仙女) as 'fairy'. Taoist Immortals may be weird in spite of their frequently human beginnings, but they just don't correlate to English fairies, nohow. No wings, just for a start.
( And the background to that is... )

Friday night I wandered into the last half hour of The Whale Rider on TVOntario. Not sure why it left the sort of psychic hangover it did, but I was vaguely fantodded all weekend because of it. Whales. Cuddling whales. Aghhh... This was followed by Crouching Tiger, Houshin Engi the anime, a volume of Houshin Engi the manga in French, a Teletubbies tape, and the last five minutes of Temptress Moon wandered into *last* night on TVO. (Even from five minutes I can tell that this last is a classic slow-as-molasses must-avoid. Even though I normally like slow and arty, the colours and lighting look as though it was all shot during a Shanghai smog alert. Possibly it was.)

The result is complete mental soup, disconnected and unpleasant imagery bobbing about in my brain like the flotsam of a seawreck.
( And the cure? )

No sooner does all the snow melt away than more snow falls. Yes dear, it's called 'winter.' But even Mrs. Professor of Islamic Culture up the street, who must be an easy 20 years younger than me, says she aches from shoveling; and so do I.
( Gankutsu-ou, cut for those who might view it some day )

Mind you, if the Count turns out to be someone like Deth from the RiddleMaster trilogy, I shall be pleased as well. But I'm not holding my breath on that one. The Count too may have altruistic motives for what he's doing but ultimately one must assume it's personal. It's the Count of Monte Cristo, after all.

To have it here, from Someone Else's lj, via metaquotes-

"I have decided that since I fucking hate it when people call them memes, and it's god damn annoying when people get cutesy and call them lemmings as if we're all nothing but stupid sheep following along bleating (molesworth mjj thinks: if the shoe fits...), I'm inventing my own god damn name. That's right, bitch, suck it up. From now on, they're herpes. Annoying, easily transmitted by contact with 'friends,' passed around among groups of people who are connected to each other to varying degrees of intimacy, and tending to pop up without warning and refuse to go away, and occasionally prone to coming back.