TOTALLY VIRAL!

An obscure rash has developed on my forearm.
nothing obscene, but there's a half circle that looks a bit like a bite mark.

so i wikipediaed rabies.
and its one of those times that im sort of hoping somebody tinkered with the article. sounds like someone nerdy having fun:


viral zoonotic neuroinvasive


sounds kind of 80s RAD!

VIRAL!

ZOONOTIC!

NEUROINVASIVE!

the author of the article also states that rabies is latin for "madness, rage, fury" which i initially misread as "furry."
the oxford english dictionary says that it is, infact, latin, and means "to rage, to rave."
i automatically think of neon and E when i hear rave. I wont put you through it, but "rave" has a bevy of uses.
and i always encourage exhausting all meaning of any word.

The first thing i though of were rats. It turns out that they hardly ever carry rabies, and that more classically it seems that farm animals carry it: dogs, cats, cattle, bats.
I had rather disliked rats and their seeming association with all major disease outbreaks- atleast the biggie medieval ones.
A friend of mine started breeding them, and although I still can't understand the want to own them, i like them a little bit more.
I have started into a book called R A T S about city dwelling rats. It's by Robert Sullivan and won a lot of acclaim. I was skeptical, but its worth a read.

I couldnt end this post without looking up "rad" to see if it had anything else to offer.

"Frightened, afraid, alarmed. Const. of, for, and infin"
"Quick, hasty, speedy; active, prompt, ready; eager, elated."
"Of or pertaining to a root or to roots"
"Characterized by independence of, or departure from, what is usual or traditional; progressive, unorthodox, or revolutionary (in outlook, conception, design, etc.)"

why cats make me uncomfortable

the guiltiest of verbal diarrhea, i often start phrases that dont catch with anyone but me.

"hang in there, kitty."

it was supposed to be like that sad 70s poster; its supposed to be affectionately encouraging. but the poster doesnt say "hang in there, kitty."



i guess that explains the perplexed looks. but i just dont feel comfortable saying "hang in there, baby." its way too personal.
i am, however, not against pet names. although i recently scoffed a friend who called me "kitten pants."


its interesting how quickly pet names come in and out of fashion. or in a few cases how it becomes completely unacceptable.
"my pet": strange now.
"puss": totally unacceptable.


the word "pussy" never fails to make me uncomfortable or to make me snigger. or both at once.
and the strange thing is, it has a few dozen meanings. and only a third of them are dirty. straight from the OED:

Chiefly colloq. A girl or woman exhibiting characteristics associated with a cat, esp. sweetness or amiability. Freq. used as a pet name or as a term of endearment. Cf. PUSS n.1 3, PUSSYCAT n. 3.

BUT THEN
coarse slang: a. The female genitals; the vulva or vagina.; b. Sexual intercourse with a woman.; c. A woman, or women collectively, regarded as a source of sexual intercourse.

and also
slang (chiefly N. Amer.). A sweet or effeminate male; (in later use chiefly) a weakling, a coward, a sissy. Also: a male homosexual.; adj.2 colloq. and slang. Exhibiting characteristics associated with a cat; cat-like. Also (in later use chiefly): weak, cowardly (cf. sense A. 1b).

as well as
nursery and colloq. Something soft and furry; esp. a willow catkin. ; Criminals' slang. A fur garment.

pussy posse n. U.S. slang (a) a group of police officers responsible for dealing with prostitution; a vice squad; (b) a group of men each actively seeking a woman for a (casual) sexual encounter.
pussy mob n. Criminals' slang (now rare) a gang of fur thieves
pussy-hoisting n. Criminals' slang (now rare) the action of stealing fur garments

pussy hair n. slang (a) hair likened to that of a cat (rare); (b) a woman's pubic hair (coarse slang).

pussyfoot: intr.To tread softly or lightly, so as to avoid being noticed; to move warily or stealthily; (also) to behave in a sly, furtive, or underhand manner. Also (occas.) trans. with it. Freq. with around. Now rare.
intr. To speak or act with excessive caution; to behave in a hesitant, non-committal, or evasive manner. Freq. with around or about.

and most recently caught by my own eyes (and making me feel akward)
pussy-cat bow n. a large floppy bow, usually worn at the neck.

its interesting to me that we cancel out so many uses of the word because a few are dirty. i can't be the only one who hasnt yet gotten over those conotations if so many of those phrases are noted as "rare."
and it becomes one of those chicken and egg social questions


does it make us uncomfortable because we stopped using it or did we stop using it because it makes us uncomfortable

lost in translation... OR how to bootleg literature

i went searching for the answer to my harry potter editing questions-namely what is the difference between the british and american issues-and stumbled upon that fancy illustration.

it's the cover for Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon

after seeing the success of the book, some chinese man (or man in china) decided to rip off the series with his own version and sell them on the street for the equavalent of one pound or aproximately 2 dollars. besides excerpts like "Harry doesn't know how long it will take to wash the sticky cream cake off his face. For a civilised young man it is disgusting to have dirt on any part of his body. He lies in the high-quality china bathtub, keeps wiping his face, and thinks about Dali's face, which is as fat as the bottom of Aunt Penny" my favorite part is this:
the body of the book is a translation of the hobbit minus the introduction which included the sticky cream cake bit as well as a magic rain that turns harry into a hobbit to begin with. all the names are edited with the exception of Gandolf, who makes the cut.

essentially, some brillant chinese man (or man in china) successfully managed to rip off two cult books in one brillantly titled novel.
he's not the only one and im desperate for cover illustrations for Harry Potter and the Chinese Overseas Students at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter and the Porcelain Doll, Harry Potter and the Golden Turtle, and Harry Potter and the Crystal Vase.
even more interesting than that, the most pirated book in china: The Chinese Dictionary.

i always find it interesting what words will be directly translated and what words will simply stay the same and be pronounced to fit the current language. taking french class, you could say something more modern (cassette, diskette) with a frenchy pout and chances were you would be right. my teachers all suggested "frenchifying"


in the case of harry potter (quoting wiki): Names such as Knockturn Alley and the Pensieve are extremely difficult to translate. The latter is a magical bowl into which memories and thoughts can be placed and examined at leisure, and is a portmanteau of two words: pensive, meaning "musingly or dreamily thoughtful", and sieve, a type of bowl with perforations through which fine particles of a substance (such as flour) may be passed to separate them from coarser ones." so, "the German version of Pensieve is Denkarium with denken meaning 'to think' and aquarium the word could be something like 'thinkarium'; the Turkish version of Pensieve is Düsünseli, which is a portmanteau of the words Düsünmek (to think, to imagine) and sel (a flood of water)

the tricky thing is how much JK uses word games in her books. she definatley didnt have the translators' interests in mind when she came up with the concept of Voldemort's name as an anagram ("Tom Marvolo Riddle"="I am Lord Voldemort") so (again, according to wiki) "in French, Riddle's full name becomes "Tom Elvis Jedusor" an anagram of "Je suis Voldemort"; Dutch his name becomes "Marten Asmodom Vilijn", an anagram of "Mijn naam is Voldemort" (My name is Voldemort); in Czech, his name is "Tom Rojvol Raddle", an anagram of "Já, Lord Voldemort" (I, Lord Voldemort); in Icelandic his name becomes Trevor Delgome; in Swedish the name becomes "Tom Gus Mervolo Dolder", an anagram of "Ego sum Lord Voldemort", where "ego sum" is Latin, not Swedish, for "I am". In Finnish his name is Tom Lomen Valedro (Ma olen Voldemort), in Hungarian the name is "Tom Rowle Denem", which is the anagram of "Nevem Voldemort" - the 'w' in the name becomes two 'v's."

perhaps its one final translation thing, but i just dont understand this italian book cover


or why the germans illustrate their horses with such crazy legs


why the danish covers are alway so epic


why the dutch never put faces on the cover


and why the french insist on making harry look cubist

my favorite color is gray. or is my favorite color gray. or is my favorite colour gray

my mother read us lots of roald dahl when i was young. for those unaware, the man's brillant and the man's a brit.
so our books were full of "ou" spellings. at some point i was obsessed with that. it looked cooler and smarter and better. colour is always better than color.

then i got over it.
i think they edit all of the british books into american. im not sure if that is common place, but I know they atleast did such for the whole harry potter series. they also cleaned it up for slang, because its too laborous for a child or even adult reader to figure out (use some critical thinking, phone a friend, google it) the difference between a trainer and a sneaker.

then recently i got into a confused conversation about the difference between "grey" and "gray." im not really sure how it came up, but it definately did and it was definately confused.
there was an arguement that "grey" is soley a verb.
and that "gray" is an adjective or a noun.
but it was also argued that the difference is purely a british vs. american thing and only pretentious people would use the spelling "grey" to appear more educated than the others.

well, apparently other people have been unsettled by this question too.
http://www.bernzilla.com/item.php?id=232
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=235359
http://flakmag.com/misc/grey.html
http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic9239.html

and, apparently, its just a brits vs. 'mericans thing and not reasonable or very dynamic.
wikianswers says: The spelling, one refers to clothes the other hair.


so we get nowhere.

regardless, i will always have respect for those brits and the way they do things. its okay to be polished yet a little offkilter.

the new york times with their foot in their mouth

As a student of journalism and an average person, i am well aware of the power and prestige of the New York Times.
They're sharp, and because of such can make daring decisions about what kinds of articles to publish.


Like write a whole article about the semicolon.

I had no objection to this at all; oh hey look, i'm quite an advocate of the semicolon myself; although i'm sure I season with it far too often. I dont fancy myself an expert grammarian, and as many will see in this sloppy side project, I make mistakes too.
But here's the deal: an article about a semicolon can be quite tongue-in-cheek and very clever.

It can also be seen as insanely pretentious.
And here is where the writer makes himself look like a silly, silly pretentious ass:
Correction: February 19, 2008, Tuesday An article in some editions on Monday about a New York City Transit employee's deft use of the semicolon in a public service placard was less deft in its punctuation of the title of a book by Lynne Truss, who called the placard a ''lovely example'' of proper punctuation. The title of the book is ''Eats, Shoots & Leaves'' -- not ''Eats Shoots & Leaves.'' (The subtitle of Ms. Truss's book is ''The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.'')

The whole snobby word nerd joke of the book is the blarring difference between


eats,


shoots and leaves

and


eats shoots and leaves

so sam roberts writes this peice about the importance of punctuation and botches a line about the importance of punctuation.
oh, sam.


checking to see how the phrase "foot-in-mouth" is supposed to be written (without confusing it with foot and mouth disease), i found out that there is in fact an award for dumb phrases (and an Ep by green day with the same title):

The Foot in Mouth award is awarded each year by the British Plain English Campaign for "a baffling comment by a public figure"
They're all quite lovely but i rather like:


"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know."



"I think that [the film] Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it's true lightness."

nick underwood, teletubbies marketing
"in life, there are all colours and the Teletubbies are a reflection of that. There are no nationalities in the Teletubbies - they are techno-babies, but they are supposed to reflect life in that sense."


p.s. the hardest part of todays post:





picking the don's picture.

words about words: a riddle wrapped in an enigma

i went on a wikipedia trail today. or, atleast the destination was wikipedia.
or atleast the stopping point which came from a trail that went something like:








and then I am reading an absolutely absurd entry about nonsense literature. it may be a wikipedia tangent, but the passage was pretty compelling and--there are better words and i may follow up to cover myself--its kind of a mindfuck; mostly because the word "nonsense" is used so frequently and is meant to explain. Isn't nonsense supposed to be something you can't explain?

see. that is the definition of a mindfuck.

i am linked to the idea of "neologisms"
a "neologism": a word, term, or phrase that has been recently created (or "coined"), often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary.


so listed under this lengistic term "neologism" are neologisms in linguistics.
{the definition of a term led me to a term containing new terms}
so here is the word gold at the end of that long trail. Here are new terms for liguistic devices (thanks to wiki so this may just be complete bullshit but it IS rather well crafted so it IS rather worth our time:

2003's aptronym: An aptronym is a name aptly suited to its owner. A related phrase is nominative determinism, popularised by New Scientist magazine, suggesting, with tongue firmly in cheek, that people's life choices are influenced by their names. The distinction is subtle but fundamental: as post-hoc versus propter-hoc, so aptronym versus nominative determinism.
ex: Derek Jeter New York Yankee shortstop (Jeter is French for "to throw"); Thomas Crapper, manufacturer of Victorian toilets; Samantha Bond, a Bond girl in 4 films of the James Bond films, playing Miss Moneypenny

2004's snowclone: A snowclone is a type of formula-based cliché that uses an old idiom in a new context.[1] It is a special case of phrasal templates. It was originally defined as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers." An example of a snowclone is "X is the new Y", a generic form of the expression "pink is the new black". In order to apply the snowclone, X and Y should be replaced with new words or phrases. For instance, this snowclone might appear as "Random is the new order", a marketing phrase for the iPod shuffle.

2005's protologism: newly invented words; a word created to fit a particular definition in hope that it will see further use. It is a prototype or a hypothetical projection of a new lexical unit before it may become current in writing or speech." It does not, however, appear to be regularly used outside this context. It might be better characterized as jargon.