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| 6/30 I wonder why Sarah gets so freaked out by two-headed people (or two people sharing a head). Now, certainly I cannot take much pain or even inconvenience in my current existence, but I still think that I would rather be alive with some grave congenital physical deformity, than not have been born at all. Of course, sharing a body is different than just being deformed, it must get unbearably tiresome to never be alone and have to make every single decision by committee. Went to Atlanta Pride parade yesterday. It was not very racy, I was expecting lots of flashers or something, I guess. 7/7 Sarah is clocking me on this blog thing. I am filled with envy by the yeasties cartoon... But great art is only produced by those who suffer. Sarah has all my sympathy concerning this latest development, romantic trouble.... Sarah even brought that guy a present from Fiji... Ingrate!! I am at friend Lee's house in Boston. While using his computer, I realized what a terrible idea it was to give him a talking Homer Simpson doll that hooks up to your computer and makes annoying, irrelevant comments on the websites you look at (for whatever reason, when I was reading my usual series of political blogs this morning, it kept saying "Mmmm - Money..."). Thank you Lee for turning Homer off... I find that more than one person hates the flying gingerbread men on the main page (two whole readers - that would be about 40% of my public) so I am removing them. Also, reader named Sparky in comments, asks for explanation of the Chinese characters. It was a random choice of title based on the fact that when I looked at www.zhongwen.com one day, "men"(1) was the word that showed up in the dictionary window. "Men"(1) means either "stuffy, humid" or (news to me at the time) "depressed." The traditional way of explaining the character is that it is a picture of a little heart shut in behind a closed door (and the word for door also happens to be "men," although I am such a bad student, I do not know what tone it is off the top of my head.) Traditional or "folk" Chinese etymology (which means the way that the average Chinese person is taught that a word got assigned a particular character - not the way a professional linguist would) is very interesting. According to folk etymology, many characters really are a "picture" of something or a combination of pictorial elements. For example, "love" consists of an element which is supposed to be rain, on top of a roof, and under the roof are a picture of a heart and the word for "friend." I tried to explain this cute word to my Aunt Dorothy Ann once, but I made the mistake of telling her first that it seems to be a hip-hop fashion nowadays to have Chinese characters on one's clothes, hat, or body (as a tattoo). Dorothy Ann is over 80 and sharp as a tack, but slightly hard of hearing. She though that when I was writing the character for her and explaining the different pictorial elements and so on, that I was telling her about something to do with rap music, so she was bored even more senseless than if she knew what I was actually talking about. It was pretty funny when I was pontificating that Chinese writing is supposed to be 5000 years old and she started looking at me like I was crazy but nodded and agreed with me for a while - then she said something like "you don't really think rap music goes back that far, do you?" Anyway, folk etymology is the basis of the online dictionary at zhongwen.com by Rick Harbaugh - I have a paper copy and really like it, it is much easier to use than a regular Chinese dictionary if you are an English speaker and really lazy.... OK, my excellent friend Lee is barbecuing me a steak and I must go inhale the tasty smoke! 7/12 While at Lee's house, incidentally, we watched Blazing Saddles. I now think "Laziest Gal in Town" might be the Marlene Dietrich song being parodied when Lili Von Shtupp sings "I'm So Tired." For years I have had a verse from "I'm So Tired" stuck in longterm memory, from finding it so funny (had to be over 10 years ago that I first saw the movie - maybe I saw it as a kid, since I did not remember the ending at all): I've been with thousands of men, again and again. They sing the same tune. They start with Byron and Shelley, then jump on your belly and burst your balloon. More blog... |
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