Number 35
Re my recent comments on the use of French vs. English pronunciations of Niger: When former ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson appeared on The Daily Show recently, he said he spent 25 years in Africa, and explained that Niger is pronounced in the French manner to help distinguish it from Nigeria. Both countries derived their names from the Niger River, which runs through both. Is the TV in my head or what?
Some military personnel are writing about the war online. Check out Blogs of War, Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing, L. T. Smash, A Minute Longer: A Soldier's Tale.
Prez Bush is going to send troops to Liberia, but says our involvement will be "limited". Well, what isn't, but God? Everything is limited; this is a weasel word and conveys no information. Wars are limited by time, geography, and casualties. The Thirty Years War was limited; it was shorter than the Hundred Years War, which was limited because it didn't go to One Hundred and One. Our Civil War was limited to four years and more casualties than in all our other wars. The Vietnam police action was limited to Vietnam and surrounding areas, if you don't count the political upheavals at home. Dubya isn't a seer and can't tell us just how limited war in Liberia might be. Is he comparing it to Iraq? Who knows. But maybe I'm being unfair about "limited" ~ would these arguments apply to any vague or general quantitative modifier, such as "few" or "much", for example? It's not always possible to be specific, but I think we should aim for exactitude in language. Anyway, "limited war" inevitably makes me think, you mean as opposed to "unlimited war", keep fighting till everyone's dead?
But I will pick on the Junior B for other words, because I can no longer refrain from running my fingers through the treasure chest of material that is his speech. Bushisms are a regular feature of Slate.com, collected by Jacob Weisberg, who's published a couple of collections already. Here are a couple of my faves, for purely grammatical reasons, of course:
Faulty Parallelism plus Dangling Modifier plus . . .
"It's very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America." ~ Dakar, Senegal, July 8, 2003 (Thanks to Michael Shively.)
Awkward Double Negative, Impeccable Logic
"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill." ~ Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003
Heard on TV: Certain insects are not terribly destructive except in "forest situations". That situation must be ~ in a forest?
Okie Noodling / Noodlers
Noodlers are men in Oklahoma who catch big bank-dwelling catfish with their bare hands. "No hooks no bait no fear." See Okie Noodling for a trailer from the documentary.
Stud Rose
Sounds like an oxymoron, but it's a rose used for propagating new plants. A web search will give predictable results, but I read the phrase in a book on miniature roses.
I just finished a new book by Tony Hillerman, Sinister Pig. I'm a fan of his Navajo Tribal Police crime fiction ~ I doubt if he'd object to be classified as a mystery writer, as Sharyn McCrumb did. But I noticed that the proofreading or copyediting or both have been neglected in this book. For those who don't know the difference, a copyeditor reads a manuscript for minor errors; a proofreader checks printed pages against a corrected manuscript. I believe publishers have been economizing here, because I've been finding many more typos and errors of punctuation and so on in books published in recent years, even recent decades, than in books published earlier ~ check your library shelves ~ to the point where they're not a surprising anomaly, but a distraction.
Usually an author receives page proofs to correct before the book goes to print. If this step is still in place, Mr. Hillerman may be excused. He's a former journalist, and a spare, clean writer, and I like him, but every writer needs other eyes to edit and proofread. He deserves better service from his publisher.
By the way, McCrumb's new Civil War book, Ghost Riders, not only is shelved, sad to say, with mysteries at the local Barnes and Noble, but it can also be found on a table marked Beach Reads. I'm not going to be the one to tell her.
A reader asks:
What's the word for those words that just plain start to look WEIRD when you look at them too long? Like, the word itself (on paper or screen) just looks STUPID? One that struck me years ago was banana. Then one day it was politics ~ not the material, the word. Tonight it's Yes. I have a table of yes/no answers, and the array of Yes cells just looks comical. There must be a word for this effect. If anyone would know, it'd be you. Or maybe Buckley. But you're friendlier, by a long shot.
My answer:
I'll ask our reading public. Actually I noticed this when I was a little kid ~ just the sound of a word can have that effect. I remember getting stuck on the word "bit", I think it was, riding in the car and thinking the word over and over. It lost all meaning, plus it struck me as funny.
Reader:
Aside from the labeling issue, it occurs to me that we might someday know enough about the brain to identify what's happening in these situations in the human consciousness. To steal a bit of Landmark terminology, what we're "present to" is the raw sound, at an earlier stage than usual in the neurological pipeline, so it doesn't yet have re-cognition and semantics applied to it.
Moi:
I don't know "Landmark" terminology, what's that? But it makes sense, "being present to" the raw sound. Although my "bit" experience probably happened when I was in grade school, I certainly was familiar with the meaning, and it can happen even now. Maybe it's similar to a kind of meditation ~ if you focus on one thing long enough, aural or visual, it will lose its usual form in your mind. Maybe after some time passes, your brain understands that the object or word has no purpose anymore.
Reader:
Fascinating point about meditation. Landmark Education is a company that sells transformation courses . . . and the only thing I can say about "transformation" is that it's different from "change," though people often describe the experience as life-changing. If you have broadband, you might want to see the brief video . . . it does a better job of describing it all than I could in a few words.
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