An Elephant of One's Own

One of these days I'll write an essay. It would help if I was asked for one - I love the idea of writing something that stands a chance of being read. For now, though, the usual: random thoughts randomly snuffled over. Long form tweeting into the awaiting void. I've been feeling a bit upset and a bit dispirited after seeing huge numbers of people here in Guayaquil attending protest demonstrations against a recent government decision to allow same-sex marriage. If I wanted to, I could follow the controversy at first hand on Twitter - I've a shrewd idea which accounts I would have to resub to - but from the little that filters through to my stagnant, brackish TL I know what I'd find: an unkindness of ad hominems, lots of religious sloganizing, the odd etymological fallacy ( matri-mon-ium! it's depressing how often that comes up), the odd red herring and slippery slope (but think of the children ! do you really want them turned into cavorting drag queens?) and, rang...

I've blogged elsewhere on semantic degeneration (to adopt the Bloomfield typology ). It's a depressing fact of life: just as the quaint sweetshop you used to buy pontefract cakes or wine gums and marbles at on the way home from school closes down, sooner or later, to make way for a Tesco or Asda, so the unique, precise meaning you used to ascribe to a particular word ceases trading, to be replaced by a vaguer, bewilderingly stupid meaning under which the formerly low-frequency word suddenly acquires a new customer base. It's "progress", of course, and unimpeachably democratic, so we'd be dumb to oppose it or try to turn the clock back. All we can allow ourselves in conscience (especially if we are linguists) is to sulk, and not like it, and be all crotchety and passive-aggressive about it. So, on that note and in no particular order, here goes. "Avatar". I never saw the movie, but well before it appeared I was using the word in my newsgroup posts t...

I've talked about and narrated dreams elsewhere in this blog. If I don't do so more often, it's simply because I rarely remember them. Experience has taught me that if I cared to remember more, I would have to pay 150 bucks a month for biweekly appointments with a floor-lamp , and I don't have that kind of money. So it's only ever going to be the one or two per year I actually remember, owing to fortuitous circumstances like waking up at the end of it and then staying awake long enough to retell it to myself a couple of times, to fix it in my mind. But I certainly wish I could remember more. Dreams are interesting. As I always say, though, it's not what happened in the dream, it's how you felt about what happened. That's generally the most interesting aspect. In this case, as usual, the beginning of the dream is lost to me. At the point I begin to remember, I am alone, walking along a road in Durán, near where I used to live, though later it turns ou...

Back in January I rejoined Twitter after several blissful years of absence. Damn fool notion: it's like that thing they do here in the Andes, getting yourself whipped with nettles by village elders to "purify" yourself. Don't know if I want to be limpiado that much, not at my age, or at least, not by anyone who doesn't look good in stilettos. Still, if there's one thing you can say for the platform, it provides you with a daily dripfeed of gratuitous controversy: National pride has evil consequences. Prefer pride in humanity. German pride gave us Hitler, American pride gave us Trump, British pride gave us Brexit. If you must have pride, be proud that Homo sapiens could produce a Darwin, Shakespeare, Mandela, Einstein, Beethoven. — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) March 30, 2019 Thus Dawkins. The popular response to the tweet was, as far as I cared to read, "how can you mention Brexit in the same breath as Hitler": fair enough, but let's be...

The other day, I stopped off at a local KFC and ordered chicken and fries. As I picked up my order and was about to head out to the car, the woman serving me glanced up and said, "Have a postmodernist day!" No, that's not true. What she did say was: "I'm afraid we're all out of regular chicken, so you've got postmodern chicken instead." Or - on reflection - maybe that was "spicy chicken", but she said it with a postmodernist expression. No, that's not true either. Actually, I didn't go to KFC at all. I was just trying to figure out how I might use "postmodern" or "postmodernist" in a sentence in a way that might convey something - anything really - to the reader. As you see, it's not easy. I think many people have the same problem. The true meaning of "postmodernist", assuming there is one, is fenced in by a wall of impenetrable books, invariably in French, that few people dare to read and non...

When you're not young, and have already forgotten most of what being young was about, there are still a few knotty recollections that serve to remind you that whatever being young was, it wasn't at all like being old. Sex is one of those things. When you're old, you can still keep a candle burning to sex if you want - and it seems somehow fitting to have some small shrine flickering away there, for nostalgia's sake if nothing else, and to dedicate the odd votive offering and yard of kleenex - but what shocks, and rankles, is the undeniable fact you used to be its slave. This is one of the surreal things about youth, that young people don't even see as odd because they're so used to it, and because the culture encourages them to see it as normal - this tyrannical power that sex, in whichever of its various manifestations, exercises over us. I won't go into this because I've talked enough about it elsewhere. But that's definitely one thing. Another t...

" The idea of Europe is in peril. " Really? That surprises me. Evidence? " From all sides there are criticisms, insults and desertions from the cause." OK. If I understand you right, you are defending a Europe, or "an idea of Europe" in which "criticisms" and "insults" cannot be tolerated. Or - let's break down the process - in which initially mild "criticisms" are loftily ignored by a bureaucratic elite, to a point where frustration builds up and "insults" begin to be heard.  And then, when even these are ignored, or are responded to with further "insults", you affect to be surprised that "desertions" begin to take place. Is that it? “Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry." Wait a moment. You said that the idea of Europe is in peril. Which idea, precisely, do you mean? I ask because the notion of Europe as a continent has been in circulation at least since Herodotus, and was...

There's Sprog's homework to "help with", i.e. to do. (I live in a "Homework Culture" a sinister nationwide conspiracy to enable people to do each others' homework with impunity). But I can hardly move a limb. I am sprawled on a torn leather sofa, with stuffing bursting out of the tears, one foot hooked over the staircase railing, the other floorbound, arms thrown backwards from the angular corners of a stretched ribcage, trying to gulp in the extra oxygen I would need to reverse the sleepward drift. "Wait," I say. "Wait..." The way of dying I seem to have chosen does not leave any room for dignity. As things go, I will wheeze more, struggle more, swear more as I fail to negotiate obstacles with my grotesque bunions and failing coordination. I will forget more and more of my eminently forgettable life, finally forgetting how and why I came to be here, in this strange place, surrounded by strange people to whom I am a defective mod co...

Older incarnations of this blog had songs pulled from YT as a regular feature (one day I might even get round to tagging them). Sometimes there'd be brief commentary, most times not. This morning I had the idea of using this space to annotate some more music, in the hope that my favourite elusive mythical beast, the Actual Blog Visitor, might discover something they liked. Seems a harmless enough activity for a Sunday night. Seems a common way to go, even. "Row Jimmy" appeared on the Grateful Dead's Wake of the Flood album, which along with various other Dead albums, and a smattering of prog and Motown soul, provided much of the backing track to a goodly chunk of my unspent, bedroom-bound, lightly sozzled adolescence. Forty-odd years later, I still like both the song and the album. At that time, the meaning and reference of the lyrics of Row Jimmy seemed fairly obvious to me, apart from the cryptic middle 8. Since then, courtesy the Internet, I've discov...

Not quite a microcuento but still: "So you say you have proof that I agreed to have five dollars deducted monthly from my account for this hokey insurance deal?" "We do. We have a recording of your voice agreeing to this, over the telephone." "You recorded my voice on the phone?" " Yes, we did . One of our agents phoned you and sold you our insurance package. Don't you remember?" " In other words, you recorded my voice saying 'yes' to an unrelated question, then spliced that with a separate recording of an operative asking me if I wanted to pay five dollars ." The aggrieved customer (whom we shall call Pussy Cinderwell, although her real name is not this, in fact being a fictional character she doesn't have a real name) paused for a moment, fiddling with her cellphone during the ensuing polite silence. "Well, can I hear the recording?" "Certainly, Miss Cinderwell. Just one moment." Mr Smug...