If you're feeling blue
The Guardian has haikus
S'pose it's better than booze.
posted by LauraB 3:17 PM
Did you know that only 4% of the world's languages are spoken in the whole of Europe? Dag! One of the many fascinating factiods findable in The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, by John McWhorter. It's a great populist overview of linguistics, and in particular the question that has been burning in me ever since my exposure to Hindi and all the bizarre whiffs of English it contains, like the "ma" sound for "mother" or "tre" sound for "three": whiter Proto-Indo-European? Do we retain anything of the Uber-Ur language of our forbears? What did it sound like? How many verb cases did people with four flints and a basket have to keep straight? (Quite a few, we could conceivably presume.) How much of how we talk now is simply because Awa the first Monkey-Girl sounded like an Olduvai Valley Girl (ie. historico-culturo baggage), and how much of it is the weird coinincidence of having vocal chords and, it would seem, to Chomsky's delight, some sort of genetic disposition to language and grammar? (And you could ask, as a corollary, did the presence of an opposable thumb have anything to do with the mutation that gave us if not language, maybe "structure-able" thought? but that's outside McWhorter's purview.)
Anyway, it's a fun read - especially since McWhorter has the knack of playing out a bad Simpsonian pun in several languages, including a French-Cree creole once spoken by Southern Ontarionians. (Creoles, by the way, are full, distinct languages; I've always confused them with Pidgins, which aren't really generatively-functional.) Bootsy approved!
posted by LauraB 10:49 AM
Last night I went to the opening of Oracles and Demons of Ladakh, where some of my photos of Trans-Himalayan architecture were exhibited.
Being an Oracle is a tough job - when the lha (good spirit) or drie (wicked spirit) hits ya, your body flails about, your voice changes, you are required by dogma or liturgy to undergo some test of physical strength, and the worst part is that in order to heal people (there's a bigger chunk of change in that then in prophesying), you have to suck out goopy blackish sludge from your patient's navel.
And you get no respect for this job: since it's kind of rotten, people assume you must've had bad karma in your past life, which is why you're coming back as an Oracle.
On the other hand, Bob Thurman made a good point in the movie: Imagine some everyday shlub like or me rocks on up to the Congress, where the Senate and House are meeting in a special state event. You summon up the spirit of, oh, say, Crazy Horse, who addresses the Congress directly: Why are you polluting the environment for future generations? Where is your moral center? Cease in your petty horsetrading and do the holy work of government and right living! &etc.
No soft money in that job!
posted by LauraB 9:22 AM
Hmm, things are looking pretty shaggy here on the blog. For some reason, Blogger won't let me edit posts anymore. Perhaps it's time to bite the bullet and install Dean Allen's Textpattern beta software.
But what is the point? I'm not a writer. I don't have anything to prove. Sometimes I just like to babble, but why does a body need to subject the internet to that? There's too much of it anyway.
Ultimately, the problem is that resumes and opinions don't go well together on the same website.
posted by LauraB 9:03 AM
Oh, I get it.
So the new conservative jackals (from the 1980-2005 junta) have really synergized their ideals with their practices lately. Of course the goal is to kill the poor, freeing up resources for the rich. That's not news. I s'pose we've all gotten used to the idea that Medicaid and Social Security and the whole notion of societal insurance would be starved of funds, thereby keeping poor people from receiving basic services.
But two things seem to have happened lately. The new Bush "budget" (read: economic war plan) trillionized the deficit, which means that within a finite amount of time (say, by the time I have grandkids, if things work out that way) there will be hardly any government programs as we know them now. Medicaid? Food stamps? Meat inspection? Head Start? Gone. They know that! They know that the country will not be able to afford the exponentially-planned tax cuts of 2003-2010, and that's fine with them, because after all, why would the beneficiaries of the tax cuts (i.e. the superrich and their offspring) need a public service? They can afford better, private services.
I thought Republicans were supposed to be the fiscally conservative ones!
The other thing it does, of course, is make physical resources scarcer in the world generally, and thus not only create a third-world-style lower class in this country, but also heighten the woes of the already desperately fucked. This will keep politics insanely violent, and people will continue to wage wars for the usual stupid reasons, but also for water and power (oil, coal, etc.)
I can only conclude that this is what they want: more poor people leads to higher death rates and diminishing access to resources. Which means that the hegemonic will consolidate their control!
I am babbling and not explaining everything; if you're reading this, please give up and go check out the latest Harpers' article, "Get Rich or Get Out."
Harpers Magazine and a sense of tranquility are, I believe, mutually incompatible.
posted by LauraB 7:48 AM
Ah, summer.
posted by LauraB 4:33 PM
Better late than never. It makes me feel nice to post these photos.
posted by LauraB 9:58 AM