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Monday, December 21st, 2009

firthsaio

12:14p waiting After all these years, surely I can wait another 45 minutes... It never ends.

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Thursday, December 17th, 2009

firthsaio

4:09p adoration + daggers adeeba my adoration for you is a wide-eyed brave incorrigible child with dirt behind his ears out in the grass in the summer today he found some wiggly worms and some pretty rocks under the bush in the yard and thinks they must be magical like you ~~~ People make their daggers sharper than their faces tell. The source of the word dagger is unknown. It came to English through Old French dague. Our best guess is that it came from Vulgar Latin *daca, a word for a Dacian knife (the province of the empire that became Romania.)

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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

firthsaio

10:14p magic Mom came into the kitchen with a sigh. She took the cheese out of the refrigerator and then brought it to the cutting board only to find our dog Rusty waiting for her there, looking up expectantly with his big brown eyes. Mom sighed again. She quickly got out a little cutting plate and moved to the other side of the kitchen, putting her back to Rusty. A moment later though, she turned around very slowly with an anxious, torn look on her face. As soon as she caught Rusty in the corner of her eye she broke down in nervous laughter. Mom: "He just... he makes this so hard on me!" Me: "You mean, you can't snack in peace because of the dog?" Mom: "Yes! It's awful! This is what happens, every time I go and get some cheese!" Another weighted sigh and she goes back to slicing up her snack. ~~~ Hocus pocus is a Middle Ages faux-Latin incantation often associated with transfiguration spells - it's origin, in fact, is in the transubstantiation of bread to the body of Christ in the Catholic mass, with the Latin words Hoc est corpus [meum] "This is my body."

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Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

firthsaio

9:00p danger danger Etymology of the day: Danger Some teasers - "Danger" and the conceptually related word "peril" are etymologically connected to words as unlikely as "domination," "house," timber," "fear," and "empirical." Guess how!? Danger is first attested in English in the early 13th century, when it had the connotation of "power of a lord or master; masterly jurisdiction." The term arrived in English via the Old French daunger and dangier, meaning "power to harm, mastery." At an earlier stage in the development of French, these words had appeared as dongier from Vulgar Latin *dominarium "power of a lord," from Latin dominus "lord, master." Old French's transition to the /a/ phoneme in the first syllable was likely due to the semantic influence of damnum (Latin: harm; cf. French dommage, English damned and damage.) Latin dominus was derived from domus, "house," ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *domo-/*domu- "house, household." This was the o-grade of the root *dm- and is also associated with the (generally) e-grade verbal root *dem- "to build." (Cf. Sanskrit damah "house;" Avestan demana- "house;" Greek domos "house," despotes "master, lord;" Old Slavic domu "house;" Lithuanian dimstis "enclosed court, property;" Old English timber "building, structure" - note the Grimm's Law and Great English Vowel Shift in effect.) The modern sense of the word danger generalized the power of the "lord" to more diffuse forces at large. This sense first evolved in French and had developed in English by the late 14th century, replacing the indigenous Old English pleoh, which survives still in the modern cognates plight (from a Germanic source) and peril (a more distant relative via Old French.) Sticking with the theme of danger, peril comes to English from Latin periuculum "danger" through Old French peril. Periculum is a compound of two morphemes: the latter, -culum, is an instrumentive suffix denoting "with." "Peri-" comes from the PIE root *bher-, "to lead across." In Latin it had the sense of "attempt," but this is the source of many and sundry words across the daughter languages of PIE; its cognates include Greek peria "trial, attempt, experience," empeiros "experienced" (whence English empirical,) Old Irish. aire "vigilance," Goth. ferja "watcher," Slavic brati "to carry", and Old Englsh fær "danger, fear," as well as Modern English ferry and the verb to bear. Thus, as far back as etymology can take us, danger has its roots in houses and building, while peril comes from a sense of risk involved in ferrying something over distance. ~~~ I slept for a really long time today. I dreamed that Alex came home, among many other things. It was a beautiful day in my mind to be asleep. I got snow tires put on my car today! That's exciting, because despite having to wait two hours in a frigid auto shop lobby with way-too-loud Christmas music and a shmuck radio host pretending to be Santa to unsuspecting "cute" children on the air, I got some linguisticsy things done. Namely, I read about Urdu grammar and the evolution of Armenian. In addition, I also learned a new English word: siping. Siping is the pattern of ridges on a tire. Snow tires have deeper siping, which allows them to grip the road better in snowy conditions, but also makes them wear out faster.

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Sunday, December 13th, 2009

firthsaio

9:12p arpeggio Last night was the holiday party. Guests: Kai, Andrew, Jeffrey, Terry, Barbara, Louise, Jesse, Sharon, Janosz, and Adam, plus Court, Darius, and TomTom. Dad was on the bongos most of the night, on and off; that is, until the Barbara brought her kindle over and got him to be quiet. Courtney was exhausted after sleeping two hours and taking her last two finals of the semester back to back, so she fell asleep in my room while Greg, Adam, Darius, Tomtom, and I played scrabble and Janosz held the rest of the partygoers captive in irrelevant conversations about Schliemann and other obscure historical figures. After the party we picked up Lani at Harvard and went into the city, first to Rattlesnake and then to Club Cafe. It was a cold and exhausting experience overall. We came back early and I went right to bed. Thirteen hours later I woke up at 3:35 in the afternoon. Shit, shit! So it was a madrush to yoga in the dark foggy freezing pelting rain. At least yoga was nice. Now I'm tired again and will likely to got to bed very, very early. Like... now. Whenever Grandma Rita used to take a picture of me, I would give her my best smile, and she would guffaw and tell me, "Nooo, a REAL smile!"

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Saturday, December 12th, 2009

firthsaio

9:47a éɣdo mar Up again at 5:00, and without an alarm clock. How is this happening? Holiday party tonight... Once again, I'm in trouble with my only friend She is papering the window panes She is putting on a smile Living in a glass house

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Friday, December 11th, 2009

firthsaio

6:21p amnesiac While explaining the decision to release two albums rather than one, singer Thom Yorke said, "They are separate because they cannot run in a straight line with each other. They cancel each other out as overall finished things... In some weird way, I think Amnesiac gives another take on Kid A, a form of explanation." He continued: "Something traumatic is happening in Kid... this is looking back at it, trying to piece together what has happened." About the differences with the previous record he says: "I think the artwork is the best way of explaining it. The artwork to Kid A was all in the distance. The fires were all going on the other side of the hill. With Amnesiac, you're actually in the forest while the fire's happening." Yorke said, "I read that the gnostics believe when we are born we are forced to forget where we have come from in order to deal with the trauma of arriving in this life. I thought this was really fascinating. It's like the river of forgetfulness. It may have been recorded at same time... but it comes from a different place I think. It sounds like finding an old chest in someone's attic with all these notes and maps and drawings and descriptions of going to a place you cannot remember. That's what I think anyway."

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Thursday, December 10th, 2009

firthsaio

8:51p all nighter Well, it has been a long day. I woke up so late yesterday that I resolved to stay up all night and try to reset my clock. I was at Harvard late with Tom and Courtney, then came back to spend several hours writing holiday cards to the Europeans. Yoga started at 6:30, before the sun was up. There were only eight people in the studio. It was an odd experience, partially because I was already feeling very tired at that point, and partially because the atmosphere was so different than I am used to - and oddly, I felt much, much more flexible than usual. Later, to the chiropractor. Amazing. I don't understand chiropractics at all, but if they say it's subluxations that are ruining my life and I feel better the next day, I don't really care. To bed!

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Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

firthsaio

7:02p thundersnow It's thundersnowing. *freu*

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