Leaden Man
So, I was thinking, and I decided I was sick of bibble being the only one with a radio show. The idea that radio is live and there's sound is for sissy girls anyway. (sorry bibble, you're a classy dame) Radio show gives me a good way to think of my inane ramblings, gotta love context.
I want to change the definition of the word Man to make it gender non-specific, so I can say "I'm just not that kind of man" and walk off into the sunset. The word man has so much symbolic baggage, be a man, all that, so many nuances of meaning that have less to do with gender than the meanings we imbue it with. Unless you want to argue that our ideas are floating about with little invisible idea chromosomes...
There's this line in a Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson,’ In Memoriam A. H. H.,' and my favorite bit is "the human hearted man I loved" I wouldn't mind being a human hearted man, you know?
I wouldn't mind being able to say I was a man without it meaning I was on a waiting list for surgery or didn't like my tits, that's cool too but it isn't the way I'd mean it.
I want to buy a second hand copy of Malleus Maleficarum, be that sort of man maybe, and piss off some wiccans at least. I could hunt down the teenage ones, the ones who acquired all their mystic knowledge from a harrowing quest down to the nearest Borders, but that's just me being a grumpy old man, quite a feat for a seventeen year old girl, so ignore me.
Something that's eating away at me as I speak is this:
I came across the word anthroparion in a quote from an alchemical text 'Visions of Zosimos' I pretty much get the meaning from the context but it's an unusual word so I want to check it out, I look it up at dictionary.com no entry, no problem, google it, only places it shows up are a few sites with the same quote, one confusing looking medical jargon filled site, and some German page.
None of this worries me, the book it appeared in was written around 300 A.D or something, the word's archaic and probably fallen out of use, no big deal.
So, I go downstairs and find our copy of the Condensed Oxford English Dictionary. This thing is the size and weight of a fat baby cast in lead, I lug it upstairs, almost falling and losing my life to this thing's gigantic completeness. By condensed it doesn't mean abridged, it means that every page actually has nine pages shrunk down to miniscule nigh impossible to read sizes for people too poor or cheap to shell out thousands of dollars for all fifty million volumes. Squinting I searched for the entry that would illuminate all, an entry that was shockingly absent.
Aghast, I turned to their website, hoping to find some sort of explanation or place to address my complaint. At least some link to obscure alchemical terms monthly. Instead, I find this "The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium."
Bull Shit.
Now, just half an hour ago, suggesting that this beloved reference source and really cultural treasure of the English speaking world was lacking would have been akin to heresy. But right now I just want to shoot an Englishman.
And, wow, I think I just got geek all over everybody's computer screens. It was fun to rant though, and now everyone knows why I shouldn't be allowed an actual radio show. :)
Oh, and the quote from 'Visions of Zosimos' is actually pretty cool, this guy undergoes "unendurable torment," he changes into "the opposite of himself, into a mutilated anthroparion, and he tore his flesh with his own teeth, and sank into himself," I'm probably going to have to check this book out.
Radio Abby signing out. :) (don't worry, I didn't actually expect anyone to read this whole thing)
I want to change the definition of the word Man to make it gender non-specific, so I can say "I'm just not that kind of man" and walk off into the sunset. The word man has so much symbolic baggage, be a man, all that, so many nuances of meaning that have less to do with gender than the meanings we imbue it with. Unless you want to argue that our ideas are floating about with little invisible idea chromosomes...
There's this line in a Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson,’ In Memoriam A. H. H.,' and my favorite bit is "the human hearted man I loved" I wouldn't mind being a human hearted man, you know?
I wouldn't mind being able to say I was a man without it meaning I was on a waiting list for surgery or didn't like my tits, that's cool too but it isn't the way I'd mean it.
I want to buy a second hand copy of Malleus Maleficarum, be that sort of man maybe, and piss off some wiccans at least. I could hunt down the teenage ones, the ones who acquired all their mystic knowledge from a harrowing quest down to the nearest Borders, but that's just me being a grumpy old man, quite a feat for a seventeen year old girl, so ignore me.
Something that's eating away at me as I speak is this:
I came across the word anthroparion in a quote from an alchemical text 'Visions of Zosimos' I pretty much get the meaning from the context but it's an unusual word so I want to check it out, I look it up at dictionary.com no entry, no problem, google it, only places it shows up are a few sites with the same quote, one confusing looking medical jargon filled site, and some German page.
None of this worries me, the book it appeared in was written around 300 A.D or something, the word's archaic and probably fallen out of use, no big deal.
So, I go downstairs and find our copy of the Condensed Oxford English Dictionary. This thing is the size and weight of a fat baby cast in lead, I lug it upstairs, almost falling and losing my life to this thing's gigantic completeness. By condensed it doesn't mean abridged, it means that every page actually has nine pages shrunk down to miniscule nigh impossible to read sizes for people too poor or cheap to shell out thousands of dollars for all fifty million volumes. Squinting I searched for the entry that would illuminate all, an entry that was shockingly absent.
Aghast, I turned to their website, hoping to find some sort of explanation or place to address my complaint. At least some link to obscure alchemical terms monthly. Instead, I find this "The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium."
Bull Shit.
Now, just half an hour ago, suggesting that this beloved reference source and really cultural treasure of the English speaking world was lacking would have been akin to heresy. But right now I just want to shoot an Englishman.
And, wow, I think I just got geek all over everybody's computer screens. It was fun to rant though, and now everyone knows why I shouldn't be allowed an actual radio show. :)
Oh, and the quote from 'Visions of Zosimos' is actually pretty cool, this guy undergoes "unendurable torment," he changes into "the opposite of himself, into a mutilated anthroparion, and he tore his flesh with his own teeth, and sank into himself," I'm probably going to have to check this book out.
Radio Abby signing out. :) (don't worry, I didn't actually expect anyone to read this whole thing)