Random Thought Thread

I use measuring cups on occasion, cause my eyes are kinda on the near sighted side.

 

<Iain sits wondering what the volume of his eye sockets is>

 

About 30mL for the average adult.

 

I have a measuring jug, but it's useless as I can't read the numbers until I get some reading glasses.

I use rough measurements for everything too, but my problem is, I can never remember how much I used of anything the last time I made it. The first time I made tom yum, it was perfect. Never come close to that again.

 

I'm a bit confused: I thought Greece used metric, and if so, why do recipes refer to cups at all?

 

I guess it's the international cuisine language. Idk why. I also get recipes from the internet in english so...

I'm not so used at cooking, so my eyes are not trained to measure most stuff. I can only measure things that I cook relatively often like spaghetti, rice, etc. I rarely bake actually. I mostly fry, make salads or cook in the pot pretty basic stuff. I'm a master at frying though. My signature dishes are omelette (whichever kind) and vermicelli noodles with poached eggs.

 

happy holidays everyone

 

Found this gem in my box of stupidly old things:

Brief outline of Harridan Copper, the first ever story idea I had.

 

Credit scores are a joke. I paid off my last undergrad student loan this year and my score took a 50 point hit at the same time. So, paying off a loan is bad?

 

Lucky for them, I just started grad school.

 

It seems like it's a bit easier to craft names that are packed with meaning in Japanese than it is in English.

One of my favorite authors, NISIOISIN, does this with all the characters in his Monogatari series. The elaborate lengths to which he layers meaning, hidden meaning, dual-meaning into each one is kind of ridiculous.

ex. Araragi Koyomi, 阿良々木 暦
阿 (a) - it has multiple different meanings, but the most relevant one is “to pander” - hinting that Araragi is an audience surrogate and the center of Araragi Harem. It’s also “a” from 阿呆 (aho) - “fool”.
良 (ra) - this one is unambiguous - “good”.
々 - this symbol marks the repeat of the previous kanji. It’s a common practice in Japanese to repeat things for extra emphasis, so not just “good”, but “GOOD”.
木 (ki/gi) - “tree”. Tree is Araragi’s leitmotif - a visual symbol associated with him. In Kizu he reveals just how serious his depression is by saying “I’d rather be a plant than a human. So I don’t have to talk or walk.” - in other words, to live. To which Hanekawa counters “Plants are still living things. You didn’t say you want to be an inanimate object.” Further down the story Araragi literally turns his body into a tree to save Hanekawa from Guillotine Cutter - a fight that happens inside the abandoned cram school, a place where an actual tree grows as a constant reminder of his “hellish spring break”. Later there is a tree at the Shirahebi shrine, where Araragi dies, and it’s still there when he wakes up in Hell.
暦 (koyomi) - “calendar”. The main story documents one year of his life, and every arc begins with a mention what date it is. It’s also a kanji with two trees (木) in it.

(taken from this fan-source here)

In English I can't really think of anything like this. We have occupational names like Baker, and then there are names with Biblical meaning, but for some reason it seems difficult to pack THAT much meaning into a name without making it longer than the alphabet or without making it unappealing to the taste buds in our ears.

I've tried, and came up with Ailina, a portmanteau of the name "Alaina" and the word "ailin" which would be something like "precious little rock" (take the meaning of the Gaelic "ailin" and add the last a from "Alaina"), but even there, I have already abandoned English. What makes this more difficult is the fact that I struggle to think of any English names that are intentionally comprised of multiple smaller words(?) to produce a coherent whole, rather than just being the amalgam of phonemes. EDIT: Portman or Johnson (any -man or -son) would work I guess, but again, this seems painfully limited to what NISIOISIN can accomplish through the Japanese language.

In addition, if you don't look up the name on Google, how in the Hell do we even find the meaning of a name? What ancient dusty tomes or sources is this information being pulled from? The Bible names seem more accessible, but beyond that, I have to wonder if it's not just a bunch of crap that's equivalent to horoscope websites. Meanwhile, it seems like if one is very well versed in the Japanese language, you can decipher Japanese names more easily.

To put it another way, it would be like... let's say you're friends with a Dalton, a Michael, and a Jeremy. Note that nothing that follows is actually legit, just made-up examples.

Dalton: "dal" meaning head/sky, "ton" meaning feet/ground, thus "he who has his head in the clouds and feet on the ground".

Michael: "mic" meaning sound, "ha" meaning laughter, and "el" meaning speaker, therefore his name is something like "comedian".

You get the idea. It seems an unfortunate limitation that this cannot be done in English, it seems, but I'm also not a genius or master of the language.

In my own work the only one character name I've used that approximates this is Cross. The story deals with religious themes, but a cross is also an intersection, at which a choice of direction must be made. And I suppose I could also have him be "cross" with other characters, and might use it to imply his "crossing" into another world or something. But this just seems a bit wooden or inflexible compared to, again, what NISIOISIN can do in his own language. It's about as genius as creating a baseball team and calling it the "Transylvanian Bats".

 

I hope all your hopes and dreams start coming true in 2021 and that the year is full of happiness and good times.

Take care and stay safe.

 

I had a dream last night that someone on this forum was explaining how tragic it was that one of their characters in their novel had to die and how they would get revenge for him...very strange. Happy New Year everyone!

 

Can't wait for everyone to start complaining about 2021.

 

There are people lighting fireworks in the small park in my neighborhood and while I appreciate they're celebrating the end of a dumpster fire, the volume and power behind the boom is making my chest hurt.

Technically it's 2021 now by 8 minutes, so I hope I started the complaining properly.

 

Wow, you're already 27 minutes into 2021. What's it like?

 

I'm 14 hours and 45 minutes in. It's cold.

 

Well what is life? Apparently to some it involves using friction
in strange ways to cook chicken.
So yeah, in theory it is possible, if you happen to be cooking
something with really good bone structure, but...

 

Eleven hours in and so far doesn't feel much different. Cold outside. The pandemic still swirls around me and mine, and the circus continues in DC.

Only one resolution: to pay more attention to my inner self in the moment, which means letting go of the past (triumphs (such as they were) and tragedies) and letting go of the future (which will never arrive in the form I expect anyway).

 

My wife is a wonderful cook who never ever measures, simply goes with the flow and her hunches, and it works whether she is cooking Chinese (her native land) or Italian or simple American, which she learned primarily by watching my mother. Frustrating for my daughter who wants to learn from her. Daughter is more like me (only better) needing to at least start with a recipe; I never get any further than that.

 

Au Clair de la Lune 1st recording 1860 - YouTube

This is the first ever recording of a human being in the year 1860. Enjoy.

 

Well I think I've read one of the best lines by Barker so far this year, and
it makes me happy the way he wrote it.

One of them was clearly the hub of the entertainment, a lanky
rubber-jointed individual with a smile wide enough to play
Chopin on.

It is one hell of a way to describe someone, that is both interesting
and kinda salty at the same time.

 

While chatting at lunch today, my wife and I realized neither one of us could name a single female magician.

 

Oh yeah, they get married off right away! Oh, wait...