Category: blogger posts

Adaptations

September 13, 2006 / / 0 Comments

I come almost entirely from northern European stock–there’s rumor of some Cherokee heritage in my background somewhere, but it certainly hasn’t manifested itself in me–blond hair, blue eyes, tall and lean.

As such, my body seems to be adapted for long, cold winters.  I generate heat like a furnace, and I’m comfortable walking around in a T-shirt in weather that would make most people run for a parka.  I typically keep the heat in my apartment set at 50 degrees in winter.

These are nice benefits to have, but there are weird side effects.  Every fall, when the days start to get shorter and the weather gets colder, my body becomes convinced that there’s a famine-stricken Arctic Circle winter coming.  It tries to adapt accordingly, apparently by making it very easy to put on a massive amount of fat.

For the third day in a row, I’ve had to force myself to get out of bed after twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep–presumably because bodies at rest don’t burn any calories.

I’m hungry all the time–even when I’ve just finished a meal.

All this seems especially pointless when you consider the fact that I’m hoping I won’t have to be anywhere near Wisconsin when winter sets in for real.

Old English

September 10, 2006 / / 0 Comments

I just finished reading the Wikipedia article on Old English.

Why?  I’m not entirely sure.  I stumbled across the link in a discussion thread on digg.com.

There were a few sections I couldn’t understand without some familiarity with linguistics (which I don’t have), but I found the article fascinating.  I’ve always been amazed by other languages–and seeing the roots of my own language laid out is amazing to see.

For those of you who won’t read the article–which I suspect is all of you–here a couple interesting tidbits:

  • Since Old English was considered to be a language of the common man, very little was recorded in it–if records or stories were kept, they were written in Latin or of the language of whoever had most recently conquered the region.  Because of this, many of the English words were being written down for the first time, and were written phonetically in the dialect of the scribe.

    Thus, many of the unusual and horrific spellings in Modern English can be traced back to Old and Middle English.  Letters that have become silent in Modern English were actually pronounced in Old English.

    For example, cniht, the old English equivalent of knight, was pronounced with a hard c sound.  The pronunciations of the words changed over time, but the spellings eventually became static and ceased to reflect these changes.

  • Old English contained a concept known as dual plurals, where there is a separate plural form indicating exactly two of something.  To give an example, say that the suffix a is added to a word to indicate the dual plural.

    man = One man
    mana = Two men
    men = Any number greater than two men.

    This concept survives in many of the languages that also share Germanic roots, such as modern Icelandic.

What really surprised me was the last, seemingly tacked-on section of the article: the Lord’s Prayer in Old English.  The similarities between Modern English and Old English are striking.  Many of the same pronouns are still in use, and it’s easy to see earlier forms of common words in the text.

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
Si þin nama gehalgod.
To becume þin rice,
gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum.
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. soþlice.

Our father who art in heaven,
Hallowed by thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done, on earth as it as in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  Amen.

If any of you actually do read the article, you’ll find that some of what I’ve mentioned isn’t in it.  I’ve drawn from my memory of high school English and other research for some of the info.

Mirror

August 24, 2006 / / 0 Comments

[Fiction, obviously –ed.]

Shoving back the shower curtain, I grabbed for my towel and dried myself off. Groaning slightly, I lurched towards the sink and toweled the condensation from the mirror. Through the haze of alcohol and sleep deprivation, I miserably wondered why I had drunk so much the night before, and just how terrible a hangover I should expect to deal with for the next eight hours.

I leaned in close to the mirror, and blearily eyed the familiar scars on my right cheek and eyebrow. They were, respectively, the results of a childhood neighbor’s fingernails and an unprovoked attack by a drunk. I rarely notice them anymore, but they seemed more prominent this painful morning.

I brushed the hair back from my forehead. Then, disapproving of the results, brushed it back down. Sighing, I concluded that nothing short of a haircut was going to improve its appearance and resigned myself to looking at bad as I felt. I turned to open the door, intending to eat some of last night’s delivery pizza before driving to work.

I turned back, stopped for a moment, and stared into the mirror.

I’m not sure what caught my eye, exactly… perhaps a gleam I didn’t recognize in the eye of my reflection. Maybe it was a slight difference in the way I looked back at me. Perhaps the person looking back through the glass didn’t seem as familiar as he should have. I don’t know what it was. Something just felt out of place, different…

I leaned in again, staring into my reflected eyes. Wondering how many brain cells had drowned in whiskey the night before, I grunted and stood up straight again.

It was nothing, I thought, trying to convince myself. It has to be. I’ve just got a case of the alkie stupids.

But…

I slowly reached out to the mirror, my index and middle fingers extended. I pressed them against the reflection.

I felt flesh. Other fingertips. My fingertips against other fingertips. I gasped and jerked my hand back, rubbing my fingers with my other hand in disbelief.

“What…” I whispered. “What the hell was that?”

I reached out again, this time pressing my entire hand flat against the mirror.

Nothing but cold, smooth glass. A trickle of condensation slid from my outstretched thumb to the countertop below. My familiar reflection looked back at me through bloodshot, half-lidded eyes.

My hand still pressed against the glass, I muttered “But… I felt it… I know I did… they were there…”