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cosmolinguist1) What would your desert island luxury be?
Writing materials. I'd love a typewriter, but I could get by with enough paper and pens.
2) Desert island book?
Is there a book called How Not To Starve To Death On A Desert Island If You're a Vegetarian? I think David Attenborough had the best answers for these questions (his luxury was a piano so he could turn it into a boat) and his book was Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life by W.B. Lord, which covers "wagons and boats, horses and oxen, tents and firearms, hunting and fishing, observing and collecting, carpentry and metal-working, camping requisites, bush cuisine, medical improvisation, the best ways to cross rivers, to move heavy objects and to build huts"... really it sounds like a book I should read anyway! I would love to be better at these practical things.
But I'd probably have to say Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!, which is one of Andrew's books, becuase I would miss him terribly and this is the next best thing. It started as a series of blog posts he had no intention of making into a book, so while I know he thinks he writes about ideas and things he's interested in, it also has a lot of his persoanlity in it. I am mentioned in a chapter about Batman. One of the two or three things that I've ever seen make him cry is mentioned. A lot of his ideas about Doctor Who, comics, being a Lib Dem, physics and other things that anyone who knows him will associate with him, are there.
3) With which historical figure do you most identify?
These questions are hard! Perhaps Robert Burton, a seventeenth-century scholar who wrote a book called The Anatomy of Melancholy, which purports to be a medical textbook but ends up sort of using "melancholia" as a lens through which to look at all kinds of emotions and aspects of life. I haven't read it all (it's a huge book, full of Proper Serious Quotations of the ancients, lots of Latin and that kind of thing), plus I have it only as a pdf and there are severe limitations to how much I can happily read on a computer screen at a time) but it's a lovely thing to dip into and out of, a kaleidoscope of literature, philosophhy, medicine, theology, science, all sorts of things.
While Burton satirically warned depresed people away from reading the book, it is clearly of graet potential good to us, which is not surprising since it is written by one of us. Samuel Johnson called it "the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise."
Burton says in the introduction "I write of melancholy by being busy to avoid melancholy" and well... yeah, I can identify with that.
4 a) What would you like to have for your main meal today?
Since it's a quarter past eleven (it took me a long time to get around to answering these questions!) I have already had it. I had a lovely spicy bean burger and potato wedges with this garlic sauce I bought yesterday and have used half the bottle already; it is good.
4 b) What's that meal called?
Dinner, though I'm not sure why. I grew up calling meals "breakfast, dinner and supper" but when I was in college rejected "supper" as too ...hokey? (I also stopped pronouncing "milk" as "melk" around this time, and other things, all for this reason.) So I switched to "breakfast, lunch, dinner," this was what my friends called them too. Then I moved here and kinda did the same thing, though Andrew's family and my old job and other places would say "breakfast, dinner, tea," and while I find it difficult to say "tea" except in rare circumstances, I have started sometimes saying "dinner" for the mid-day meal too. But I don't have anything better than "dinner" to say for the evening meal either, so when I say "dinner" sometimes even I'm not really sure what I mean.
It's kind of like "football" that way; while I've adapted to calling soccer "football," I still call American football "football" too, because I can't describe the things I'm used to as "American" without being hugely self-conscious; I hate it.
4 c) Is this a really bizarrely British question?
This question made me laugh (especially as the original was edited to include it and 4b). I can see why it'd be asked -- British people are obsessed with language, as it encodes so much of class, background, location, education, and a lot of other things that are important to this society.
But it's not just British -- I remember talking about regional and national differences in the English langauge back when I was in college and never dreamed I'd go to Britain, much less live here so long it's screwed up my langauge to the point where I wrote "at universty" before changing it to "in college" (because that's what I called it when I was in college!). And based on that I got the idea to write an essay about the different things English-speaking people call their midday and evening meals, for a class I was taking at the time. So I dont' think it's really bizarre, or British.
Writing materials. I'd love a typewriter, but I could get by with enough paper and pens.
2) Desert island book?
Is there a book called How Not To Starve To Death On A Desert Island If You're a Vegetarian? I think David Attenborough had the best answers for these questions (his luxury was a piano so he could turn it into a boat) and his book was Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life by W.B. Lord, which covers "wagons and boats, horses and oxen, tents and firearms, hunting and fishing, observing and collecting, carpentry and metal-working, camping requisites, bush cuisine, medical improvisation, the best ways to cross rivers, to move heavy objects and to build huts"... really it sounds like a book I should read anyway! I would love to be better at these practical things.
But I'd probably have to say Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!, which is one of Andrew's books, becuase I would miss him terribly and this is the next best thing. It started as a series of blog posts he had no intention of making into a book, so while I know he thinks he writes about ideas and things he's interested in, it also has a lot of his persoanlity in it. I am mentioned in a chapter about Batman. One of the two or three things that I've ever seen make him cry is mentioned. A lot of his ideas about Doctor Who, comics, being a Lib Dem, physics and other things that anyone who knows him will associate with him, are there.
3) With which historical figure do you most identify?
These questions are hard! Perhaps Robert Burton, a seventeenth-century scholar who wrote a book called The Anatomy of Melancholy, which purports to be a medical textbook but ends up sort of using "melancholia" as a lens through which to look at all kinds of emotions and aspects of life. I haven't read it all (it's a huge book, full of Proper Serious Quotations of the ancients, lots of Latin and that kind of thing), plus I have it only as a pdf and there are severe limitations to how much I can happily read on a computer screen at a time) but it's a lovely thing to dip into and out of, a kaleidoscope of literature, philosophhy, medicine, theology, science, all sorts of things.
While Burton satirically warned depresed people away from reading the book, it is clearly of graet potential good to us, which is not surprising since it is written by one of us. Samuel Johnson called it "the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise."
Burton says in the introduction "I write of melancholy by being busy to avoid melancholy" and well... yeah, I can identify with that.
4 a) What would you like to have for your main meal today?
Since it's a quarter past eleven (it took me a long time to get around to answering these questions!) I have already had it. I had a lovely spicy bean burger and potato wedges with this garlic sauce I bought yesterday and have used half the bottle already; it is good.
4 b) What's that meal called?
Dinner, though I'm not sure why. I grew up calling meals "breakfast, dinner and supper" but when I was in college rejected "supper" as too ...hokey? (I also stopped pronouncing "milk" as "melk" around this time, and other things, all for this reason.) So I switched to "breakfast, lunch, dinner," this was what my friends called them too. Then I moved here and kinda did the same thing, though Andrew's family and my old job and other places would say "breakfast, dinner, tea," and while I find it difficult to say "tea" except in rare circumstances, I have started sometimes saying "dinner" for the mid-day meal too. But I don't have anything better than "dinner" to say for the evening meal either, so when I say "dinner" sometimes even I'm not really sure what I mean.
It's kind of like "football" that way; while I've adapted to calling soccer "football," I still call American football "football" too, because I can't describe the things I'm used to as "American" without being hugely self-conscious; I hate it.
4 c) Is this a really bizarrely British question?
This question made me laugh (especially as the original was edited to include it and 4b). I can see why it'd be asked -- British people are obsessed with language, as it encodes so much of class, background, location, education, and a lot of other things that are important to this society.
But it's not just British -- I remember talking about regional and national differences in the English langauge back when I was in college and never dreamed I'd go to Britain, much less live here so long it's screwed up my langauge to the point where I wrote "at universty" before changing it to "in college" (because that's what I called it when I was in college!). And based on that I got the idea to write an essay about the different things English-speaking people call their midday and evening meals, for a class I was taking at the time. So I dont' think it's really bizarre, or British.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-29 03:09 am (UTC)::hangs head in literary shame::
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-29 03:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-29 05:02 am (UTC)For me, 'dinner' is whatever the biggest meal of the day is. So on most weekdays, now I don't have access to a decent canteen, it goes breakfast-lunch-dinner. But on the weekends, especially Sunday, it goes breakfast-dinner-tea. Dinner is not dictated by time, but importance.
I don't think I even noticed Americans didn't have 'tea' for some time. But tea and supper have never been synonymous for me as supper is a late, pre-bedtime snack/small meal.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-29 12:46 pm (UTC)Yes, this.
...supper is a late, pre-bedtime snack/small meal.
This too. And this has only caused any confusion at all in the last three years, when I started having relationships with people who'd been brought up towards the top end of middle class.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-29 12:48 pm (UTC)Thanks for answering them: I enjoyed reading this.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-29 07:45 pm (UTC)I had a lot of fun writing this and am proud of what I could come up with.
Though it seems that, once again, everyone wants to talk about what they call their meals, so I could probably have just written that bit with the same result!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-01 10:33 am (UTC)Best, guaranteed way to get people debating enthusiastically!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-29 05:33 pm (UTC)I'm from the North West but not working class and my parents weren't local to the area my dad being southern English and mum being a Scot.
I grew up with dinner == middayish meal "school dinners" and tea was what you had in the evening but could also be called dinner - but you always asked parentals "Can $friend come for tea" for the evening meal. I think of supper as being either more middle class than my upbringing or word used by oldfolk to denote a snack before bed which isn't a full meal. I expect that reflects the language of the area I grew up in.
I suspect my Scottish family (working class done good and become middle class) would use dinner for middayish meal and tea for your evening meal and supper as last meal of the day as well. They also use a lot of dialect I only realise when it's spoken back at me by other Scots.
I think my English (very posh think 1922 Miss Manners about etiquette if not money and actual anything else) grandparents would have used lunch for midday and dinner for evening, tea was afternoon tea or a cup of tea (which caused fights with my mum who took children to see granddad who hadn't actually invited us for food despite living 3 hours drive away so she'd get pissed off and bring in chips) and supper was last meal of the day... I also think the "inviting for tea" was a bit deliberate - class snobbery against my mum who dad's family thought was common.
These days I'll clarify "tea" "dinner" for meaning with people and tend to refer to eating in general as a plan for the day. I don't think we use meal words at home cos neither of us eat breakfast and it's "I'm eating, are you?" not a mealname.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-01 06:49 pm (UTC)my understanding is that , in the American South at least , it goes breakfast/dinner/supper. doesn't feel particularly natural to me (i'm in Southern Appalachia), so i tend twards breakfast/lunch/dinner.
(in any case, it prolly doesn't help i am - how you say? - "3rd shift." today Breakfast counts as a taste of Tullamore Dew !)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-06 08:27 am (UTC)Breakfast/dinner/supper is quaint in my dialect.