Minor amusements and wordcount.

[kiya]

I posted lengthily to the temple board comparing practical approaches to Constitutional law to building a fence around the Torah.

teinedreugan has been occasionally putting an icepack on his foot and affixing it there with an ace bandage. This evening, the tail end of said bandage was right in my peripheral vision, in a sort of dangly manner. Dangerous. (Pull. Sproink. Pull. Sproink. Pull. Sproink. . . .)

We watched "Desperado" on the telly in preparation for seeing "Once Upon a Time In Mexico". Now, if you search the IMDB for "Desperado", you get OUATIM listed as "aka Desperado 2". If you search the IMDB for "El Mariachi", you get "Desperado" listed as "aka El Mariachi 2" and OUATIM listed as "aka El Mariachi 3". For some reason, this pleases me immensely, perhaps because it's incredibly perverse.

Other notes -- I can follow dialogue and music in Spanish, at least in flicks like that, but I couldn't translate it without having to actually think about it. The meaning's there, but it's not language-enabled. I'm not sure if that means I've lost the ability to think in Spanish, or if I've still got it. Mostly it probably means that my processing of Spanish isn't laced around with the superstructure of having-processed-English that clutters up my brain when I'm trying to output in that language, plus not having the translator fluidez that means that what I hear automatically comes out in the other language like Roman has. (Footnote available.)

I have a desperate need to do things with my hands. teinedreugan said we might be able to buy fabric tomorrow. We'll see if that works, and if this particular urge to sew lasts long enough to finish this project (which is, essentially, all hemming, but it's a lot of all hemming).

Bah. erispope just disconnected, about fifteen seconds before I realised I wanted to talk with her about something the next time I saw her. Bugger. Flip windows, and there's that 'has disconnected' message. Yay timing.

Section 27: 316 words (1215 total; done)
Section 28: 372 words (done)
Section 29: pondering . . . .

Argh, yes, Arthur, there's a snake in there. I know there's a snake in there. I put the snake in there. Stop freaking out, okay?

Comments

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

Footnote available, but not included? Buh?

I can still do some of that translated-but-not-really thing in Spanish. I can follow it enough to get the gist of a thing, but if you ask me what the words are, I get all confused. This is how I communicate with my parents' cleaning lady. I talk to her in English, and she responds in Spanish, and we both get just enough meaning to be getting on with. Her English is way better than my Spanish, though.

[kiya]

It was an oblique and largely irrelevant footnote, not worth going into unless someone cared to ask; however, it seemed relevant to note that it was footnoteworthy, in the event that someone wanted to know and would otherwise have thought that I was being more than usually incomprehensible.


I was doing a sort of running translation of a horribly soppy love song in Desperado, and could only do every other line or so. Eventually I gave up because losing the thread was irritating me so much. I understood it all when I wasn't trying to turn its meaning into meaning in something else; very weird.

[rainfallsautumn.livejournal.com]

I loved your post on Constitutional law! It's an interesting thread, but it seems to me like one of the people just does NOT understand that we don't live in an ideal world. Or else there are people there that are a whole lot more comfortable with mixing church and state than I will ever be. It's interesting on the whole, the more I read those boards, the more I learn that there are several different definitions of "conservative"-- and while I may be politically conservative, I'm starting to think I have no concept of the conservatism that many of my fellow temple members embrace.

[kiya]

Y'see, the way "conservative" means to me is "more concerned with social stability and harmony than individual autonomy"; by that standard I'm slightly on the conservative side of centrist.

That's, as far as I can tell, not what anyone else means by it. It tends to give me a twitch when I see someone forwarding positions labelled "conservative" that look to me like they directly promote social turmoil.

[rainfallsautumn.livejournal.com]

I think it can mean both things, and your definition definitely fits the folks on the board. However, I'd be way, WAY on the other side, thinking there can BE no true social harmony without individual liberty. I'm increasingly alarmed by what I'm reading, and I think that difference is the core of it.

So I think there are far more people like you than you might imagine-- you have far more company there than I have.

[kiya]

I don't see that way way anywhere; it looks like it's slightly on the liberal side of centrist to me. ;)

The extremes of that particular axis look to me like "All individuality must be subordinated to the will of the group" and "Concern about the group is completely irrelevant, I'm gonna do what I want and to hell with everyone else".

I think the extremes are out of ma'at; ma'at is the middle way.

[kiya]

I wrote this a while ago on a message board and copied it to my livejournal so I could keep it; I think it's illustrative of what I mean by "conservative" (and "centrist" for that matter).

[morningwind.livejournal.com]

Mehen wrote: "there can BE no true social harmony without individual liberty."

*nods* Estoy de acuerdo. I'm finding it to be a constant source of irritation that I can't really place where my political beliefs are on some grand sort of spectrum; I suppose saying that I'm politically conservative with socially libertarian tendencies is how I'll have to describe myself for the moment.

I've enjoyed the posts by both of you on that KOL thread, BTW.

[kiya]

Heh -- when I sat down and tried to come up with a set of political axes that satisfied me, I gave up when I hit fourteen or so. I've got that saved somewhere, I think, in case I ever decide to finish it.

(It takes me eight or nine to describe my sexual orientation. My problem with reality is that whenever I try to describe it accurately I need so many dimensions that I start to tesser.)