Wake

I was invited to a wake and a funeral earlier this week. I couldn't go to the wake, but I made it to the funeral, and couldn't help but wonder what "wake" means. It's hard to find decent information about it online, and I suspect there's a lot of misinformation out there, since it's sort of a weird word to use for a corpse lying in an open casket for mourners to view.

I found an article about false etymology on the Internet, which mentions this false explanation of "wake":

"Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey," proclaims the Internet message. "The combination would sometimes knock people out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a 'wake.'

The author, Richard Lederer, says that the correct meaning is this: "'Wake descends from the Middle English 'wakien,' 'to be awake,' and is cognate with the Latin 'vigil.' 'Wake' simply means, traditionally at least, that someone stays awake all night at the side of the casket on the night before the funeral."

A dictionary says:

an annual English parish festival formerly held in commemoration of the church's patron saint...the festivities originally connected with the wake of an English parish church...a watch held over the body of a dead person prior to burial and sometimes accompanied by festivity

I don't know if the following explanation is true, but supposedly it's part of a 19th century Scottish custom:

For several days the body was "Waked" - Members of the family, numbering 2 to 10 people, usually the young and unmarried, would watch over the body around-the-clock., to keep the spirit from falling to the Devil. Curtains or blinds were drawn until after the funeral.

Family and friends of the deceased would come and pay their last respects. Readings were made from the Bible, along with the singing of hymns, and conversing in low hushed tones. Neighbors would help by bringing extra chairs for the watchers or extra peat to help heat the house throughout the "Dead Days."

I guess if I were a historian or had access to some academic types who specialize in British history or etymology, I'd ask them, but this is the best I can do. I wonder what the real story is, if there is one.

Not just for kids

I've been working on a draft of a novel and am not exactly the most psyched person about how the story has turned out. I don't want it to be a blabber piece, where the character just talks and whines and tells us about every detail of their frustrated life, as if it's a diary entry. I think Bridget Jones has set the tone for a lot of books, and I don't want to write one of those, even though some of them have become very popular and the authors are enjoying generous advances and rewards for their hard labor.

So I did a search on "how to write a story" and came up with thousands of options. Usually fiction writing advice is vague or too complicated to be practical. It's as if the writer is lonely and wants us to join them in their garbled thinking because no one else is there.

But the advice at this site is really helpful. The site is for kids, but that's great for people like me who want clear answers instead of puffed-up words written by a self-smitten writer who's out to impress. It seems that the non-fiction world, especially business writing, has plenty of people who try their best to communicate clearly in a straightforward way, but in the fiction world, being like that is uncool or unattainable.

Here's a sampling of some of that kids site's storytelling advice:

"To keep the story interesting, the more times your hero tries and fails, the better."

This is what they say about conflict and the central problem that your character has. You have to ask:

"What is your main character's problem?
Is the problem big enough so that it will take a whole story to solve it?
Do other characters help create the problem?
Does the setting influence the problem?
What steps does your hero take to try and fail to solve the problem?"

About resolution:

"It's best if the story's hero solves the problem on his or her own...It's great if one of the hero's faults turns out to be a strength that leads to the resolution of the story."

Questions to ask about the resolution:

"How does your main character finally solve the problem?
If possible, can they solve it using their own strength or wits?"

And a general question:

"Think about a story you like.  What makes it good?  Can you identify the main character, the setting, the problem and the resolution?"

So I went through all the questions and points, and realized that I have a lot of tweaking to do. Even though I realized the lameness of what I wrote, it didn't bum me out because I have found a way to effectively evaluate what I've written instead of being more confused.

Toby's rich

Toby Young, who The Sunday Times says is "famously short and bald," often is self-deprecating in his articles and in his entertaining book, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. He openly discusses his failures and feelings of inadequacy, which makes the rest of us feel like we're not alone.

So you'd think he's struggling to get by, even though he went to prestigious schools and his dad was a lord, which is odd because his dad claimed to be working for justice and for the common man, against the oppressive class system. It often amazes me that British people who are anti-snob end up becoming lords, so they end up participating in the system they supposedly despise. Weird and borderline hypocritical.

Anyway, Toby isn't doing as bad as he thinks or leads us to believe. The Times said: "The author Toby Young has clinched an £800,000 deal to turn his bestselling memoir into a Hollywood film that producers hope will be a male version of the Bridget Jones blockbuster...Harvey Weinstein, head of Miramax films, is understood to be investing £50m in the film based on How to Lose Friends and Alienate People."

And Toby managed to add a typical comment: “Anyone who hasn’t met me and then sees the film will be very disappointed when they find out what I look like."

I don't think I'd want to see the film. The book is such a good read (except for the vulgar and "typical" guy bits). I wonder if all that money makes him feel more like a descendent of a lord instead of a struggling commoner in London.

SOX WIN!

Woo hoo! The Chicago White Sox just won! It was a great game--since the first inning, I had a feeling they would win! If only I had the moolah to go to the World Series.

Da Mayor of Da Windy City is a huge Sox fan since he's from Bridgeport, which is right near Cellular Field, so let's hope he puts off the corruption for a while and gives us all a break!

Chipotle is dangerous

I just went to Chipotle to get some guacamole and chips for my husband. Every time I pass one of those places, I wonder how fattening it is since Mexican food isn't known for being the most healthy food on the planet. I've never eaten any food from there because I don't know what I would be consuming. However, just in case I were to eat some in the future, I wanted to get some nutritional information from their site.

Their site is confusing and annoying. There's a small, "breathing" graphic that you're supposed to click, and if you don't like complicated, flashy graphics or can't process them, it would take too long to figure out where to get any nutritional information. They're so busy entertaining you that you may not even be able to get past the vague menu or cutsy presentation where some information is supposed to be buried.

So I continued my search, and found a Chipotle nutrition calculator that a smart college student created. He says:

The idea for the Chipotle Calculator came when Matt e-mailed Chipotle for the nutritional information on their burritos. They replied with a PDF sheet listing the nutritional information for the individual ingredients, but it was annoying to calculate what your burrito has manually.

Being lazy, in an odd reverse-lazy kind of way, Matt decided to write up the Chipotle Calculator to make it easy to find out how healthy his burrito was. He posted a link to the calculator on a few forums accross the net, and shared it with his friends. Before long the calculator page was getting 500+ Chipotle hungry visitors every day. Because of the success of the page Matt decided to go all out, getting the domain ChipotleFan.com and re-doing the site.

It's great how people start little projects online that grow into something big and useful, which makes the doing of it and the subsequent success even more gratifying.

What I learned from the calculator is that Chipotle is very caloric, fatty food that I should avoid, unless I want to limit my consumption to one bite. Which is amazing, considering the founder of that company looks fit and healthy. I wonder if he eats his own food anymore. After all, 90% of it is owned by McDonald's.

what O' means

I found out in the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation that the "O in Irish names is an anglicisation of 'ua', meaning grandson."

So in the name O'Leary, for instance, the "O" isn't a contraction of "of", as if someone is "of" the Leary family. I'm sure a lot of people have assumed that for years.

By the way, even if you've never heard the author, Lynne Truss, speak, you can still tell that she's British due to her spelling of "anglicization".

I'll have more to say about the book, but the Sox game is on and a videotaped Startrek episode is queued up.

Welcome Bernie

I got Bernard Goldberg's latest book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, which sort of reads like a blog, since the writing style is conversational and the book is a series of entries that don't have to be read in order. You can easily put it aside for a while and return to it without feeling any disruption because it's not an ongoing narrative that has to be understood in a certain kind of flow.

I checked out his site and saw this greeting, which he wrote in March 2005: "Hello friends - and welcome to my brand new website which is being launched on the very day that my old colleague Dan Rather is stepping down as anchor of the CBS Evening News...I'm entering a brave new world of the Internet."

He's been in the media for like 30 years and only entered the "brave new world of the Internet" this year? What's so "new" about it that he couldn't join it earlier?

His bio says that he "is widely seen as one of the most original writers and thinkers in broadcast journalism. He has covered stories all over the world for CBS News and won six Emmy awards for his work at that network," but he never made his way to the Internet?

It just goes to show that sometimes people in the print and broadcast media work backwards, because they've already made it--they have been able to participate in high-level communication for a while, unlike tons of other folks who aspire to participate in that scene, who have to find any vehicle they can to get their name and ideas out there. So the Internet is a natural choice, since an unknown can't just walk up to an editor's or producer's desk and say, "I'm talented--hire me."

So welcome, Bernie, and any other successful person for whom this is the Year of the Internet.

Cack-handed

I was at Toby Young's site and saw this sentence in one of his reviews: "As a piece of drama, Playing With Fire is a little cack-handed."

Toby's British, so I figured it's a common phrase over there. I went to Michael Quinion's site, where he explained that the phrase is "certainly British. It’s only obscure, though, if you’re from somewhere else, since it’s a well-known British informal term for somebody who is inept or clumsy. By extension...it means somebody left-handed, who does everything 'backwards' and so looks clumsy or awkward. It first appeared in the middle of the nineteenth century."

Quinion, who "writes about international English from a British viewpoint" is one of those lucky people who's found something really enjoyable to do with his life, as his bio shows.

Japanese newspaper words

A while ago, I found a great ESL site with all kinds of English help for non-native speakers, and within it are lists of Japanese words that are frequently used in newspapers. The words are in kanji, hiragana, and katakana.

Below are some hiragana words, which are just a fraction of what's available there:

すっかり (sukkari) all; completely; thoroughly
ふさわしい (fusawashii) appropriate
あるいは (aruiwa) or; possibly
いわゆる (iwayuru) the so-called; so to speak
あらゆる (arayuru) all; every
とにかく (tonikaku) anyhow; at any rate; anyway; somehow or other; generally speaking; in any case
けたたましい (ketatamashii) piercing; shrill; noisy; loud; clamorous; wild
かっと (katto) flare up; flying into a rage
あくまで (akumade) to the end; to the last; stubbornly; persistently
もっぱら (moppara) wholly; solely; entirely
おおむね (omune) in general; mostly; roughly
しばしば (shibashiba) often; again and again; frequently
なるべく (narubeku) as much as possible
ぱっと (patto) suddenly; in a flash; rapidly; nimbly; alertly
ひたすら (hitasura) nothing but; earnestly; intently
じっくり (jikkuri) deliberately; carefully
たびたび (tabitabi) often; repeatedly; frequently
おもちゃ (omocha) toy
わざわざ (wazawaza) expressly; specially; doing something especially rather than incidentally
いきなり (ikinari) abruptly; suddenly; all of a sudden; without warning
ぎりぎり (girigiri) at the last moment; just barely
やられる (yarareru) to suffer damage; to be deceived
なぞる (nazoru) to trace (drawing); to follow
そもそも (somosomo) in the first place; to begin with
ぶつかる (butsukaru) to strike; to collide with
ゆったり (yuttari) (1) comfortable; easy; calm; (2) loose; spacious
ともかく (tomokaku) anyhow; anyway; somehow or other; generally speaking; in any case
いかなる (ikanaru) any kind of (with neg. verb)
いかにも (ikanimo) indeed; really; phrase meaning agreement
あらかじめ (arakajime) beforehand; in advance; previously
いよいよ (iyoiyo) more and more; all the more; increasingly; at last; beyond doubt

Picard's neck

I may have mentioned it before, but just in case: I've taken it upon myself to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation because during all those seasons it was on the air, I was not watching television at the time, I was in Asia, and I wasn't into sci-fi shows. I'd heard my friend rave about the show so much, I just had to see it, so now I'm taping it every day to see what I've been missing.

People think Captain Picard is the best, and I have to agree. He's smart, strong, diplomatic, talented, curious, skillful, interesting, productive, creative, intellectual, and has other qualities I can't think of right now.

But has anyone noticed his neck? I haven't been able to find this topic online, and since I'm not a "trekkie" or obsessed Star Trek fan, I don't participate in nor care to read any message boards, so perhaps I'm not the first to discuss it.

What I've noticed is that in the first few episodes of the first season, his neck is pronounced; you can see the grooves and adam's apple clearly, and even some creases. But as the series progresses and thereafter, you can't see the details of his neck as much.

Maybe the creators of the show saw the tape and thought, "His neck isn't smooth. We need to do something about that."

So what did they do? Did they put more makeup on Patrick Stewart's neck, or change the lighting? With each show, I've tried to figure it out, but I can't. I compare his uniform to the others, but it looks the same.

These are important questions. Sure, people are suffering in natural disasters and there are wars and rumors of wars, but here in the semi-civilized world, the mystery of Picard's neck should be solved. I'm sure the answer is somewhere out there, and if I ever get to meet any of the Star Trek insiders, I'll ask them.

Mixed congee

When I was traveling around Asia, I often ate Mixed Congee, though I never ate it in Japan (it may not even exist there).

The Mixed Congee I just ate (created in Taiwan by Taisun) is made of water, glutinous rice, oats, green lentils, peas, peanuts, cereals (whatever that means), red beans, longans (don't know what those are), and sugar. It's hardly sweet, but it's sweet enough to make you feel like you're not eating anything too boringly nutritious. But it's healthy enough to turn a lot of Americans off.

In fact, I was the only non-Chinese person at the Chinese store in Chinatown, so a lot of people either looked at me or moved away. I've gone to other Asian stores--Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese--and even though I was the only non-Asian in those places, they didn't look at me amazed, like "Is she in the right place? Oh my gosh--maybe she's not! Should we tell her? No, let's just look at her."

So now when I tell non-Asians my favorite snack is Mixed Congee, I can offer them a can for them to try. If they dare.

Name dropping

I'm going to be vague about what I'm going to say because I don't want to indict any particular person, but point out an attitude that is either geographical or contemporary.

Recently, I heard someone give a talk and couldn't help but notice that they used every opportunity to drop names of successful and famous people they've met, know, or are going to know. Chicago isn't a wannabe type of place; it's down-to-earth to the point where only a small segment of the female populace cares about wearing the latest fashions or starving themselves to near-death. The person who was talking lives in LA, though I think they're not a native (as is the case with a lot of people out there).

Here's an example of what they said, with the specifics removed: "My relative was speaking at a family event, and well, my relative is a famous --- and, well, okay, I'll tell you: my relative is so-and-so."

Nobody cared about who the relative was enough to ask, but the speaker mentioned it anyway. And it just continued--at every turn, they mentioned projects they were working on, and inserted references to famous people they worked with or whose agents they "had" to contact, and even mentioned conversations they'd had with the insanely wealthy. As in, "I was talking with ---, who's the founder of ---" and they paused to see what our reaction was.

The first famous reference (the relative) seemed to impress some people, but after that, the audience just seemed to want to hear the speaker's journey, not their rich and famous laundry list.

Or maybe that's my perception, because that's how I felt. Still, I may be right because the audience didn't seem to audibly react to each reference with a gasp of, "Oh wow! We're simple-minded midwesterners, and you're a big-shot from LA who knows Everyone Who Matters! Please, let us touch you!"

After all those names were dropped, I managed to crawl out from under them to get enough air and wonder if the speaker is just a perpetually unsatisfied wannabe. They are successful--no doubt about that, but I would guess that they don't think they're successful enough, which is why they use The Names to Matter.

I know people in LA who don't drop names even though they've met famous and wealthy people, but is that name-dropping game an LA thing, or is it a product of our celebrity-obsessed culture?

Haraobi

Here's something you may not know about: 腹帯 (haraobi), which is described in odd English below:

From olden times in Japan, pregnant woman put a white cloth called "Haraobi" around the abdomen wishing for an easy delivery. It is quite useful to keep you balanced as well as warm. Nowadays, some people wear a maternity girdle instead of a Haraobi. But a Haraobi is easier to adjust to your size. Many Japanese visit shrines and pray a God for an easy delivery, and buy Haraobi there...After delivery, you can use your Haraobi again to regain your shape, and cut it in small pieces and use it for your baby's nappies. However, these days most people seem to be using handy disposable diapers.

Even though I lived in Japan, I'd never heard about it, and I bet a lot of other people have no idea what it is, either. There isn't much information about it in English, but you can read about it in Japanese. There's too much information to translate it here quickly, but maybe one of those online translation thingies would be decent enough.

Feast of Trumpets

Today is Rosh Hashanah, so downtown Chicago is pretty quiet. It's considered the Jewish New Year, but in Leviticus, it's called the Feast of Trumpets:

23 The LORD said to Moses, 24 "Say to the Israelites: 'On the first day of the seventh month you are to have a day of rest, a sacred assembly commemorated with trumpet blasts. 25 Do no regular work, but present an offering made to the LORD by fire.' "

That's all it says. There's no mention of a new year there. So why do people consider it a New Year? Here's an explanation:

The name "Rosh Hashana" literally means "Beginning of the Year." You may wonder how this can be, since it is called the first day of the seventh month! The reason is that the Jewish calendar is built on two cycles-the religious calendar beginning in the Spring, and the civil calendar beginning in the Fall. In the Torah, the months are never named but only numbered, beginning with the month of Nisan in the early Spring, which is the first month according to the religious calendar.

Since the source of the holiday is the Bible, I'm tempted to say "Happy Feast of Trumpets." But that will confuse people, and I wonder if they even know what any of this means.

Add the g!

It bugs me when Northerners don't add a "g" to the ends of words. Like "I'm doin' it," or "tryin' it," or "he's sayin' that..." or "the doorbell was ringin' but I didn't answer it."

It's not like people are in too much of a hurry to add the "g," they're just not being conscientious. (Or "bein' conscientious"? Maybe the missing g there is just a Southern thing).

What also seems to indicate a lack of attention is when people are talking about a past event, but they use present tense. Here's a hypothetical conversation between humans A and B:

A: I went to the store, and the lady says to me, "Is that all?" and I say, "Yeah."

B: Well I went to the gas station, and the guy's lookin' at me, like I'm crazy, because I don't have my credit card with me.

Hello! Use past tense! Sometimes people will describe an awful situation on a call-in radio talk show, and I can't help but keep track of how many times they're using the present tense to describe the past. Here's another fictitious example:

"I got home, and I walked in, and there's this guy standing there, holding a gun. It was scary. Luckily, I had my cell phone, so I call my husband and he runs in with a gun, and there's a big shoot-out, and then my husband says, 'I'm gonna kill you!' And then he kills the guy and there's blood everywhere."

You'd think that she wouldn't want to re-live such an awful experience, but by keeping it in present tense, she is. Keep it in the past, and we'll all be able to appreciate what you're saying (or sayin').

I wonder how this type of speech--the lack of a "g" and present tense for past--can be described. Is it from a lack of education and/or reading? Is it a regional thing, colloquial, or does it result from laziness?

Pete's novel

Pete Townshend has written a novel, and he's posting it on his blog, one chapter at a time.

Yes, I'm talking about the real Pete Townshend, from The Who.

He says at his blog: "What is well known is that I'm a rock star. You are not worthy etc. In fact you are worthy. And so am I. We deserve each other."

And the novel freebee isn't going to last forever: "Begins 24th September. This serial will run for 23 episodes, ending February 25th 2006."

Enjoy.

Complimented

I went out with someone I haven't seen for a while, and as we were walking to the restaurant, he said he'd checked out my site, and he'd enjoyed what he'd read. I assumed he was talking about this blog, but he meant my Metrofiction page.

I was shocked--someone had read what I wrote, and liked it? Wow. I hadn't asked him for any feedback, but he offered it to me, unsolicited. He even said it was funny, and he didn't know that I could write [so well?]. That surprised me even more, and I felt grateful.

It was just one person's opinion, but it made my day. It was interesting timing, too, because I discussed the Japanese word for "regret" in class earlier tonight, and I was thinking, "I regret a lot of things. I may even regret trying to write fiction."

But what timing--just when you think you're writing in a sealed bottle, someone comes along and takes off the cork.

Angry poet

I did a search for the terms "I tried to get published" and "gave up" to see who out there has thrown in the towel, and found Lelia, a poet who's been beaten down by the process.

She starts out with what a lot of people are saying throughout the Internet, I'm sure: "You know what really pisses me off? Publishers and agents."

And then the complaints of a fed-up poet begin:

Last year, I entered contests and lost to–without fail–abstract writers and poets (can we say LSD-induced writing? Yes, yes, we can) and…a group of a particular race, or so it seemed. Names just sometimes give away a nationality, or at the very least a culture mindset (e.g. Mohammed and La’Quinda).

Not even my SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope) was returned on most occasions. That is not a huge surprise, as this is typical of the publishing business’ lack of etiquette, but it’s still very frustrating...

After that, she offers us a list of "Other things that piss me off about the writing business," a small part of which is:

Publishing contests which obviously have a politically correct bent. This is VERY TYPICAL of American poetry contests. There are only so many survivor cancer patients, African American women, teens from the ‘ghetto,’ and Islamic ministers who can be so enlightened as to win every year for a particular contest. Give me a break...

..."We do not accept unsolicited poetry manuscripts and suggest you go through an agent if wanting to pursue publication with our publishing house.” — Grand. So, this leads me on the wild goose hunt for agents (most of which are apparently still living in the Stone Age and without a website). I finally find an agent, and what do I find on his submission guidelines? “[Insert Agent Company Name Here] does not read or represent poetry submissions.” In other words, let me get this straight: I’ve got a chance if I’m Rowling or King.

At the end of her rant, she really tells the publishing industrial complex off (what she calls the "prissy boys in the printing biz"). But it's too rude to quote here.

Hey, she said all that, not me. I'm just sharing it with the world. Good thing I'm not a poet. The fading fiction dream is bad enough.

Vos and vosotros

Mahndisa asked "about how vosotros from archaic Spanish got morphed into vos in Argentina."

I asked LanguageHat, and he said:

Actually, vos is the older form; vosotros is vos + otros 'you others.'
From The World's Major Languages (ed. Comrie):

In Latin America, the position is more complicated. Vosotros, the familiar plural form, has given way to ustedes, used with third person inflection, as a generalised plural. Vos, which in medieval Spanish had been used as a polite singular (just as Modern French vous), has taken over in many varieties as the generalised singular, colligating with inflections which are historically both singular and plural, sometimes even blends. `Voseo' is not a recent phenomenon; its roots must be sought in the colonial period, and recent archival research has revealed that it was well established in educated Buenos Aires usage by the beginning of the last century.

So, there's the best answer I could get without killing myself through research (or actually spending any time at all).

Tomb of remembrance

I was reading Jon Konrath's journal (which is a good read, especially if you're in an introspective mood) and saw his use of the phrase "tomb of remembrance." I'd never seen that before, especially in connection with the Internet, though the phrase is in a handful of places. The phrase popped up towards the end of a post about a guy who went to his school in exciting Indiana:

...Gunter was like the lowest member of the social pecking order at Concord. He came from a poor family, had greasy hair, some kind of speech impediment, and was into geek stuff like Dungeons and Dragons, but wasn't a bright guy, either. All through junior high and high school, he was the whipping post for most of the guys, and he got beat up a lot and just took the punishment. He actually tried out for a lot of sports, and tried to become athletic, and play basketball and football, and I guess it says a lot to be involved in preppy-dominated sports like that when you're the most hated kid in school.

And I think part of why I didn't outright just haze the guy continuously was the fact that I didn't want to be his friend, but I realized I had a lot more in common with him than I did with the jocko sport guys in school. I mean, I had this thing in high school where everyone thought I was some kind of kid genius, so it didn't matter if I only weighed 110 pounds of bones and skin and couldn't do a single chin-up, because someday I'd start the next Apple Computers or something. But Greg didn't have that going for him, so he tried to become a jock, which I guess didn't work that well either.

Anyway, there is no Greg Gunter tomb of remembrance on the web, and I couldn't even find an obituary or anything else online, except one hit that the public library would have one, but I'd have to go there and waste a day hunting for it, and it probably doesn't have a story of what happened or anything.

Maybe that post will become Greg's tomb of remembrance.