Budgeted caring
Posted in Comment, Mundanity, Pretensions on 06/01/2007 09:51 am by OrthoclaseI was composing a post in my head about my “caring budget” — this is my internal account for things I can or can’t (or won’t) afford to care about, such as the anniversary of “Sgt. Pepper’s yada yada.” (In case you didn’t realize, this does not fit into my caring budget. Nothing re:Beatles does.)
But then I hit a conundrum: if I talk about it, doesn’t that imply that I can afford at least a little bit of caring about it? I asked Plagioclase what he thought, and he pondered a moment and said “No, it’s meta. You’re talking about the caring. You could have picked any other subject to illustrate the point.”
“True!” I replied, “Like Kevorkian’s release or Lindsay’s rehab or the iTunes controversy of the week, or the new video of the Loch Ness monster, or sports.”
“Wait!” he exclaimed. “There’s new video of Nessie?”
06/02/2007 at 7:11 pm
I haven’t heard of the rehab or the itunes controversy or any sports results except hockey. Does this mean I care even less, or just that I’m too lazy to keep up on the “news”? (I know, sadly, it’s the latter, because I’ve been carefully avoiding reading about the budget since they threatened a summer election. Summer elections — or any politics at all in JJA — are verboten.)
06/02/2007 at 7:12 pm
Also, why are so many of our words for forbidden borrowings? (I was debating between verboten and taboo, there.)
06/02/2007 at 10:13 pm
I look at the headlines a couple of times a day for a few different sites, though I seldom click through to the stories. I suppose I could do a better job of setting keywords, but since I don’t have an absorbing interest in any particular facet of the news, I’m stuck with the highlights of a lot of different subjects. I’m sure as my election countdown widget gets closer to The Day, I’ll find myself looking less often at the news.
Words, however, I care about. I have no idea the answer to your question, but I have just spent a pleasant few minutes learning that taboo is Tongan (according to the dictionary on my computer).
06/03/2007 at 1:21 pm
I could have only given the South Pacific — knew it was Malayo-Polynesian, but forgot which. Captain Cook, right? It’s a nice word. And was probably more appropriate than verboten, when I think of it.
Probably that adjective is no more likely to be a borrowing (which we recognise as a borrowing, as opposed to a really old borrowing) than any other, though.
06/04/2007 at 1:27 pm
If I hadn’t've looked, I would have thought it more like Indian (South Asian). I suppose I was relating “Hindu/Hindoo” and “tabu/taboo”. Reading a lot of old stuff gives one alternate spellings
But yeah, the dictionary says it’s Capt. Cook.
Now you’ve got me thinking about shades of meanings…