Jeremy, you know, and I know, anyone you’re stuck with in a room for a lifetime, however cute, however intriguing, however chill, you’re going to want to kill them after a year, never mind a lifetime.
So you’re off the list.
And what would drive you insane is being stuck with the same soul day after day; but I’ll take a shapeshifter, so at least I’ll get some visual novelty. Proteus, for instance?
What? No deities?
The question said I could raise the dead; bring a deity along shouldn’t be that much more of a stretch.
“Since 1995, legislation has provided a set of rules for acceptable names for New Zealanders where a name, or combination of names, should not cause offence, be unreasonably long, or resemble an official title or rank.”
1.2k is a lot of people. I can’t individuate them any more; that’s why I try to follow just 300 ±10%.
The people I regularly chat and banter with? They give me delight and meaning. They challenge me and they improve me. They’re my kin. And I hope they know that.
The people I don’t regular chat with, but have the odd exchange with? They’re my neighbours. I’m always happy to see them. Hello neighbours! *wave*
The people that I have no idea why they followed me? Thanks guys, seriously, thank you, but… I have no idea why you followed me. If they’re big enough names, I’ve taken to asking them why; they often don’t have satisfactory answers. 🙂
Mez, I am one who strives not to be judgemental, including on myself. (I fail a lot on the latter.) I associate that with not ruling things out; you don’t know what might happen, and what you might find yourself driven to. For Man is a Giddy Creature, as Shakespeare said somewhere.
But I’ve got a couple of answers.
I’ll never take drugs. My apologies to all my drug-partaking peers here, but I don’t think I’m ever even going to get drunk: I’m too much of a control freak about myself.
I’ll never have kids. I’ve left it too late.
I’ll never bungie jump. That’s OK. I never wanted to. Acrophobia.
I’m not quite the right person to ask about this; serious interest in the origins of language resumed after I studied linguistics.
But think about it. Why do words have multiple meanings?
We differentiate polysemy and homophony: multiple related meanings, and multiple unrelated meanings.
Why is there polysemy? Because words get applied to different contexts, by analogy and metaphor and metonymy.
When would polysemy have started? The minute humans became cognitively capable of analogy and metaphor. And that capacity may well have predated language.
When would homophony have started? The minute there was more than zero neighbouring languages to borrow from, and the minute sound change started, and the minute people started making up new words. And that would have been not long after humans started using language.
In a roundabout way: syllabus is ultimately derived from a garbling of the obscure Greek word sittyba, which got mangled progressively in manuscripts and then print editions of Cicero, and reinterpreted from its original meaning “title slip”.
I’m going to give one for each decade from the 30s through the 70s. I’m going to put up, not necessarily my favourite songs, but the songs I think have had the greatest cultural impact.
Markos was the master of the Peiraeus tradition of rebetiko, which switched from an Anatolian, plaintive setting for songs about hashish and swag, to a Greek, jaunty setting for songs about hashish and swag.
Frangosyriani marks the beginning of the end of the tradition. Wikipedia says it was written in ’35, but it already sounds like it was written in ’36, when the Metaxas dictatorship censored both the lyrics and—more lastingly—the scales of rebetiko. It’s just a list of scenic locations in Syros where Markos would take his fellow Catholic girlfriend. Its music lacks the bite of what made Markos great.
But this is his lasting legacy, a tune that gets everyone swaying, a tune suffused with elegance and romance—and jauntiness.
If Markos was master of the Peiraeus blues, Tsitsanis was master of what came next: the transformation of rebetiko into a genre palatable to the masses, cleaned up, and with virtuoso flourishes.
Cloudy Sunday is the song that, at least when I was young, every Greek knew by heart, and was guaranteed to bring a tear to every Greek’s eye. It has a dignified, stately melancholy to it, a proud swelling of the heart.
Tsitsanis let it be understood that the song was written in 1942, while Athens all around him was starving. That was no doubt a big part of why the song became so well loved. The prevalent theory is that the lyrics were written in 1946 by a friend of his, because his soccer team had lost that Sunday.
In truth, that doesn’t diminish the song a bit. The song stands just fine on its own. Here’s the definitive performance by the great Stelios Kazantzidis.
Kazantzidis also wrote songs, and this is perhaps one of his greatest.
Kazantzidis is perhaps an acquired taste. In my youth, I dismissed him as boorish, mawkish, too Oriental. I matured, I learned there’s a place for that in life. I learned that pain in life deserves wallowing in music. And after I took part in a drunken singalong to this, I could never dismiss him again.
I’m living my last night tonight. And those who have embittered me so, now that I am leaving life behind, I forgive them all.
Everything is but a lie, a breath, a sigh. Like a flower, a hand will cut us one dawn.
Where I am going, tears and pain have no purchase. Suffering and sorrow will stay behind in life, and I will leave alone.
Life has two doors: I opened one and went in. I took a stroll one morning, and by the time sunset came I left by the other.
Theodorakis is a defining figure in Greek music and Greek politics; his star has been tarnished, but he expressed a generation, and that does not change, even if the generation has become disillusioned since.
This was likely his greatest song, where he transformed the bouzouki song into a a not-so traditional lament for the dead. The song was one of many Theodorakis used in his play on the reccent Greek Civil War—each and every one a hit.
And none more transcendental in its keening than this.
Yes, there’s wild applause whenever the altered lyrics alluding to the Athens Polytechnic uprising are sung (“Friday the Killer’s night”). That kept happening throughout the 70s.
As an epigrammatic means of defining appropriate civility in exchanges on Quora: it is a very good ideal, and one that is lacking in many online fora. My libertarian heart has chafed against it, but I have appreciated how it has helped me off the ledge in interactions with other users on more than one occasion.
There are areas for interpretation which cloud it, of course. A forum that uses the “Be Nice” to ban sarcasm or swearing is not a forum I have much time for. The way it is used to suppress discussion of moderation actions is one I have consistently resented as specious. And any extension of BNBR to public figures, I regard as illegitimate.
But as an ideal for one-on-one interaction, yes, it is a good thing.
Its implementation, on the other hand, is as flawed as you’d expect. No transparency, rulings that leave you scratching your head, inconsistencies, vulnerability to vendettas.