Random musings
Sep. 4th, 2009 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matthias_waveConcerning transportation, cursing, and a play by Tom Stoppard called Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth.
I've been thinking that I'll have to begin swearing in Dogg on a regular basis. This will require some explanation.
Dogg is a language Stoppard invented for the play (two plays, but they really only work when performed together) I mentioned above. It's based on a paradox posed by Wittgenstein concerning language, the net result being that every word in Dogg is the same as a word in English, but they all have different meanings. For instance, "useless" is a polite greeting along the lines of "Good day," "git" means "sir," and "Afternoon, squire!" means "Get stuffed, you bastard!" And "bicycles" is a curse. It's hard to tell just what it means, since it's among the few words not translated in the script, but given that "tricycle" means "hellhound" it's probably a safe bet that it refers to divine punishment or the designated location thereof.
This brings me to why I should start swearing in Dogg. The college I'm attending has a very large campus with relatively little space to park, so naturally many students ride bikes to get around. The problem is that the bike paths often run adjacent to, cross, or in some cases are one and the same as the sidewalks, and the cyclists don't often pay attention to pedestrians.
While considering this, though, I had another thought. Just because we can guess at what "bicycles" means doesn't mean we have to be right. We don't even have to know what it means to use it; really, anything could be a swearword if said with the proper vehemence behind it. If anyone's read Thief of Time, you could probably tell that the Auditors used "organs" as a curse even without seeing the thought process behind it. "Oranges" could be a curse. So, for that matter, could "anything."
... and now I have no idea how to wrap this up. Oh, well. TL;DR version: Tom Stoppard is awesome, I hate bicycles, and just about anything could be a swearword.
I've been thinking that I'll have to begin swearing in Dogg on a regular basis. This will require some explanation.
Dogg is a language Stoppard invented for the play (two plays, but they really only work when performed together) I mentioned above. It's based on a paradox posed by Wittgenstein concerning language, the net result being that every word in Dogg is the same as a word in English, but they all have different meanings. For instance, "useless" is a polite greeting along the lines of "Good day," "git" means "sir," and "Afternoon, squire!" means "Get stuffed, you bastard!" And "bicycles" is a curse. It's hard to tell just what it means, since it's among the few words not translated in the script, but given that "tricycle" means "hellhound" it's probably a safe bet that it refers to divine punishment or the designated location thereof.
This brings me to why I should start swearing in Dogg. The college I'm attending has a very large campus with relatively little space to park, so naturally many students ride bikes to get around. The problem is that the bike paths often run adjacent to, cross, or in some cases are one and the same as the sidewalks, and the cyclists don't often pay attention to pedestrians.
While considering this, though, I had another thought. Just because we can guess at what "bicycles" means doesn't mean we have to be right. We don't even have to know what it means to use it; really, anything could be a swearword if said with the proper vehemence behind it. If anyone's read Thief of Time, you could probably tell that the Auditors used "organs" as a curse even without seeing the thought process behind it. "Oranges" could be a curse. So, for that matter, could "anything."
... and now I have no idea how to wrap this up. Oh, well. TL;DR version: Tom Stoppard is awesome, I hate bicycles, and just about anything could be a swearword.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-10 11:37 am (UTC)The bigger pain in the butt are the pedestrians who won't get out of the way!!!
LOL sorry, I had to.
Geraniums!!!
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Date: 2009-09-10 01:11 pm (UTC)