Author Archive
Word 57: Suzerainty
These mutants thrive under a suzerainty of market-driven popular culture which allows adolescent attitudes to creep up on adults, and seep down to children.
suzerainty (n) 1: the position or authority of a suzerain 2: the domain of a suzerain – source: The Times Magazine May 10 2003, p. 7
Logical
In John Clarke’s The Romans and Their Conquests (April 26) he stated that ”what we call normal sex is a creation of our own culture”. Really? If that’s the case, how is it that circa 56AD, the Apostle Paul who live in Rome described the sexual excesses of non-Christians as ”unnatural”.
Well, maybe because ”our own culture” is pretty much based on Christianity, especially the stuff that deals with sexuality? Alas, the writer had meant this only as a rhetoric question and therefore answered it himself:
It is not that ”normal sex” is a creation of our own culture but that it is a creation of God.
I must say I’m a bit disappointed with the Times. This piece of logic and argumentation wouldn’t be out of place on the pages of, say, Karjalan Heili, the free weekly newspaper of my beloved home town Joensuu, but on the pages of the Times… O tempora, O mores!
Get a life #1
Word 56: Exacerbate
Never having studied a play or learnt a method of acting must exacerbate Gambon’s awkwardness with his profession.
exacerbate (v) 1: make worse [syn: worsen, aggravate, exasperate] 2: exasperate or irritate – source: The Sunday Times Magazine May 11 2003, p. 22
Word 55: Donnybrook
Then the meeting of the credentials committee, before the convention itself, turned into a donnybrook.
donnybrook (n) 1: free-for-all, brawl 2: a usually public quarrel or dispute – source: New Yorker 12.5.2003, p. 70
Comical timing
The man next to me laughs all through the movie – can he be imagining the same thing? I think not, but he must be one of those people who have to make their derision or approval loudly known to the rest of the audience. This is especially annoying in foreign films, when people grunt or snort their appreciation of the French with nanoseconds before the subtitles have come up.
I thought that it’s quicker to scan the subtitles than to listen to the dialogue, and therefore I’ve held back my loud acknowledgements until the precise moment of the utterance. Yes, I am an annoying person.