Futile Horn

04.12.2005 - 11:41 pm (here's to the pole vaulting goddess)

Since I’ve last updated this, I’ve written a few entries and deleted them, not to hide anything I’ve had to say, but because they were so utterly banal. I get the feeling it’s going to be the same for this one, but I can’t sleep so…

According to dictionary.com, the word “banal” enjoys no consensus as far as pronunciation goes. The most common way rhymes with “canal”, but you can also say it like “anal.” For me, the last syllable rhymes with “doll” which is the least common of the three and, so they tell me, usually British. In any case, all three pronunciations are used by a minority of speakers, ensuring that however you say it, you’ll sound stupid.

For the record, I mispronounce “plebeian” by putting the accent on the first syllable, which I’m pretty sure is how Harvey Pekar’s first wife mispronounces it at the beginning of American Splendor. I’ve no idea how I got in the habit of saying this word improperly, since really the only time I ever hear it is in the song “Cry Me a River” where it’s used to rhyme with enjambed line “though with me and”.

Dictionary.com knows the word “enjambment” but not “enjambed.” The same goes for Word’s spell checker. This is certainly their oversight and not my error, because I saw the word in scholarly use just today.

Speaking of which, I guess I’ll have finished reading the first two books of Ovid’s Metamorphoses by tomorrow (the commentary uses words like “enjambed”). I guess I’ve always thought of this as a long, pointless Roman work snidely befouling centuries of Greek mythic tradition (and maybe it is), but so far it’s been a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The reason I didn’t appreciate poetry in Latin for so long probably has to do with how poorly it translates into English. I guess I didn’t think there was much there worth devoting the effort to. Yet the way Ovid tells basically the same stories over and over again without them getting stale is a pretty good testament to his ability.

I was thinking of putting in a few of my favorite lines here, but I am still getting creepy Latin language hits from Google searches from people who I’m terrified might actually know me.

So now I’ve learned to appreciate Ovid and Horace… I’ve made a few stabs at Virgil, but I’ve tried reading the Aeneid in both English and Latin, and it still remains for me the most profoundly ridiculous piece of Western literature until Boccaccio’s Teseida. Okay, maybe I exaggerate a little. Just a little.

Man, so many books to read. Honestly, I’m a little tired of staring at paper, but I need to read, and there isn’t anything else to do.

I thought this up over a can of vegetarian chili. It’s to the tune of the Cohen/Buckley/Wainwright song, whosever version you like best.

I heard there was a meter rod
That David used, it measured God
But you don’t care to tailor suits, now do you?
You cut the cotton cloth in fourths
And stitched Him up some summer shorts
Into the style they call the Lord’s Bermuda

Hallelujah
The Lord’s Bermuda
Hallelujah
The Lord’s Bermuda

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn