#maneatingbadger

[2r1t]

Raum, Batibat, Azazel, Pythius

raum: do you have a tendency to hoard anything? if so, what?Nope, not really! In college I actually had the least possessions of everyone I knew. I don’t like “stuff”, things that don’t have some reason to be had.

batibat: talk about the worst nightmare you have ever hadTime to pick one… Well. There was one fairly recently where my boyfriend and I were supposed to go to some house party or event together. He showed up significantly late and drunk, then proceeded to get more to drink. (Remember how I had that serious drinking anxiety? Yeah…) Then when I tried to talk to him about it and be like “what is going on”, he laughed at me and ignored me. Then he went next door and did drugs??? Idk I woke up then and was like…not okay. Immediately texted him and was like “help a dream gave me anxiety”. Almost had a panic attack in bed, how fun! It sounds silly now but so many of my issues rolled into one nightmare.

azazel: talk about a time when you were falsely blamed for somethingHmmmmm. I’m really trying to think of a time. This really doesn’t happen often because I’m so open and I stay away from drama haha. Sorry I don’t have a juicy answer for this!

pythius: out of all the lies you have ever told, which is your favorite?OHHHHH what a question!! Very clever.I really don’t lie often, 50/50 for moral reasons and because I absolutely suck at it. My favorite lie happened during my last week at Uniqlo. One of the associates was acting strange, so all day long I’d been joke-accusing her of being high at work. Part 1 of this glorious lie was telling her that we, as a leadership team, decided she would need to submit a urine sample. For some wild reason she believed it??? and like fell to the ground giggling. So after that she was like “why don’t you go pick on [other associate], he was with me last night”. Why not, right? It was great, because he was so confident: “I’m not on drugs. I didn’t do anything last night. I seriously didn’t.” Well, in the middle of our conversation, the assistant manager asked me a question on the walkie. Part 2 of the beautiful lie: I answered him, then turned to the associate and told him, “That was management. When do you get back from break? 12:45? Great, we need to see you in the office at 12:45 to talk about this.” Poor guy nearly peed his pants.Gosh that was extremely fun.

[rook-de-rivas]

maneatingbadger liked your post:if anyting this evening has taught me: prosecco...

dan i see you liking everything, just send me a message on fb already i miss u @maneatingbadger

[strayhopes]

maneatingbadger replied to your post:I just remembered the worst thing so I’ve gotta...

did any of your sins merit a proof? was it considered a badge of honor to get written up on his door?

I think it was more generally directed. I was certainly implicated in the litany of Bible verses which could be interpreted as anti-swearing

[maneatingbadger]

Back from a weekend trip to NYC. 

Uneventful roundtrip, Vamoose remains an efficient and reliable bus company. The bus there had laminate flooring, first time I’ve seen that. 

Brought The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger for the bus. He has officially entered my writer pantheon. Quotes from his (and others’) work will enter my queue at some point. 

Discovered my uncle living in Hoboken has a new cat. Her name is Henata (sp?), Japanese but I forget for what. She’s three months old, the runt of a litter, and adorable beyond all description. Played with her for a solid two hours yesterday. 

First New York bagel successfully acquired and consumed. The guy at the counter asked me three times if I really wanted belly lox, as it was “very salty.” Asians are no stranger to sodium, but he wasn’t wrong, and we had nothing to wash it down with. Oh well, still tasty, but with enough cream cheese on that one bagel for me to spread liberally on seven. 

Central Park is a municipal treasure. DC should level a few blocks of gentrified luxury apartments and create something similar. The Mall doesn’t count, not enough trees. 

Visited @amnhnyc for the first time, their massive titanosaur skeleton cast reinforced my lifelong love of sauropods and defied all efforts at capturing its scale photographically. Will return to say hi to Gomek (incidentally the name of my next cat), last saw him at NatGeo in DC. 

It was nice to catch up with old high-school friends, but their greater professional success relative to mine is a little disquieting. 

After arriving back in Bethesda tonight, we were crossing the street when this small white compact making a left turn across the intersection kept accelerating as it approached our crosswalk, slamming on the brakes to a stop only when I started yelling and waving my arms. It occurred to me then that yelling and waving at an oncoming car (as opposed to diving out of its way) may not have been the safest or most effective means of survival, though I’m unsure we could’ve reacted quickly enough anyway. The driver may also have already noticed us independently of my antics. But I’d been reading The Perfect Storm just minutes before on the bus, and it seemed odd to learn so much about the physiological process of drowning only to get hit by a car. 

[maneatingbadger]

Tagged by @30casterlyrock. 

Will tag 10 people once @worldiary makes that random follower name generator she promised me. 

[maneatingbadger]

Good news: Job should finally start in a month.

Bad news: Might be two months, might be strung out further yet again by the vagaries of government contracting, and I should temp in the meantime which means dressing like a stuffy professional adult in DC summer humidity again and goodbye sleeping in. But money I guess?

[maneatingbadger]

I've been rereading Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo to correct my childhood mistake of reading an abridged version (Lowell Bair, Bantam Classics). 

Since I was visiting family on the west coast when I began, I used a free Kindle version on my phone and laptop until I could transition to a hard copy in DC. Turns out the ebook (anonymous translator, Project Gutenberg) does not match my girlfriend’s paperback (abridged, anonymous translator, Barnes & Noble Classics), throwing my whole enterprise in turmoil. I should’ve realized earlier that, as with any foreign-language writing, various translations exist in various states of abridgment (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Homer, etc.). But it’s astounding that Dumas does not seem to have a single quality definitive translation. The internet is surprisingly spare on the subject (see Wikipedia for the basic translation history) but yielded two findings of note: 

The 1996 Penguin Classics translation by Robin Buss flows more easily for Anglo-American audiences than the anonymous 1846 translation found in Project Gutenberg. 

Avoid abridgments. 

I also came across this BA linguistics thesis from 2013 by Lisa Bao applying Western translation theory to Gutenberg vs. Buss. Interestingly, she finds against the hypothesis of Victorian censorship in the 1846 translation regarding a lesbian relationship. 

Anyway, to itemize what I’ve learned: 

There are wildly different editions with potentially plot-altering translations and abridgments--chapters shuffled or renamed, entire scenes moved or removed. 

The Bantam Classics abridgment by Lowell Bair remains suspect. 

My girlfriend’s B&N Classics abridgment is now suspect. 

My Project Gutenberg edition appears to be one of two arguably definitive extant English translations, the other being the Penguin Classics translation by Robin Buss. 

So, where to from here? I find myself preferring Gutenberg’s rambling and convoluted nineteenth-century sentences over the “more readable” Buss bandwagon, so I’ll probably stick with the former. But I would like to read both for the sake of comprehensive translation, so if I come across Buss for cheap at a used bookstore... 

[maneatingbadger]

Adventures in Cheap Mass Transit, Part [counter broken/exceeded]: BoltBus departing Portland at 6:30 A.M. PST bound for Vancouver, BC with stops in Bellingham and Seattle. Arrival projected under eight hours from now. Will update on butt comfort and customs progress as necessary.