Cheesecake from the Beeb

Why risk discovery of your soft-porn viewing habits at work when you can just browse the BBC News website?

WOOF!

In other BBC News, Japanese manga ruled obscene. No! (Thanks, arkanjil.)

Treasure hunt

Let me start by stating the blatantly obvious:

The best thing about the Internet is that the barriers to entry are so low that you have people posting about everything. The bad thing about the Internet is that the barriers to entry are so low that many people who post do so very badly.

Yesterday, I had a straightforward question about a rather recherché subject: What is the past participle of the Gothic verb latjan? As it turns out, an online utility exists to answer precisely that question.

It wasn't working yesterday and still isn't today.

No matter, some American professor is putting up free Gothic lessons! Whoo-hoo!

But there's no table of contents (just "Lesson 1", "Lesson 2", etc.) or index and it turns out that the lesson I need hasn't been webified yet.

Still, there are other choices! Like this site that everyone points to--

--which is in itty-bitty eyestrain type and omits the crucial bits of information I need!

Other people who are scanning in classic reference grammars also haven't gotten to the part on participles yet. One guy has a site on what Gothic might look like had it survived into the modern age. Very entertaining, but not what I'm seeking right now.

In the end, I was cast back on old-fashioned papery things. Ten minutes in the stacks, and my question was answered: latida. Knowing that, what did I do next? Get dinner!

Today on G.I.C.: Passive-aggressive South Siders!

So we had this guy come in and ask where some meeting organised by Reference for members of the Civil Engineering Dept. on distance learning was. He was graying, so I called him "sir" and he snapped, "Don't call me that, I'll think you're talking to my father." I asked if he had called the department and he said he'd left a message for his father there telling him he'd meet him here. All he knew about the meeting was the time and that it was in this building somewhere. That wasn't much to go on, but looked at the Meeting Maker entries anyway and didn't see anything likely. I suggested that, since Reference was organising it, he talk to them. "I didn't say 'Reference'", he said, "you said 'Reference'." Then I suggested that, since it was distance learning, that he go to the East Wing. I started to explain to him how to get there and he replied, "I went here for four years, I know the East Wing." He didn't really want to leave, he said, since he thought his father might come by at any moment. I suggested again that he might want to call the department and he shrugged it off. He said, "So my best bet is to go to Reference and if they don't know then the East Wing." Yep. "How do I get to the East Wing?"

Finally, he shambled off to Reference. My co-worker leaned over and said, "I was about to leave, go to Circulation, and call this number." He confirmed that the guy had said "Reference" and that he knew how to get to the east wing.

When I last spotted the guy, he had found his father--who also didn't know where to go--and they were setting off in a direction. I heard the father ask, "Did you ask how to get there?" and him reply, "I cut her off." as they moved out of earshot.

Title of the Day

Meatphysics by Jake Chapman. ([s.l.], 2003)

From the cover blurb:

Vagrantly purposeless while attempting to exceed the limits of strict utility, MEATPHYSICS proposes a pessimistic model of apathetic repetition--'a disease within a disease'; an aetiological experiment conducted by the death drive, following the pathic route mapped by Freud in his declaration that 'the aim of all life is death'.

Still think you might want to read it? Know that significant portions of the text are carats, blocks, and other entries from all over the Character Map.