Wordmongery run amok!

During a conversation in the staff lounge just now, Lakshmi began a statement to my predecessor in this position, who now has an IT job with the organisation, "You digital people..." I immediately began mocking her, saying, "Yeah, you Digitalians!" This launched a discusions of Digitalian stereotypes and lifeways.

Of course, we soon felt in need of a corresponding term for non-Digitalians, so I proposed "Analogicians." That Digitalian pinhead objected, saying that, since we still used computers, "analog" was inappropriate. Maybe we should be called "Digitizicians"? I objected, "I prefer Digitarian!" Then someone suggested "Binarian", and this degenerated into a debate over whether Binarians originated in the Binary Islands or the city of Binares. (I did point out that Binares and its environments were settled by Binaryans in the distant past.)

I blame the free supplies of Cherry 7Up.

Much ado about poo

When I read rollick's review in this week's Onion of the infamous Doggy poo, something struck me as not quite right. I don't blame her, of course, since the mangled romanisation of the author's name seems to be the fault of the issuers of the video, but "Jung-seang" struck me as simply bizarre. I immediately set out to find the proper form.

Half-an-hour (and several disgusting scat photos later--thank you, global purveyors of Internet smut! I shall not soon forget this, though lord knows I'd love to!), I'd nailed it: Kwen Cengsayng (in Yale) or Kwŏn Chŏngsaeng (McCune-Reischauer). The original Korean title is Kangacittong and can be found in e-book form here. I may, at some point, peruse it to see if it is, in fact, as lugubrious in the original Korean as rollick accuses it of being in English translation. Kids' books are about my level anyway, as far as reading the language goes. The fact that another of his works is Hanunim uy nwunmul or "God's tears" (literally, "Heaven-Lord 's eye-water") does not bode well.

Oh, and of special interest to a select few of you, the Japanese translation of the book in entitled Koinu no unchi. Since koinu is "puppy" and no is the possessive particle, unchi can really only mean one thing. Jim Breen's excellent online Japanese dictionary confirms this. (Feel free to inform the list of this startling discovery, keyne!)