Lights, cameras--well, just lights, really.

[muckefuck]

monshu brought home twinkly white lights tonight so I spent a chunk of time entwining them in the branches of the Norfolk. I felt like a madman who tortures trees--a feeling not helped by the gardener's recommendation that we leave the lights off as much as possible since electrical current whacks plants out (in much the same way that I imagine it would us under similar circumstances). It's a good thing trees lack sentience. I'm not sure what they would make of our annual customs. Would my behaviour be judged more or less sick than that of some who just kills one of them and displays the ornamented corpse? No ornaments yet, incidentally. Is there anything sadder at Christmastime than decorating by yourself?

With one thing and another, I'm running a day behind in my ongoing series of fireplace-related vocabulary posts. I finally gave up on trying to find the correct Irish for "damper" and used maolaire even though this is "damper" in the sense of "something that muffles or deadens" (e.g. maolaire turrainge "shock absorber"). My next language, Chinese, is probably going to be even more fun because I don't think open fireplaces are traditional anywhere in China. At least I have a partially translated Wikipedia article to work from, which is more than I have for Korean.

ETA: Chinese completed! It went quicker than expected due to promiscuous Googling.

Comments

[fainic-thu-fein.livejournal.com]

I would suggest 'comhla simléir' for 'damper', if it's any help. Not being one to have ever had a fireplace, I don't know most of these terms in English, let alone Irish, but when I wiki'd 'damper' I immediately thought, "that's a comhla!"

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

My wife and my son desperately want Christmas fairy light strings all over our front yard, but neither one wants to take up the job of installing them - apparently that's "man's work." I have no position on fairy lights: they seem like artifacts from another world to me. My wife says white, my son wants all the colours he can name. Ideally they'd like the big tree covered from crown to ground, but they're not willing to consider how this can be achieved with a ladder that only reaches halfway up.

Also, we won't be here for Christmas, so this is for appreciating during the 3 weeks of unbelievable panic just before the holidays, in which everyone, including me, my wife's company and my son's school are trying to cram in everything they failed to do in the other 11 months of the year.

...I'm feeling a certain solidarity for the tree, right now. I think I'm going to deploy your torture argument.