The dreams of the warriors

So here's a weird example of how my mind works.

Last evening I drove out to downtown Beaverton and watched the 2009 anime film "Summer Wars". It was great popcorn, gorgeously animated in the best anime style, and hit all the mange/anime-lover (i.e. me...) buttons; high school romance/angst, family drama, high-tech danger, goofy secondary characters, samurai, squid, baseball. It's fun.

After the show I went and looked it up and was unsurprised that the director was the same person who did "Belle", the gorgeous anime version of Beauty and the Beast that my daughter took us too several years ago. 

 

Well done, Hosoda-san.

 

Anyway, as I was reading I was a bit bugged by the title.

 

Yes, it's about a war (well, "cyber-war") and it takes place over two days in summer, so, "summer wars", fine. 

 

But.

 

The Japanese title is "サマーウォーズ in katakana, which is "Hepburnized" in the Wiki as "Samā Wōzu".

 

Okay, now; because I'm me (and do military history and martial sports that have Japanese connections) I'm very familiar with the Japanese word for "war".

 

And it's not "Wozu", it's 戦争, "Sensō". 

 

I tried looking for some sort of katakana or hirigana versions that could be translated as "wozu". 

 

Nope.

 

Then I plugged the katakana title directly into romaji, and Dr. Google gave me this: "Samāu~ōzu".  

 

That's also not "war"; indeed, try and look up "ozu" and all you you get is either a place name or a personal/family name. All the other links went directly back to the film, suggesting that the katakana don't mean "summer wars" in the general sense of "wars fought during the summer" but specifically "the movie "Summer Wars".

 

So now I'm baffled; is the title some sort of phonetic "English"? "Summer" ("sama") "Wars" ("wozu") invented just for the flick? If so...why? Why not just call it 夏戦争; "Natsu Sensō", "Summer War(s)"? Is there some particular reason or meaning for naming it the way they did?

 

I'm now hooked and I want to know.

 

Doesn't make the flick any less fun; indeed, now I want to know more about the movie. 

 

And that's so me. 

 

Sad, but there it is.

 

Out of the mouths

My kid used the word "worshed" the other day and I realized that I have several peculiar verbal tics. That's one of them.

For the English word to describe what you do with dirty clothes I say "Did you put your socks in the worsh?"

I don't know why I do this. I don't call folding money "corsh" or a mixture of meat and potatoes "horsh". It's just how I pronounce the word wash, and I don't remember why the hell I do it.

Now that I have had to actually think about it I'm embarassed by it and have consciously tried to amend my speech to the correct pronunciation, "wash".

Now that I think of it, I realize that I've picked up a couple of these odd verbal tics.

I use the word "arsed" in the sense of "worked up over" or "bothered to"; "It isn't something I got arsed enough about to get done...". This is a Britishism, and I suspect I picked it up from listening/reading about English soccer.

When I'm exasperated about something I will often say "Jesus wept!" as a way of saying "What a ridiculous fuck-up!" I do know wherte I got this; from reading that the two words are the shortest verse in the Bible. I liked that, and somehow it found its way into my speech.

If someone tells me something obvious, or something that I have already agreed to, I will often reply "There you go." (or if in rough company "There you fucking go."). This was my old drill sergeant SSG Layne's reaction to anything he agreed with (spoken, by the way, in his very distinctive Caribbean accent with the accent on the first word: "Dere you fokkin' go!") and it has stuck with me.

When I was little we had a cat named "Possum", and ever since all cats (when speaking to the cat) are "possum", as in "Who's da sweet fluffly li'l possum?" (said in babytalk voice while rubbing cat's chin).

The cats don't seem to care one way or the other but, then, cats should all be named whatever the sound of a can of cat food opening sounds like.

So. Those are my verbal tics, oddities, and peculiarities. I have no idea why this suddenly occurred to me, but there it is. Embarrassing, perhaps, but better than running around a comic convention in nekomimi ears, so there's that.

Do you have any of these odd little verbal tics, and, if so, what are they?

Dining In

Sex dreams and now this. Lechery, lechery, wars and lechery. Nothing else holds fashion, I kid you not...

Anyway.

To begin with, my parents were of the school of parenting that believed that innocence was bliss.

I think I didn't even know that there were expressions inadmissible in polite company until high school at the earliest. Even after that my profanity was not convincing until the U.S. Army taught me to swear and then some.

I now have some considerable experience with the subject and have become through experience a thorough believer in the notion that the more you know - and, in many cases, the sooner - the wiser and more judicious you will be in your selection and employment of the rougher forms of the English language.

Because swearing and cursing, like any other form of speech, have a form and a style and an elegance to them when done correctly. And it is well for a person to do things, any thing, with form, style, and elegance.

Even invective.

But.

There is also an element of discretion involved.

If you are ignorant of the language then oftimes you will be oblivious when it is used, or misused, by others. It has always seemed to me that having someone on staff with a reasonably filthy mind is essential to avoiding errors such as this one:

Wanna bet Cathy got a whole bunch of smartass remarks after that header appeared on her column? Especially with the little smirky-face picture above it? And all because nobody on the "Examiner"'s editorial staff looked at that and chuckled "Eat out Catherine Cleary, hunh? I'll bet..." Derp.

I'm not sayin' you have to be filthy.

But it doesn't hurt to know about filthy. All's I'm saying.

(h/t to Nancy Nall for this little gem)

Loquiris Latinae?

Ubi bene, ibi patria (~Pacuvius: "Where one is happy, there is one's homeland.")

I just went to the edit page of New Blogger^TM to tweak a post and noticed that my last titles are in Latin, or at least dog-Latin, which is all I can really manage in that speech.

Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appelant (~Tacitus: "They made a solitude (wasteland) and called it peace.")

When I was a mere slip of a college lad, all shining morning face and that, I took a course in the language from a rabbi (seriously!) who had an odd sort of rabbinical humor and was probably a fairly good instructor but who for all his gifts couldn't overcome my sloth and inattention. Plus the irregular verbs were almost as bad as German.

Cito enim arescit lacrima, praesertim in alienis malis (~ Cicero: "Tears dry quickly, especially when they are for others' misfortunes.")

But I did pick up a lifelong fondness for little Latin tags, both for the combination of brevity and meaning as much as for the delight in showing off my erudition.

Aliena nobis, nostra plus aliis placent (~ Publilius Syrus: "We like other people's (things) the best; others like ours.")

One of my favorite military writers, Robert Frezza, created a fictional colonial infantry battalion (of a supposed Japanese interstellar empire, of all things...) whose commander liked to style his officers as possessing "Roman virtue and samurai discipline", and for effect proceeded to scour all literature for the more unusual and interesting of them.

I've always suspected that he invented the very best, but that's part of the fun - since hardly anyone speaks it, Latin is the perfect tool for creating hoary wisdom out of modern cloth.

Nemo ante mortem beatus (~ Ovid: "Call no one happy before his death.")

My enduring problem is that my Latin grammar is, well, about as good as you'd expect for someone who flunked sophomore year Latin. So I tend to mangle conjugations and tenses.

Vae victis! (~Livy: "Woe to the conquered!")

The other thing is, of course, that not many other people share my enthusiasm, so, where once I might have been reading some news item about the doings of, say, Dick Cheney, and made the comment...

Vestigia terrent (~Horatius: "The footprints frighten me.")

...and the listener versed in the same tradition would have immediately understood that in two words I was referring to the story about the fox commenting on the implications of seeing footprints leading to but not from the lion's den and, thus, observing that the doings of the Dark Lord of the Sith revealed him as an unprincipled man and a danger to our Republic, the same is not true today.

So, sadly, I'm afraid all my fondness for these little tags does is, again, to reveal my own talent for elliptical self-amusement, self-satisfaction, and a despicable fondness for useless knowledge. And after all these years, too. Sigh. Our skies may change but not ourselves.

But! I refuse to repine! After all,

Non scholae sed vitae discimus (~Seneca: "We do not learn for school, but for life.")

Ah, well. Acta est fabula. Plaudite!