29 January 1999: Semantics

Friday morning I woke at 3:30. I dozed on and off, mostly off, until the last possible minute that I could still catch my regular bus. The indignity and frustration galled me as much as the insufficiency of sleep. I planned to stop at the office and pick up Corelli's Mandolin, which I'd left there on Thursday like a ninny, and stop at Starbucks for caffeine and a few chapters before my department's retreat began nearby. It turned out to be a good thing I did go in at my usual time, because it meant I could have coffee with a friend from work whose grandmother just died. She spent last weekend in Sacramento with her and would catch a noon plane thence again. She got to say good-bye. I hope I do.

The Überboss (who liked my hat) and the executive director of all Dot Org (UrBoss) joined us for lunch, which was fun. I really like how democratic a workplace it is and our people are great. Over lunch we got on the subject of school uniforms, and someone who'd gone to a private school described her polyester grass green skirt and her Crayola yellow shirt. Oof. Clearly no respect for people's skin tones. I mentioned that in a parochial school I knew of, the girls had to wear gray skirts and white shirts that was about as defined as a dress code can be without actually being a uniform I could guess, except there were no rules about earrings and make-up so the girls were often quite frighteningly garish at their extremities. Someone said, "Well, everybody has to do something to express their individuality," and someone else quipped, "C'mon--that's what your social security number is for!"

Well, we all thought it was pretty funny.

I mentioned the D.C. city councilmember who has been forced to resign because someone, evidently lacking sufficient vocabulary to understand the word "niggardly," chose instead to believe the word one of racist roots and racist meaning; the brouhaha resulted in his resignation. We debated black magic, to blacklist, and to blackball as terms that have also passed from p.c. usage because of the assumption of racist connotation. I think that black magic is so called because it's dark and unknown like the night and that people are oversensitive about "black-" as a component of other words. "Cotton-pickin'" is a cuss word I grew up hearing, and as soon as I considered its origins, maybe when I read a Scholastic Books biography of Harriet Tubman, I knew not to use it. That is clearly of racist origin. And I respect even what I consider oversensitivity and don't use compound words with "black" in them. But "niggardly"--oooh, I just cringe. Merriam-Webster's 10th Collegiate lists two separate words: "niggard" and "-ly" (Middle English word of Scandinavian origin) and the next word alphabetically which I hesitate to name explicitly even in an orthographic discussion. The two have nothing to do with each other. That someone either misheard him or misunderstood him is one thing; that instead of understanding and explanation only a resignation could satisfy reactionaries disgusts me.

Later the director mentioned an organization that wanted to found a group that they initially named the Center of Whatever. They had to take "Center" out of the name because the point of the group was decentralization, or something. I murmured an aside to my boss: "The word 'center' has been blacklisted."

It was funny in context but I promise I'll never use that word again.

Afterward, I stopped by the office before the next bus to call RDC. It was after 5:00 on a Friday and a few Dot Org women were spread out in the conference room with their scrapbooking stuff. I can't understand cutting up photographic prints--surely that's what Photoshop is for--but their tools! their pens! their papers! I was entranced. I can see looming in me a potentially insatiable appetite for acquiring, owning, delighting in, but not actually using, all of this neato stuff. Not just right-angle pinking shears but wavy shears and cornering shears and little tools to round the corners of photographs--which amused me, because isn't that how photographs used to be commercially printed, in rounded rectangles? (that's twice in three entries; I'll stop proselytizing Macintosh for now) They had stickers, too, which I can't see buying--what about making your own artwork? Anyway, what fun. I could immerse myself in bits and pieces as Mona did in her Christmas wrapping. I will restrain myself more than Bea, though. She brought all her stuff in a be-wheeled suitcase.

While I was there, someone else entered. Bea said, "Oh, you must be Dee. This is Jae and this is Ess and this is Lisa--" "We've met," I grinned. She added, "I'm supposed to be her exercise partner, but I haven't been a very good one so far."

"Oh, but now you can be. The Martha Stewart of step aerobics isn't teaching Thursday nights anymore." Ess asked, "Martha Stewart?" and I was off, doing my wonderful impression of the Worst Step Aerobics Instructor Ever. She didn't like to call out instructions so we were supposed to watch her, which of course throws off rhythm and is difficult in a crowded classroom, especially since she insisted on arranging the room diagonally, with her in the corner. To indicate we were supposed to watch her, she would wave her two-fingers-pointing hand at her own two eyes. She looked like one of those workers at an airport who guides planes with those glowstick things. She couldn't count, she didn't plan, she paused to ruminate upon what to do next, letting our heart rates drop; overall, I finished, "She bites big rocks." This might have gone over better if Jae had ever heard before the phrase "She bites" to mean "She sucks," which means, roughly, "She's the worst step aerobics instructor ever." Or if I had sufficient imagination and vocabulary to invent a less slangy insult.

I thought I was too beat to go out but after absolutions and ablutions I felt better, so RDC and I went out for a casual supper at Macaroni Grill. There was a 30 minute wait, so I took up the vibrating pager that would call us back to the host's station and we went exploring at Bloodbath and Beyond. Our new place will have two bathrooms, which I consider an unnecessary if extremely pleasurable luxury, and one will be Mine and the other will be His and Mine is going to have candles and violet geegaws, or so I thought until I saw an Ernest Shephard (© Disney, malheuresment) shower curtain. It would go with my Owl hand soap and Tigger bubblebath and Pooh shampoo.

Back in the restaurant bar, I told RDC a few of the highlights of the day, interrupting myself to sing-n-sway "Bring on the night, I couldn't stand another hour of daylight," and leave him wondering what the Police had to do with my story. "It's the song playing right now--in the bar, not in my head." Nonlinear storytelling, indeed. So I continued with my tales of semantics and scrapbooks and Corelli's Mandolin. My exuberance about this book has already inspired in him a new exclamation: "Minced mice!" which is almost as funny as swearing in foreign vegetables.

Macaroni Grill covers its tablecloths in butcher's paper and provides crayons, which I appreciate. I drew the new apartment layout and asked what he thought should go where, and he contemplated the squares before him and said something in that chess code of Queen this to whatever that. So I drew a grid of 64 squares and that's when we discovered that what I call castles, he calls rooks. I'd like to know the origins of the two names, whether the distinction is regional or class based or what. Also I got to write out all the names of my book's characters and draw a mandolin.

Tomorrow we'll go to the Denver Art Museum to see an exhibit of 600 years of British paintings, apparently all owned by one private collector. Sometime soon there'll be an Impressionist exhibit. The DAM's strength has been its native and three-dimensional art, but I'm pleased to see it get other, traditional shows. My body's not combobulated enough to ski so we'll stay in the city, and lock ourselves up and put up barricades and otherwise try to deny that s-word thing. I won't be able to ignore it at work, which is seven storeys above where a parade will happen, if anyone thinks there's a need for one. Such an event will disrupt buslines, probably, and empty the office; so I might ask for the afternoon off.

RDC suggested watching the game so we could see the new Macintosh commercial, a sequel to the "1984" one. I told he could deal with a 24-hour wait and download it with everybody else. He lies awake at night thinking of reasonable suggestions that will make my eyes bug out.