I won! Wait, I won?
It takes quite a lot of skill to throw a game convincingly. The fact I'm still uncertain over whether the game was actually thrown is testament to my opponent's crafty generosity, if he really did let me win. I suspected something was awry when I narrowed his lead over me while he kept encountering a rash of difficulties with getting the 8-ball into any pocket, until that cathartic moment when, after a few of my own fumbling moments with the 8-ball, I won. Wow. At that moment, as strongly as I sensed victory was being handed to me, a feeling of redemption engulfed any other worries or misgivings I had. For an instant, lingering questions on the legitimacy of the victory evaporated, as did the tension of being down 0-4 games, a tension I grew so accustomed to as to fail to recognize how taut and clenched-fisted it had been keeping me. While the tension seemed permanently subsided, those lingering questions were less willing to go, coalescing into an anvil and thudding atop my head with the pestering realization that I need to think of how to respond beyond showcasing motionless stupor and disbelief.
What's the protocol, I wondered; do I sneak in a teaser about how he let me win? Should I thank him for the gracious gesture? Perhaps he would be offended if I garishly threw noise on a donation he so discretely made. Then again, I did still have to struggle - he certainly wouldn't have fiddled with that 8-ball long enough to embarrass himself. In fact, in addition to the onus of winning being on me, I had to endure the added pressure of potentially losing to someone playing on a five shot handicap. Yes.. yes.. the victory was well earned. Besides, I continued to reason, it would be sacrilegious of me to call his act an act when he expended considerable effort to make his loss credible. I decided to accept his donation; I played the intended part and offered a courteous "good game" with an appreciative smile and a nod. I instantly second-guessed myself, wondering if silently accepting someone's largesse would be considered tawdry, but, thankfully, the comforting return of relief from my opponent's starkly more relaxed look allayed any fear of misstep. He bought the act, or so I believe.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Robert Blackwill, Dictionaries, and p[a-z]*pot(ate|ent)
Despite a gleaming mention in the subject, Robert Blackwill has very little to do with this particular journal entry. In fact, he is merely part of the ambient noise surrounding a slippery word that tantalizingly evaded me. It's quite odd how, when focusing so intently on recollecting one thing, loosely related items emerge into thought and, though unsolicited, they emerge with unbridled clarity and brilliance.
I began explaining to a friend how I hate synonyms and prefer words which carry a larger concept - a purposeful word useful in reducing the amount of time to convey an idea. At that moment, I caught the shadow of a word which would be of prime example; unfortunately, anything more than the shadow eluded me. Lilipote? No, no. What was it? I struggled to think. I knew its definition is the use of a euphemism or understatement for emphasis. I started rattling off to my friend whatever I could think to see if the word would come to me. If two people are berated by an extremely mean officer, one can later use hyperbole to tell the other "that's the worst officer ever in history!" One can also use sarcasm to tell the other "he sure is a nice guy." One can also use a .. er .. lilipote to tell the other "he's not an extremely nice guy." Tragically, I was in the car without internet access. I asked my friend over the phone to google "lilipote" and although I was expecting no results, it was disheartening to be confronted with that reality. It did make for a decent segue into Lilliputs and from there the conversion meandered to other things of interest, such as the movie about a 40yr old male virgin, and away from this mess of grappling with quarter-life senility.
To ensure no one's spirits have risen in thinking this blog will delve into the interesting parts of that conversation, I should make clear that interesting movie-related discussion will never be in any blog I write. Interesting stories can easily be told to people, real-time; it's the uninteresting things which require the occasional straggler who resorts to reading blogs, having tired of hours of solitaire.exe and an additional hour of repeatedly dragging rectangles on her desktop to see icons highlight. Right, now that we've squared that away.. Once I arrived home and the conversation ended, I managed to remember 'litotes' was the word I likely was looking for, and a quick validation on the web vindicated my belated answer. Naturally, just before feeling the burden lifted, I remembered once knowing a word used in a many years old NY Times passage about then ambassador Robert Blackwill being autocratic and sinking his staff into depression by incessantly denigrating them. I knew the word meant something along the lines of being given authority or power by appointment; other than that, I only knew it began with something like "pen" and ended with something like "potate" or "potent" which is sadly insufficient to query a web dictionary, or a printed one for that matter.
Cursed word-based queries, grep would solve this in seconds, I muttered. Wait, yes, grep will solve this in seconds! After some longer than anticipated tar.gz hunting, I seemed to find numerous providers of the 1913 Webster's unabridged English dictionary, which has fortunately been released into public domain. With some tr, sed, and sort -u, I had a nice greppable txt file revealing 'plenipotentiary', carrying as a noun the meaning "a diplomatic agent, such as an ambassador, fully authorized to represent his or her government" and as an adjective "invested with or conferring full powers." Aha, excellent. If only there had been a web service to do this generally! Are you listening, Google? I seriously need a mind-augmenting persistent cache to prevent memory loss. As an aside, as if this whole posting wasn't a giant one, a month and a half ago I managed to utter "Al Grove" in place of "Carl Rove", seamlessly morphing him with a certain former vice president and presidential candidate I'll leave unnamed. Needless to say, that gaffe instantly clinched an unofficial debate victory for my heckling opponent.
I began explaining to a friend how I hate synonyms and prefer words which carry a larger concept - a purposeful word useful in reducing the amount of time to convey an idea. At that moment, I caught the shadow of a word which would be of prime example; unfortunately, anything more than the shadow eluded me. Lilipote? No, no. What was it? I struggled to think. I knew its definition is the use of a euphemism or understatement for emphasis. I started rattling off to my friend whatever I could think to see if the word would come to me. If two people are berated by an extremely mean officer, one can later use hyperbole to tell the other "that's the worst officer ever in history!" One can also use sarcasm to tell the other "he sure is a nice guy." One can also use a .. er .. lilipote to tell the other "he's not an extremely nice guy." Tragically, I was in the car without internet access. I asked my friend over the phone to google "lilipote" and although I was expecting no results, it was disheartening to be confronted with that reality. It did make for a decent segue into Lilliputs and from there the conversion meandered to other things of interest, such as the movie about a 40yr old male virgin, and away from this mess of grappling with quarter-life senility.
To ensure no one's spirits have risen in thinking this blog will delve into the interesting parts of that conversation, I should make clear that interesting movie-related discussion will never be in any blog I write. Interesting stories can easily be told to people, real-time; it's the uninteresting things which require the occasional straggler who resorts to reading blogs, having tired of hours of solitaire.exe and an additional hour of repeatedly dragging rectangles on her desktop to see icons highlight. Right, now that we've squared that away.. Once I arrived home and the conversation ended, I managed to remember 'litotes' was the word I likely was looking for, and a quick validation on the web vindicated my belated answer. Naturally, just before feeling the burden lifted, I remembered once knowing a word used in a many years old NY Times passage about then ambassador Robert Blackwill being autocratic and sinking his staff into depression by incessantly denigrating them. I knew the word meant something along the lines of being given authority or power by appointment; other than that, I only knew it began with something like "pen" and ended with something like "potate" or "potent" which is sadly insufficient to query a web dictionary, or a printed one for that matter.
Cursed word-based queries, grep would solve this in seconds, I muttered. Wait, yes, grep will solve this in seconds! After some longer than anticipated tar.gz hunting, I seemed to find numerous providers of the 1913 Webster's unabridged English dictionary, which has fortunately been released into public domain. With some tr, sed, and sort -u, I had a nice greppable txt file revealing 'plenipotentiary', carrying as a noun the meaning "a diplomatic agent, such as an ambassador, fully authorized to represent his or her government" and as an adjective "invested with or conferring full powers." Aha, excellent. If only there had been a web service to do this generally! Are you listening, Google? I seriously need a mind-augmenting persistent cache to prevent memory loss. As an aside, as if this whole posting wasn't a giant one, a month and a half ago I managed to utter "Al Grove" in place of "Carl Rove", seamlessly morphing him with a certain former vice president and presidential candidate I'll leave unnamed. Needless to say, that gaffe instantly clinched an unofficial debate victory for my heckling opponent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)