desperance (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
desperance) wrote2012-12-03 02:56 am
desperance) wrote2012-12-03 02:56 am
Collectivity
I just had occasion to look up the collective noun for vultures. Turns out there's a whole slew of them (what's the collective noun for a group of collective nouns?): wake, committee, venue, kettle or volt, depending whether they're flying or eating or just hangin' out in trees.
I approve of these fine distinctions. Tragically, none of the words available had the resonance I was hoping for, so I dumped the sentence that was half-formed in my head. Happily, though, the Wiki entry also mentioned the rather lazy habit of calling any vulture a geier, which is ornithologically unsound but actually I think quite evocative; so as so often happens, I went looking for one thing and walked away with something else. Serendipity is happenstance dressed up. (And we are sure always to call it research, are we not?)
In other news, I am making a cheapjack version of oxtail marmalade, just to see if I think it might be worth the fancy one. You will be shocked, shocked to learn that I anticipate the answer "Yes". I am in fact committing the cardinal error of theorising ahead of my data. Still, I will be sure always to call it research, so my back's covered.
This is the kind of cooking that I love: wandering through to the kitchen over the course of a long afternoon, chopping and stirring and drifting away again, under no pressure to produce anything on time or even at all. It's cooking for the process, not to put a meal on the table. Murmur it softly, but sometimes that's the kind of writing I prefer, too: with no thought for publication or readership, just working to get it right. It's why I have things around that I've been working on for a decade and never shown the light of day.
I approve of these fine distinctions. Tragically, none of the words available had the resonance I was hoping for, so I dumped the sentence that was half-formed in my head. Happily, though, the Wiki entry also mentioned the rather lazy habit of calling any vulture a geier, which is ornithologically unsound but actually I think quite evocative; so as so often happens, I went looking for one thing and walked away with something else. Serendipity is happenstance dressed up. (And we are sure always to call it research, are we not?)
In other news, I am making a cheapjack version of oxtail marmalade, just to see if I think it might be worth the fancy one. You will be shocked, shocked to learn that I anticipate the answer "Yes". I am in fact committing the cardinal error of theorising ahead of my data. Still, I will be sure always to call it research, so my back's covered.
This is the kind of cooking that I love: wandering through to the kitchen over the course of a long afternoon, chopping and stirring and drifting away again, under no pressure to produce anything on time or even at all. It's cooking for the process, not to put a meal on the table. Murmur it softly, but sometimes that's the kind of writing I prefer, too: with no thought for publication or readership, just working to get it right. It's why I have things around that I've been working on for a decade and never shown the light of day.