Completely: or, the naming of things
Feb. 15th, 2013 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceIt's half-nine here, as we drag the weary chain of time around the planet; and I'm keeping a window open on NASA's live stream from JPL of the asteroid flyby, just because I can.
Not the meteorite that hit the Urals earlier today, no: that was just a cosmic coincidence, of the kind that makes me very happy. This is Asteroid 2012 DA14 - which I have just paused to check, because I may have been reading about it all morning but none the less. Have these people never heard of marketing? Comet Kohoutek was a bit of a wash, but I still remember the name forty years on. 2012 DA14, not so much...
On the other hand, zoophagy. Fabulous word, means what you think it means, and like most things it has an extreme that you can go to if you choose. I was musing this morning on completism and collecting, that human urge to have it all. I do have my own instantiation, expressed inter alia by my fondness for reading series, which leads to that inevitable anxious spasm when I come to the end. Last night I finished the run of Seanan McGuire's October Daye books, which I have been thoroughly enjoying; this morning as I brewed the coffee I was fretting over what to read now.
Fortunately, it was not a long fret. There areheroisms books all around us; and pretty much since I've known her Karen has been singing her pleasure at Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce series. So I picked up The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and yes, that'll do nicely. I was not far into it before I was reminded that William Buckland ate the mummified heart of Louis XIV - and there you go. Zoophagy and completism, the urge to have eaten everything that lives, however disgusting. I don't - quite - have that; I don't believe I'd eat the mummified heart of a French monarch, just because I never had. But if it's on a menu, I pretty much want to eat it, yes. (Don't ask me about cat. I never want to find myself in a restaurant that offers cat. Dog I would eat without a second thought, but... Yeah. Let's not go there. Ever.)
In repeated news, asteroid go whee!
Not the meteorite that hit the Urals earlier today, no: that was just a cosmic coincidence, of the kind that makes me very happy. This is Asteroid 2012 DA14 - which I have just paused to check, because I may have been reading about it all morning but none the less. Have these people never heard of marketing? Comet Kohoutek was a bit of a wash, but I still remember the name forty years on. 2012 DA14, not so much...
On the other hand, zoophagy. Fabulous word, means what you think it means, and like most things it has an extreme that you can go to if you choose. I was musing this morning on completism and collecting, that human urge to have it all. I do have my own instantiation, expressed inter alia by my fondness for reading series, which leads to that inevitable anxious spasm when I come to the end. Last night I finished the run of Seanan McGuire's October Daye books, which I have been thoroughly enjoying; this morning as I brewed the coffee I was fretting over what to read now.
Fortunately, it was not a long fret. There are
In repeated news, asteroid go whee!