New Homes and Starving Cyborgs

[felis_ultharus]

Life

Well, I wasn't going to make the announcement until we got it, but we've got it so here it is: we're moving. To Verdun. We're leaving our brick 1980s cube under the grey concrete highway for an apartment in a nice old building half a block from a river.

The rent is a bit more, and the furniture will have to be hauled up a flight of rickety stairs but I'm going to be glad to move. I think we've both come to loathe this place, and Matt's best efforts to make it anything but hideous have failed.

We shall also be near-neighbours with foi_nefaste, maidenoffirisa, Matt R. (retrogamerbear's brother), and a few others we know. The shops are nicer, the area has more character, and just the feeling there is better.

For the Vacouverites, it a bit like going from Main and Hastings to Kitsilano or Commercial Drive.

For scottevil, for his love of the word

I came across the name of a Medieval theologian today: Joannes Jejunator. It apparently means John the Faster (faster as in fasting). It shares a common etymology with "jejune," however -- the Latin word jejunus, "empty."

Doesn't the Jejunator sound like a cyborg sent from the future, with a leather jacket, wraparound sunglasses, and a lot of weaponry, who's come back in time to make things jejune...?

Comments

[scottevil.livejournal.com]

I'm still using the word, once in every course.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Then you are the Jejunator!

[scottevil.livejournal.com]

Definitely. But do we pronounce it jejunator or jejunator?

No, really, I used it deliberately last week when I did my English placement test (not the University Writing Test). I was under the impression that I'd be forced to take a composition course -- as in, a course to learn how to write properly and how to prepare an essay -- and was all snobby-annoyed at the idea. So I threw 'jejune' into the little essay on the test, as a subliminal hint that I found the whole composition course thing ridiculous.

I was placed in the highest level, ENGL 212. (At least that.) I went to the department and spoke to some nice ladies, and found out that the composition courses aren't requirements after all (the calendar sure makes them look required), but recommendations. Glad I sorted that out, because it would have been an incredible waste of time and money and patience.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

They never inflicted that on me, except when I did jounralism. A basic English grammar/spelling/comprehension exam was part of my way into journalism, and the blocks of text for the reading part were hilariously out of date -- all this stuff about the glory of the British Empire as it was invading India.

I couldn't believe they were still using stuff like that.

I don't know about Latin emphasis. Most Latin languages put the emphasis on the second-to-last or last syllable, so I'd guess jejunator or jejunator. But as an English borrowing, we could probably shift the emphasis on to the first syllable.