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While I am glad that I have health insurance, glad that I can get in for a physical even despite flu season, glad that we are not ignoring the ongoing vertigo, etc., I have to say that fasting before a blood draw and doing vertigo PT were not the best combination. I am now in the seriously nauseated stage of hungry. Anybody with some theories for breakfast, a mid-morning snack, or early lunch? Usually the first thing I eat in a given day is in a very set pattern, so I don't have to make decisions with low blood-sugar. This is, it turns out, a good way to have things arranged in general, and ought not to be underestimated. Seriously. What food is edible today? Inquiring Mrissas want to know.
Nov. 5th, 2009
Elsewhere--under friendslock, so I can't link it--I have been talking to some people about names. And it got me thinking:
If I was writing a story set in 2040, and the story was about a brother named John and a sister named Mary, I would make some very specific assumptions. I would be looking for cues that either the story was set in a neo-traditionalist society of some sort--or at least one that flirted aesthetically with neo-traditionalism--or else that John and Mary were immigrants from an immigrant group that had not come to English-speaking countries much before. (I have to confess that I would also be more attuned to clues that the author was born before about 1965 and was not very good at spotting social change.)
But why is that? So John and Mary are not a particularly common name pair for siblings born in 2009, or in 1979, which is more relevant to stories set in 2009. So what? If the story is set in 1940, John and Mary are totally normal names for an English-speaking sibling pair. 1840, same deal. 1740, same deal. 1640, same deal. 1540, same deal....
So why is my gut so sure that the recent pattern is more relevant than the longer-term one? And is this just me? What, if anything, would you assume about a 2040 or 2140 story featuring Mary and her brother John?
If I was writing a story set in 2040, and the story was about a brother named John and a sister named Mary, I would make some very specific assumptions. I would be looking for cues that either the story was set in a neo-traditionalist society of some sort--or at least one that flirted aesthetically with neo-traditionalism--or else that John and Mary were immigrants from an immigrant group that had not come to English-speaking countries much before. (I have to confess that I would also be more attuned to clues that the author was born before about 1965 and was not very good at spotting social change.)
But why is that? So John and Mary are not a particularly common name pair for siblings born in 2009, or in 1979, which is more relevant to stories set in 2009. So what? If the story is set in 1940, John and Mary are totally normal names for an English-speaking sibling pair. 1840, same deal. 1740, same deal. 1640, same deal. 1540, same deal....
So why is my gut so sure that the recent pattern is more relevant than the longer-term one? And is this just me? What, if anything, would you assume about a 2040 or 2140 story featuring Mary and her brother John?