Two questions

[mrissa]

1. Timprov and I were watching a very silly TED talk, and I wondered: does anybody but Timprov like 4 a.m.? And if so, do you like it from the staying up side or the getting up side?

2. As we know in Dar Williams’s “The Christians and the Pagans,” “When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said really no, don’t bother.” What does this mean in your idiolect? In mine it’s, um…it’s basically “I don’t really trust you, person I barely know, so get the hell out of my kitchen.” (There are other ways of saying things like, “I think it’s more important for you to get time with your uncle,” or, “I have a system that I’d just prefer to work within.”) Is that what it means in Dar’s home dialect/idiolect? What does it mean in yours?

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Comments

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

1. I don't know if I'd say I like 4 AM. I'm very often awake then (on the staying up side) but it is around then that I start feeling a bit guilty and thinking that I should go to bed (even if I don't for another hour to hour and a half).

2. Never previously having heard of Dar Williams I have no idea what it means in his or her idiolect. In mine it could vary a lot depending on delivery; I default to something like "I appreciate the thought but please don't take the trouble on my account."

Oh, and on an unrelated note: I got the latest Asimov's in the mail recently, and I notice your name is on the cover! Mostly covered up by the subscriber address label, though. (I always peel that label off, it's a compulsive thing.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, we found that particularly funny because my response to having my name on the cover of things is always the Monsters Inc. quote, "I'm on the cover of a magazine!" and of course his face was mostly obscured there too.