There is nothing amusing about amusia, especially when it is you who happens
to be struck with the malady. My guess is most of us are when it comes to the
inability-to-produce-music part, few where the appreciation part is concerned.
This week's AWAD features more words about ailments and afflictions, words
you don't want to hear from your doctor's mouth.
Friday, July 21st, the word is anhedonia. I wondered if this would show up during this "summer of discontent."
What Academy Award winning (US) film was (according to it's director) supposed to be called anhedonia?
The answer is Woody Allen's "Annie Hall."
Welcome, jmica.
Golly, I was just wondering if I'd get you confused in my
mind with jmike. Then I realized if I sort of Brit-speak your name, "you" could almost be Jamaica! (Yes, I'm weird.)
I don't think a movie or show called anhedonia would do very well! Oh--and I wasn't aware that this is a summer
of discontent--'splain, please?
Why a "summer of discontent," you ask? This week the theme is "words about ailments," last week it was terms from phychotheraphy. This talk of things like trichotillomania is enough to make one want to pull one's hair out!
Fortunately, I cannot do that.
Ah, now I get it. Merci.
And...obscurant, aren't you?
Interesting to have a Dr Culpepper being quoted re 'diminished acuity of taste' (hypogeusia).
>>Dr Culpepper being quoted<<
Um--because pepper of all kinds is strongly flavored?
I bristle at this misplaced charge of obscurantism!
Shakespeare's Richard III speaks of "the winter of our discontent... ." In the 60s (an era which we can both remember) the phrase was switched around and applied to the summers of discontent which were marked by inner-city riots. The only exception to the summers of disconcent was the summer of '67 --the summer of the Peace and Love in San Francisco. The next summer Robert Kennedy was gunned down, Martin Luther King was gunned down, tanks rolled against the Prague Springtime of freedom and the Police rioted in Chicago. In the summer of 2000, Anu Garg has marched a melange of maladies before us: yet another (if minor) summer of discontent.
>I bristle at this misplaced charge of obscurantism!
no need to bristle, your exposition was very welcome, I'm sure. I enjoy literary allusions (how else could I read Umberto Eco??) but I can get frustrated too when they don't register. Folks here are certainly not afraid to ask when we use words that baffle them!
Well, jmica:
FIRST, you say that you cannot pull your hair out.
THEN, you say you "bristle"!
If you cannot pull your hair out, that leads me to think
you don't have any TO pull out--in which case, how then
can you bristle, O obscurant one?
Isn't there something called "Culpepper's Herbal", first compiled by Nicholas Culpepper some time in the 17th century?
Bingley
>Isn't there something called "Culpepper's Herbal", first compiled by Nicholas Culpepper some time in the 17th century?
I thought it was a reference to Dr. Pepper, the soft drink. When I lived in Virginia, I actually knew a physician, psychiatrist type, named F. J. Pepper. Odd duck, like most psychiatrists, and the only bit of humor about him was his insisting that his office hours were from 10 to 2 to 4!
Now, I've heard of Dr. Pepper, but I've never actually seen it. What's it like?
Bingley
> Now, I've heard of Dr. Pepper, but I've never actually seen it. What's it like?<
Argh. How do you describe a taste. It's a dark cola-loking drink,carbonated of course, fairly sweet, with a fruit aftertaste. Not unpleasant, not cloying. For years there have been rumors that it was made from prune juice, but I saw an article recently that said those rumors were nothing more than urban legends.
Reminds me. The Queen mum is celebrating her 100th birthday next week. She and Bob Hope are going to share a prune milkshake and then she's going to spend the rest of the day on the throne.
Good one, Ted! Now all we have to do is to resurrect Bing Crosby and we could cast 'Road to Windsor'.
Bingley,
Dr. Pepper tastes exactly like cherry-flavored cough
medicine. Trust me, you'd rather drink beer.
goes without saying, jackie!
actually, Dr. Pepper (DP) was intended to replicate cherry cola. I like the taste of it a little better than Coke's 'Cherry Coke' product, but then I can't stomach Coke. interestinly, from a marketing standpoint, DP has found a large enough niche that Coke has fielded yet another competitor (at least regionally) called Mr. Pibb, which tastes more like DP than like cherry coke. go figure.
Actually, I've always rather liked the taste of cough medicine. I suspect adding cherry flavouring might ruin it, though.
Bingley
> Actually, I've always rather liked the taste of cough medicine.
Just give me my codeine straight please.
And this one's a true story. Quite a few years ago I met my father for lunch in Washington DC. The waiter asked if we wanted to order a dink; my father said, "You know, I haven't had a martini in years. Set me up with a double." The waiter asked him if he'd like a twist with it. The Old Feller growled, "Dammit, son, if I want lemonade I'll ORDER lemonade."
As it looks like you have all rambled off the main subject onto proprietary brands of cold drinks, I'll throw in my two-pennarth.
All those drinks (Dr Pepper, Cherry Coke) are pretty horrific. We have Irn Bru which is quite disgusting. The advertisement used to say "made in Scotland from girders" (it's bright orange with a touch of rust) and I can believe it.
Have you ever put a coin in a glass of coca-cola? Have you ever thought what it is doing to your teeth? Apparently the diet versions are no better - its the acidity that gets you!
And another thing ... I've never seen the point of those cans of cold tea they sell in America. Cold tea is made very easily, I make it all the time when I leave my cups of tea to get cold and it is quite unpleasant. I can't imagine why anyone would want to put it in a can!!!
>Isn't there something called "Culpepper's Herbal", first compiled by Nicholas Culpepper some time in the 17th century? Bingley
Well Mr Bingley, you are correct. It is so good to meet a true academic in these parts. The sort of person who doesn't get dragged off into discussions about canned drinks! Please pass on my kind regards to Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Originally published in the mid 1600s by Nicholas Culpepper, English Physician, as the Family Herbal. Here are some prints from Culpepper's Complete Herbal (1845) which claims to review the "medicinal and occult qualities" of herbs as they relate to "the cure of all disorders incident to mankind."
http://www.printspast.com/pwap1001030011.htm
>Now, I've heard of Dr. Pepper, but I've never actually seen it. What's it like?
Bingley
Oh no! What is this is I spy! I am not sure that I will ever hold your virtue in such high estimation again. Woe is me!
In reply to:
It is so good to meet a true academic in these parts. The sort of person who doesn't get dragged off into discussions about canned drinks!
Sorry to disappoint you, Jo, but there is a bottled drink here in Indonesia called teh botol which is just what it sounds like, a bottle of cold tea. It seems to be much more popular than the ubiquituous US drink and is the drink of choice for when you want liquid now. Funnily enough it doesn't taste at all like hot tea that's been left to get cold. But it is very sweet, to cater for Indonesian tastes. Most Indonesians think I am odd because I don't take sugar in tea or coffee; they usually have half a dozen teaspoons of sugar in either.
Bingley