![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Vocab word of the day:
Jul. 1st, 2003 08:23 pmAmitié amoureuse: lit. "amorous friendship". Fairly self-explanatory. Time magazine's exact definition: "a delicious form of intimacy, expressed in exchanges of teasing kisses, tender embraces, intimate conversations and rhapsodic love letters, but not necessarily sexual congress". Scaled back a bit so relates to current age level and not to adults: something that actually exists, but not in our language, therefore proving that our language and culture are completely unrelated to anything people actually need to talk about. Simplified into something to poke at Ella: not necessarily anything out of your trashy romance novels, you silly interfering blonde sheep.
The way our culture deals with love annoys the living hell out of me. Maybe I'm just stupid, that I can't always tell the difference between platonic and non-platonic, or that I think people can be friends and [insert random completely stupid and inadequate word or phrase meaning roughly "people in a romantic relationship of sorts" here] at the same time (although apparently, that second one's not just me, it existed in France at one point). Maybe I'm just naïve that I've always thought that way, and have never seen the point of conventional romance, as it appears to always involve much more crying and whining and angsting and depression and fighting and making random sacrifices and commitments and random bouts of "This isn't working!" *SOB* and guessing instead of talking about things straighforwardly and constantly going "I need more out of this relationship!" and playing with each other's heads than necessary, and definitely *way* more ritual and games than necessary. And it makes for goddamned stupid stories.
Oh, and then we have the vocabulary, which is just GODS-AWFUL and perpetuates the inability to have anything make any sort of sense, because we can't SAY anything that makes any sort of sense. We have a whole bunch of words that also mean other things and you just have to understand it through context, and context fails us half the time. The terms "girlfriend" is just dreadful; it can mean either any friend who is female or a female one is in a romantic relationship with (at least there's some sort of stupid-sounding difference, but a difference nonetheless, between boyfriend and guy friend). Then we have the term "relationship". Any time you have two people who know each other you have some form of relationship; when you have two people who are in a romantic relationship it is still generally referred to only as a "relationship". This results in such strange things as Claudia getting an email wishing to know both what the relationship between two people at the moment is, and then if they wish to have a relationship at all. Apparently, they already have one; there is no way to phrase the second question so it both makes sense and sounds good. Hence the senseless redundancy. *sigh* It's understandable, but still stupid, and not at all the fault of the author.
Then we have the use of the words "like" and "love", which just... gah. Makes no sense whatsoever. Especially when people fall in love (note how we have liking someone, loving someone, falling in love with someone, and no falling in like with someone) with a friend, and then must admit they "like" him/her/it, despite the fact that disliking people and being his/her/its friend don't seem to go together very well. "I like you" and even "I love you" are generally rather cheap sentences, and therefore when they are needed as an Admittance, I start casting around for any less trite way of saying it. Can't find any. Luckily, have managed to completely avoid needing to do so, up until this week. (Have had an annoying week so far.) (Ella, shut UP.)
I could possibly continue ranting about this, except it would get horribly confusing, as the point is that it's all horribly confusing.
In other news:
CLAUDIA f English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Ancient Roman
Pronounced: KLAW-dee-a, KLOW-dee-a
Feminine form of CLAUDIUS
CLAUDIUS m Ancient Roman, English
Pronounced: KLAW-dee-us
From a Roman family name which was derived from Latin claudus meaning "lame, crippled". Claudius was a Roman emperor of the 1st century. He was poisoned by his wife Agrippina in order to bring her son Nero (Claudius's stepson) to power.
Blast. Pretty name, v. bad etymology...
Random spiffy name:
AILILL m Irish, Irish Mythology
Means "elf" in Irish Gaelic. This name occurs frequently in Irish legend, borne for example by the husband of queen Méabh.
Was taken for a two-hour walk with Eddy today in which she proceeded to do a Social Analysis Monologue which involved too much poking fun at me. Bah. At least I got out for a bit; groundedness has equaled doing really random things to distract myself from missing not-here friends.
-Claudia
The way our culture deals with love annoys the living hell out of me. Maybe I'm just stupid, that I can't always tell the difference between platonic and non-platonic, or that I think people can be friends and [insert random completely stupid and inadequate word or phrase meaning roughly "people in a romantic relationship of sorts" here] at the same time (although apparently, that second one's not just me, it existed in France at one point). Maybe I'm just naïve that I've always thought that way, and have never seen the point of conventional romance, as it appears to always involve much more crying and whining and angsting and depression and fighting and making random sacrifices and commitments and random bouts of "This isn't working!" *SOB* and guessing instead of talking about things straighforwardly and constantly going "I need more out of this relationship!" and playing with each other's heads than necessary, and definitely *way* more ritual and games than necessary. And it makes for goddamned stupid stories.
Oh, and then we have the vocabulary, which is just GODS-AWFUL and perpetuates the inability to have anything make any sort of sense, because we can't SAY anything that makes any sort of sense. We have a whole bunch of words that also mean other things and you just have to understand it through context, and context fails us half the time. The terms "girlfriend" is just dreadful; it can mean either any friend who is female or a female one is in a romantic relationship with (at least there's some sort of stupid-sounding difference, but a difference nonetheless, between boyfriend and guy friend). Then we have the term "relationship". Any time you have two people who know each other you have some form of relationship; when you have two people who are in a romantic relationship it is still generally referred to only as a "relationship". This results in such strange things as Claudia getting an email wishing to know both what the relationship between two people at the moment is, and then if they wish to have a relationship at all. Apparently, they already have one; there is no way to phrase the second question so it both makes sense and sounds good. Hence the senseless redundancy. *sigh* It's understandable, but still stupid, and not at all the fault of the author.
Then we have the use of the words "like" and "love", which just... gah. Makes no sense whatsoever. Especially when people fall in love (note how we have liking someone, loving someone, falling in love with someone, and no falling in like with someone) with a friend, and then must admit they "like" him/her/it, despite the fact that disliking people and being his/her/its friend don't seem to go together very well. "I like you" and even "I love you" are generally rather cheap sentences, and therefore when they are needed as an Admittance, I start casting around for any less trite way of saying it. Can't find any. Luckily, have managed to completely avoid needing to do so, up until this week. (Have had an annoying week so far.) (Ella, shut UP.)
I could possibly continue ranting about this, except it would get horribly confusing, as the point is that it's all horribly confusing.
In other news:
CLAUDIA f English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Ancient Roman
Pronounced: KLAW-dee-a, KLOW-dee-a
Feminine form of CLAUDIUS
CLAUDIUS m Ancient Roman, English
Pronounced: KLAW-dee-us
From a Roman family name which was derived from Latin claudus meaning "lame, crippled". Claudius was a Roman emperor of the 1st century. He was poisoned by his wife Agrippina in order to bring her son Nero (Claudius's stepson) to power.
Blast. Pretty name, v. bad etymology...
Random spiffy name:
AILILL m Irish, Irish Mythology
Means "elf" in Irish Gaelic. This name occurs frequently in Irish legend, borne for example by the husband of queen Méabh.
Was taken for a two-hour walk with Eddy today in which she proceeded to do a Social Analysis Monologue which involved too much poking fun at me. Bah. At least I got out for a bit; groundedness has equaled doing really random things to distract myself from missing not-here friends.
-Claudia
