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Oct. 13th, 2019 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choco_froshSomebody at teenybuffalo's shindig t'other night read a brilliant short story about a couple of people manning a space station called "Lighthouse", and trying to figure out what the hell its name meant. I cannot now FIND said story, so this is not an exact quote but:
"My sister, who's a history otaku, said that it was, like, a building with a big light that told waterships where there was rocks, same as this thing tells, well, ships where the space hazards are."
The reader reminded us that, while in English an Otaku has come to mean someone who is obsessed with anime/all things Japanese, in Japan it can refer to any kind of obsessive nerd.
In that moment, I had an unpleasant revelation.
I am now a bellringing otaku.
* * * * *
(Further proof of this, as if more was needed, came after dinner, when I decamped, leaving Teeny with a quantity of excess soup, in favour of the ringers' deliberately-delayed-til-after-the-start-of-school post-AGM party. Which was unexpectedly much quieter, even after they put out the bourbon.)
(The bourbon was definitely a mistake.)
So yeah, that was my Saturday of 2 1/2 parties. (Ringing practice counts as an extra half party.)
teenybuffalo's shindig t'other night read a brilliant short story about a couple of people manning a space station called "Lighthouse", and trying to figure out what the hell its name meant. I cannot now FIND said story, so this is not an exact quote but:"My sister, who's a history otaku, said that it was, like, a building with a big light that told waterships where there was rocks, same as this thing tells, well, ships where the space hazards are."
The reader reminded us that, while in English an Otaku has come to mean someone who is obsessed with anime/all things Japanese, in Japan it can refer to any kind of obsessive nerd.
In that moment, I had an unpleasant revelation.
I am now a bellringing otaku.
* * * * *
(Further proof of this, as if more was needed, came after dinner, when I decamped, leaving Teeny with a quantity of excess soup, in favour of the ringers' deliberately-delayed-til-after-the-start-of-school post-AGM party. Which was unexpectedly much quieter, even after they put out the bourbon.)
(The bourbon was definitely a mistake.)
So yeah, that was my Saturday of 2 1/2 parties. (Ringing practice counts as an extra half party.)
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Date: 2019-10-14 03:10 am (UTC)Which kind of mistake?
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Date: 2019-10-14 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-14 04:48 am (UTC)We finished eating your soup after you left, and there is none to return to you. I'd say I'm sorry, but I can't find it in my heart to be so. It was very good soup.
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Date: 2019-10-14 01:00 pm (UTC)Otaku
Date: 2019-10-14 02:43 pm (UTC)"In that moment, I had an unpleasant revelation.
I am now a bellringing otaku."
I am sad that this is unpleasant to you. I think many aspects of happiness (and most useful academic work) come from what could be called obsession with a subject. In terms of ringing specifically, I was as always pleased this morning by the level of devotion from the contributors to bellhistorians, in the current case trying to track down whether the name of the location of a tower as reported in the RW was a typo, the result of a scanning artifact, change of street name, etc. Archives and maps were consulted. Consensus achieved. Small happiness.
I'm a dilettante in most areas, but I often admire and enjoy the fruits of the obsessions of others. (with exceptions, like Oxfordians and the people on the misnamed History channel who are obsessed with the idea that space aliens are the true architects of the pyramids, etc.).