Things are getting desperate in our home.

I've been somewhat avoiding news on Hurricane Katrina damage and/or I get really belligerent and snarky about the topic when it does come up. I realized maybe it's because my best friend could have, you know, died. He was one of those people living in the city without a car or copious amounts of cash, but he luckily has friends who help look out for him. For those who don't read his journal, he's sitting safe in northern rural Louisiana, planning to go ahead and move out to California soon, then return back to his flooded apartment later for any possessions that survived.

I know it's all just physical earthly elements but it still has a psychological toll. It's not just a home lost. It's not even just your street or your neighborhood. It's your whole city.

The purpose of a woman is to love her man

I have to rename one of the side characters in my novel because it was getting too confusing so I pulled out my related reference paraphenalia and came across this in the midst of name-hunting:

"....NEMESIS, usually translated as Righteous Anger, and AIDOS, a difficult word to translate, but in common use among the Greeks. It means reverence and the shame that holds men back from wrongdoing, but it also means the feeling a prosperous man should have in the presence of the unfortunate -- not compassion, but a sense that the difference between him and those poor wretches is not deserved."

Ok, yeah, this is book is written in the 1940s, so the word choice isn't so stellar, but I find it interesting when words don't exist in english which makes me think of cultural reasons. Like, why would english speakers NEVER need a word for this phenomenon? Why would we not need a reminder to quash feeling superior to those "poor wretches"? Hmm.

I'm naming my next dog Aidos. He can keep tabs on me.


[Note: The subject line comes from Kylie and Robbie's song Kids, which came on my computer while typing this. I never realized that's what she was saying until just now. Oh Kylie.]