The United States is now rivaling those who burned the Great Library of Alexandria as cultural destroyers. Having deliberately built a base upon Babylon, a new report from the British Museum notes:
Dr. John Curtis, the writer of the report, noted that his charges “should not be seen as exhaustive, but is indicative of the types of damage caused.”
Apparently, some folks are taking offense to using “actually” in conversation. Actually, there’s something very nice about using adverbs in regular conversation. Realistically, it beats the tongue-tied swagger or the awkward pauses because, actually, the brain gets an extra second as the beads of sweat form hideous spoors on your forehead while hot lights, cameras and an audience are upon you and you hope to hell that you’re coming across as articulately as the perfectionist producers demand (yes, even on CSPAN!). Actually, it’s not quite like that at all. But having been on camera, it’s close. Inadvertently, in print, adverbs stick out long sore thumbs but, actually, adverbs announce a moment of discovery, a sense that one is discovering a point or a thesis in the process of response and, actually, if someone has a problem with this, well then we suspect that they may not have many ideas to contribute to the world, save complaints over very minute things. Actually.
Gwenda has a highly accurate account of dance lessons, complete with clumsy bald guys, sad middle aged couples and tittering dwarfs. I want to assure everyone that ballroom dance lessons are really like this, particularly the ones that involve neophytes getting to a dance hall two hours before everyone else to pick up a few moves from an instructor barking over an inaudible PA system (or, even worse, with one of those damn headsets).
[8/11/05 UPDATE: Nearly eighteen months after I made a New Year’s resolution to thoroughly learn ballroom dancing, I have failed to follow up. At least from a long-term perspective. Much of this has to do with a promise I made to a now ex-girlfriend that I would take ballroom dance lessons with her. Sadly, the relationship ended before such a plan could come to fruition. Instead, what generally happens these days is that I attend some random lesson in a genteel club out of the blue (often with whomever I am dating), attempt to learn the intricate moves (taught as if one is supposed to learn these things by osmosis rather than cogent instructions), and stumble accordingly as partners are exchanged. But I’m great on a dance floor with idiotic Caucasians! Perhaps because I am more ambitious. I’m probably thinking of dancing right now because I have a date tonight and I’m thinking of intimacy, because it’s been a while (not too long but I’m impatient) since I went dancing and smelled a woman’s nice perfume and held her in my arms, and because I figure nobody will possibly sift through the archives to read these personal ramblings. That’s the great irony ab0ut categorizing everything. You think it’s for your users, but really you become personally connected to it and you start writing these longass afterwords as if you’re compiling some book — when, in fact, very few people care about these obscure peregrinations.]
