03 August 2007
hic et ubique?
Several months ago a food writer in the SF Chronicle scornfully chastised any Bay Area resident who would even think about using frozen duck. I don’t know what her definition of “readily available” is, but she clearly hasn’t been to my local Safeway, which, while totally adequate, has a way of always missing some key item I’m looking for. Things I have looked for and not found, either because they’re out of stock or because the store doesn’t carry them: whole wheat pasta, candied ginger, mixed nuts, amaretti, whole-grain crackers, plain nonfat yogurt, chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream (you see the extent of my dilemma. . . .). Don’t even think about looking for tahini. Just don’t. So there I am in the greeting card/paperback/magazine aisle recently, because printed matter compels me to reading the way fresh duck compels an SF food writer towards snobbery, and in between the romances (will our tempestuous auburn-haired beauty be able to tame the brooding duke/cowboy/lawyer who mysteriously turned up in town? Something tells me she will!) and the true crime paperbacks (will your husband murder you in your bed and run off with his secretary? He very well might!) there’s a Latin-English dictionary. Several of them, in fact, so it’s no random volume left by a rebel scholar who has no dog to eat his homework, but an actual stocked item with a bar code. I don’t even know what to make of this.
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4 comments:
Please, let's get one thing straight. The tempestuous beauty may want to do many things with the brooding duke/cowboy/lawyer, but taming is not one of them. After all, she's mysteriously attracted to him, against all of her common sense. And, no, it has nothing to do with his landholdings/inheritance/income potential. There is a good chance, however, that he needs to tame her.
My best guess about the dictionaries is that the person who was ordering books thought, "We have many customers from Latin America who probably would like to learn more English." I say this because a store that carries a Latin/English dictionary should also carry decent cheese and Dutch Process cocoa, which it does not!
I am totally flabergasted by the latin-english dictionary mystery. I'm going to be thinking about this a lot, probably for a long time.
I think vicmarcam's theory has to be correct. The "Latin" dictionary was ordered for "Latin-Americans." We're doomed.
V, I think the tempestuous beauty may not want to tame the duke/cowboy/lawyer, but he will choose to tame himself for her, so great is the love he feels, much as Satan in Paradise Lost is not actually thrown but instead hurls himself from the abodes of bliss. I know your terrifying standards for a "decent" cheese shop and tremble accordingly.
I thought about asking my nephews if Bishop O'Dowd High School still teaches Latin, but rejected that theory on the grounds that no other reference books or textbooks are carried. So it looks as if the "Latin America" theory might be true, though it wasn't until now that I realized I had always assumed that "Latin America" meant South America and not Mexico, though there's no reason it shouldn't include Central America.
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