NASCENT

I've been having a quiet day. I had a piece of chocolate cake with ice cream (yes, I know I said I was off chocolate this year, but it is my birthday, so sue me. I can be off chocolate again tomorrow) at lunch time. We'll have steak and potatoes for supper. Lloyd gave me some cash for a present, which I promptly blew on a couple of DVDs—The Storyteller starring John Hurt. I remember watching these on television and thinking that I ought to record them.

I've been trying to decide if I want to catalogue my tapes and DVDs on LibraryThing. Probably not, as I am already up to 550 books, only about ten percent of which actually belong to my sister, my husband or the kids. A couple of hundred years ago this would have amounted to an amazing treasure. Of course, they didn't have sound recordings then, either. They had to tell their own stories and make their own music—act out their own dramas, make up their own gossip. What a bunch of softies we are!

The word of the day for January 11, 2009 is "nascent" — Pronunciation: \ˈna-sənt, ˈnā-\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin nascent-, nascens, present participle of nasci to be born — more at nation
Date: circa 1624
: coming or having recently come into existence [a nascent middle class] [her nascent singing career].

Our quote for the day is from Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924), French philosopher. repr. In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979, rev. 1986). “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?” Critique, no. 419 (Paris, April 1982):

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

;^)

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