Garlic farts

Lovely dinner last night at Kaosamai in Fremont with juliebata, holyoutlaw, and Denys. Conversation was wide-ranging, as you'd expect, but the topic that fascinated me the most was when Julie talked about how after the Civil War, a number of ex-slaves (including ancestors of hers) moved to Wisconsin and became farmers and dairymen, settling in peacefully and marrying their white neighbors. This was completely new data to me. Denys spoke for me when he said, "This wasn't after World War II?" Julie confirmed it was after the Civil War. She told us that her great grandfather (if I'm remembering the correct generation) learned to speak Bohemian, because one of his neighbors was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia.

Well, I love having my world expanded like that. There was also much gossip and other chitchat about gardening and hip replacements and farmers markets and Alaska and werk. I ate garlic pork and drank Chang Thai beer, which I had never tried before. It was fine, very similar to Singha. The pork was absolutely slathered in finely minced garlic. It tasted lovely, but I don't think you want to stand near me today.

Gravitas

I've been meaning for a long time to wish out loud that people would stop using the word "gravitas," but I can't quite pin down what bugs me about it. Is it that I don't like the word, or is that I don't like the concept? Where I see the word used most frequently is in film criticism, and usually it is used to note -- and almost always to decry -- a *lack* of gravitas. Today I saw it used in a review of Be Kind Rewind -- a very positive review that ends, "Good-hearted and intelligent, Be Kind Rewind still lacks for the gravitas of The Science of Sleep." As if that's a bad thing!

"Gravitas" has a sense of "weightiness" that I recoil from instinctively. "Seriousness" and "dignity" are also given as definitions. I dunno, I'm still torn between whether I find it a form of latinate pretentiousness, or if I'm just against dignified weighty seriousness in general. I tend to like words of all kinds, including the latinate, so I'm thinking it's weightiness itself that I object to. Give me the baroque and the absurd, that's what I say. To hell with gravitas.

(Hm, I just googled "lack of gravitas," and the first page is mostly about politics. "Does Obama Lack Gravitas?" Kill me now! Well, later I see a consideration of whether Ovid lacks gravitas. I'm beginning to hope so.)