Diagnosis

So my barium swallow found that I have gastroesophageal reflux disease, commonly known as acid reflux. I should be happy about this - no narrowing of the esophagus, no damage, no mysterious lumps, the little valve between my esophagus and my stomach is just refluxing some. But I'm finding it disproportionately and irrationally upsetting.

The first reason why I'm upset is that I wasn't feeling any heartburn, I was just having trouble swallowing (apparently the reflux was causing my esophageal muscles to spasm, which explains why applying icy hot to the outside of my neck helped food go down smoother), so now every time I feel any little thing in my upper torso I'm all "OMG, is that heartburn?"

The second reason why I'm upset is it's chronic. I've had it for an unknown period of time (possibly even my whole life, we have no way of knowing) and it won't ever go away. I've never had that happen before. Every physical ailment I've ever had has always gotten better. It's a stupid thing to be whining about, I know, and many many people have chronic conditions, but it's a bit of a mindfuck and a paradigm shift.

The third reason why I'm upset is the list of things that contribute to it is rather extensive. From the literature my doctor gave me: "Alcohol, being overweight, smoking, citrus juices and tomato products, chocolate, tea, coffee, carbonated drinks, fatty and fried food, highly acidic food (pickles, sauces and vinegar), peppermint, onions, garlic, spicy foods." I don't smoke and I'm slowly and steadily working on the being overweight part, but I love everything on that list! When I'm stupidly stressed or upset like I am now, (and, ironically, one of the recommended lifestyle changes is to reduce stress) I reach for a glass of wine and some comfort food. They're now contraindicated. And when I eat something on that list (which even includes my fricking salad dressing because it has garlic and vinegar in it!) I get in this loop of worrying about every little thing I feel in my upper torso, then worrying because I'm getting stressed.

Intellectually, I know that I don't have to cut the contributing foods to zero. I know from experience in many areas of life that small changes can make a difference. I've been mindlessly eating tomato sauce pasta dishes every day of my life for the past 15 years. I can easily get that down to twice a week, and might even be able to get it down to once every couple of weeks. That in itself should make a noticeable difference. I can cut out mindless afternoon coffees that I don't really need. I can cut out spicy foods that I have no particular enthusiasm for but end up eating from time to time because I feel like my taste in food should be more worldly. But emotionally I still feel bad and guilty and like I'm doin it wrong for not being able to do it perfectly, and emotionally I'm still mourning the loss of so many of my favourite foods even though I don't have to lose them entirely, and then I feel bad for stressing because I'm not supposed to.

Intellectually, I know that I'm not even feeling pain (just freaking out over every tingle and itch in my upper torso) and that the purpose of the recommended lifestyle changes is to reduce discomfort, but emotionally that isn't making it any less overwhelming.

Intellectually, I know that this is a good diagnosis for the symptoms. My esophagus is not damaged. I don't require any procedures where they stick a scope down my throat. But I wasn't emotionally prepared for something that won't go away ever, even though it's minor.

Intellectually, I know that the medication I'm taking (Dexilant) has gotten excellent results so far and is going to fix my esophagus even more during the one-month course I'm taking. Two weeks ago I was physically incapable of eating more than four strawberries. A week ago I was eating normal amounts but having various side effects. Now I'm eating normal amounts and not having the side effects that I was having a week ago. If these silly little feelings that are making me nervous are in fact in my esophagus, this medication will make them better before I finish. I know that if, once the medication stops, I start having further difficulties, I can easily get more of it. But I can't seem to make myself be patient.

Intellectually, I know that life is basically the same. I've already had reflux for some time without knowing it, and I'm actually more empowered know because I know what it is and how to prevent it and what meds to take if it gets unbearable. But I suddenly feel disempowered, like it's completely outside my control.

And, intellectually, I know that at least half the people reading this are dealing with some worse medical condition. But I still can't turn off the useless part of my brain that's stressing needlessly and making me whine to y'all.

My barium swallow experience

My doctor ordered a barium swallow as one of the tests to diagnose my difficulty swallowing solid food. Obviously the first thing I did was google it, and read many scary things. Turns out it wasn't nearly as difficult or uncomfortable as the internet suggested. Here's my experience:

The referral went through in one week, and my test was scheduled two days after that. It was scheduled for 8:15 a.m., and I was instructed not to eat or drink anything after midnight the night before.

Once at the clinic, I checked in and had a negligible wait in the waiting room, and was then taken to a dressing area (co-ed, but individual stalls with curtains for doors) and was instructed to remove all clothing and jewellery between my shoulders and waist and put on a gown. The gown as big enough to wrap all the way around me once I could figure out how to tie it properly, although an older gentleman who was in at the same time seemed to have trouble getting his to tie properly and his was gapping. I was then taken to another area (had to walk in gown and pants through an area populated by medical professionals and gowned patients of both genders) where I was shown to an examination room. The only people in the examination room were me and the doctor, and the room had a door that closed.

The doctor had me stand on a platform, took some images before I drank the barium and some pictures after I drank the barium. He then had me drink something fizzy and took more images. Then he told me to hold onto the edges of the wall behind me, and, to my surprised, it started tilting backwards until I was lying on a table. He then had me move into different positions, tilted the table to different angles, and had me drink barium with a straw followed by drinking water with a straw, taking images all the time. This process lasted about 15 minutes, after which I was directed back to the dressing area, changed into my own clothes, and was free to go. I left the clinic 23 minutes after my scheduled appointment time.

The internet told me that the barium would taste chalky and kind of gross, but to me it tasted like nothing. The adjective "chalky" suggested to me that it would make me even more thirsty than I already was (remember, I hadn't had anything to drink in 8 hours), but instead it made no difference to my thirst - neither quenched it nor worsened it. Basically, it didn't make any difference to me whatsoever whether there was barium in my mouth or not.

I found the test easy, noninvasive, and completely free of discomfort. I wasn't entirely thrilled with the co-ed dressing area and walking around in a gown (I'm accustomed to changing in the examination room) but nothing went amiss in the dressing area and, since I could keep my pants on, I was actually more covered in the gown than in my street clothes. If changing clothes in one co-ed area and then walking to another area is in fact logistically necessary, they could resolve my privacy concerns by installing doors with locks on the stalls (like most clothing stores have) rather than using curtains like they do right now.

But, overall, it was no big deal and if I ever have to have one again I will have no dread whatsoever.

Takeaway:

- Time between GP appointment and being informed of barium swallow appointment: 1 week (7 calendar days, 5 business days)
- Time between being informed of barium swallow appointment and date of appointment: 2 days
- Time between test and when I was called with results: probably 1 day. (My doctor's office called me the day after the test, but I wasn't able to get back to them before closing so I don't know what it was about yet)
- Preparation: nothing to eat or drink after midnight (for an 8:00 appointment)
- Time in waiting room: negligible
- Total appointment time: 20 minutes
- What it tastes like: nothing. It neither quenched or worsened my thirst
- What to wear: separate tops and bottoms, because you're allowed to keep your clothes from the waist down
- What to bring: apart from whatever paperwork you need, bring a full bottle of water because you're going to want to drink water when it's over.
- Recovery: negligible. You'll probably need some food and water because you'll have been fasting, but you can walk right out of the lab and straight back into real life.

Teach me how layoffs work

Take the city’s buyout package now or you might be laid off later, Mayor Rob Ford warned 17,000 city workers who have so far spurned the effort to get them off the payroll.

Ford, appearing Friday morning on Sun News Network, was asked about layoffs in light of a Star story revealing that his administration now feels they are inevitable because of very low take-up of the city’s buyout offer.

“Now if they don’t take the package, what else do we have to do?” Ford said. “We might have to lay them off.”

If more of the eligible workers don’t agree to leave their jobs in exchange for up to six months’ salary, the city has no choice but to issue layoff notices to cut labour costs and tame the 2012 deficit, he said.

“The last thing we want to do is put somebody out on the street so we’re working and saying here, here’s a package, I’d advise you to take it. What else are we going to do?

“If someone else can come up with a solution, let me know.”

The internet's general interpretation of this statement is that people who volunteer will get packages, but if not enough people volunteer and the city has to forcibly lay off some people, those who are forcibly laid off won't get packages. I haven't been able to google up anything that explicitly confirms or disproves this interpretation. (If you have something more definitive, please do let me know in the comments.)

Is it normal to offer packages to those who volunteer to be laid off but not to those who are forced to be laid off? If so, why? The employer can afford to give packages to X people anyway, so why be so assholic about it? What does the employer gain by having people "volunteer" under duress rather than choosing who goes?

In the specific case of the City of Toronto, if they do in fact intend to offer packages only to people who volunteer, why are they encouraging more people to volunteer? If fewer people take packages, they'll have to spend less money. And if the general interpretation is incorrect and people who don't volunteer but are laid off anyway will in fact get packages, we're back to the question of why are they encouraging people to volunteer when they don't really want to?

An explanatory note

I recently experienced some kind of medical problem that made it difficult for me to eat enough. My doctor promptly prescribed a medication that has made it possible for me to eat normally again, and I'm in the midst of a battery of tests that's intended to diagnose the specific root of this problem and determine what treatment is needed, if any.

I'm writing this because I intend to blog about my experience with some of the medical tests (to make the kind of info I was looking for going in googleable), and I might blog about some thoughts arising from some of the symptoms. And I know it all sounds kind of scary when I'm sitting here saying that I couldn't eat properly, suddenly obsessing about medical tests, and not yet having a name for my ailment.

So here's the takeaway: nothing to worry about. I am now able to eat properly, I'm receiving appropriate medical care in a timely manner, and it's quite possible the medication I'm already taking is the actual solution to the problem. If not, it's going to be either an additional medication or a routine outpatient procedure.

This is getting blogged about because it's all very new to me (this is actually the first time in my adult life I've gone to a doctor without already knowing my diagnosis and necessary treatment), but as medical treatment goes it's objectively unremarkable and all this blogging is just my usual self-absorption.

Things They Should Invent Words For

Today I was walking down the street when an e-bike drove past me. My first thought: "So THAT'S what an e-bike is." The same thing happened when I first saw a picture of Spongebob Squarepants. "Oh, THAT must be Spongebob Squarepants!"

This phenomenon, seeing a tangible thing you've previously only seen referred to in writing and instantly recognizing that it's what the word in question refers to, needs a name.

Nuances: This concept doesn't include when you learn what a word refers to by looking it up or having it explained to you. This doesn't include learning what a word refers to by hearing or reading it used in context. It is specifically the phenomenon of recognizing the referent the moment you see it with your own eyes, without clues or context.

Do landfills not work or something?

Two things that everybody knows:

1. You're supposed to cut up six-pack rings so fish don't get caught in them.
2. There's a big patch of plastic garbage floating in the ocean.

The question that both of these things raise: how is garbage that we intend to throw into a landfill end up in the ocean? When I throw something in the regular garbage stream (including six-pack rings), my understanding is that it ends up in a landfill somewhere in Southern Ontario and stays there forever, tragically never decomposing. Do landfills leak into the water table? If so, this needs to be more widely publicized. If not, how are all these plastic things getting into the ocean?

Things They Should Invent: WhatDoYouDoAllDay.com

Many people don't fully understand what jobs they've never done entail. For example, I blogged before about how I don't know what pharmacists do other than dispense and advise about drugs. When I worked in fast food, some of my customers clearly didn't understand (both to their frustration and to mine) that I had scheduled tasks to do in addition to making food and ringing in customers. I still don't understand what social workers do (people keep explaining it to me as "assisting clients with X" and "supporting clients in Y", but no one elaborates on how exactly they assist and support).

Apart from general interest, sometimes people go into a certain field without fully understanding what the job entails, and sometimes people loudly complain that certain jobs are overpaid without fully understanding what the job entails (which is particularly problematic for public-sector jobs, where a critical mass of loud complaining - even if it comes from a place of ignorance - can result in working conditions being unfairly worsened.)

We need a single central website where people in different jobs can describe in detail exactly what it is they do all day, including the parts of the job that their clients don't see. It would also be interesting to have information like what's annoying and what's rewarding? What rules hinder you and what small pleasures are there? If they could keep it well-moderated, they could even have readers ask questions. But mostly we need a full view of what exactly it is everyone does all day.

Why it would not be appropriate for the library to charge for hold delivery

I've seen a number of comment-thread commenters suggest that, as a budgetary measure, the library should start charging to deliver holds. But that wouldn't be appropriate, because if the library were to charge for delivering holds, it would create a two-tiered system.

Popular novels tend to accumulate far more holds than the library has copies even before they're released. This means that all copies in the system are sent to people with holds on it, and (with the exception of the "Best Bets" section) none of the copies are in the library.

Currently, anyone can put a hold on a book, so everyone has an equal chance of getting at the book. You just have to get in line.

But if they started charging money for holds, only people who can afford to pay would place holds. This means that richer patrons would get at the books before poorer patrons, because the poorer patrons can't afford to get in line. Speaking as someone who could easily afford to pay a fee for this service if necessary, I consider that unfair, unacceptable, and contrary to the mission of libraries.

At this point, some people are thinking "But what if you can place the holds for free, just not have the delivered to your home branch?" The problem is that would still create a two-tiered system. Think for a moment about how such a system would work. Either patrons would only be able to put holds on books that live at their home branch, or they'd have to pick up the hold wherever the book happens to be. If we are limited to putting holds on books that live at our home branch, that's a two-tiered system because the pool from which we can place holds is significantly smaller. If we have to pick up holds wherever they happen to be, then we might have to go to any corner of the city - very likely over an hour by bus given how wide-spread our city is.

I also question whether that would actually save any significant amount of money given how often books need to be shipped around anyway. If you return a book at a different branch (say you return it at the branch near work even though you checked it out from the branch near home) they have to ship it home anyway. If it's already been subject to a delivery hold, it will need to be shipped home. And if they're shipping them to one branch anyway, how much more expensive could it be to ship it to another branch?

In any case, charging for holds would have the basic effect of allowing richer patrons to access our entire library system, while poorer patrons are limited to the collection at their local branch, which completely defeats the purpose the fantastic library system our city has worked so hard to build.

Why Rob Ford and his allies should be responsive to slactivism

Doug Ford says:

“Ford Nation is too busy working, paying taxes, creating jobs. That’s what they are doing.”

But then Rob Ford said:

“I encourage people to come to the executive committee next Thursday,” he said during an interview on CP24. “Everyone has five minutes to talk to me personally at our executive committee. I invite the whole city. I don’t care if we have to sit there for three days. I don’t want to have people ... they have five minutes to tell me what business do you think we should be in. And it’s next Thursday at 9:30 at city hall. Come and let me know what you think – the average taxpayer out there – what are we doing right, what are we doing wrong. I want to hear from the people and I encourage them to come.“

So if their base consists of very busy people, why do they insist that people make the time-consuming effort of going all the way down to city hall and waiting around all day to speak in person? As a person who is in fact busy working, I find that prohibitive. Shouldn't they be more responsive to emails? Petitions? Facebook groups? I've noticed on more than one occasion they seem to write off existing feedback as insufficiently effortful and encourage people to use other methods of communication. If their base consists of busy people, they should be making it easier, not harder, to state one's case.

The other other awesome thing about libraries

With silly attitudes towards libraries in the news lately and having recently lived through the hottest day of my life so far, I find myself thinking about another benefit of libraries: they're a place where everyone is allowed to be. Not just where everyone is allowed to go, but where everyone is allowed to be.

If you want to hang out in Tim Hortons, you need to buy a coffee. If you want to hang out in the mall food court, they can kick you out for loitering if they want. But you are allowed - and in fact welcome - to hang out in the library for as long as you want. It's climate-controlled, there are comfy seats, there's psychological privacy (you're in an open room, but people generally mind their own business, and no one will think it's strange if you find an inconspicuous nook somewhere and hide there), and there are no rules about what you should be doing apart from not disturbing others. You don't have to be doing schoolwork, you don't have to be using library materials, you don't have to be doing something serious or important, you don't even have to be awake. You're just allowed to be there, for as long as it's open, doing your own thing.

It's very easy to forget how important this is when you're in a position of privilege. I myself don't hang out at the library that often, I tend to just swoop in, pick up my books, and go home. But that's because home is a comfy, internet-equipped, air-conditioned apartment that I have all to myself. Not everyone has that privilege. If home is too crowded or noisy or uncomfortable or abusive or non-existent, having somewhere else to go - a perfectly respectable place to go and to be (compare the connotations of spending hours in the library vs. spending hours in the bar) - can be a lifesaver. And once you're there, it's full of tools for educating and improving yourself or, worst case, quietly amusing yourself.

And despite the fact that it's of such value to the most marginalized people, it is not by any means charity. It's something literally everyone uses.

Amy, Amy, Amy.

I was saddened to hear that Amy Winehouse was found dead earlier today. She was only 27.

I first heard Amy Winehouse sing in this mashup, where she put Ella Fitzgerald to shame (Ella is the first voice you hear, Amy is the second).



I had heard of her from media coverage of her private life, but I was rather surprised to discover that someone who attracted that kind of coverage was also such a genuine talent.

The world is now worse off for no longer having that talent among us, with all its potential forever unfulfilled. And it's tragic that even with all that talent and wealth she was never able to find peace.

Here are a few of her songs that always end up on repeat:

The problem with conventional thinking about machine translation

Reading In the Plex, Steven Levy's fascinating biography of Google, I came across the following quote from machine translation pioneer Warren Weaver:

When I look at an article in Russian, I say, "This is really written in English, but it has been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed to decode."

I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is incorrect, and people who don't find themselves able to get past this way of thinking end up being very poor translators.

A more accurate approach would be "This idea really exists in a system of pure concepts unbounded by the limits of language or human imagination, but it has been coded in a way that one subset of puny humans can understand. I will now encode it for another subset of puny humans to understand."

To translate well, you have to grasp the concepts without the influence of the source language, then render them in the target language. You're stripping the code off and applying a new one.

If you translate Russian to English by assuming that the Russian is really in English, what you're going to end up with is an English text that is really Russian. Your Anglophone readers will be able to tell, and might even have trouble understanding the English.

The Russian text is not and has never been English. There's no reason for it to be. The Russian author need never have had a thought in English. He need never have even heard of English. Are your English thoughts really in Russian? Are they in Basque? Xhosa? Aramaic? Of course not! They're in English, and there's no need or reason for them to be in any other language.

This is a tricky concept for people who don't already grasp it to grasp, because when we start learning a new language (and often for years and years of our foray into a new language) everything we say or write in that language is really in English (assuming you're Anglophone - if you're not, then, for simplicity's sake, mentally search and replace "English" with your mother tongue for the purpose of this blog post). We learn on the first day of French class that je m'appelle means "my name is". But je m'appelle isn't the English phrase "my name is" coded into French. (If anything is that, it would be mon nom est.) The literal gloss of je m'appelle is "I call myself", but je m'appelle isn't the English idea "I call myself" coded into French either. If anything, it's the abstract idea of "I am introducing myself and the next thing I say is going to be my name" encoded into French. The French code for that concept is je m'appelle, the English code is "my name is".

I'm trying to work on a better analogy to explain this concept to people who don't already grok it, but here's the best I've got so far:

Think of the childhood game of Telephone, where the first person whispers something to the second person, then the second person whispers what they heard to the third person, and so on and so on until the last person says out loud what they heard and you all have a good laugh over how mangled it got.

What Mr. Weaver is proposing is analogous to trying your very very best to render exactly what you heard the person before you say.

But to grasp concepts without the influence of language and translate well is analogous to listening to what the person before you said and using your knowledge of language patterns and habits to determine what the original person actually said despite the interference.

Which defeats the purpose of Telephone, but is the very essence of good translation.

This should be a tweet, but I can't get it down to 140

I find myself wondering how people who truly, genuinely believe in and fear hell can bring themselves to have children. Because bringing a child into a world where hell exists introduces the possibility that the kid will go to hell someday.

I did once yearn to have children, I did once genuinely fear hell, and I do have your basic adult hormonal child protection instincts, which I'd imagine are massively stronger when it's your own child.

It's perfectly normal protective instincts to be willing to risk one's life to save one's child's life. But, for those who believe in it, the threat of far is vastly worse than the threat of death. Death is a sudden extinguishing of life, while hell is eternal torture without hope of reprieve. Religious traditions with a strong fear of hell do tend to contain the idea that it's your religious duty to have children. But if any parent would risk their life for their child's life, wouldn't they also risk hell to save their child from hell?

It is true that parents tend to think "But MY child will be GOOD," but your basic human decency isn't usually enough in hellfearing religions. Religious traditions with a strong fear of hell also tend to make it difficult to get into heaven. The slightest lapse of virtue can send you to hell, and in some cases even a virtuous life with improper rites can send you to hell. Thinking back to my previous mindset of hellfear and adding protective instincts, the risk of having a child go to hell far outweighs the biological/hormonal yearning to have a baby and any other benefits of procreation that I can think of.

I wonder what other factors there are for hellfearing parents that outweigh even the horrors of hell?

How long do we have to keep stating the obvious for?

Despite the bombshell nature of many of the cuts suggested this week by a city-hired consultant, there is no stampede of Torontonians signing up to tell the politicians face-to-face, or in writing, how they feel about them.

I'll admit it never occurred to me to tell politicians how I feel about them. You know why? Because it's so blatantly obvious that they're destructive and unworkable, and I figured it's just as blatantly obvious to anyone who lives in the world. The KPMG study proves that there simply aren't workable cuts to be had by listing what few remaining things could even legally be cut. It isn't advocating cutting these things, it's pointing out how destructive large-scale cuts would be by saying that these important things are the things that would remain to be cut if large-scale cuts were to happen.

It really frustrates me that not wasting my time stating the obvious to politicians could be interpreted as support for or indifference to such destructive measures. And I think, on top of all the damage already being done to our city, this need to constantly be loudly shouting the obvious at the top of our lungs is also destructive to our city, because it takes away energy that could otherwise be used to think of ways to make things even better.

It's like if you had to say to every person you encountered "Please don't hurt me," and if you didn't they'd hurt you. That would be really draining, wouldn't it? You have to be totally on top of making sure you noticed every single person around you and said "Please don't hurt me" to them, plus it would preclude saying "Hi, how are you?" or "I love your shoes!" or "Can I pet your doggie?" And on top of that, it would also take up the energy you need to think "This sidewalk would be more easily navigable if the planters were flush with the curb" or "Hey, that store might sell greeting cards" or "What if I used the egg slicer to slice the mushrooms?"

Real life operates under a tacit assumption of the obvious. Of course people don't want you to hurt them. Why can't politics do the same?

In which my planned blog post is obsoleted

I was going to blog about this, but POGGE beat me to it and did it far better than I could have. Please go read POGGE if you'd normally read my posts on municipal politics.

Why I want everyone to refer respectfully to those I disagree with

Recently my twitter feed turned up a blog entry that formulated an excellent argument in support of a political position that I agree with, explaining the issue fantastically for those who aren't already familiar with it. My first instinct was to retweet it for the benefit of those who don't see this issue from the same point of view or haven't given it much thought. Unfortunately, the blog author used insulting nicknames for the individuals and organizations with whom they (and I) disagree. I'm not going to argue that the insulting nicknames weren't well-deserved, or, in some cases at least, perfectly accurate, but the problem is that they destroyed all the post's credibility in the eyes of those who didn't already agree with our position.

I know I'm not the boss of anyone else's blog and I know that we're all totally allowed to use our own blogs for venting, but it's just so frustrating to see such a useful argument that I can't use or share because of a bit of name-calling!

If you're going to say something I disagree with, go ahead and say it however you want. I welcome your destruction of your own credibility.

If you're going to say something I agree with but can express better, go ahead and say it however you want. I don't need you.

But if you're going to say something so brilliant and insightful and better than I could ever come up with that I feel compelled to link to it and share it, please don't do so disrespectfully. You don't even have to be actively respectful. Just calling people by surname only will do the job, and it's still easy to mentally pronounce venomously.

Wherein a monogamist presumes to give advice on how to handle adultery

Dear Annie: I recently found out that my 27-year-old married daughter is having an affair with her 40-year-old boss. He is married and has two children. She doesn't know that I know.

I warned her to be careful when I noticed that she and her boss sometimes work late. I told her that when I was her age, I did some things I was not proud of. I also sent her articles about people having affairs. I told her it was wrong and people would get hurt. I have tried to give her as much advice as I could without letting on about what I know, but now I think it's time to tell her.

I do not want to do this over the phone, so I am waiting for the vacation we are taking with her and her husband in a few weeks. This has truly been a shock to me because I thought I had taught her better than this. Before she married, her father and I separated for a year. I never told her that he was seeing someone else.

So far, I have told no one about my daughter's affair, but I want to confide in my husband. How should I handle this? -- Puzzled

I think the best approach here would be for the mother to simply inform the daughter of what she knows and how she found out. No judgement, no advice. Simply let her know that her ass isn't covered (if indeed it needs covering - some commenters in CF Abby suspected that it might be an open marriage) and that any interested party who is at least as competent as her mother would be able to find out about the affair.

The mother's first duty in this matter is to her daughter. Even if, as a general philosophy, she doesn't want adultery to happen or marriages to break up, her loyalty should be to her daughter over her daughter's husband or her daughter's boss. Simply pointing out what she knows and how would fulfill that loyalty to her daughter, and at the same time make her point about the pitfalls of having an affair far better than nagging or passive-aggression ever could. And, as an added bonus, doing so completely without judgement and advice sets her up as someone her daughter can confide in should it become necessary.

Of course, in this particular letter, it's too late for that. The LW has already given her daughter lectures and unsolicited advice and passive-aggressive newspaper clippings. At this point, her only hope is probably just to come clean. "Listen, I've been making a complete ass of myself and handling this really poorly and I understand completely if you don't want to talk to me any more. I'll just tell you this one thing and then leave you alone. All this started because I googled your name and the word Facebook and found a post in the Citizens Against Bad Puns facebook group in which you appeared to be flirting with a guy named Bill, so I clicked on his name, [etc.] In any case, all I wanted to do was point out that this information is publicly googleable so you can protect yourself accordingly. I truly am sorry for acting like such an idiot and making you uncomfortable. The only explanation I can offer is that I've never been in this situation before and couldn't figure out what to do, although at my age I really should know better."

Then drop it completely.

Further attempts to translate Eddie Izzard's giraffes and tigers

A while back, I proposed a strategy for translating Eddie Izzard's (technically untranslatable) giraffes and tigers bit. The basis of this approach was that the tiger needs to be replaced with something that's charadable in French.

In the shower this morning, it occurred to me that it might be possible to keep the tiger.

The French for "tiger" is tigre (scroll down for French pronunciation). The first syllable could be ti, as in the casual French diminutive for petit. And, if the onomatopoeia for a growling predator animal is reasonably similar in French, the second syllable could be "grrr" just like in English.

Now you're probably thinking (especially if you're Anglophone) that the second syllable of the French tigre doesn't sound very much like "grrr". Which is absolutely true. But it the second syllable of the English word "tiger" as pronounced in Eddie's own non-rhotic dialect doesn't sound much like the very rhotic "grrr" either. Eddie pronounces it something like the UK example provided by "mooncow" here, in a way that I would write out in my North American dialect as "tie-guh". The fact that the English word "tiger" contains a G and an R seems to be enough to carry the charade in non-rhotic English, so I see no reason why it wouldn't work in French. (I don't know if the French sound in the second syllable of tigre can be defined as rhotic or not because I never paid enough attention to my phonetics unit, but the French R is certainly more growly like a tiger than the non-rhotic UK English R in the English word "tiger".)

The flaw in this translation is still in the first syllable, using the diminutive ti. In English the first syllable is "tie", which Eddie charades by miming the act of tying a tie (i.e. men's neckwear). The Anglophone audience sees this and thinks "tie", thus making the charade effective. However, any effective charading of the French ti will first lead the Francophone audience to petit, from which they'd need to be guided to ti. It's still a two-step process in French where it's a one-step process in English, and the additional step is significant when you're doing something as complicated as trying to communicate syllables soundlessly while imitating a giraffe.

I can't tell you whether or not this translation would work on stage. It would have to be tested to an actual audience in real-life conditions. But it's the closest I've gotten so far to translating this untranslatable sketch, so I'm posting it.

Things They Should Invent: opposite of né(e)

(And, no, I don't mean mort(e).)

In English, we have the word né(e) to refer to the surname a person was born with, most frequently used (as née) to refer to a woman's name before marriage. For example, suppose Elizabeth Bennet marries Fitzwilliam Darcy and changes her name to Elizabeth Darcy. If she is subsequently profiled in her alumni magazine or hometown newspaper, they might refer to her as "Elizabeth Darcy (née Bennet)" so that people who knew her before her marriage but lost track of her will recognize her.

We also need a word that refers to the name a person would later adopt, but did not have at the time at which they're being referred to. For example, suppose, sometime after her marriage, a childhood photo of Elizabeth is published somewhere. It would be inaccurate to describe this as a photo of Elizabeth Darcy, because she wasn't Elizabeth Darcy in the photo. However, if the caption says "Elizabeth Bennet", people who know her as Elizabeth Darcy might not realize who it is.

I know we can totally express this concept clearly by arranging words into phrases and sentences, but I want a simple one-word term that will express it as elegantly as né(e). Extrapolated logically from French, it would be something like marié(e) or devenu(e), but I'd prefer something more elegant.