relative weirdness (was Re: signal and noise ...)

BP Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:

> At 10:35 2001-12-10 +0000, James Campbell wrote:
>
> >... which is why I found it so comforting to find Conlang in '96 when I got
> >online: "Wow, so many conlangers!" You don't feel quite so weird when you're
> >surrounded by equally-weird (or at least, weird for the same reason) people.
>
> Until your kids tell you what a nut you are who wastes time with fairy-tale
> languages...
>
> That one really shot me down, and I'm still trying to recover.  Not that
> I'll stop conlanging, but I must find a way to convince them it is
> worthwhile. :-(
Well, I have no children to tell me that I waste time with conlangs,
but my (elder) brother does the job.  When I recently made the mistake
mentioning the Conlang Translation Relay in a conversation about
translation problems, he thrusted Wittgenstein's infamous argumentation
against "private languages" at me, stating that the translations were
inevitably meaningless and thus the whole thing a waste of time.
When I said, "Well, it is just a game", he said nothing anymore.
But then, he always considered me an impractical daydreamer.

My parents, however, know nothing about my conlanging.  I have learned
not to tell anything about my bizarre worldbuilding and related projects
quite early, when all I got was utter indifference from my father and
sharp disapproval from my mother.  (One ought to mention that my
mother's
parents were protestant fundamentalists, though she herself was not,
only unbearably conservative in some respects.)

Well, I know that I am somewhat weird - one can tell that from the fact
that I like swimming fully clothed (something no-one in my family
ever understood either).

Jörg.

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