Clavardage and Cohen

Completely trivial post, but:

My new absolute favorite word is the Québecisme clavarder. I don't know what the Académie Franςaise has to say about it, but it's a portmanteau word (or mot-valise if you're speaking French while throwing French words around) comprised of bavarder, to chat + clavier, and it hopes, on the heels of courriel's success (courrier + électronique = email) to replace chatter, tchatter, and even tchatcher, for electronic chat.

Not that it matters, but it gets my vote.

To celebrate clavarder's victory over my heart, here is my favorite stanza from my favorite song ('Joan of Arc') by the irrefutably (and even Québecoisically) Canadian Leonard Cohen:


'Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,
Saying this she climbed inside
To be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And high above the wedding guests
He hung the ashes of her wedding dress.'

The Inerrancy of Internet Quizzes

After taking the 'Which Theologian Are You?' test (well, it was fun for me), I came out as 100% Anselm and 80% Augustine. I guess that makes me 180% Medieval - which is better than 25% Calvinist. I tried to reload the page after after taking a (thankfully still-living) mouse back outside that the neighbor's cat had very generously lain in one of the slippers under my chair (thankfully my feet were no longer inside), but it had timed out. The quiz results, not the mouse. I do not therefore recall how much Luther I am, or how Calvin, just that both were low (one more than the other by a long shot) and that I haven't the vaguest notion who Jonathan Edwards is. Of whom I am 0%; I'm guessing something about sola fide and justification, except that if those were the only things, Luther and Calvin should be lower than they were, too.

Anyway, of course I'm Medieval; I haven't bothered to know anything about Protestant theology other than Calvin, Biblical inerrancy, and those funny folk out in the hollers who somehow manage to integrate snake-handling into the liturgy. I find it as easy to disagree with all these as to find the logic of the Manicheans and Jains in need as well of a good swift kick in the syllogism. And I'm not counting the Friends in my paltry 'Protestant theology' resume, as any Friend worth his oats will tell you that theology and too much cerebration are obstacles, not conduits, to communion with the Divine. And I don't know if Quaker non-theologists Fox and Penn were among my potential 'Which Theologian' matches.

Well, back to my lofty tower, then. All that remains is to find a equally unshocking Internet test that will reveal whether I am truly a pair of squishy wedge-heel 'flip-flops' with large plastic flowers on their tops, black patent buckle-embellished mules, or a ten-year-old pair of scuffed-up Sorel 'Joan of Arctics' a full size too big after having lost their detachable linings.