Update: Mystery Solved
1/3/09 – I was able to contact Mr. Warner, former publisher of Mother Tongue Annoyances, and he wrote back as follows – his remarks appear with his permission:
Yes, I am ‘that’ Tim Warner. I took the Mother Tongue Annoyances blog offline because (a) I lost interest in it; (b) I had some privacy concerns based upon some overly revealing things I described about myself in some of my articles; and (c) I was tired of fielding negative commentary from the proverbial ‘peanut gallery.’
Resource Lost
With a sense of loss I write to say this morning I found dead the link to Tim Warner’s Mother Tongue Annoyances. The Snap thingummy at right when you mouse over the link appears to still work, showing a tiny webpage preview snapshot of the site with a large Asian language character of, to me, unknown provenance upper right near the site’s Search box.
Cadged from the Snap.com mouse-over - page thumb appears to date from April, 2007
Blissfully, I clicked on the little picture and found, to my horror, this:
Fare Ye Well said the site's title bar, and Web PDF downloaded this long, sad, nearly empty page
Warner’s important work has contributed to my understanding of the term, “Asshat.” I’ve spent much time happily perusing his site for information of the sort I’ve been unable to reliably find elsewhere. My reason for consulting MTA this morning was to find information for this site.
I recall reading somewhere on the site that Warner’s employment brought him to Nashville from some other part of the country, possibly the north-central states. He published, I read at one point, a snarling diatribe of sorts against my own religion, Christianity, but I excused him on the grounds that his work was sound, interesting, and his education was undoubtedly a product of what passes for higher learning in these United States. Also because he seemed to take issue more with my coreligionists, and to have little understanding of the religion, itself.
So what’s happened to Warner? I don’t remember seeing that Asian language character upon his website prior to today’s mouse-over. Has he become enamored with the speech and related cultural habits of a language and people group not natively his own? I would like to know. It is a mystery.
Shit
I’ve been pondering the etymology of some current uses of the English word, “Shit.” Specifically “Crazy Shit,” and “Wild Shit,” usually preceded in speech by “Dude (or other mode of address), that’s some (insert type of shit here).” In my experience, the term “Crazy Shit” connotes something unacceptably bad in the past tense unfortunately unpreventable, whereas the term “Wild Shit” is spoken with a wistful and grudging admiration for a daring, large surprisingly truthful or defiant act or statement.
“Shit” also may refer to marijuana, perhaps the gateway drug through the use of which the unacceptably bad and unfortunately unpreventable, or the daring, large surprisingly truthful or defiant stepped out into the world of human act or omission.
Something to think about.
Christov_Tenn 