Laborious Libations

Well, It has been a while since I have been writing on here on Harry Potter. That is due in part to that fact that I have reached the stage of what I call "Dumbledorian Conjecuritis" ... where I have expended much of my intuition into the realm of hard fact (which is by no means to say that I have expended anywhere near a tenth of the possibilities of discussion that exist within the realm of the facts of the text, and some would say I have not done a very bang up job with those I have touched lol) and would be entering the realm of wild speculation that is difficult to hold together in a coherent sentence (well ... I mean ... wilder than my speculations already are) But it is also partly due to the fact that I am spending every waking moment (and quite a few unwaking ones) on this encyclopedia editing project, some of the contributors for which make me look like a good, concise and sparse writer :) But today a wonderful witticism knocked at the door of my brain and presented itself for consideration, which also gave me the wonderful opportunity of something light-hearted to throw up here that gives the reader a brief insight into the insanity sometimes visited upon editors by the authors they seek to wield into coherency and also indulges me in one of my favorite past-times - analyzing Rowling's thoroughly interesting names. The Libatius Borage Award But fear not, I will not bore you with any of the tedious details of the editing of this encyclopedia; the particular incedent from today is sparse in detail. I was going through one piece trying to fix some writing that was proving somewhat tedious and I told the friend for whom I am working on this project that the Secret Editorial Consortium of this encyclopedia project (ie, me) was hereby awarding this particular contributor the "Libatious Borage Award." Now I get to explain why I chose the potioneer author whom we meet in the Half-Blood Prince chapter of ... the Half Blood Prince, to name this prestigious award after - because I have listened to book six several times through now while driving and I always love this name (and I will note again, up front, this is not a serious "here is a theory of a deep meaning or prediction based on such" post - it is a "these names are a blast" post ... but I think that somehow, mystically, that sort of things carries its own profound meaning, just one that you lose if you try to "explain" the profoundness too much). Libatious Borage: Pioneering Potioneer or Pretentious Prat? A libation is a poured out offering, such as, in the ancient world, a cup of wine might be poured out to this or that god at the beginning of a feast in thanksgiving. Libation offerings of both wine and grain were very common and St Paul refers to Christ's offering as a libation, a sacrificial pouring out. In present day the term often carries simply the idea of an ample pouring out or intentional spilling out. "Borage," I believe, is meant to pick up the common "slangish" adding of the suffix "age" to the end of a work to make a noun out of a verb or even another noun, such as "oops, had a little bit of spillage there." So then, you have a libatious borage as, shall we say, a profuse pouring out of boring material ... which I would say might fit Advanced Potion-Making. But I think there is more, more that fits Borage's individual style of potion-making. If you take the "Li" and the "Bor" from the too words and put them together but with the accents the same as they were in the original words (with the accent thus on "Bor" - which the construction lends itself to thinking of because "Bat" does pretty much the same thing in the original word "libation") you get a sound an awful lot like the "labor" part of "laborious" ... which I think is what Rowling had in mind (although I highly doubt that she has worked it out thus consciously, simply because I think she probably has much better things to do with her time LOL) But think about it, LB's instructions, what Hermione refers to as the "official instructions" are pretty stinking tedious and do not yield the results that the HBP's do. I honestly do love Rowling's knack for names. Anyway, now you know what the minds of madmen do for fun :) And if that doesn't win me the LB Award I don't know what will, but hopefully it was at least a little fun. "See you in the funny papers" (100 points to the house of whomever can tell me where that one comes from ... you have to reach way back into the dungeons of mid 80s computer games for it) PS Apologies to any who happened upon this post in its unfinished form, I was the victim of "Cross-Program Confusion" (which is a bit like Jimmy Hendrix's "Cross Town Traffic") - in MS Word ctrl-shft-s is the keyboard shortcut for changing styles and I use it A LOT recently - when the idea of "Lilbatious Borage: Pioneering Potioneer or Pretensious Prat?" came to me as a sub-heading I stuck it in and was going to go to hit ctrl-u and ctrl-b to bold and underline it, but out of force of habit hit ctrl-shft-s ... which, in blogger, obviously is, or at least contains, the keyboard shortcut for "publish it, baby!" ... sorry bou'that. (actually just did it again going to bold and underline the PS heading ... sorry)