Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist

Of course, I caved. I mean, I can actually sort of justify buying them now that I’m going to be a real grad student and stuff.

Besides, Megan and I can both use the OLD. At what comes to a 60% net discount, it just makes sense, right?

On top of that — who needs weights when you have multiple 10lb dictionaries you can lift? Really, somebody should come up with a routine for six-pack abs that involves these things. Then we people who do obscure languages could argue that there are health benefits.

And, as you see, they’re so shiny and new, they’re reflecting each other in their jackets.

For purposes of scale:

From bottom to top, that’s the Big Liddell/Great Scott, the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the BDAG, the Middle Liddell, and then the Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary.

When I posted the link to the sale, I said to send me pictures of you with your purchases, but let’s expand that, because I don’t think that’s geeky enough.

No, not by half.

Here’s what I want you to do:

Take all of your scholarly dictionaries — grammars are okay too, I suppose — and find a way to arrange them creatively and photograph yourself with them. Creatively edit the photo if you want, too. When I say creative, that gives you very broad license. Let your dead language nerd freak flag fly. Heck, if you even want to figure out a way to do a video, I’d love to see it.

Post your own result on Flickr or Twitpic or YouTube or somewhere, and then post the link as a comment on a post I will put up tonight. Let’s say you have till Friday, 22 May — that gives time to get the word out that somebody really is crazy enough to ask for this, and it will be between Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation for movie releases. Do it on Friday, 15 May instead of going to see Angels and Demons (what’s sad is, I’ve never read the book and don’t plan to, have no idea what the story actually is from the trailers and have zero intention of seeing the film, but it is patently obvious who the real bad guy is the way the trailer is edited, much as was the case with Mel Gibson’s Payback).

Do I have a prize? I don’t know. I’ll try to come up with something.

So, forward this around to other language geeks. Tweet it. Put it on Facebook, MySpace, Craigslist, whatever.

I’m serious about this. An academic year has come and gone; something insane is called for.

Get to it.