Back in the mid seventeenth century the Brits began using bloody to add emphasis to an expression of uncertain origin, but is thought to have a connection with the "bloods" (aristocratic rowdies) of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; hence the phrase bloody drunk (as drunk as a blood) meant very drunk indeed. After the mid eighteenth century until quite recently, bloody used as a swearword was regarded as unprintable, probably from the mistaken belief that it implied a blasphemous reference to the blood of Christ, or that the word was an alteration of "by Our Lady"; hence widespread caution in using the term even in phrases such as bloody battle merely referring to bloodshed.
In America today you can be on the
bleeding edge which refers to the expense of buying electronic technology when it first comes out, before the prices drop due to higher production. From bloody being a swear word to the curse of being on the bleeding edge may seem like a big leap but in my mind the two are connected with an interesting phenomenon I've observed over the past forty or so years in my own life.
Just a moment ago I had my wife a small digital video camera I've had for years. Video has fascinated me for over thirty years and I've owned VHS video cameras and recorders since when they were two separate units right up to video camcorders that are smaller than the original VHS tapes were. The advances in technology have been extensive and expensive. I know. I've thrown out useless cameras that no one wanted for which I'd paid several times the high end prosumer camcorders. The cost of being on the
bleeding edge. When I came back from my first extended stay in Guatemala where I was learning Spanish in a total immersion school my wife was going to her first industry show where she had a booth and some pattern packets to sell. During the show I walked around looking at what people we doing and selling. When I got back I told her there was going to be a lucrative future in making and selling instructional videos and offered to make them for her. In her defense it was her first show and she was in overwhelm with all there was to do. Perhaps that's why the suggestion was batted back at me. Did I say batted back? It was more like it was shot out of a cannon. I never mentioned it again.
A few years ago Connie asked me to shoot, edit and produce an instructional video for her about painting roses. Of course I did it. Now it's time for a new one and she's looking to buy a camera so she can capture video of herself painting and explaining what she's doing. Naturally I offered to let her use one of the video cameras I have. She received the suggestion much better this time. It's only taken her a few days to collect the camera to give it a try this time. If you learn nothing else from being married to the same person for over twenty-seven years you may learn patience and forbearance. It's not always easy but it can be done with persistent effort. There are a number of steps through which we usually pass before we can accept something new. To be on the bleeding edge and know what is going to work before others know can be painful. No wonder they call it the bleeding edge. Bloody hell!
Comments (15)
Patience on all sides. I have always noted with much respect that my long time married friends (who by far out number my single friends) work very very very hard to be "happily married". And it is true, they are not those miserable marrieds. They are happy together but man, they have way more patience and generosity in others than I do.
I lack patience in most things. And being married is way too much work. 'Tis why I stay single!
@warweasel -
Heh, I hear you. I'm not selling marriage. It's tough. Well, except for Doris Day and Rock Hudson. I think the secret there was that Rock was gay.
Well there is a term I've yet to hear used. Guess I walk in the different circles. Bloody I've heard.
Being in relationships has taught me to have more and more patience. I think it's key for almost anything worthwhile. I"m not giving up!
c-)
I recently took my very intelligent "almost 11 year old" grandson for his birthday shopping trip. We went to an educational store first to look for a microscope, then determined that the one that he thought he needed was much too expensive. I was made aware that the toy ones did not show the things inside the blood and tissues. TMI. So it was off to the nearest toy store. We walked every aisle to finally end up in the techy part of the store, the divided area that requires you to walk through a detector of some kind to get in or out. As he reviewed several items and games, he held up two items that were considerably different in price. He gently explained to me that the one he wanted was more expensive because it was new and on the "cutting edge" of technology. If he waited a while, he could get it for much less, but if he chose the less expensive now, he could get some other stuff. I watched his face carefully as he almost caressed the cutting edge item. "My problem", he said, "is that I really want this and I want it now." After checking out, I thought about how many adults would have thought it through that much.
@gandywhite -
I expect the ones who were strapped for cash and responsible enough not to spend what they didn't have. What that translates as in modern language is, Very few.
When I was young, if you can imagine such a time, I wanted to do photography. I got a camera, stocked it with film whenever I could afford it, and took lots of pictures. Almost all were junk. Then I got some chemicals and lab gear and started developing my own film. You remember film, don't you? The celluloid strips you stuck in your camera to make pictures with. Oh, developing! That's when you bathe your film in a chemical soup to make the pictures appear. I then tried making prints. I made contact prints because I couldn't afford an enlarger. Enlarger? A machine that shines light through a negative onto special paper that could be developed to make prints in larger sizes than the negatives themselves. I once made my own photosensitive paper following a formula I found in the Chemical Rubber Handbook, that three-inch-thick book of science and technology. The paper wasn't very sensitive, so I could only make contact prints using long exposures to sunlight. The prints were brown and tan, not black and white. It was decades before I could play with an enlarger in a lab set up on the desert island where I stayed for a couple of years, the place so secret we weren't allowed to have cameras. I didn't need one; I had lots of negatives from years of taking pictures.
Somewhere in the early stages of my hobby, our neighbors bought themselves movie cameras. They took about three minutes worth of pictures per roll and, because they were in color, required being sent off to a lab for processing. Then the strips of film had to be cut into sections that were glued back together in a sequence to tell a story, rarely over seven or eight minutes worth. Movies seemed much more expensive and complicated than prints and I had invested so much energy and money into making prints that I decided that movies didn't interest me. Had I gotten into movies I wouldn't have had time or money for anything else, including having a life.
I eventually got an enlarger and a laboratory set-up that allowed me to process color negatives into color prints. By that time it was pretty pointless. Technology had moved on and everybody half my age was using video cameras. Those early users of video technology now find themselves in much the same place I found myself as kids were now making videos with their cellular phones and posting them on the Internet.
I found myself with useless technology and useless skills and could no longer find the variety of films and chemicals I needed easily or at reasonable prices. And my dog ate many of my pictures one afternoon.
That is the bleeding edge and, like it or not, we are all riding a technology that is speeding faster and faster ahead of us, placing us nearer and nearer that bleeding edge whatever we do.
@WordJames -
We share much of this story. Mine later, of course. In the mid sixties I was into photography and set up a dark room in my garage. After things in my life went south I had access to a dark room at work, even though I worked in a sail loft. The owner was an avid photographer and simply love having me set up a darkroom there. He paid for everything and I used it. He'd give me a camera and tell me to go sail with his sons and take pictures. I did, brought them back and developed the film and printed some of them. It was great! Never got into color though. Black and white was more artistic to my mind so I stayed away from color as long as was possible. I think you'll find now it's difficult to find black and white film just anywhere and even more difficult to get anyone to develop color film without one of those machines that does it all wrongly for you. Progress. *smile*
The bleeding edge doesn't bother me. Let it bleed. I'm not bleeding with it.
So we both have obsolete and useless knowledge.
I was the group troubleshooter where I worked, with the Panama Canal Commission. I had extensive experience with a variety of scientific computers and mainframe computers when the personal computer first came out. I could use CP/M but my knowledge was limited. I became skilled with MS-DOS when IBM invented their 8086- and 8088-based personal computers. I was the local expert on DOS-based dbase programming. All of those skills and that experience quickly became obsolete, useless.
When I left for California, I eventually got myself a clone PC, just about the time Windows 3.1 came out. When Microsoft announced they were going to upgrade the system to Windows 95, I taught myself Linux, which I could use at about the same skill level I had used CP/M. That is, not very well. Now I use a Mac running OS-X, a take-off on BSD Unix. Each move meant abandoning well-honed skills to learn yet another system. The skills didn't carry over very well, certainly no better than shifting from chemical-and-film photography to modern digital photography and videotaping. I could probably learn the new stuff, but my skills get old and outdated faster and new stuff doesn't stay new for very long.
My father was raised on a cattle ranch. He learned to ride, rope, brand and round critters up. He went into the Navy and learned to blow things up. His skills didn't become obsolete.
My son now sings opera professionally. People were singing opera the same way centuries ago. He supports his singing training by building Web sites, but he doesn't use technology that morphs quickly into something new. Both his singing and his computer work are relatively stable.
My wife and daughter do sales. They are right there at the trailing edge of technology. My daughter uses computers; my wife is slowly learning. Their sales skills, however, don't have to be re-learned every two or three years.
Being at the bleeding edge has almost bled me dry.
@WordJames -
Become a cook. Food never goes out of style.
I came back and read word james conversation. Really interesting, you two. Happy after T'day.
Bloody right!
Patience is a virtue that I need to reinvestigate....
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