Tag: writing

April Rambling: Kiwi marriage equality; Eddie’s aunts

Jaquandor has been doing this musical A to Z, and they’re all interesting.

moi, a couple of years ago

“If every kid having a mom and a dad is really what you are concerned about,” Miriam Axel-Lute expects “to also see you showing up” for these struggles.

The Fagbug meets Equality House.

Arthur: “When I was a kid, I expected life to be a certain way, and that way did not include being true to myself. I simply couldn’t imagine that one day I might be a full citizen.” Here is his favorite speech (it IS a hoot) and his favorite moment in the marriage equality passage in New Zealand.

The Man On the Street: Three Decades of Street Harassment.

This month in 1889, the so-called “Unassigned Lands” in what is now central Oklahoma were opened to white settlement, the celebrated Oklahoma Land Run. “The Native tribes, you may be sure, aren’t quite so enthusiastic about celebrating.”

Mr. Frog re: Spike Lee’s School Daze and a Ramble About Racism.

10 Cover-ups That Just Made Things Worse.

27 science fictions that became fact in 2012.

Meryl: Logos: The power of grounding logic and expectations in our communications. Also, Optical Illusions and their role in Education, Brain Training, and Visual Literacy; at least check out the video at the end of the latter one.

J: The sexiest letter.

Neil Gaiman: There wasn’t anything in there that indicated that I was going to be a writer, a real writer, with something to say, except for one thing, and it was this: I was writing. There was lots of writing going on.

I whine a lot about writing, but I never have whined quite so persuasively as this.

Healing the Wounded Womb.

MY FAVORITE STORY OF THE MONTH: Eddie writes This is the Story of Gussie and Bertie, two of his aunts, of a sort.

Tegan tells a story.

Amy’s momoir.

Mark Evanier sells the house he grew up in.

Happy Navroze – a personal look at the Zoroastrian holiday

SamuraiFrog’s fond memory of Turkey in the Straw.

Math Anxiety: What it is and How to Relieve Its Stress and Impact.

Here’s an alphabet mural Ken Jennings painted on his daughter’s wall when she was a newborn. Very clever.

Jaquandor has been doing this musical A to Z, and they’re all interesting. Cheri asked what music makes me cry. One of them is his B. “Bach’s music is, to me, architectural. It is mathematical. Now, to some that might make it sound like the music is clinical and sterile in emotion, but nothing could be further from the truth.” Another is his D; funny story therein. He ALSO wrote a great obit of trumpeter Bud Herseth, who you’ve probably never heard of – I hadn’t – but still a most worthwhile read, and listen.

Lost in translation: CHEERS theme in German, and an ad for the musical Wicked when it got to Helsinki, Finland. Also, If you don’t understand this commercial…

The latest Carl Reiner book, and an anecdote about a funeral.

From the 1940 Charlie Chan movie, Murder Over New York: The police round up every Hindu in town.

Always liked Jonathan Winters, and sorry he died. Here’s what Ken Levine had a nice piece. Mark Evanier wrote several pieces; first thoughts; Jonathan receiving the Mark Twain Award at the Kennedy Center in 1999; him at a recording session for Garfield and Friends in 1990.

Willie Nelson turns 80 this week, and Coverville celebrates the occasion.

I probably watched Pat Summerall announcing sporting events for 40 years. And Maria Tallchief, a great dancer.

Never DID trust Winnie the Pooh.

Someone on Facebook wrote: “If you’re a geezer, you’ll hear it in your head.” And I do.

K-Chuck Radio: Miles to go before I sleep…

Contraptions: Oreo separator machine. Also, a recipe for making ice.

The state capitals.

Photos of Insects with Drops of Water On Their Heads

I Write Like HP Lovecraft, DF Wallace or J Joyce?

My more informational pieces are very David Foster Wallace.

To show that, when you peruse this blog, you are reading the finest quality reading material, per instructions from Dustbury, I went to the website I Write Like, where one can supposedly “check which famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers.”

I took the first ten blog posts of this month as a typical sampling.

The War On Christmas post and the reviews of the Walter Cronkite autobiography and the Vince Guaraldi biography, I write like Lovecraft:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

A couple of newsier pieces my life on a treadmill and the FantaCon update are Joycean.

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

My more informational pieces, politics and commerce, and the Baseball Hall of Fame and the UHF TV are very David Foster Wallace, who, I must admit, I’ve never read.

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

No time to blog is in the style of Cory Doctorow, who I read regularly these days. (Note to Dan: so is your December 2 post.)

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Finally, my World AIDS Day piece is like William Gibson, whose writing style I am not familiar with.

I write like
William Gibson

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Whose writing style do YOU emulate?

The Dave Brubeck webpage. I wanted to say something clever about Brubeck, who died earlier this month, like this piece by EJ Dionne. He was a real ambassador of jazz. I DO remember hearing, and liking, Take Five on the radio when it first came out. My favorite of his songs, though, is Blue Rondo a la Turk. Also, SamuraiFrog links to a Disney song.

Like most Americans, I became aware of sitar master Ravi Shankar, who died this week, via his relationship with Beatle George Harrison. Still cracks me up when, at the Concert for Bangladesh, the 1971 event that Ravi encouraged George to initiate, Shankar says to the clueless Western audience, “If you enjoy the tuning so much, I hope you enjoy the playing even more.” The official recording label of The Ravi Shankar Foundation is East Meets West Music. “With unique access to an archive featuring thousands of hours of live performance audio, film footage, interviews, and studio masters, EMWMusic releases rare recordings and provides audiences with the definitive portrait of Ravi Shankar’s long career. And, in keeping with Ravi’s dedication to looking forward and not back, EMWMusic provides a vibrant platform for new artists, projects, and collaborations.”

 

Technology is my friend, or a fiend

We could have a whole bunch of Thomas Paines out there, speaking truth to power.

Chris from Off the Shore of Orion, whose been off her blog, but on other social media, wonders:
What piece of technology would you hate the most to lose? Which piece of technology do you wish would just disappear?

The former is quite easy; the latter, not so much.

I am a lousy typist. I used to use tons of Wite-Out and those weird little strips that would take up a letter from the already-typed page. But it was tedious and exhausting. Clearly, my favorite technology that has been developed in my lifetime is the word processor. It has made the creative process INCREDIBLY easier. Oops, I typed an n when I meant an m; no problem. Backspace and correct.

I remember having this Sears typewriter back in the 1980s that had about a page worth of memory, so you could write before it typed about a line of text, and there was this narrow screen on it, so you could see a little bit of what you had written. It was an improvement, but not like the chance to view, save, and change a large document.

If I were dependent on the old technology, I wouldn’t be a librarian, for I would still be working on my graduate school paper from 20 years ago, which ran about 50 pages long (and wasn’t very good). When I first composed it, the sections were structured 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c. But once the first draft was completed, I realized I had it all wrong; it should have been arranged 1a, 2a, 3a, 1b, 2b, 3b, 1c, 2c, 3c. So I cut and pasted over 2/3s of the document. If I had had to RETYPE it…

I don’t know what kind of typist Jaquandor is, but I’m sure that he is appreciating editing the text of his book or two, including Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title), on a word processor, rather than retyping every draft. BTW, I think is rather awesome that he’s doing that. You should read what he says about writing, with a wife and a kid and a job, in response to this column, which I sent him.

And of course, the word processing mode eventually made this whole blogging thing possible, which means, theoretically, that we could have a whole bunch of Thomas Paines out there, speaking truth to power. We don’t, of course, and people write all sorts of garbage, but that’s not the fault of the technology.

This is why I get extremely nervous about those sneaky draconian bills such as ACTA, designed presumably to protect against copyright infringement, but which would have a chilling effect on free speech.

On the other side of the original question, it’s more difficult to say. I could pick getting rid of the drones we fire into Pakistan. But the technology itself is neutral; a similar methodology might be used to blow up that asteroid that’s going to hit the planet, or to play video games.

The same technology that might infect thousands of people with some terrible virus might also be used to save them.

Somewhat off-topic, but Mark McGuire noted that “Facebook announced it has hit one billion users. Do you think you will still be using FB in 5 years? What social media platform do you think you will be using the most by then?” My answer is that I haven’t a clue. I didn’t know, 10 years ago, I’d be blogging; three years ago, I ignored Facebook altogether. I might have said three years ago, Twitter was pointless (I didn’t, but I could have), yet here I am tweeting daily, mostly things that I blog, to be sure. And I would not have thought you could so easily link them.

I WILL say that planned obsolescence is a terrible trait in manufacturing, but that’s more a methodology than a technology.

Oh, you know what technology I wish would disappear? The eight-track. A stupid technology that would make a lot of noise in the middle of a song. That’s something that should go. Wait: it did. Lots of bad technology goes away on its own.

The Lenten devotional post, in five minutes or less

The notion that I could churn something out “in 5 minutes” really ticked me off.

Among others, I was requested to make a submission to the FOCUS churches Lenten devotional calendar/booklet. I received the email because “you have either submitted an entry in the past [I had not] or have demonstrated interest in writing for public consumption [maybe THAT’S it]… There are texts assigned for each day and… parameters…for this project.”

After failing to respond, five days later, On January 31, I was asked if I had received the invitation. Eventually, I acceded to do one entry, about 2 paragraphs, based on 1 Corinthians 2:10-16. “It has Paul talking about spiritual vs those who are unspiritual. Those who are spiritual understand that which is spiritual, but those who are unspiritual see the gifts of God’s spirit as foolishness. Why? Because spirit is required to understand these gifts, and they don’t have them. And we [followers of Christ] have the mind of Christ. Below are instructions… about doing this. Can you have it to me by Feb 10? I’m guessing you could create it right now in 5 minutes. Or you can live with it a few days as [the editor] suggests.”

And somehow, the notion that I could churn something out “in 5 minutes” really ticked me off, so much, in fact, that I mentioned it to my wife when I got home. She said that it was a compliment to my skilled writing or some such. (Yes, I know I’m being petty here; sometimes I’m petty.)

Here’s something that has, for a long time, been true of me. I hate long, or even moderately long deadlines. Invariably, one of two things will happen: I will do the thing right away because I don’t want to forget or become too busy at the point of the deadline. If I have an intro to write for ABC Wednesday, it’s usually done at least the week before. When I’m going to contribute to Flashmob Fridays, all but one of the contributions I’ve sent by Monday.

Or, I’ll forget altogether, or in the alternative, just run out of time. February 10 comes, and in my pique, the booklet had TOTALLY left my consciousness, until I get a reminder.

So, I take more than five minutes – indeed my entire lunch hour (or more) – to write 187 words; the maximum was 250. I needed to find the right tactic. And now that I’ve finished ranting about it, here is what I submitted:

“I’ve been a librarian for nearly two decades. One of the things I have noticed over the last several years is that many people seem to think that virtually all the information they will ever need can be found by going on the Internet and Googling for it. In fact, Google and other search engines do not always retrieve what’s known as ‘gray literature’, which is defined as ‘research that is either unpublished or has been published in non-commercial form.’ Often, it is that particular dissertation, government report or policy statement that provides the best answer to a query.

“Likewise, there is human knowledge. Some folks believe that’s all there is, and are skeptical of any other source of data. But others have been blessed by the Spirit to access the ‘gray literature’ of Christ’s spirituality. Best of all, one doesn’t need a computer or other device to access this database, and one can download it at any time, day or night. And the wisdom to answer life’s pressing questions can be found in unexpected clarity.”

I also had to add a sentence prayer.

“May we be transformed by the greater wisdom offered to us graciously by the Spirit of God.”

I have no idea if it’s any good. It’s not something I’ve done before. But it DID make it into the booklet. If I do it again, I’ll definitely budget at least TEN minutes for the project.

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