Crenellated Flotsam

The Olympics are over, which is good news for my television. The old beast needs to rest up the next two weeks to be ready when Formula 1 starts up again in Bahrain and bicycle racing starts filling up my TiVo.

I’m either a huge fan of the Olympics or a sucker for them, depending on your point of view. No matter how obscure the sport, I get a huge kick out of watching these people from all the world trying their best at them. My fasciantion, of course, isn’t served well by American coverage, but maybe I’ll get to that later.

I run only slightly faster than an oil spill and my skiing experience is limited to one downhill run. I would have done more, but I never got the hang of turning so my descent was a series of straight lines and tipping over to avoid running into trees. I was exhausted from all the standing up by the time my ex completed four complete runs, smiling and waving at me each time she passed.

I’ve never handled a javelin, discus, or shot, so the field events are as foreign to me as ice skating. In short, I’ve never been much of an Olympian, but did finish in second place at some thing at our local playground, finishing just behind my best friend of the time and ahead of no one. His dad was a gym teacher who took great delight in signing us up for sporting things no one else in the world was aware of.

Anyway, the Olympics are over and my eyes can remember what it’s like to go hours without tearing up. No, the heartwarming personal stories that interrupt the coverage don’t do much for me, but seeing the smiles of the winners moves me. I learn all I need to know from listening to the five second commentary that introduces them while they compete. Their faces, though, speak volumes to me, and I can’t look at any cheering crowd all decked out in their country’s garb without thrilling for them.

See, that’s the thing. I feel as happy for the French when someone from their country wins as I do for the US when we claim the prize. Maybe even happier. We’ve got a lot here in the US, which makes a medal for Croatia or Finland all that more precious. We’re the world’s super power last time I looked, which taints our victories for me and reminds me of Kramer’s wins in Seinfeld over his karate class of ten year olds or Monty Python’s student-teacher soccer match.

I’d like to see more of the actual competition than just the Americans and those who tip over, but as long as I’m outnumbered in this country, all I’ll ever see is how great we’re doing. That’s not very sporting to me, but unless the games come to a city near me and I can attend in person again and sit through a day’s boxing matches between people I’ll probably never hear about again, it’s what I’m stuck with.

Which reminds me: If anyone needs to prove Andy Warhol’s fifteen minute thing, watch the Olympics. That Canadian woman whose mother died just before her skating is someone I don’t think I’ll hear about ever again. I wonder what she’ll do with her life.

I don’t much like the term Grammar Nazi, but I’ve been called that and probably worse over my life. For me, it’s not so much a matter of defending my native tongue like a cop, but I do so because I’m a hopeless romantic and I don’t like to see English hurt.

Not that the language minds, or even notices.

I love how language changes over the years, how it grows, but I’m never very happy when the change costs us something and gives nothing new in return. Without changes, we wouldn’t have such great new words as fo shizzle, website, or Branjelica. These words, and many others, are ones we need.

I’ve grown used to, if not fond of, Internet thread board people co-opting most of their terms instead of coming up with their own, but I wish they’d come up something new instead of grabbing spam, troll, and the like. It was bad enough for me when spam moved from Usenet postings on a wide number of groups to include any e-mail ad, but lately it’s been dumbed down even more and now is used to disparage any comment someone dislikes.

Dammit, I love this language and all the nuances it lets us convey. A pretty girl isn’t the same as a cute one, and calling someone brilliant means something different than saying she’s smart. When we need a new word to describe something, English lets that happen and, over time, the word becomes part of our shared language.

When some word with a long and recognized history, such as chocolate, is broadened to mean just about anything that contains any amount of coca, for example, we don’t gain anything and the larger meaning dilutes the meaning of the words we use to communicate our thoughts without ambiguity. I know, I know, no one except lawyers and philosophers care about such precision, but I don’t want a language that ends up losing the distinction between an abode and a house.

There’s no way any living language can remain static, stay the same, become entrenched, calcified, or stagnant, and there shouldn’t be. Still, when a word or phrase I love is used to mean something different than it’s always meant, what it was designed to convey, a little part of me dies, and it hurts more when we lose an exacting, defined term and gain nothing.
I’d rather spend a week in jail than a night in prison as long as those words mean what they were meant to mean. If I’m gonna be precise, that is.

I don’t remember much from the history classes I took in school, which were only those I needed to get a degree in another field, but I don’t think that has anything to do with my point.

Every day, from every side, I hear people in America talking about our Founding Fathers, a group of people with whom I’m admittedly ignorant. Yeah, I know some of their names, but I don’t know very much else about them.

Anyway, to make some point, partisans usually call on one or more of these Fathers to reinforce their position. Whether it’s arguing for small government or nationwide health care, these historical people are brought up to prove whatever’s being argued.

Like I said, I can’t claim to understand if the viewpoint of the long dead person is true or not, but I don’t think it matters one way or the other. Not only does it seem that to every Founding Father there’s an equal but opposite Founding Father, but I’m not convinced what someone said 250 years ago even makes a lot of sense any more.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think those guys did a great thing in setting up this country. Our constitution is a remarkable document and not just because it’s almost completely silent when it comes to policy. It’s a great frame for running a country, and I think it’s done a pretty good job of holding up.

What concerns me is this idea that what Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, or whoever believed in 1770 is what they would think today. I’m thinking these people, as much as anyone, would be as influenced as much by their environment as they would be by any internal tendencies.

I didn’t take many psychology or sociology classes, either, but I have a hunch that we’re shaped as much by where and how we’re brought up as we are by anything. Kids learn from their parents, and either carry those same things on or rebel against them and take the other side. We all grow through adolescence and the self-obsessed twenties, and some of us stop along the way and others continue to grow throughout our lives and find their positions changing.

My point is, not everyone is static and I’m not even sure that we can say with any certainty that how anyone turned out was ever fixed. A kid raised in Portland in the 1960s might have an entirely different set of political or cultural beliefs had she been raised in Salinas or Houston.

The people who grew up in New York in 1827, I’m thinking, might not even recognize themselves in the mirror if, instead, they were raised even ten or fifty years later. I just think where and how we develop is a huge factor in determining who we are.

If that’s true, a contemporary George Washington might not believe what the one from history did. If we permit people to change, if we brought him back to life, there’s every reason to believe he might even change his mind about whatever it is he’s most known for thinking.

I guess this is all just to say that I have no idea what lesson I’m supposed to take from arguments based on these old guys.

If you ask me, the word awesome has pretty much lost all of its oomph.

I guess I can see why it became so popular with the kids, who are almost always at the forefront of changes in lanuguage and usage, but that doesn’t help me feel better about losing another perfectly fine word.

Over my life, I’ve seen quite a few words come and go, change meaning, or take over slang and become popular. Some, like gay, have had their meaning restricted, with no new word popping up to take their old place and meaning, which reduces our language by exactly one word. Others, such as jungle, have become politically incorrect and necessarily replaced by cold, dry, descriptive phrases (tropical rainforest) that have absolutely no emotional response. Sure, I may picture the same thing as before, but tropical rainforest doesn’t bring up memories of drums or all those movies I saw as a kid.

After a few days of rain, we’ve had a couple of sunshine here in Los Angeles. It was bright and sunny earlier this morning, but now clouds have returned and I changed from shorts to long pants. When the sun pops out, I can turn my face toward it and feel its warmth, and trying to fathom the enormous power of something that far away being felt by me and making a noticeable difference astounds me.

The explosive power of the sun is awesome. It gives me pause, causes me to feel awe, in a way no slang use of the word even approaches. A new song or remarkable play in a sporting event doesn’t make me feel that way, but without thinking, that’s the word we use to describe them. Awesome has now become simply filler, much like uh or like, added to speech or writing but adding nothing to the idea being brought forth other than “I like this” or “I think this is good.”

I thought it was bad when incredible became cheapened by use and went from its original “impossible to believe or credit” to doubtful or, worse, unlikely. I hadn’t realized that language needed to change to eliminate the nuances our individual words were invented to convey, but I guess that’s the way it goes.

It’s not awesome, this evolution, it’s erosion.

As if life weren’t confusing enough, I sometimes make it worse by refusing to understand simple concepts.

One of my longer lasting problems comes with the notion of secret. For some reason, I keep thinking of in terms of a stronger, probably non-existent word that would refer to something that I, and I alone, know. I know, I know, most secrets are between two people, but it always feels to me as if more than one person knows about some thing, it’s not the same as a real secret.

As can be expected, this gets me into lots of trouble, but only with myself. I like to think of myself as one of the more discrete people around, and anything I think shouldn’t be public or even divulged to another person is locked up tight in my head. I don’t have much trouble keeping these things secret and I don’t remember ever hearing anyone gossiping about me as blabbing, but maybe they do and just keep it a secret from me.

I’d like two terms, one for things I share with others and another for things only I know. I suppose I could distinguish them by calling the first one confidences, but it’s not likely I’d remember to do that all the time. Still, it’s a good way to keep the two things separate.

There are any number of things I’m aware of that no one else knows, but they’re not all worthy of being called secrets. I think a secret has to be something I’m hiding, or that I don’t want other people to know. I mean, right now no one knows which toothpaste I used this morning or what underwear I have on, but it’s not like I wouldn’t tell anyone who asked. Those things are unknown to the world, but that’s more a matter of happenstance than reluctance.

What’s weird about the confidences is that I have a hard time considering them as secrets because even if I never mention them, someone else knows about them and could talk about them. Since I can’t really control if no one else learns about them, I have a hard time considering them as secrets. If I die, the secret won’t die with me and that, to me, pretty much keeps them out of the realm of secrecy.

Then again, a confidence, I think, is something that I’m told about, not something that arises on its own. Just like the toothpaste, I’ve done a lot of things with other people, but only the ones we don’t other people to know about should be secret. Even more troubling, a lot of those things, now that I think about it, are things I’d have to check with the other person to find out if I can talk about it or not. I know what I’m not telling anyone, and those things are secret, but my not talking about something doesn’t mean it’s a secret. It would have to be something I know, or have been told, not to discuss with others.

So, in my overly complicated world, there’s more to the matter of secrets than would seem to be necessary. There’s probably thousands who’ve had access to my super secret Social Security Number so I guess a secret boils down to something someone doesn’t want others to know, no matter how many already do or why.

I read Catcher in the Rye a few times growing up and it makes me sad that it’s not as popular as it once was. Recent generations, jaded by more explicit depictions of life or just generally rebelling against earlier generations, remark that Holden is a jerk, which actually hurts me.

Still, ideas presented in a few of the scenes stick right in front of my mind and I use or remember them, if not daily, at once a week (and have since I first ran across them). They’re probably not crucial to the story and I’d doubt if they’re popular with anyone but me, but for some reason, I call on them whenever they seem to fit.

The first is what I call the Holden Caulfield theory of Catholicism. At some point in the book he remarks to the effect that you can always tell a Catholic person by how they try to find out if you share their faith. The example he gave that I remember is Catholics asking you for the location of the nearest church and how that showed the subtlety they employ in trying to discover if you, too, are Catholic.

I can’t say that anyone has ever asked me that, but I’ve expanded or adapted the idea to how women often use similar things to let you know about their availability. It’s rare for me to talk very long with any woman and not have her bring up her husband, lover, or boyfriend if she has one. It’s never in response to a direct question, something I don’t think I’ve ever asked of anyone, but she’ll usually work her relationship into the conversation.

One reason for that might be because her love and status is so important to her that it’s the focus of her life, and I can’t argue with that. Or, it may just be an efficient or safe way to let me know her boundaries, but whenever someone, however awkwardly, introduces their relationship into the conversation I grin and remember Holden and his Catholics.

The other thing Salinger brought to my attention through Holden is a question he wondered about when he spent some time with a prostitute. Instead of thinking about sex, which I would guess to be the extent of the matter, he wonders if the sales person who sold the girl her coat (or dress) knew that it was a prostitute that was buying it.

Again, I expand on this idea, not having a great deal of interactions with prostitutes, and frequently wonder about those who sold things to the people I talk with know that he or she is … whatever.

The things I learn about those in my life aren’t very often secrets only we share, but I do learn some things that I guess aren’t public knowledge. It’s sometimes a very minor thing, but I wonder about the grocery clerk or shop assistant not knowing that this person has a mole somewhere or that she went to Scotland or some such place when she turned twenty.

The closest I ever came to matching Holden’s experience was when I took a writing class and one of the other students was an exotic dancer. I couldn’t help but wonder if, when she bought the fishnet stockings she once wore to class, the sales person knew that this girl would be displaying them to anyone with a pocket full of singles.

Anyway, Salinger enriched my life, and I’m sorry that kids today don’t appreciate Holden. I haven’t read the work in decades, so maybe it didn’t hold up well, but I can’t help feeling a little bit sad that it’s cool to hate on him.

Although someone very clever (Mark Twain?) noted that, while everyone talks about the weather, no one does anything about it, I’m going against the grain here and doing much more than that. Me? I’m panicking.

Here in So Cal we’re at the beginning of a week of rain and storms and true to the quote, it’s pretty much what everyone here is talking about. Neighbors are covering things in their yards with tarps (the blue ones that grow on trees on that Lost island), everyone’s pretty much put their trash out a day early (to avoid getting unnecessarily wet), and there was a flurry of dog walking earlier this morning.

Right now, the drizzle has begun and I can imagine the ants don’t yet know that their homes will be flooded.

I like the rain, at least when I’m inside and don’t have to drive anywhere. I wouldn’t even mind that so much if it weren’t for my convertible top not fastening when it’s closed, which means I have to drive around with the top down and look like an idiot.

Or, to be generous, a devil-may-care sort of guy, enhanced by new goatee.

One nice thing about the rain is how well it soaks the ground, costing me nothing. The wet ground that will result is much easier for me to do the drastic weed pulling that I favor, ripping everything up by the roots, but it also encourages growth and that gives me more to do. Still, it will be easy enough next week, say, when the rain’s stopped, to go out and pick the largest growths, yank them from the ground, and safely sequester their carbon away from those who would wish to add it to the atmosphere.

In the meantime, I have (I hope!) everything I need to survive. Well, everything except the makings for chili.

While everyone around me is getting ready for the holidays, or just getting over them, I’m stuck here wondering about the human condition.

It’s no surprise that there are things I like and things I don’t care so much about, but it might be surprising that I don’t really consider myself to be a fan of much of anything, not even of those things I really, really enjoy.

I see this all the time on the Internet, people rushing to the defense of things they like or cheering on their teams, and I just don’t get it. In sports, it looks like when you root for one side you’re required to see nothing your team does as deserving of a penalty while everything the other side does is wrong and a flagrant foul. In books, games, movies, and literature, people who are fans seem to go out of their way to justify what others see as flaws, and fanwaking takes up most of their time.

Fanwaking, of course, is one of my favorite words, and might even be a real one. It’s pretty much the term used to describe going out of one’s way to explain something that any normal person would see as a plot hole, but mostly just reflects our human need to justify.

I don’t know why, but I can’t feel this need, and I can’t even call myself a fan of just about anything. Maybe I am, but just stubbornly refuse to admit it, or maybe I’m lacking what it takes to commit myself wholeheartedly to things.

I’ll be among the first to defend something or someone if they’re being wronged, but I’d like to think my support isn’t blind. When someone criticizes something I like, I can get hurt, sure, but if there’s some value in what’s said, I have to consider that. Maybe it’s part of it, but when someone or something I claim to love is criticized, I don’t feel personally threatened and usually don’t take it personally.

It may be, though, that I’m so reluctant to defend others because I’m not often defended and never learned that’s how things are supposed to work. I do know, though, that if I say anything bad about Dragon Age or some other popular game that I’ll be attacked up and down the Internet by fans of the game who will dismiss and diminish anything I say without even considering it.

And I can’t do much about it. Maybe I’m built in such a way as to always first attempt to see the other side and not just instictively close my mind to anything and everything said by those with whom I disagree. I don’t much care for Sarah Palin’s views, but I don’t hate her, and whenever she comes up with some new pronouncement, my first reaction is to try to understand where she’s coming from.

This entry is rambling, at best, but it’s mostly just a test to see if this blogging software works with my updated Wordpress. If you’ve read this far, enjoy the holidays!

It’s about time I remembered this blog.

Before I write anything, I had to upgrade my installation and, as they always do, the end of the upgrade directions contains the helpful advice that I should consider “rewarding yourself with a blog post about the upgrade.” Well, I’m not sure how rewarding it will be for me or anyone else, but here it is.

It’s quite an extensive upgrade because I haven’t done one in quite some time. This new version has a way for me to add not only pictures to my entries, but video and audio, as well. I can only hope that means that the music comes on automatically when people load the page and plays all the time the page is open. It would be even better if I can find some of that old MIDI music we loved so well on the Geocity pages!

The good news about those enhancements, which may have been incorporated a few years ago, is that I don’t have to bother with those annoying ways of including pictures I had to use in the past. They involved special coding, which I invariably forgot, but I’ll have to check where these uploaded pictures are stored, if they appear as thumbnails, and all that.

Also, I have no reason to believe any of the old images will show up, not unless I move them.

See, this is what’s great about living in this day and age. Computers allow us (me) to spend roughly forever completing tasks that were once unheard of. We think they’re faster, more efficient, and let us be more productive, but that’s not true at all. Sure, they let us do more, but we spend far more time managing them than we ever had to spend changing typewriter ribbons.

The good news is, this is a new post. Maybe I should try to get back in the habit of writing here, using it as a way to warm up for other writing I need to do during the day. Maybe I can even say something interesting some day.

Or, add a picture.

I think too highly of NaNoWriMo to make a mockery of it.

In years past I remember being thrilled by the prospect of writing a novel and simply amazed that I was able to do it. I looked forward to November with eager anticipation and traditionally wrote a page or so at the stroke of midnight on November first before settling off to bed.

When I got up the next morning, there it was: the start of my novel and it was as if fairies had started it for me while I slept!

I’ve finished enough novels during NaNoWriMo to know that I can do it. That’s no longer a challenge. Now, none of them are what you’d call good by any stretch of the imagination, but they were all over fifty thousand words and most of them even had a hint of story or character development.

A few years ago, when I quit, it was because I was mocking NaNo, and that made me feel bad. The idea, and the wondrous joy I shared in when I first became aware of the project, was fading quickly as I realized all I was doing was a typing exercise. Instead of writing a story I needed to tell, to explore my writing abilities and strengthen them, all I was doing was writing for the sake of writing, just so I could say I won.

In the first year I participated there was some guy who finished the first day or so and did so by copying and pasting one word 50,000 times. I hated that then, but my last couple efforts weren’t really any different and I hated myself for that. I was taking something wonderful, something that everyone else was excited about, and crapping on it by just tossing words onto the page and calling it a novel.

This year I still don’t have the sense of adventure and excitement I felt those first couple of years, but I hope to make the best out of what I have. I don’t know if I’ll win or not, but NaNo has never been about winning or bragging rights. I hope to be strong enough to put aside any silly sense of obligation and come up with a draft of a novel during November, one that meets the threshold.

What I won’t be doing is demeaning the project I hold so dear by showing I can type enough words to win.