TV Can Be Illuminating

Tucson Weather Today

_____

Can you imagine that human beings can be so uninformed that they would actually eat vomit?

Many people willingly do eat vomit... often. And they enjoy eating it. They revel in it; they pay high prices for it at their local supermarket.

You doubt this?

Watch the following video:

_____

I was disappointed this morning when George Will was absent from The Round Table on ABC's this week Sunday morning TV news show... Michael Gerson was okay, as were the two old has-been entertainers, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson but none of them comes up to the common sense reportage of George Will. The interview with Colin Powell was (to me) uninspired. The interview with Matt Damon about his work to provide clean water to those who do not have it was inspiring.

Who is Matt Damon?

What is Water.org?

_____

I believe that most people believe the word disingenuous is a politically correct synonym for liar. But actually, the definition is: disingenuous: Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.

Not quite the same thing.

For some reason, the word disingenuous reminds me of Senator Chuck Schumer, who, by the way, is extremely fond of using the word very.

Senator Charles Schumer

_____

My new Journal is not ready yet. Only the opening page exists at this time, but it is not to be a daily journal. It takes me more than one day to put my serious thoughts into intelligible words. And I have no previously written postings to fall back on. When it is ready, it will be there.

__________

A Curmudgeon? Who Me?

Tucson Weather Today

_____

I have been thinking about returning to the often thankless task of entering some of my deeper thoughts into my online journal, those personal pages within my domain which only those who have the link are able to enter.

_____

Philip Pullman recently posted the following: "I don’t believe in dissing books I used to love..." Mr. Pullman is a published author and book collector, so I felt some distress because he used the word "dissed" instead of 'disrespecting.' Using popular slang is not forbidden of course, and any writer is certainly free to use any word he cares to, but I feel that doing so, at least in this case, shows disrespect for the English language.

Or am I just being an old curmudgeon?

_____

Romney Uniquely Qualified For President said South Dakota Senator John Thune. I'm not sure exactly what it means to be "uniquely qualified."

_____

I read a poem that made me question (again) the difference between modern poetry and prose.

Fun, Fun, Fun When the Guy Goes Away
by Hal Sirowitz

That's a strange question to ask
a woman at a bar, she said. "Are
you having fun?" If I wanted
to have fun I wouldn't have come here.
This is a lot of work. I have
to decide which guy, out of
all the jerks here, has the potential
of becoming my future husband.
I mostly just have looks to go on,
since the conversation is usually
minimal--like the one we're having now.

"Fun, Fun, Fun When the Guy Goes Away"
by Hal Sirowitz,
(Before, During & After, Soft Skull Press, 2003.)

I've read the poem time and again, and I can only surmise that it is recognized as being a poem simply because of its line breaks, without which it would surely be classified as prose.

Sometimes I fear that by posting my honest thoughts, some of the conclusions I come to and write about in this blog merely serve to illustrate my abysmal lack of culture, formal education, and basic intelligence... to those readers who possess culture, formal education, and basic intelligence.

Ah well... so be it.

_____

A man and a woman who have never met before find themselves sharing a sleeping car on an overnight train. After some initial embarrassment, they both go to sleep in their bunks...But in the middle of the night, the woman leans over and says to the man: "I'm sorry, but I'm a little cold. Could I trouble you to get me another blanket?"

"I've got a better idea," the man replies with a glint in his eye. "Just for tonight, let's pretend we're married."

"OK, why not," giggles the woman.

"Great," the man says. "Get your own damn blanket!"

(From: Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind, MIT Press, 2011)

_____

Yes, I have decided to go ahead with my plan to enter my deeper thoughts into my new Journal but it might take me a few days to write a worthwhile entry. I wonder if I can still write an intelligent and coherent sentence. Time will tell, as they say.
__________

Whatever . . .

Whenever my attention to the task at hand--whether severely or ever so slightly--wavers and wanders then wanes, I turn for diversion to my Kindle PC and read a chapter or two from the novel 'Lord Jim.' Not to learn from its pages how to write literature. No, not to discern from the author's words the process of composing text for a modern novel that will be both understood and appreciated by today's readers. No. Joseph Conrad employed far too many adjectives and adverbs, and too many over-used figures of speech, too many abstruse similes and metaphors. (Or so I've been told)

As, (italics mine) for example, in:

She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over the plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.

It seems that the temper of the times determines the perceived quality of a published work.

Is a writer, aiming for publication, ever free to write whatever and however he or she wants to write? I think not.

Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad

A used hardcover copy for a penny.

. . .

Uh oh! -- I forgot; I was going to heed a famous author's advice to improve the quality of my blog by making each day's entry a miniature story, with beginning, middle, and end. Oh well, as with a weight loss diet, I can always start doing so tomorrow.

. . .

I read over at The Writer's Almanac that Andrew Bell illustrated 160 plates for the first edition of the Britannica, including illustrations of female pelvises and fetuses for the "Midwifery" entry, which shocked King George III so much that he demanded they be ripped out of every copy of the encyclopedia.

Now, I'd say that's a pretty good illustration of why an actively ruling Monarchy is not the most desirable as a form of government. In fact, life's experience shows the folly of allowing any form of government to grow unchecked. They all grow larger and larger, and grow more and more powerful, feeding mercilessly off the people, until the finally just get too big for their britches. And have to be taken down a notch or two.

And on and on groans and grumbles the crusty old curmudgeon.

. . .

The more I speak and hear spoken aloud the guttural word 'blog' the more I dislike it. Perhaps I should stop using the word and refer to it instead as my web journal... or something like that.

. . .

I finally got around to officially effecting the change of address for my Amateur Radio license from Jacksonville to Tucson. I'm not sure how soon the change will be made in the FCC database though. I'll keep checking until I see the correct address.

. . .

Even Mark Twain put to good use the practice of salting his writing with multiple grains of adjectives and adverbs, even the -ly ones. For instance, in his autobiography he wrote: "John Robards was eternally and indestructibly amiable. I may even say devilishly amiable; fiendishly amiable; exasperatingly amiable."

That's what can be accomplished by incorporating -ly adverbs into a statement the author sees as being enhanced by using those particular parts of speech.

So there . . .

. . .

New Word

pleonasm
redundancy;
The use of more words than necessary to express an idea

__________

Why Do I Write?

.

What purpose do I have in this day-by-day entering of my thoughts in this blog?

The only purpose I can think of is that I wish to simply write down my thoughts and feelings as they occur to me. It's a type of diary. Or a personal log, or a journal of sorts. If at any point in the writing or in the reading, some observation seems at all profound or meaningful, then that's fine with me. If not, that's fine too.

My purpose is to write . . .

. . .

I recently read a Wired interview with Steve Jobs on modern technology and how the web will affect peoples' lives. At one point Steve said, "It's certainly not going to be like the first time somebody saw a television."

Which set me to reminiscing...

The first time I saw a television set was in 1950 (or perhaps '51) when I was 11 or 12 years old. I remember it well... while I was attending a classmates birthday party, the host's mother turned on their new television set and sat us all down to watch and listen to Buffalo Bob call out, "Hey kids... what time is it?" And the loud answering outcry was,
"Howdy Doody time!"

I was astounded. A movie theater right in their own home. True it was a small 6 or 9 inch dark-green screen and the show was in black-and-white, but it was right there on a table in the Orville Moore's family living room. Amazing!

When the show eventually presented a back-to-back pair of filmed movies of cowboys Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson in big white sombreros riding galloping horses with the dust-raising posses chasing the fleeing bad guys in black hats and shooting loud booming guns and the rousing music sounding so loud in the background... well, the experience was so new and so different that it truly did send chills coursing up and down my spine... and boy-oh-boy, I was absolutely stunned.

I remember it well . . .

Steve Jobs, in that same interview, said, "We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much -- if at all.
--Steve Jobs
Feb. 1996

. . .

The sudden storm that erupted here in East Tucson a couple days ago left a tremendous amount of detritus in the swimming pool and on the deck. The wind was strong and long-lasting. And it took me almost an hour the next morning to skim the pool's surface and sweep off the deck. I took some pictures of the scattered, submerged, and floating debris...

The pool and deck

. . .

Surface of the water

Hey! I'm not complaining. Skimming the pool, while Eva stands faithful guard, barking against any covert invasion of lizards or ground squirrels (or humming birds) is a calming and relaxing endeavor, probably because I don't have to do it... I just want to.

. . .

That's all for now.

Toodles.

.