A Title Is Such A Tiresome Necessity

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Attention!

My weight today is 155.2 pound.

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My new word for today is phrop and I'll bet it's new to you, too.

In one of his most excellent entries, Michael Quinion wrote:

Sir Arnold Lunn invented the name "phrops" for these euphemistic phrases that do not wear their true meaning on their face. Examples of phrops are "we must have lunch sometime", and "we must keep in touch", both of which actually mean "my life’s ambition is never to meet you again".

Now I am constantly on the lookout as I read news reports, blog entries, and even novels for more examples of these phrops.

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ASH WEDNESDAY

Ash Wednesday is a day of repentance and it marks the beginning of Lent --

From Wikipedia:

Ash Wednesday, in the Western Christian calendar, is the first day of Lent and occurs 46 days (40 days not counting Sundays) before Easter. It is a moveable fast, falling on a different date each year because it is dependent on the date of Easter. It can occur as early as February 4 (February 5 on leap years) or as late as March 10. Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of adherents as a sign of repentance.


The ashes used are typically gathered after the Palm Crosses from the previous year's Palm Sunday are burned. In the liturgical practice of some churches, the ashes are mixed with the Oil of the Catechumens (one of the sacred oils used to anoint those about to be baptized), though some churches use ordinary oil. This paste is used by the minister who presides at the service to make the sign of the cross, first upon his or her own forehead and then on those of congregants.

Good Grief! I don't know what more to say about that.

But eventually I'll think of something.

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The Poetry Radio Project offers audio recordings of poems and famous people speaking their thoughts about poems and poets.

I found Godzilla's Avocado by Thomas Sayers Ellis to be fascinating.

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What is the difference between freedom and liberty is one of those annoyingly recurring questions I have asked myself. Finally, I decided to look it up and see what others have to say about it.

According to Merriam-Webster:

FREEDOM

1 the quality or state of being free: as a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another: INDEPENDENCE c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous d: EASE, FACILITY e: the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken f: improper familiarity g: boldness of conception or execution h: unrestricted use

2 a: political right b: FRANCHISE, PRIVILEGE synonyms FREEDOM, LIBERTY, LICENSE mean the power or condition of acting without compulsion. FREEDOM has a broad range of application from total absence of restraint to merely a sense of not being unduly hampered or frustrated. LIBERTY suggests release from former restraint or compulsion . LICENSE implies freedom specially granted or conceded and may connote an abuse of freedom.


The attempt by Merriam-Webster is not enough. I still don't see the difference. So, I guess that my best choice is to give this question some more thought.

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It seems that I never get tired of reading or listening to certain poems. And this is one of them:


Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


No, I did not get formal permission to reproduce the above poem.

If the copyright owner asks me to, I will immediately remove it.

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A poem is "never a put-up job.... It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a loneliness. It is never a thought to begin with. It is at its best when it is a tantalizing vagueness."
--Robert Frost

Laugh And The World Laughs At You

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The Simple Things In Life . . .
Delightful Youtube videos --

Watch, listen. and love it . . .

And this one too . . .

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Today's New Word

diktat
noun:
1. An order or decree imposed without popular consent.
2. A harsh settlement imposed upon a defeated party.

Note:
DIKTAT!

That would make a grand title for a novel, perhaps with a cover illustration of a hobnail boot stomping a victim's head. (1984?)

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The opening sentence of Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is:
"As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect"

If Kafka could write, have published, and gain fame from such an outlandish line, then it seems to me that nothing is impossible in the creation of literature if the writer has sufficient courage...

...and is gifted with great talent, of course.


And, William Faulkner wrote about his childhood surroundings.

So why can't I?

I can.

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I AM THAT I AM

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"Ultimately literature is nothing but carpentry. Both are very hard work. Writing something is almost as hard as making a table. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood. Both are full of tricks and techniques. Basically very little magic and a lot of hard work involved."
--Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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A Biennium Is A Two-Year Period

This is Saturday and The Ides Of March is (are?) fast approaching. A time to beware -- or so I've been led to believe(if your name's Julius).

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Today's New Word

fomite:An inanimate object or substance, such as clothing, furniture, or soap, that is capable of transmitting infectious organisms from one individual to another.

Somewhere (I can't remember where) I read:

This word reminded me of the years I taught health both at the high school level and more recently at the university level. When considering communicable diseases we always addressed the 3Fs of transmission: Food, Feces, and Fomites! Most students understood infectious transmission via spoiled or infected food and, of course, through feces via sewage contaminated/polluted water or improper sanitation and lack of personal hygiene, but I always had to explain Fomites as being door knobs, unwashed plates, glasses, and utensils, etc. that can carry viral/bacterial particles and transmit them to unsuspecting recipients.

--Don Williams
Professor of Biology, Kansas City, Missouri

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Self Help Books, Tapes, DVDs, etc.

I was reading a blog entry regarding the subject of Self Help and in the appended 'comments' section, I found the following:

Finally, someone came forward and spoke on a topic that has bothered me for years. The self-help genre is the biggest money-scam out there. Writers of self-help realize the way to a best-seller dollar making big-time pay day is to write a book that over-sells and under-delivers. Every generation alive today, from the aging baby-boomer to the 20-somethings want instant fixes to whatever their own problem is.

EVERY problem is fixed by the same common thread: behavioral change. I hear people ask me all the time, "Why can't I.....? and I tell them it's because they look at the problem from a position of someone who has already lost: "Why can't I lose 10, 15, 20, pounds?, when they should be asking themselves, "How can I lose this weight?" We do not need books, CD, or DVD, with the title, "How to." We need only look in the mirror, and ask How can I...." and this is true of any problem we come up against. This is true in my own life, and it can be for you as well!

Just send me $9.99 and I'll tell you my secret. But if you act now, call within the next ten minutes and I'll tell you my secret a SECOND time for $16.99. That's right! Free, unsolicited advice told to you TWICE for only 16.99. Act now! Call Now: 1-800-555-0000. What are you waiting for? Call NOW!

That comment was supposed to be both informative and witty at the same time. In my opinion, it was.

And further . . .

"How many of you have self-help books?
Okay, that's your first problem.
You can't help yourself, because yourself sucks!"
--Billy Bob Thornton
School for Scoundrels

Hm. I wonder if I could sit down and write a successful Self-Help book. Why not? After all:

Life Is . . . A throw of the

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Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
--John Lennon

Do Turtles Blow It Out Their A**es?

This morning at 7 A.M. Tuscon Time my scale reported that, at that exact instant, I weighed 157.2 pounds.

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Have you ever heard the word Desertification? I first encountered the word yesterday when I opened my new copy of Desert Leaf Magazine, which is distributed free here in East Tucson, and read a story about desertification.

Desert Leaf Magazine

Desert Leaf Magazine has an article that says desertification is a global problem caused in large part by overpopulation, water scarcity (now exacerbated by climate change) and poor land-use planning and agricultural practices. And the United States is not immune, as the severe dust storms of the 1930s made clear.


A farmer and two little boys run for shelter during a dust storm in Oklahoma in 1936.

Desert Leaf also has an online edition. And it contains many more interesting items regarding the desert area. If you would like to read some (or all) of it and you missed the link above, it is repeated below.

http://www.desertleaf.com/

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WASHINGTON -- NASA's Glory mission ended Friday after the space craft failed to reach orbit following its launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.


NASA has begun the process of creating a Mishap Investigation Board to evaluate the cause of the failure. Telemetry indicated the fairing, a protective shell atop the satellite's Taurus XL rocket, did not separate as expected.

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Did you know that:

Turtles have been living on the earth for more than 200 million years.
They evolved before mammals, birds, crocodiles, snakes, and lizards.

Question: Do turtles breathe through their butts?

The answer, according to WikiAnswers is...

"Yes... maybe..."

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Miscellany . . .

The 2011 Tucson Festival of Books is scheduled for March 12, 13 on the University of Arizona Campus. The index of events is on the left side of this website and it includes a list of the participating authors

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Iron Eyes Cody (April 3, 1904 – January 4, 1999) was an American actor. He was recognized for portraying American Indians in Hollywood films.You might remember Iron Eyes Cody from the Youtube video of this commercial

Iron Eyes Cody

Near the end of his life, his Italian ancestry was made public. Cody was born Espera Oscar de Corti in Kaplan, Louisiana, a son of Antonio de Corti and his wife, Francesca Salpietra, immigrants from Sicily, Italy.

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Yesterday I received an email from a longtime friend. He cleared up the mystery of The Dot... For centuries, Hindu women have worn a dot on their foreheads. Most of us have naively thought this was connected with tradition or religion, but the Indian embassy in Ottawa has recently revealed the true story.

When a Hindu woman gets married, she brings a dowry into the union. On her wedding night, the husband scratches off the dot to see whether he has won a convenience store, a gas station, a donut shop, a taxi cab, or a motel in the United States . If nothing is there, he must remain in India to answer telephones and provide us with technical advice.

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I read somewhere that the title of John Roberts is chief justice of the United States, not chief justice of the Supreme Court. That could be an important distinction if an author is stating this official title in a novel, or more importantly, in a non-fiction book.

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While out on my daily walk I heard what sounded like the rattling of chains and a "clop, clop, clop" -- so I turned around and saw...



After the wagon passed my location (off the beaten path) I snapped another shot...


Quite a sight. A wagon carrying happy Arizonans, being pulled by mules and trailed by a horse, all headed South on Conestoga Avenue ready to turn onto Tanque Verde in East Tucson.

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Miscellany: noun A group or collection of different items; a mixture.

My Weight Today Is 157.4 Pounds . . .

Two months ago I weighed 160 pounds. This means that I have lost 2.6 pounds. That's an average of 1.3 pounds per month. And I am eating just as much as I had been eating before I started keeping a record. The only difference is that I have stopped adding sugar to anything... completely. And I have been eating fewer bread and cheese sandwiches, replacing them with mixed salad greens (including baby spinach) and sprinkled with raisins, nuts, blueberries -- topped with a strawberry.

(Ken's Ranch Dressing was dribbled on after taking the picture)

By the way . . . I am weighing myself using the new digital scale that I bought a while back through Amazon.com and that is how I am able to announce my weight with such accuracy. One thing I have discovered, though, is that one must position the scale on a hard, flat surface to get a consistently accurate readout, no carpets nor slightly rounded tile floors.

When I reach 145 pounds, I will add additional calories to my daily intake, enough to maintain that weight level.

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Some of the Robert Lowell poems seem to say so much more than I (in my obtuseness) take away with me after reading them.

obtuse
adjective
1. not quick or alert in perception, feeling, or intellect; not sensitive or observant; dull.
2. not sharp, acute, or pointed; blunt in form.
3. (of a leaf, petal, etc.) rounded at the extremity.
4. indistinctly felt or perceived, as pain or sound.

At times I find myself wishing that I was smarter than I know I am. But most of the time, aware of the socially conditioned behavior of those assorted intellectual giants known to me, I am so glad that such a foul and hateful fate, such a stifled and savorless state has happily not yet befallen me.


After a hearty New England breakfast,
I weigh two hundred pounds
this morning. Cock of the walk,
I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey
before the metal shaving mirrors,
and see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.

From Walking in the Blue
by Robert Lowell

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Theodor Seuss Geisel -- writing as Dr. Seuss, spent nine months writing what would become The Cat in the Hat (1957). That book is 1,702 words long, but it uses only 220 different words.

The Cat In The Hat

Note: The above fact was taken from The Writer's Almanac and (respectfully) reproduced here.

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The Washington Post has an archive containing Five Myths About various subjects. The subjects are: Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, The Super Bowl, George W. Bush, and there is even one titled Five Myths About Facebook. And there are many other subjects.

This archive could conceivably transform some of those individuals who 'believe' themselves to be highly educated into 'truly' educated persons.

Hm. I wonder how many people will actually take the time to read those archives.

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The New York Review Of Books has a short piece written by Larry McMurtry about Marilyn Monroe. I found it interesting.

Marilyn Monroe

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More On Writers And Writing . . .

The month of March kinda sneaked up on me... and sank its relentless fangs of unstoppably passing time into my unsuspecting consciousness. I'd forgotten that February has fewer days than the other months. Just one of the penalties of living more than seventy years, I reckon.

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Mike Barker asked his writers group the question: "What is horror?"

That three word question has troubled me ever since it first impinged upon my attention (three hours ago) and I still have no quick and clever answer for it.

My problem in finding a suitable answer might be because I am looking too deeply into the mind of the average reader at this specific point in time. And yes, I know that I have earlier expressed my disgust with the term 'at this point in time' -- but that trite and wordy expression seems particularly appropriate in this circumstance. What it is that constitutes horror is changeable with each present-day era, this being dependent on the peer-to-peer transference of modern-day morality, and what is considered acceptable or normal behavior. Then, of course, horror may be seen as the villainous imposing of unacceptable or abnormal behavior on the innocent, unsuspecting, and identifiable, likable characters.

Or is that (the above paragraph) merely a bunch of blathering babble? I will have to give this some more thought.

Although Mike seems to think that Sherrilyn Kenyon could have the answer, I don't agree. Her novels are popular fantasy, not horror. They are the books I could never make myself read, being akin to romance novels.

But, of course, I could be wrong... again.

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The overlooked typo is the bane of even careful writers and their editors. How many instances have I found of the repeated word -- (... on the the dark, silent beach...) -- and the grammatically incorrect word choice -- (...there feral and ferocious red-rimmed eyes..." instead of "...their eyes...") -- how many? Too many. And these careless slips have a way of defeating the author's purpose, be it instilling fear, horror, or whatever other emotion was intended. A detail-oriented copy editor can be a real lifesaver.

Here is an actual typo that I caught just today: "I totally confused my cow orker yesterday..." Huh? my cow orker? If this typo had been within a manuscript's final draft and had found its way into a published story... well, you know what I'm saying. Right?

One already professionally edited website I was asked to examine actually still contained nineteen (19) errors... one of them being a repeated word (...the the...) and another being (well... I don't remember what it was but it was a funny error.)

To a limited degree, I can offer a valuable service to certain selected writers. You can read about my unusual FREE service HERE,


Again, the link is: http://www.genechambers.com/edit.htm

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My newest project, compiling some of my earlier unpublished manuscripts and interspersing them with selected sketches of my life in the middle and latter parts of the twentieth century, is progressing... but slowly. Why? Laziness, of course. I'd rather read than write.

But I intend to get busy and finish it up. Soon.

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Rensselaer Adventures recently featured a piece about the 2011 accumulation of snow. Below is a photo I am including here with permission from the photographer -- a picture that struck me as particularly striking. Probably because I was a resident of Rensselaer for the first forty years of my life, and I recognize the creek pictured, as well as recalling from memory both the beauty and the horror of those Hoosier winters.

Photo reproduced here with permission of Robert Schenk

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