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First break from work in six months yesterday, since March paid work every day and some days all day and part of the night. If only the work was full time year round. Wednesday was only an hour's work -- too many days a year like that.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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Seeing if I can still post here...so far, since Sunday, I'm cut off from making snarky comments on six webcomic sites, while others still allow me to post...if I knew why, I'd fix it...
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Well, as long as the snarky comments aren't personal attacks, you should be able to post here.
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Seemed something in their posting software didn't like my website info---professional rivalry?---but omitting it let me post again. I was starting to wonder if someone had locked me out without telling me...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Robert Nowall: Seemed something in their posting software didn't like my website info---professional rivalry?---but omitting it let me post again. I was starting to wonder if someone had locked me out without telling me...
Hunh, that's weird. Computers are silly sometimes.
Posts: 745 | Registered: May 2015
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Some chat rooms, blogs and such, bar active links, like website urls, to mitigate spam. Hatrack doesn't though will balk at a url with a parenthesis glyph in it. Like Wikipedia articles that are subtitled with additional content, and the url contains the same subtitle bracketed by parentheses, e.g., wiki url string Exposition (narrative). The Hatrack site also bars urls with ampersands.
Only the first above, active link posts, impacts robertnowalldotcom.
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I think it likely...in fact, it seems to have cleared up at the moment, though I haven't tried everywhere...but these forum forms have spaces for name, e-mail address, and website, so why exclude something, even by software error? (They also have "get a Gravstar," but I don't bother with that.)
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Saw this in a document received for editing advice: "bored chair." The context of its sentence left open whether "bored" is misspelled, not the document overall. The overall context is of a board of director's chairman or woman or chairperson.
Misspelling corrected, the term is a bizarre idiosyncrasy, literally, a chair made of wood!? yet figuratively a metonymy for an attribute of the leadership position, seated at the highest chair. The use, though, is quite clear for native English users yet an odd and curious artifact of language; board chair, stiff furniture -- amusing.
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Another odd artifact of language seen today in a grocers' aisle: "plastic glass." A beverage tumbler made from a polycarbonate material!? The figure of speech is oxymoron: terms at odds that paradoxically contain an underlain truth. Pliable rigidity?
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Comes from the English language evolving in different places on the isle. Words that sound the same, even sometimes spelled the same, meaning different things.
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"Glass" is used as a synonym for "tumbler" or "drink container" and not as a description of what the item is made of.
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"Glass" is a perfect example of living language in process. The word's Old English denotation is solely fully vitrified silicon material. Over time, the word metaphorically came to mean any item made from the material: vitrified silicon beverage containers, lenses, ocular scopes, windows, and mirrors. The metaphoric uses that expanded beyond vitrified silicon became idioms, as well as nouns became verb adjuncts, plus, naturally, adjectives and adverbs, in turn, became connotative meanings, and in turn, became Modern English denotative meanings in their own rights.
Difficult artifacts of English language are most apparent to non-native speakers, less if at all to native speakers, who take for granted words and terms by appreciation of their attendant contexts. Also, translation software often stumbles over such words. And most all of English vocabulary is context driven more so than denotative.
Though probably a topic for writing discussion and not per se mill grist, the matters of language use and idiosyncrasies thereof are weighty considerations for every aspect of expression, as much certainly for creative expression. The artful categories of double and more entendre, figurative language; clear, strong, intentional, interpretable ambiguity; all told, the capacity for artful language prose poetics to express more with less in an economy of words, irony, satire, sarcasm, etc., add up to the unique human ability to process conversation.
"Plastic glass" and "board chair" reflect all those above language properties. Another set of idiosyncratic language artifacts considered when meditating on the latter: "spectacles," denotative meaning eyeglasses, though also plural inflection of spectacle, an emotionally charged display; "solicitor," different British and U.S. denotations, one a lawyer, one a salesperson; and "napkin," likewise, different British and U.S. denotations, one an infant's clothing appurtenance, one a mealtime appurtenance.
Those idiosyncrasies of language come easily to native speakers through osmotic absorption, though as much also sow confusion. For writers, therefore, due attention paid to and called to ambiguous expression spans understanding gaps and best practice transcends superficial expression for the near instant sequence of intellectual, emotional, and imagination engagements. Context specificity, like "plastic tumbler." What, one extra syllable and two more glyphs are too much? Well, "tumbler" itself is possessed of several incongruent denotations. Language!? Writer poets navigate language shoals and rapids for their readers' absorption spell sakes.
In other words, write plainspoken and wield a poetic stick.
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The laptop acts up! The onboard wifi transceiver drops connections at inopportune moments, and repeatedly, and jams up the operating system. For cripe's sake.
Bought an external wifi antenna, mid $$, to test that, in fact, the onboard antenna was the fault. Installed the external antenna's drivers as easily as an eyeblink and away it went, as vigorous and as stable as desired. It's a plot: problem-want incitement, delayed satisfaction, provoked escalation, unequivocal, irrevocable satisfaction outcome -- problem resolved.
And last week the microwave started on its own, fortunately, only the light, fan, and turntable ran -- not the magnetron, which could have started a fire. Spooky like, the machines have a mind of their own. Actually, the problem is a design flaw, not enough air flow to exhaust steam and a consequent condensate short circuit that arced the start-up circuit. Meaning, soon time to get another microwave. It's a plot.
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Yeah, definitely time to get a new microwave. O_o
Life is a series of plotlines so infinitely vast and inexplicably intertwined that no one (certainly no one in our lifetimes) will be able to map it out. That just means there's always new (sometimes interesting, sometimes frightening) things to discover.
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My dreams are always nightmares, invariably involve a complication I can't satisfy; task, project, whatever. I get it: finish to completion some everlover thing for once in your slack-all life! Actually, they are diabetes dreams that waken me when my blood sugar plummets perilously, nightly. A long term unsatisfiable complication, though one satisfied short term by the simple expedient of carbohydrate intake.
Long term, diabetes won't go away; it can be mitigated by hard, constant, every waking moment, some sleeping moments, life-long focus on diet, exercise, and medical co-management. It's a plot with a bittersweet, tragic-comedy outcome end.
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Well, you know, everyone dies in the end, right?
And stories that explore immortality often have not being able to die turn out to be a tragedy, too.
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By the way, the first sentence above is my standard response whenever someone tells me not to "spoil" the story (or movie or somesuch) for them.
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In my later teenage years I had horrible nightmares; the wake up screaming in the middle of the night type of horrible. I got heartily sick of it. So, somehow I managed to wake up enough from the 'dream-state' to realise what I was experiencing was 'only' a nightmare. I could then re-immersed myself into the nightmare and start seriously kicking some nightmare monster butt. It became so satisfying I started going to sleep each night hoping I would have nightmares .
As far as leading a tragic life goes; it only seems tragic from the outside looking in (stupid psychologists), from the inside it's just life: a series of obstacles that need to be endured, overcome, or surrendered to.
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I've been looking to my dreams for some kind of inspiration in writing---ideas, mostly---and every so often, like last week, something comes about. (Wrote about a thousand words, though it might take twenty thousand to do it justice. Either way, it comes at the end of a long dry spell.)
Mostly, though, they're my mind musing on things I've seen or done in the past few days or weeks...
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My life transpires between life and death extremes, never quite a life of full peace and enjoyment and not quite dead yet. I count that a success.
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In WRITNG IN GENERAL AND THE SHORT STORY IN PARTICULAR, Rust Hills talks about how much better night dreams are as sources for stories than day dreams (wish fulfillment is a poor source, according to him).
And I agree. Study your dreams and use them if you can.
I kept a dream journal once, writing down what I could remember as soon as I woke up, but I stopped because the dreams just got to be too weird for me.
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I don't remember much of my own dreams, generally. I might if I started actively paying attention and writing them down, I suppose.
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It is recommended that if you want to try to remember your dreams, you keep a notebook and pencil or pen by the side of your bed.
As soon as you wake, you pick them up and write down as much as you can about any dreams you remember, before other things distract you and they slip away.
There is also something called "lucid dreaming" which Phil described above when he talked about realizing that he was dreaming and consciously (so to speak) exercising control over what was happening in the dream.
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Lucid dreaming for me is perilous when a nightmare is really about low blood sugar. I have as it is several sugar crises a year. One this past spring was due to I went back to sleep and awoke in a hot, muscle-tense sweat. I was at the brink of an empty fuel tank, running on vapors. The crawl to the food pantry was a close run between nonconscious and hind brain efforts, a bare success. An hour after taking on fuel, I was back to normal mind.
I've kept glucose tablets beside the bed, the recommended emergency supply. They contain 10 carbohydrate grams per lozenge and are like giant SweeTarts -- irresistible temptations for a carbohydrate craver. My sugars ran too high for that duration. My best strategy is some kind of undesirable hard candy; cinnamon drops serve. They're okay though not crave-worthy and also contain seventeen carbohydrate grams apiece.
My carb budget is max three hundred grams per day, with mild to moderate exertion, less on sedentary days.
A metabolic process allows that a sugar candy or glucose tablet dissolved in the mouth uptakes quicker than one digested, a difference of effect at a half hour instead of an hour or so to restore adequate fuel supply. Oral membranes absorb sugars faster than gastrointestinal membranes. I won't mention the cake frosting tube injection and back end procedure rescue squads implement, when they're not IV-certified EMTs.
A well-managed diabetic regimen titrates carbohydrates, exertion, medicine, and lifestyle. Carbs are as necessary as they are toxic, are also comfort food necessary for emotional nutrition, necessary for self-soothing the slings and arrows of social discord. It's a compromise: overindulge and harmfully impact health, manage indulgence and delay health issues, or deprive and harmfully impact mood, or all at times apart and in concert. Diet and exercise and emotional and medical management at all conscious moments and nonconscious times -- it's a full-time job.
I do lucid dream though leave it for when my sugars are safe ranged. I document aspects from those dream nightmares, paraphrase the pertinent highlights.
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In my life, I've only had two lucid dreams---but I woke up before much of anything could be done. In both cases, though, I was alone.
I used to keep a dream diary back in my twenties, kept it up for a few years...but lacked the time to keep it up once I entered the workaday world...
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To paraphrase two disperate novels, welcome to a brave new world; it could be the best of times or the worst of times. High-five to all my American friends.
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Today " . . . is a date that will live in infamy." (FDR) Tel est la vie.
I am consoled only that the legislative and judicial branches are constitutional checks and balances to the executive branch, [and of each other] and that the press is the fourth estate and, as well, constitutionally guaranteed free speech, [and as well a check and balance to the other estates and powers]. Much will be written about all this . . .
"Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced." (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1931)
"We had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859)
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I was obsessively checking the polls last night; it felt like a bad dream. Woke up this morning to the confirmation. I'm just... sad. I'm very sad.
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Strangely enough, I was reminded of the French revolution. The overlooked, forgotten, and marginalised portions of the middle-class rose up against the autocrats, overthrowing the status-quo. What I don't know yet is if you've ended up with Robespierre or Bonaparte.
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The Gangs of New York, 2002 motion picture inspired by the nonfiction book of the same name, by Herbert Asbury, 1927, and William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting -- inspired by real-life William Poole, who advocated suppression of immigration, continuance of human servitude, civil violence, anti-Catholic, pro-Protestant supremacy toward those ends, unconditional elite privilege for elites, though not one himself, extremist libertarian conservative values, and stumped most to "native" white middle class blue collar workers of his own status.
Poole led the Know Nothing, Native American Party, circa 1850s, a mid-century militant populist movement akin to later, and earlier, ethnic purity fascism. Spring ahead; fall back. Set clocks back one hundred sixty or so years.
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I just had the most complete story-dream I've had in years. It's near future sci-fi with a touch of horror (all things I love), and it has a coherent beginning, middle and end. I might need to change a few details, but I really liked the overall plot arc and am very interested in writing it as an actual story. Might even take a crack at that today, while it's fresh. (I made sure to write everything I could remember down, and it seriously reads like an outline.)
So much for not remembering my dreams very often. This definitely makes a dream journal seem worth it.
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Ah lucid dreams, what a wonder the minds conscious, subconscious, nonconscious, and reptilian hind synergize.
Please let us know how the night dream made word comes along. Look forward to a refined draft fragment of it offered for commentary, if so decided.
Had a precursor vivid dream myself recently, though that melded into the usual recurrent nightly unsatisfiable action drama. The action of the first segment is a satisfaction outcome that incited the second action. That sequence invoked a profound thought about a sequence derived from an unequivocal success that incites a higher-stakes drama, to what outcome end I don't yet know. A start and a middle act, not an end act yet. I favor a tragic-comedy maturation action and outcome end.
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I'm planning to, when the time comes. I ended putting it on the back burner for a few days because I have another story I just figured out how to revise and I still need to figure out how to reconcile some of the more dream-based elements, but I will definitely be posting fragments again soon.
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Dropped a motorcycle on my ankle this afternoon; hurts like 'ell. Guess I'll be hobbling along helpin Mr Dillon as much as I can; bein wounded an' all.
Phil. a.k.a Chester (for the time being)
Just blew my nose; add a broken rib or two to the list. Pretty sure it's just one, but it still hurts when I cough.
[ November 22, 2016, 07:06 AM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Sep 2012
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quote:Originally posted by Grumpy old guy: Dropped a motorcycle on my ankle this afternoon; hurts like 'ell. Guess I'll be hobbling along helpin Mr Dillon as much as I can; bein wounded an' all.
Phil. a.k.a Chester (for the time being)
Just blew my nose; add a broken rib or two to the list. Pretty sure it's just one, but it still hurts when I cough.
Talented there to break a rib when something lands on your ankle.
Glad it wasn't worse and hope you recover fine.
And give my regards to the Sheriff
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
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Thank you and a belated Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. (I spent most of the holiday working, but got to eat afterward. Going to work again now.)
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Noticed for some time different search engine results when different keyword orders are queried. Finally tested and analyzed why. So-called intuitive search engines are based somewhat on Boolean protocols' logical combinatorial systems and somewhat on position strength -- akin to human attention span prioritization, positioned first or last. The "intuitive" feature, at a lower priority, also bases on search history patterns and user IP address geographic location. If more than two search terms, combined or single words, middle terms are least emphasized. Search first priority invariably bases on last position terms; second priority accorded to first position terms, third priority to middle terms. Huh, as do clause, sentence and paragraph syntax.
For example, a person's name and an artifact, custom, or tradition with which the person is associated yields different results when the name is first or last. Three terms, like a name, an artifact, and a geographic label, is an exponent increased different result priority, digital binary exponent: two terms, 2^2=4; three terms, 2^3=8 bases, etc.
How the human mind and the collective nonconscious consciously and nonconsciously influences technology is a curiosity.
Also, this week appreciated that the human mind is -- well, of two minds, one that of the literal, the other of the figurative. Yet within each are overlaps and as well a substantive difference between each, Venn diagram-like, in terms of intellectually held knowledge and second-nature native knowledge.
The former is superficial knowledge, like taught and learned yet underappreciated awareness the Earth is a sphere, received though unsubstantiated by personal empirical experience. Or the Moon, generally perceived and depicted as a two-dimensional disc of many faces; the latter, knowledge acquired from sensory experience and become native and a fuller appreciation of the overall knowledge, that of the Moon visually perceived as a true sphere despite its two-dimensional appearance.
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Have sought the label for when the behavior or behaviors of an employer or employer's agent, or any other social, vocational, educational, informal or formal, etc., circumstance causes an individual to depart, self-terminate, quit, leave, etc., the group entity. Includes casual acquaintance and friendship social groups' centrifugal forcing.
Found it today: constructive dismissal, or termination, or discharge. Both forced out from a once-and-done event, one egregious event occasion, and the "last straw," a recognizable pattern of by instance variable degrees of accumulated force occasions with one final compulsion event. Such occurs when hostile, aggravated, intolerable behavior of one or more individuals toward another or others forces receiver resignation from the group entity. This is also label-able as proactive shunning.
While some social exclusions are justifiable and reasonable based on supportable, rational grounds, many, too, are the unsupportable personal sentiment difference intolerance and petty envy and jealousy force causes. Probably more of the latter occurs than the former for proactive shunning. "Constructive dismissal" generally applies to law venues, while "proactive shunning" is more broad and of psycho-sociological arenas.
Well, that's now one name exposition challenge with which I've an acquaintance. Fertile fruit for a number of stories' intangible complication contest contexts and textures!
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Received an editor wanted solicitation today. Several come in each year. The solicitation is due to being on a writing community listserv, and thousands received the solicitation. I pass.
The writer's project is about a family member. I don't have the heart to let the writer know how problematic family stories are due to little or nothing publicly notable about them and this project itself. Plus, sampling of the writer's writing exhibits numerous grammar, style, craft, and voice considerations short-shrifted. The writer needs a ghost writer, not an editor yet.
However, notablility cannot be invented where little exists. On the other hand, self-publication will serve the private family memento criteria the project actually is notable and suited for. The project is ready for that without much more than a light copyediting pass, though heavy enough proofreading to cost more than the work warrants or asks. Such is the life of writing.
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I've been wrestling with serious work-related depression that has more or less halted all of my writing efforts for the last week. Tried to take a personal day yesterday to recover from the stress and hopefully get some writing done.
My pharmacy got robbed.
I ended up going in to work for a couple of hours to help smooth things over, collect video feed of the incident, etcetera. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the robbers didn't actually get away with anything.
Went home and was completely useless for most of the day. XP
Ahh well. I'm giving it another go today. We'll see how things turn out.
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This definitely makes a dream journal seem worth it.
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