Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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Sharing Through the Generations

Something that interested me when I was a young lad, sitting and, yeh, staring at my maternal great grandmother (she was OLD, I tell ya! *heh*), particularly as she sharpened her pen knife and used it to trim her fingernails VERY short: onychorrhexis. Nah, I didn’t know what to call it as a six-or seven-year-old lad, but that’s one of the things that interested me: the ridges on her fingernails. *huh* Same as on my maternal grandfather’s hands, and. . . mine, now. (I have one sib I have noted who has the same issue: ridged nails that split easily.) So: trimming my fingernails (yeh, and toenails, now) very short has become a thing for me. Recently, however, I’ve had a really handy tool added to the task: a nail trimming device (a small, rechargeable rotary grinding tool) soundly rejected by the dog. Works for me, though.

Oh, med resources list a lot of different causes for the issue, but only three of them seem to apply to me: heredity, aging, and arthritis. *shrugs* If I can live with joint pain, I can live with this, especially since I have naproxen sodium for the one and this neat lil grinding tool for the other.

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Delightful

I had lost track of Margaret Ball and not read anything by her for several years when I ran across A Pocketful of Stars (Applied Topology Book 1). Good stuff, Maynard. I’m now working my way through the seven book series, and, if then quality remains at the level I expect from Ball, I am NOT looking forward to finishing book seven and discovering she has not written book eight. Yet. *heh*

Oh, there’s nothing “important” about the books (although my brief spate of appreciation for advanced–or even just semi-advanced–math ~50-ish years ago and continued casual appreciation to this day does enjoy the “math talk”). They are just fun, well-told stories with amusing and interesting characters. Juuuust a wee tad Wodehousian in “fluffiness,” if Wodehouse were to have been mathematically inclined and in tune with contemporary “college kidsian” mores.

*sigh* OK, it’s taken a bit of a “bodice-ripper” turn in book 3. Oh, well. It was good while it lasted.

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Oops! #2,965

In order to check your compatibility with Standard Social Media English, you might want to take an English language fluency/literacy quiz. If you score too well, your English will not be down to the “standards” of typical social media drivel. Here’s an easy-peasy MOR quiz, though it does have a couple of BrE (British English) quirks:

Test your English

Sadly, my English language fluency/literacy disqualifies me from engaging in Standard Social Media English drivel:

English Literacy 3

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Ah! From the File, “Book Blurbs That Make You Say ‘NO!'”

“If you like Hitchhikers guide [sic] to the Galaxy and the Starship Troopers movie, you’ll love this book!”

Firstly, the movie adaptation of Starship Troopers sucked swamp gas. Secondly, The two VERY different stories had almost nothing in common whatsoever, apart from the fact that the books they were based on were a couple of the best works of two very different masters of the science fiction field.

If the execrably written and edited excerpt from a book blurb that went downhill from there is at all representative of the book, then the best thing to do is flip on by with a curt, “No.”

Aside–and having nothing to do with the comment above–I dislike “dramatis personae” lists in the front of a book. Sure, I imagine it might help folks keep characters straight, but I think a writer is better served (and better serves his readers) by organically introducing his characters within the narrative, as different characters meet, and, although if a book is in a series and I have read 1,000-1,100 books–not all fiction, of course–in the six months between episodes (and that’s roughly a six month reading list for me), I still prefer to exercise my lil grey cells and recall the characters that were introduced previously w/o reading down a list of ’em.

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Things Tend to Work Out. . .

. . .or not.

For example, as I walk, my left-right strides are about equal, despite the fact that my left leg is longer than my right leg. It kinda works out, cos my left foot is shorter–missing part of the heel, as a result of the same incident that caused my left leg to be a bit longer than my right leg.

It just kinda worked out that way. Cool.

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Annoyingly Stupid Expression #4,736 Used by Writers with NO Imagination Whatsoever

“[he, she, they] turned on [his, her, their] heel[s]” Sometimes “spun” (or even more stupidly, “span“) is subbed in for “turned,” as if that makes the expression any less abysmally stupid.

THIMK!

#gagamaggot NO THEY DID NOT. NONE OF THE CHARACTERS THESE WRITERS HAVE “TURNING” ON THEIR “HEELS” ARE GINGER ROGERS, FRED ASTAIRE, OR GENE KELLY! Heck even searching for those masters of popular terpsichorean displays trying to turn up even ONE instance of any of them doing it was too tedious a task to complete, although there are youboob videos demonstrating in excruciating detail how difficult the maneuver is for even accomplished dancers. For example:

And even then, it’s no singleton action. *smh* I file this with all the other annoyingly stupid laziness writers abuse to break suspension of disbelief. So, wee lil tip to lazy writers: unless your target audience has been playing with autolobotomy kits, don’t have your characters “turn on their heels” unless they are accomplished ballroom dancers, mmmK?

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Side Effect or Par for the Course?

The second, I am quite sure. *smh* Oh, what am I talking about? Old injuries–30, 40, 50, and even 60 years old: long healed. But. Nowadays, the slightest lil thing can seem to evoke reminders of broken bones, interesting wounds, torn ligaments, etc., making minor missteps into weeks long re-recoveries, at times.

*sigh* It’s not a side effect of age but simply my body “remembering” old insults far, far better than I would prefer. *heh* As long as the 59-year-old old skull fracture doesn’t start issuing updates, methinks I can weather the littler things like the lesson on watching my feet around horses. . . ?

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Amazon Shipping

The new (to America’s Third World County™) Amazon shipping/delivery service is pretty cool in some ways, but the only person making deliveries that I have met ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. I very much like the tracking map. When I saw I was next up, and that the delivery person’s location was on the street just above us (no houses between us and the street, clear view), I stepped out and saw the driver just sitting there, facing the wrong direction, apparently trying to locate our street, then drive off north, away from our location. Five minutes later, here they came. (Must have been relying on Google Maps, which is remarkably inaccurate around here.) Okay! Finally found us! Then, picked up small package from seat of pickup truck and started hunting around for the second package due in today (which the tracking app said was on the truck). Six minutes this time. Apparently, Amazon offers no training on prganizing a loadout for delivery. *shrugs*

Still, it was a pleasant experience, and the delivery was quicker than Prime deliveries in the past recent months.