Category: The Voices in My Head

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Yet Another Uncontroversial “Controversy”

Clip vs. Magazine: In personal conversations–either IRW or via social media/forums, etc.–I simply explain the differences when someone misuses “clip” when referring to a magazine. When it’s misused by someone who is or expects to be paid for their writing, I excoriate such morons for not doing their homework. Such misuse in print by people being paid (or expecting to be paid) for their poor work ethic is reprehensible.

For reference, here is one type of clip–there are many–and one type of magazine (in this case, a stripper clip for [likely] a semi-automatic rifle with an internal magazine, and an external magazine for a semi-automatic or select fire rifle):

glossary_clip-vs-magazine_01-300x264

Of course, magazines for pistols and moon clips (and half-moon clips) for revolvers look a bit different to the pics above, but the differences between clips and magazines are so very clear and simple that writers who expect to be paid (or who have accepted pay) for writing articles or books who misuse “clip” to refer to a magazine are disgusting, lazy slugs who disrespect their readers with their poor work ethic.

Ah, I really should have just linked this and let it go, I suppose. *sigh* Lazy, subliterate, disrespectful frauds pretending to be writers wouldn’t care, anyway, and ordinary folks who simply want to know would just click on through and. . . learn.

“Hickock45” does a great job (as always) explaining the terms:

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*sigh* Is It Just Me?

While reading my pdf copy of Korsybski’s “Science and Sanity,” I found myself wanting to correct minor errors of punctuation, probably introduced by the conversion from hardcopy and not caught by the line editor. The text itself seems perfectly logical–if dense and sometimes even obscurantist (though I am assured that is by design)–and without any obvious errors. It’s just that periods in the middle of sentences irritate me.

Or. . . did Korzybski do that intentionally for that reason? Just to thump that bone on folks like me? I’d not put it past him. . . *heh*

BTW, naturally each chapter in the pdf copy is separately password protected (because the copy I have is available only in discrete chapters), so I can’t correct them w/o cracking the password (probably doable with the tools I have on hand or can access), but that’s just too much like work. *heh*

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Déjà vu All Over Again

The problem with reading fiction is that there is a limited number of plots, and I’ve read them all many, many times, in so many combinations and permutations that I invariably think, “Déjà vu all over again,” when reading a novel. Characters, descriptive narrative, and minute plot variations are the interest points I read fiction for anymore. Well, that and a writer’s deftness (or lack thereof) with a story arc, etc. *shrugs* There’s enough left to feed the addiction. Re-reading exceptionally well-written fiction is quite often much more interesting than most new material available.

Non-fiction? Different criteria in many ways.

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I Post These Kinds of Things Because You’re Slacking Off

The problem with self-pub? Whole HERDS of 20-something illiterate liberal arts graduates “writing” books for a “readership” of their peers. The sheer depth of their cultural, historical and LITERARY illiteracy (grammar atrocities, word misuse, COMPLETE misunderstanding of background and usage of common expressions, etc., etc.) is mind-boggling. It’s too late to lobotomize them. They’ve already done such a good job on themselves, already.

(Yes, there are a few who actually either know how to use a dictionary and form moderately coherent sentences. . . or else have gone outside their cohort and enlisted the aid of the rare literate proofreader/editor to clean up their glurge.)

Yeh, yeh. Dylan Thomas said it best (though about a different kind of death): “Rage, rage against the dying of the light. . . ” *heh*

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Just another gripe about dumbed-down society

One of the worst failings of many contemporary performers attempting to sing classic songs (or really any songs at all, it seems at times) is that all too many can’t really hear music, let alone perform music. As Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau often said when asked about his facility singing both lieder and opera (thought by many to be vastly different musical genres), “Man muss sich anhören was die Musik sagt.” Those who can’t really hear what the music is saying turn in performances that are either bland and tasteless or inappropriate to the marriage of text and tune. IOW, MOST typical contemporary performing/recording “artists”–except when they “sing” pieces that match their musically-stunted tastes and abilities. But that’s pretty much OK with an audience that has even less ability to discern music.

Just another of the effects predicted by José Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses (La rebelión de las masas).

Fischer-Dieskau: “One must listen to what the music says.”

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Some Non-Random Musings on the Current Scene

N.B.: I frankly DGARA about foreign affairs, except where developments might have a local effect because of “feddle gummint” stupidities or deliberately malicious intent (toward citizens) in policies. So, by “current scene” you can expect me to comment on what was once quaintly known as “the home front,” for the most part.

Today’s topic: Censorship, “feddle gummint” skulduggery, Sharyl Atkkisson, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and a possibly appropriate citizens’ response.

By now, anyone with at least one firing neuron who’s not been living under a rock knows that our dear “gummint” placed spying software on Sharyl Atkkisson’s computers. Anyone in denial about the runaway skulduggery in effect in nearly every agency of the “feddle gummint” is either delusional or a part of (or expects to benefit from) the underhanded, nefarious, unscrupulous behavior that seems to now be the norm for “feddle gummint bureaucraps.” Heck, even the WaPo is “viewing with alarm” the appallingly stupid, criminal “feddle gummint” spying on a journalist.

If the feds can do it to her, they can do it to you. “Evidence” of “computer crimes” on ANYONE’S computers is now subject to The Sharyl Atkkisson Caveat: if the feds can plant things on her computer, who’s to say they didn’t plant stuff anywhere else they wanted to?

From now on, any claims by the “feddle gummint” to have found “evidence”–of ANYTHING–on a citizen’s computer should be loudly and raucously mocked.

Citizen response? So far, just the usual “view with alarm” stuff like the WaPo article. Sound and fury, etc. What would be appropriate, I think would be for a “vigilance committee” of patriotic hacker citizens to engage in a “Manhatten Project”-style effort to crack open every government computer system possible and flood the net with everything they want to hide from us. Snowden? He should be so far back he wouldn’t even be visible in the rear view mirror. Of course, it could happen that _some_ secrets could be minimally detrimental to national security, but I seriously doubt there are many such. Most “national security” secrets are more than likely just bureaucratic turf building/protecting.

Sadly, I do not have the skills necessary to make a contribution to the effort, and nor do I any longer have an audience/readership to influence toward that effort, since my work to remake this blog into nothing more than exercise space for “the voices in my head” has borne fruit. *heh*

In further mind-boggling abuses of rights supposedly protected under the First Amendment, while a student who is a Sikh has rightly received a pass on carrying a knife (“ceremonial dagger”) in pubschool, for religious reasons, Christian students who carry or read their Bibles, share their faith with other students or who are seen or heard praying or even just expressing opinions informed by their faith are continually oppressed. (Sure, schools pretty regularly lose in lawsuits over this, but the push against Christians practicing their religion in a pubschool setting is regularly, improperly, assaulted).

And cognitive dissonance never sets in with the left, because. . . it requires cognition? *sigh*

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If You Can’t Hack It. . .

. . .then it may not be worth having.

I tend to hack most stuff I buy, mostly in very simple ways allowing [whatever] to suit my uses better than OEM standards. (BTW, that’s one reason I dislike Apple products. Less amenable to modification to suit individual users.)

That 46″ LED TV with the WiFi antenna waving in the air off to one side? I have a use for that.

That microwave oven “Ramen bowl” designed to cook a standard rectangular ramen noodle serving? Hole drilled in a corner in order to hang it from my pot rack (which, itself, is hacked–not hanging in the way it was designed to hang but MUCH more securely). Oh, and that package of ramen noodles? Minor hack: bits of meat and veggies added make it a more complete snack. Added spices make i more delish.

New mower? Hacked the handle to make it more comfy for me to use.

Maybe you’ve seen Jerkstoppers™ for notebook computers and other devices. Unnecessary. Hacked my own. Easy-peasy.

Vacuum sweeper? Hacked the wand to allow attaching more, different attachments (from a previous vacuum sweeper).

The trapezoidal box a new bathroom sink came in? It’s now a bathroom clothes hamper (spray paint and 10″-wide band of thick, adhesive-backed aluminum foil added for appearance and strength).

Now, I don’t usually hack extremely simple, well-functioning tools like knives, but I have made knives by hacking old tools, pieces of iron or steel I had laying around, whatever. And sheaths for such things? Why not convert old leather goods to new uses? OK, BTDT.

I even hack books and music to make both better for my uses. Books: my own hardcopies are strewn with notes and corrections that editors should have caught (flyleaf is good for indexing the notes).

Music: I can always write a new arrangement of a piece I find unsatisfying in its original form, or, write new music for old lyrics, as I did when I found CRANHAM unsuitable to the last verse of Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter” (poor metric* and content match, IMO, as good as the tune is for the other verses). Unfortunately, the tune I wrote that mates well with the last verse is unsuitable for the rest of the verses. But since the last verse is the whole point of the piece, I can live with that for my own uses.

I disliked our plain, double-paned front picture window, just sitting there as a *blah* focal point of a bay window, so. . . hacked it with some pinstriping tape and translucent glass paint, so that now it appears to be a multi-lighted, multi-colored stained glass window.

The sides of our nice new (well, even after a year it still feels new 🙂 ) aren’t the brushed stainless steel of the front, but a “pebbled” enamel gray. One side shows, so. . . while it’s attractive enough, two neodymium magnets in one corner make a great catch for keys; a nice, brushed aluminum-framed cork board is helpful for current info that should be available to anyone in the house. (the neodymium magnets are the killer hack for that fridge side, though–used ALL the time, and better than the hooks we’d used in a different location before)

(“Kitchen hacks” probably outnumber most of the other hacks put together, music hacks excepted.)

I suppose I just look at things and wonder, “How could this be better?” There is usually at least one way any product can be improved, usually several.

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Home Is Where the Heart Is

In the sixty-*mumble* years of my short, short life, I’ve lived in quite a few places west of the Mississippi (one, just barelywest, but I have only vague recollections of my family’s sojourn in St. Louis) and traveled/visited to/in all the other lower 48 as well as other places outside our borders. Some have felt “home-ish” for a while, but when we moved to America’s Third World County™ a couple of decades ago, it felt like coming home.

First, the town and area we moved to had been buried in my unconscious since childhood by association with our “Uncle Hubert” (“adopted” uncle, lifelong friend of my maternal grandfather) who was from here, and whose grave is actually only about an eighth of a mile from our house. Automatic positive associations, since Uncle Hubert was a classy, classy guy who poured out strength, humility, honor and kindness.

Then, good Lord it’s beautiful here! Oh, it’s not the grandeur of the Rockies or the stunningly unique offerings of Yellowstone or suchlike. No, it’s a quieter, older beauty. A “rocks and rills and forested hills” kind of beauty. Get out and get “lost” on the back roads of the county: a fav activity of mine. (No, I don’t actually get lost. I know where the cardinal directions are and have a compass or three for seriously “dark and stormy nights” and whatever. I said “compass” not “GPS.” GPS is for subliterate wusses.) Still, the geographic and botanical variations are many and pretty darned amazing.

And the people. Sure, there are about as many dumbasses, jackasses and self-made morons as one might expect to find in any population, by normal distribution. But those are limited in effect and practice by an ethos of hard work, respect for common sense and a firm adherence by most of the folks to an attitude best characterized by, “your business ends where my nose begins. . . and vice versa.” “edumacation” levels are not what one might find in more urban areas, and, frankly, that is a good thing overall. (Most “highly educated” persons are self-made idiots, and I say that as a highly-educated idiot. :-)) Can-do? Yeh, third world county folks can.

And did someone say, “diversity”? We have the best and worst of that here, too, and it’s. . . working out for the most art (with some fear and trembling at times, but still working out). Somalis, Pacific Islanders (a couple of different groups, from different island groups, no less!), Moldavans, Germans, Vietnamese, Hmong, and quite a few more (including *sigh* more than a few alien invaders from South of the border). All of them seem, except for the Somalis, to be working hard at assimilating and becoming Americans (the illegals harder than some, though illegitimately). Culture clashes are almost. . . well, never.

And then there are the other demographics: townies and hill/country/”piney woods” folks. Those groups do overlap, but my fav folk are the folks I meet on back county roads, rednecks, hillbillies, even a few almost hermit squatters. Are some of ’em paranoid separatist “militia” folks? Yep. And almost all of them are good people, too, if a wee tad extreme in some views even for my taste.

Feels like home. Very classically conservative politically and socially, for the most part. That means, of course, that, applying the nose-business rule, that folks are allowed to be different and not generally forced into conformity, as in more and more subsets of society. Conformation to the norm of “if it ain’t your business, butt out” lifestyle is a type of conformity I can live with gladly.

Another Good Thing: Friction? Strong disagreements? Argument? Yeh, but when you can COUNT on most folks being armed, those things are usually dealt with better than in other places. Crime? Well, some, but home invasions, muggings, car jackings and suchlike? See above re: armed citizenry. Do more folks lock their doors in America’s Third World County than when we first moved here? Yeh, but the powers that be decided to put an Interstate highway through our county, and there went that tradition. No,seriously. Oh, there are other “benefits” of civilization that our rulers have foisted off on us that have contributed, but I’ll let the increased traffic stand in for them all.

Is America’s Third World County™ being brought slowly into the late 20th Century (it’ll be a while before the 21st Century begins its invasion here *heh*)? Yeh, but there is still a remnant of a better life here, and it’s home.

And, on top of all that, here is where my Wonder Woman lives, and that would trump anything else, anyway. 😉

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Taming the Wild Loa

I may need to look for a dreadlock wig and chicken bone rattle to deal with a client’s connectivity issues tomorrow. Sorry. Prayer and fasting ain’t cuttin’ the mustard.

😉