I Do These Stupid Things…

…as a service to my readers. *heh* That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

So, I thought I was deleting a couple of 3GB video files. Oops. Somehow, the whole folder was selected. Now, that’d not be so bad except that it’s my habit to SHIFT+Delete, meaning things normally do NOT go to the Recycle Bin in Windows or Trash bin in the GUI ‘nix OSes I use.

Yep. About 200GB of video files, “gone”. Except. OK, I took the lazy way out. Was in a Win7 session, so I invoked Recuva and told it to bring those files back from the dead. Now, normally, I use this lil utility or another (much more expensive utility, since Recuva is free *heh*) to resurrect files on USB-attached drives for other folks, but at least that meant I had it available to use for myself.

Next time, perhaps I just ought to be more careful to begin with, but meanwhile, Recuva does work.

So, just remember,

“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to serve as a horrible warning.” – Catherine Aird.

About That “Literacy” Thing

In our progressively (yes, I meant the pun) dumbed-down society, “literacy” has come to mean simply being able to laboriously puzzle out the written word. That’s sad. For one thing, it means that people who are literate by that commonly-accepted definition can graduate from college without being able to puzzle out the meaning of the directions on a prescription pill bottle, a bus schedule or a dumbed-down (to supposed eighth-grade level) newspaper editorials.

There. Did I make that link hard enough to miss? 🙂 The data that article draws on is scarier than the article. If you search hard enough, you can find it. *heh* (Yeh, not doing folks’ homework for them on this one. I only want the ones who are… literate enough *heh* to be able to handle the info to get it. Snarky enough? Probably.)

But the problem is really worse than that. Maybe because we’ve become a society defined by the audio-visual media that is TV and radio more than anything else, the proliferation of markers demonstrating that even folks who can read, don’t, or (worse?) that when they do, they read dreck, slop, crap, really, really stupid and uninformed writers.

A very few examples will illustrate my point.

How often have you seen and heard people use “anniversary” to indicate something other than an annual event? “Two month anniversary” is a common example. What part of “anni”–from Latin, “anno” or YEAR–have these subliterate idiots missed?

Or, one I read recently from someone who is ill-read, but who listens to subliterate Hivemind podpeople enough to be dis-educated: “…for the light of me…” when the appropriate phrase was “for the LIFE of me”. Compound that with the multiple occurrences of such phrases as “woks of life,” “chester drawers” “intensive purposes” and a veritable Legion (and yes I meant that2 cultural reference *heh*) of other malaprops, stupidities and downright illiteracies, and we have a society progressing toward genuine illiteracy.

And what, pray, hath brought about this effusion of disgust for a growing illiteracy in our society? Why, the annual profusion of one of its most stupid examples: FEB-YOU-ARY.

*gag-spew*

It’s FebRUary, dumbasses.


Of course, in the mini-rant above, I did not place enough stress on one of the worst aspects of progressive illiteracy: who the illiterates listen to and “read”. As Mark Twain wisely said,

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

Note the word, “good”. People who find books written by such as Dan Brown to be readable are people who have denied themselves the advantage of reading books that are well-written and so don’t even know that they are poking a metaphorical screwdriver into their forebrain and stirring. People who watch or read “news” (propaganda) promulgated by an increasingly subliterate Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind rarely twig to the fact that they are being enstupiated by doing so. (And yes, I know that the word “enstupiated” is used more often by me than by any other source known to Google. So? It’s a perfectly good neologism coined by John Stossel, IIRC. :-))

Of course, it’s a thorny problem. So many people have “gradumacated” from American public schools having been told they are”literate” that most do not even know that they are, at best, fumble-headed subliterates. Those few of us who twig to the fact that the “edumacation” system is seriously broken may figure out that we are technically literate subliterates and begin to take steps to correct the problem, but it’s a long, hard row to hoe (and a tip o’ the tam to Davy Crockett for being the first to record that phrase :-)). I’m still working on my literacy (the Lays of Ancient Rome and other works by Macaulay, among many, are still unscaled works, for example), and expect to continue to do so right up until my body’s ready to be cremated.

Most folks, it seems, surrender their literacy to the care (and poisoning) of others more interested in keeping them fat and stupid than anything else.

RPG for the Idle Rich

Make that, “RPG for the Dhimmicraps, Mass MEdia Podpeople and ‘The Political Elite'”.


(Note the copyright. I excerpted one pane for my purposes of 1. sticking something sharply pointed into the “debt ceiling” talk and 2. “Fair Use” of a small portion of a strip to point to the larger opus, hoping some others might get sucked into the world of the Foglios, which includes not just the strip referenced here but also Girl Genius.)

A Not So Petty Peeve

No, really, it’s not! *heh*

Authors and proof readers and editors who get paid to write and proof read and edit copy that people then buy from them really have a duty to use words properly. I’ve been struggling through another work that could have used some due diligence from each of these classes of people. The straw that broke the back of my patience was, “…jeopardize it with undo stress…”

That’s “undue stress,” folks. *sigh* Just the last straw (of many) for this book. On the “rejects” pile, now. Time is just too short and my red pencil is wearing to a nubbin. *heh*

I think I lost 3 IQ points trying to give the book a chance. That’s three of nine books that proved to be wasted time this week so far. Not a good set of numbers.


OK, perhaps I was hasty. Lack of sleep? Well, that’s no excuse; I should allow for that. The book with all the absolutely stupid errors of usage, etc., is an advance reader copy and hasn’t been through a final proof for publication yet, so I really need to cut ’em some slack. Or maybe I should offer my “proofed” copy to save ’em some time? *heh* Nah. Only if they pay as piece work for corrections (but then they might lose money on the book… ;-)).

*This Is Not the Post You Are Seeking*

*heh* IOW, this is one of those posts that probably should not see the light of publication, but the voices in my head (a firm majority) insist I do so anyway…

As an Olde Pharte, I have discovered the joys of extended times upon the throne. When I have a long session in “The Throne Room” I frequently take a book to occupy my time while other things are “processing”. Now, however, thanks to the fact that I finally succumbed to the “wants” to get a toy computer (the lil notebook I’m using for this post), I sometimes just take this lil toy into the “Throne Room” with me, instead of just a book (why not? I usually have more than one eBook in process at any one time on this and other computers).

And yes, that is where I am now, posting this most TMI post of the year for twc.

Now, That’s a Desktop Background

Following on LC Aggie Sith’s post, I *Heart* Hooters, I went searching for a hooter of my own to use as a desktop background and found this:

*heh*

Now, that’s a hooter.

And so is this one… found later and made into my “new(er)” desktop background:

“Whatchu talkin’ about? I AM smiling… ”

And the replacement for the second background above…