Brutal Barbs

     It’s always interesting reading those few grumpy one-star Net comments on products and services, and those emotional discussions on every news issue or announcement, which often degenerate into the crudest kinds of name calling and vicious put-downs.

     We’ve always had put-downs, of course, but in those much-lauded good old days they were more civilized, more intelligent and clever.  Classier.

     A few examples:

     From Beethoven after listening to a rival improvising on the piano for a half hour: “Will it be long before you begin?”

     Theodore Roosevelt about President McKinley after he refused to declare war on Spain:  “No more backbone than a chocolate eclair.”

     Abraham Lincoln on the ideas of his political opponent Stephen Douglas:  “As thin as the soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.”

     H.G. Wells on a literary work by Henry James:  “A magnificent but painful hippopotamus.”

     Winston Churchill on Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after he supposedly convinced Hitler to leave England alone in exchange for Britain’s noninterference:  “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”

     Winston again on Clement Atlee:  “A modest man, who has much to be modest about.”

     Prince on a rival’s new album:  “Michael Jackson’s album was called ‘Bad’ because there wasn’t enough room on the jacket for Pathetic.”  (So-long Prince.  You were a fine musician.)

     But my favorite is one from radio and TV host Arthur Smith to a rude heckler.  I think it can be applied equally well to most of those mean-spirited losers out there who cruise the Net giving one-star reviews to everything they come across:  “Sorry, I can’t hear what you’re saying.  I’m wearing a moron filter.”

Phil

The terror among us

     There has been much apprehensive discussion about the potential threats we face from shadowy terrorism.

     What if 3,154 Americans had been recently killed by lurking terror among us in the most gruesome ways imaginable?  What if this terror had injured 424,000 more Americans, many of them grievously?

     Those tragic statistics are real, recorded in the span of 2013 alone.  The casualties are even worse for 2014.  And for 2015.  They will be worse still in 2016.

     The bloodshed goes on.  Day after day.  Year after year.  At horrendous cost in lives and lost productivity and dollars. 

     The lurking terror among us is distracted driving.  It’s killing and wounding us every day.  Ten percent of all drivers under 20 involved in fatal accidents are reportedly distracted.  At any given daylight moment across our nation 660,000 drivers of all ages are using cell phones.  Some of them will not live to see tomorrow.  Headset phones have proven no safer to use while driving than hand-held devices.

     All of this death and destruction is entirely unnecessary.

  

     Yet has even one presidential or other public-office candidate dared raise this horrific issue?

     Might this terror be a worthy topic of political debate?  Might it deserve some attention from our lawmakers in Congress?

     Does anybody care?

     Somebody better.  Because if we continue to ignore this dark and very real terror among us, the decade beginning with 2016 will witness this scourge needlessly killing 50,000 more Americans and injuring four million.  Will you or someone you care about be among those?

Phil    

(Statistical source:  http://www.distraction.gov/stats-research-laws/facts-and-statistics.html)

What do these names have in common?

     Hagrid’s Dragon, Thor’s Helmet, The Yin-Yang, The Oyster, Cleopatra’s Eye, The Helix, The Sliced Onion, The Fiddlehead, The Ghost, The Turtle, The Baby Eskimo, The Hockey Stick, The White-eyed Pea, The Little Gem, The Snake, The Captain Hook, The Heart, The Coal Car, The Raspberry, The Double Bubble, The Silver Streak, The Cat’s Paw, The Cheerio, The Little Beehive, The Starfish, The Ink spot, The Emerald, The Phantom Streak, The Frigate Bird, The Magic Carpet, and The Chandelier.

     They’re all imaginative names astronomers have given to star clusters, galaxies, nebulae, and other celestial objects.

     Of course, these names are not necessarily what other creatures out there in the Universe call the same objects.  They might call our magnificent spiral Milky Way something like The Dishwater Going Down the Drain Galaxy.

Phil

The emotions wheel

     A friend sent me the link to this wheel which is supposed to help writers with their fiction:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=b69319d37f&view=att&th=153b5908aa876ac9&attid=0.1&disp=safe&zw

     The wheel has a certain logic to it, but if any writer starts resorting to this stuff she or he really misses the whole point.

    

     There are all kinds of writing advice books.  Most are junk, written by folks who have not actually accomplished much in writing.  Some talk about constructing elaborate story lines using index cards that you can shuffle around to build a structure, or charts that purport to lay out a proper story flow, or certain arcane formulas.  

    

     Problem is, life doesn't follow charts.  How would we set out to chart the dark and bizarre thinking of ISIS, for example, or hope to predict its future using some fiction formula?

    

     The best writers work from habitual in-depth scrutiny of surroundings and people and experiences, much like the best photographers and painters and sculptors.  Of course you have to work within a certain recognized genre, and for good reasons.  Nicholas Sparks writes romances, for example, and has worked to nail that genre.  His readers come to his books with certain expectations (some kind of spotlighted human relationship that is troubled or in jeopardy, with some kind of believable resolution that has romantic resonance).  He satisfies those expectations and thus makes lots of money.

     And writers who can additionally imbue their work with enough power and wisdom and beauty and empathy can rise above all the rest and help change the world.  Steinbeck did it with The Grapes of Wrath, for example.  There are many, many more examples.

Phil

Wrong use of words

     Our language is almost endlessly expressive, but it must be used correctly to preserve its integrity and to be most effective.  Many times words are misused, so the language suffers.  Here are a few examples.

     Unique:  The original meaning was one of a kind.  As such, it could have no modifiers.  You cannot have something that is very unique (very one of a kind).  The proper word you want if you’re going to use a modifier is unusual.  Often something can be very unusual.

     Enormity:  The original meaning was an horrific abomination on a vast scale.  The Holocaust was an enormity.  An elephant is not, therefore, an enormity.  An elephant is enormous, or unusually large.

     Bemused:  It originally meant confused or perplexed.  If you appreciate some humorous comment or incident, you are amused, not bemused.

     And a phrase that particularly lights my fuse is “center around.”  The center of a circle or sphere is fixed and unmoving in relation to that circle or sphere.  Therefore the phrase is impossible.  You can center on something or revolve around it, as the planets revolve around the sun, which is at the center of our solar system.  But the earth cannot center around the sun.

     Here’s a list of commonly misused words:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_commonly_misused_English_words

     Of course, if enough people continue to misuse a certain word or phrase, the folks who write the dictionaries will eventually cave in and add the misuse definition, sadly to the detriment of our language.

Phil

Am I being evaluated?

     I’m in the process of attempting to renew my medical for my Merchant Mariner Master Captain’s License.  Knowing the process can take months, well in advance of the expiration date  I visited my general practitioner and my eye doctor, let them thump and stick and scan me, filled out the numerous exhaustive forms, and sent them in to the Merchant Marine Division of the United States Coast Guard under The Department of Homeland Security. 

     After three weeks, this is a verbatim excerpt from the e-mail I received: 

     Your Application has cleared the Medical screening and is ready to be evaluated by the Medical Evaluation Division, evaluation section.

     This is the sort of bureaucratic nonsense that grinds along like a great boulder-strewn glacier all across our fair land in almost more governmental departments and agencies than can be counted, and at high cost to us all.

     No wonder so many people are pissed.

Phil

Language erosion

     The global advent of social media and texting has wrought some sad side effects, including, I’m afraid, the erosion of our language.  We’re seeing homemade abbreviations and sloppy spelling and unleashed clichés and incorrect punctuation and bad paragraphing, with everything tapped out in lazy lower case and sprinkled with exclamation points.  Have we so devolved in the use of our language that we must employ cutesy graphic gimmicks like hasty emoticons to express emotions that we used to take the time and thought to sincerely spell out?

     If you’ve ever read any letters from the Civil War years, you’ll recall how differently our language was used then.  It may have been overly embellished and a touch melodramatic, but it displayed a deep respect for the beauty and power that has been instilled in the intelligent use of words over uncounted generations.  Those wartime letters were sincere and often deeply moving.

     Is it too late to rescue our great language, to begin again using it to its full potential?  Employed with respect and skill, it still has the ability to make us marvel and laugh out loud and cry empathetic tears, and it bears the latent energy and impact—as when so well used by Winston Churchill or Dr. King or Eleanor Roosevelt or Abe Lincoln or Carl Sagan and his successor Neil deGrasse Tyson—to change the world.

     I hope it’s not too late.

     In closing, I’d like to thank one and all out there from the bottom of my heart (and from the middle of my liver and from both ends of my appendix) for reading this humble blog. 

     Happy face.  Winky face.  And lots and lots of exclamation points.

Phil