Smells a little musty

Whew, got a little dusty in here.

*sets down bucket of cleaning supplies*

Well, time to get to work on that...

Time of Day

Week two of the blog and think I did rather well with it. I think I need to start picking a time of day to set aside and work on "my" things rather than the other projects I have to do. Otherwise it just gets too easy to put things aside in the name of work. And while work pays the bills, I'd also like to be doing more. Which was the whole purpose of keeping this in the first place.

Only times really left to be uninterrupted and sort of "me time" is either in the early mornings, or thee late evenings. And while I like mornings, and have found them to be productive, I don't like actually having to get up to experience them. On the other hand, I used to work great in the evenings (and that's when the first major works got written way back when) but have found that to be less so as time goes on. I do seem to be less distracted in the evenings, which counts for something I guess.

Of course, with the writers on strike and nothing on tv, I may find myself in front of the computer more often. But I think ti shouldn't take an angry labor movement to accomplish that.

color words

Learned an interesting tidbit the other day while on the way to work. Listening to the radio, and the guest on the NPR show (or it might have been PRI - six of one half dozen of another) was commenting on her study of languages. It turns out that not every culture has words for colors like English and many of the other western languages do. In fact, in some cultures int ehir language colors are either some variation of black and white, or they relate to a specific object. Orange, for example, is relatively new, so in Dutch it's actually a reference to China because that's where the oranges they ate came from.

The other aspect I found interesting was how sometimes even parts of speech play different roles. In English, for example, it's the nouns that are often the most important. In many of the Nati8ve American languages however, it's the verbs which have greater importance. Thus objects are referred to in phrases, often including a verb. This is also, for example, why a lot of those Indian names have a verb to them. (Think "Dances with wolves" or "Stand with a fist" for example.)

This of course leads to an interesting possibility when creating new cultures in writing. Rather than assuming they all relate to things in ways we are used to, what if they don't? I's sort of the old idea that the Inuit have seven different words for "snow." They don't, of course, what they have is different terms for different kinds of snow, but likewise the concept of a palm tree would be lost on them. So if you have aliens or fantastical races, you start having to think about what might be important in their culture/world, and how that might shape their language.

Which I for one, had not given much though to before.

Death of Originality

Well, whatever else I was going to write about just got tossed. One of my favorite new shows has been canceled, and while I'm not surprised I am of course disappointed. (Though it's one less distraction, right? Wrong. I don't watch that much tv anyway. I haven't watched American Idol since I lived overseas and there was nothing else on the satellite.) Of course, this latest victim is just indicative of the utter dearth of imagination that plagues the average TV exec - and dare I say the average TV viewer that elevates the mindless dreck of the reality show and the "so cliched it hurts and yet we're still aiming for the LCD (lowest common denominator) of humor so we'll retread the fart jokes or angry mother in law endlessly" sit-com.

Seriously, has anyone bothered to actually watch these shows? When was the last time a sit-com was funny without retreading the same jokes? Yet those shows are given ample to time to succeed, or at least achieve mediocracy. Sure, some of them are true gems, and I enjoy them, but mostly I don't find them funny. I'm no humor Philistine, either, I like the Stooges and the Marx brothers. Pixar's short "Lifted" which was very much in the vein of classic physical comedy is hands-down the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. But I also like cerebral jokes, too, and if the humor is low-brow I'd prefer it wasn't condescending.

Equally unexpected was that this one was a sci-fi show (time travel) though they kept the geek factor low. Those never succeed, or at least very rarely. For every Battlestar Galactica that makes its, and shows why these shows should succeed, there's a Flash Gordon that argues for pulling the plug. Journeyman fell somewhere between those, but much more on the end of BG than FG. (Hey, there's a certain symmetry to that comparison, isn't there. I guess we could label this latest casualty a CG or DG level show... Or not, having realized there's only so far you can push any literary device.)

The only good thing is that like many shows, knowing the writer's strike was imminent, they wrapped up the major plot points. There was plenty of room left to explore, but at least the faithful few - far too few apparently - won't be left hanging.

Misnomer

While sometimes places have those little cutesy names I mentioned last week, at other times you look at a place and wonder what the name on the sign could possibly have to do with anything. And sometimes that lends itself to a whole host of "what if" type ideas. For instance, near a park where I take my daughter there is a little nondescript building. It looks very much like some VFW hall or some other venerable establishment meeting hall. The Elk's club could meet there and feel at home.

I have no idea what the the place really is, though I suspect it's something like that, but it's called "Dante's." Now this may just be the effects of a semi-classical education, but to me a place that shares a name with someone most famous for laying out the architecture of Hell ought not to be a place for late-middle aged approaching senior citizens to hang out for Sunday brunch. (Which reminds me, I haven't been to a good Sunday buffet brunch in I don't know how long. Have to fix that sometime soon, I think.) Which brings to mind all sorts of hidden - possibly nefarious - purposes that the building could be "really" used for.

And it's kind of an ideal location for it, too. After all, who expects the minions of Hades, or other supernatural undesirables, to hang out amidst the semi-suburban neighborhoods where this building sits? It's across the street from a playground, after all. (Evil thoughts here of a monster's Sunday buffet, I suppose.) Of course, that's one of the reasons I like the place so much. I know it has a mundane purpose, and therefore haven't looked it up because I'd just as soon not know for sure, but imagining all the other purposes it COULD be used for, an that would fit its name so much better is a lot of fun.

Tipping Point

Ever have one of those days where you know you ought to get stuff done, and you meant o get stuff done, but you keep putting it off? Not with the intent of not doing anything, mind you, just sort of taking care of other things first. Other things that are likely not as important, and certainly not as crucial. You think to yourself in the morning, or in the early afternoon that you'll have plenty of time and then... suddenly you're looking up at the clock and it's late afternoon, practically early evening. Now you have to start thinking about cooking dinner, and the evening's wearing on...

Somewhere in there is a tipping point, when you realize that all your carefully laid plans just aren't going to happen. Oh, sure, you'll still get something done, probably working later in the evening instead of watching television or something else fun, and you'll justify it by saying you did get it done. But really, shouldn't the work have come first? Of course it should have. So why didn't it?

I personally think procrastination is just a cop-out. It's a way of saying, yeah, I knew this was important but I put it off anyway. For no good reason, and now I'm just going to hope it doesn't come back to bite me. At some point you have to stop putting things off. Not sure how that's accomplished, mind you, and if I had a sure-fire cure I could patent it and become rich.

If I ever got around to it.

Motivation

Hmm, wondering how long I can keep the one-word title thing going... Not that it's been that long yet. Turn it into a month long challenge and then maybe I'll have something. At least then I'd be motivated about something.

I have one more day here - if I'm counting Sunday as part of the previous week, which it ought to be, because after all it's called the "weekend" right? hard to be the end if it starts the week, no matter what the calendar says. Though it does bring into question why the calendar does start with Sunday. Probably religious reasons, I'm guessing, though even still it is supposed to be the seventh day... Well, now at some point I'm going to have to research it. Or post the question some where and let other people research it for me. The web makes it really easy to be lazy about that sort of stuff. Besides, I'm not sure how you'd search for the answer to that question anyway. I could always look it up on some of the user-written encyclopedias - we all know which one - but then there's no way to guarantee veracity. Plus I doubt anyone's actually done that.

I could go look, but I do have things I need to get done. Though, as any method actor would say, I'm having trouble finding my motivation.

Not that I don't have practical motivations. There are bills to pay. But that's hardly reasons to get excited. It might seem a little odd to expect to be excited about your work, but I've always felt that was important. You should WANT to clock in, metaphorically or literally speaking. And while that may be strictly a middle class sentiment, or at least often articulated as such, I'm not sure it is. After all, there is talk of the working classes being "proud of" the work they accomplish. I think that's largely the same thing - having a feeling of not only accomplishing something but tackling a task that you can look back on and claim with some sense of self-satisfaction.

And right now, I don't have it. At least for what I ought to be doing.