April 2008 Archives

I am a language nerd. Although I agree with Steven King's assertion that any word you have to stop and look up in the thesaurus is the wrong word for whatever you're writing, I really do love the way words fit together and the kind of lyrical wonder they can create when they're strung together in pretty way (or -- less pretty but more impressive -- stacked up like a Jenga block).

It's that kind of haphazard, teetering construction that I'm thinking about today.

One of the truisms of English lit that gets tossed around is that at the time that Shakespeare was writing, the English language was approximately one-fifth the size that it is today. One of the reasons that ol' Will and his compatriots were notorious neologists (Shakespeare is credited with the invention of anywhere from 500 to 1700 new words, many still in common use today) was simply because they kept reaching for tools that not only weren't there, but hadn't been invented yet. The same is true of certain phrases and expressions.

What fascinates me is that I get to see a similar kind of lingual evolution on a day to day basis with my daughter. Granted, she is not (yet) Shakespeare, but she does face the same challenges faced by anyone trying to communicate in that era; a limited set of words from which to choose. In some cases, she points or otherwise indicates what she's trying to say; in others, she uses the wrong words in hopes of (I think) being understood anyway.

But in others, she pulls a jenga block from the bottom of the stack, and moves it to the top of the tower. This leaves gaps, to be sure, but she gets to a place she might not otherwise have achieved, and in ways that expand both her understanding and mine.

Example: a few weeks month ago, she and I were lazing about the house on a Saturday. Actually, *I* was lazing, and Kaylee was restless and wanted to something -- anything -- more interesting. She was bored.

The problem was, she didn't know the word 'bored.' For all she knew, the word for what she felt right then didn't exist. (It didn't exist in Shakespeare's time either, and wouldn't for almost 200 years.)

So, with this unnamed feeling, Kaylee came to me.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, Kaylee?"

"I'm... sad."

"You're sad?"

"Yes, I'm sad... and tired."

"Ohh, that doesn't sound good."

"Yes. I'm sad, and I'm tired... and I want to DO something."

Sad, and tired, and I want to do something; three linguistic jenga blocks stacked one on top of the next to reach bored. I understood her meaning perfectly, because it was a true and accurate summation of everything she was feeling right then; and far more informative than the single word.

I wonder, sometimes, if all the extra tools we have to work with in the language-as-it-exists-today make us better able to communicate, or actually prevent us from exercising some of our creative and analytic muscles.

Some of you have been scarred in the past.
It's perfectly understandable.
Affectionate fans of the great Dr. Seuss,
Risking two long hours on a gamble.

The Grinch live action, while quite energetic
Was quite a deplorable mess.
The cat in the hat? We don't like Seuss like that.
The f* they were thinking? Can't guess.

So I heard about Horton, and didn't succumb
Thought it would be either awful or dumb.

But time has gone by, and reviews have been high
and Kaylee is old enough now: "we could try..."
I crossed all my fingers, and knocked on some wood,
And went to the movies, hoping it would be good.

And?...

It was smart, it was funny, it made my cheeks ache
from all of the smiling; it's really that great.
It got me laughing, it brought me to tears,
It's the best children's movie I've seen in six years.

Kaylee laughed, and she cowered
She cheered and she glowered
She clapped for the hero when we got to the end
And wanted to see it all over again.

What do I think? Should you go see this flick?
YES. For fun family time, this sure does the trick.
It's crafted with love and affection and glee
with some real touching moments that sure got to me.

It's not the same thing as the book, read aloud,
but I'd like to think Dr. Seuss would be proud.

When I titled the last post a grand and majestic mess, I truly had no clue how accurate a summation that would be for the problems that people have been having with leaving comments on the site.

They don't work. They only kind of work. They work just fine, but go into a pending file I never get notified to approve. They work just fine, but go into the spam folder and I never get notified to approve.

The great irony is that all the actual spam was going into the "pending" file and the all the good comments were going into "spam". Grr.

So: rewrote the code a bit. A lot. Actually, I gutted the MT 4.0 'testing for sentience' stuff and replaced it with the code that's been working just fine on Random Average, using this same installation of MT. I was still getting an error stating "the text you entered was wrong" for awhile, but once I determined that it was just an option I needed to shut off in MT, and not an actual judgment on the quality of my writing, everything was fine.

Amanda: you've been the hardest hit by all this, it looks like -- all of your comments from the past MONTH OR MORE are finally showing up, and my apologies.

Any further problems should be brought to my attention via my GMAIL account of firstname(dot)lastname.

Okay, that was just an inexcusable lack of posting.

I hardly know where to start, so this is going to be a real hodgepodge of information.

I got married! You can check out pictures over here. They aren't sorted yet or anything of that nature, and they don't include the professionally done ones either, but there are still some really wonderful ones, uploaded directly to flickr by whoever brought a camera to the party.

The Wedding was, essentially, perfect. I teared up as she came up the aisle, and we basically had a fantastic day. Great friends, great food, great music, great dancing, and just an all around fantastic day.

Kaylee was so solemn and serious and proud as she walked down the aisle with her little ball of flowers while everyone watched. I wonder if she'll remember it when she's older. I remember a few high-emotion things from when I was two or three -- I hope she does. She was pretty wiped out by the time the wedding came around (thanks to late rehearsal dinners and a long day sight-seeing with my family in the city), but she was great.

I got to get my family out to New York and show them the city I've come to love as a second home. That was really special. Seeing Virg and T was most excellent as well -- I just don't see people enough.

I met my agent for lunch and we talked about geeky tech stuff, the Kindle I'd secretly ordered for Kate, and plans for Hidden Things. (Currently out for consideration with about a half-dozen publishers whose names liberally coat my bookshelves at home.)

I asked her if, knowing a potential publisher would (probably) have a whole new set of revisions for me, it would make any sense to sort of hold off getting into another writing project, since it would only be interrupted.

Her answer: "Write. Always go forward and write the next thing. Don't kill your momentum." Advice that rings with the easy-quotability of truthiness. I took it to heart.

New tiny-writing project here, inspired by the Othar Tryggvassen twitter. More I will not divulge, but it should be fun for both reader(s) and writer alike.

Is this thing on? Seriously, are the comments working? What options among all those comment options aren't? The old site's comment traffic didn't always vibrate the walls with kinetic energy (note to self: secure the water main in the house before it shakes the drywall loose), but what was once a grade-school water fountain has dwindled to a drip that wouldn't keep a hamster alive. I'm a narcissist, people: validate me.

I'm still trying to figure out how I want to set up and use this site. I'm half-tempted to just put all my game-related material here as well, but once I do that, then there's all the requisite links I'd need to provide over to random-average.com, and that breaks the kind of zen simplicity I'm aiming for here.

Oh, right: new job. All of you wishing me well on the job hunt, thanks very much. While I was flying out to New York to get married, I got a call and a job offer. I'm the new training coordinator (read: manager) for a big-and-still-growing company in Denver who really believes in good training for their people, but doesn't quite know how to go about it, except "get someone in here who does know". There are worse plans.

Their employee retention rate and length of employment is about five times higher than the national average, and I don't think it's an accident -- I'm pleased to spend my days with these folks.

And... is that it? That's it for now. Far more frequent posting coming up. First up: toddler vocabulary and how it compares to Shakespeare.

When the signal-to-noise ratio on the internet, unbelievably, gets worse.

Dear Internets: If you're going to fill yourself up with pointless crap, make it funnier.