Language

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“And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad…”

The madness continues, or begins again, as the beginning of a new work week occurs.  “What madness is that?” you ask?  I mean the madness of bothering to stay alive, the madness of continuing to do things that are absolutely pointless and irrelevant even in the moment, let alone in the long term history of the cosmos.  I mean the madness of trying to pretend to be cheerful or positive in any way, to try to be polite or engaged or interested in anything around me.

That madness, and other forms related and/or similar to it, is the sort of madness I mean.

I guess I really would have to say that the madness “continues” rather than that it begins again.  It’s not as though it has ever stopped or paused.  It simply takes a different form over the weekend, when there is less to do.  But there is no more real sanity involved in any of my activities even when I’m not commuting to the office and back.  I’m just less constrained to try to seem vaguely pseudo-normal, or at least vaguely pseudo-tolerable, when I’m by myself in my room.

I should look up a thorough etymology of the word “madness” or “mad”.  I know that it has morphed, to at least some degree, into a modern synonym of “angry”, but the older meaning of “lack of sanity” or “extreme agitation” of other types still persists at least a bit.  And it’s better than “insanity” in my opinion.

Madness has a certain poetic quality to it that “insanity”, which is really a legal term, does not have.  Insanity, whether by design or just by customary use, carries the impression of a loss of previously existing “sanity”.  I’ve introduced my term “unsane” before, but I don’t know if it’s going to catch on.  At least, though, it conveys the notion, potentially, of situations or people or beings to whom or to which the very concept of sanity doesn’t apply.

But of course, as I noted, insanity (and sanity) is a legal term that applies to assessing whether or not one can be held legally culpable for one’s actions.  As such, it can be fairly vague, and certainly it is not scientific.  There are quite a few forms of mental illness* that are truly debilitating and dangerous and can even be life-threatening, and are certainly immiserating, but which would not allow one to be found “not guilty by reason of insanity” if one committed a crime.

Mind you, all these notions, from laws to words to legal or even moral responsibilities, are simply inventions, creations, “fictions” produced by humans for various reasons—they are memes** and memeplexes that happened to survive and reproduce, so they carried on.  Often, though not always, such memes persist in the meme pool—i.e., culture—because they are useful to the organism(s) through which they propagate.  But they do not have any truly fundamental reality.  They are emergent things in a spontaneously self-assembled complex adaptive system that has no more intrinsic, inherent meaning than does a snowflake or a piece of rock candy—also, they are far less beautiful and/or tasty, though they have their charms.

Still, I’m sick of nearly all of it—mentally sick, physically sick.  I’m particularly sick of my part within it, largely because I don’t think I have much of a part within it.  Like the song says, I don’t belong here.  But, of course, the fact of not belonging in one place does not logically imply that one belongs somewhere else.  Even setting aside the fact that the term “belong” is fairly vague and protean, by any version of it but the very loosest one, it is entirely possible for an individual entity or being not truly to “belong” anywhere at all.

I certainly know that it’s possible to feel that one does not belong anywhere.

It’s vaguely reminiscent the old Groucho Marx joke in which he said he would never join a club that would have him as a member.  It’s funny, but it’s also a good description of a dysfunctional state of mind—or at least an inefficacious frame of mind—such that a person feels that he or she is an outsider, and that any group that would welcome him or her is probably not the sort of group in which he or she could possibly feel comfortable.

It’s what happens when one looks online to find communities that purportedly have common difficulties or shared issues and which intend to provide mutual support, but one feels at least as alien and uncomfortable with the thought of these support groups as one does about any other group.

No-win situations are clearly possible in reality—the very concept of “winning” is another entirely artificial one, though it can be pertinent to the objective biological world in some circumstances—and when one is in one, it can be reasonable to try simply to accept that one cannot win, and therefore that one’s choice of how to escape the situation is arbitrary and so may as well be random, or whatever seems most attractive at the time.

Anyway, that’s enough bullshit from me for today.  I don’t know what point I’m trying to make, but that’s okay; there is no inherent point, no evident telos to the cosmos.  There is no purpose in which to lose myself, and there is no home to which I can return.  I’m certainly in no position to try to make a new home of any kind or to create some new purpose.  I wish I had just walked away a month ago today, as I’d hoped to do—it would have been a good day for it.  Or perhaps I should have done so a month before that; it would have been even better.

Oh, well.  The past cannot be changed, anymore than the characters in a film can rewind their own reels and edit earlier frames to change their story.  If one were able to change past time, it would necessarily involve another level of time, some “higher” time in which a different kind of future and past existed, not constrained by the one within this world.  That’s conceivable, of course.  However, there’s no evidence that it exists.

But that’s a discussion for some other time.

*Yes, I prefer to call things “mental illness” when they impair the successful functioning of a person’s mind, to greater or lesser extent.  Referring to everything as “mental health” comes across as just weird a lot of the time.  “He struggles with mental health” is the sort of thing people sometimes seem to say, but that doesn’t make much sense.  Surely he struggles with his relative dearth of mental health.  Or is it meant that perhaps he dislikes mental health, which seems fairly pathological in and of itself, just as a person might want to sabotage that person’s own physical health?  Either tendency seems to be a case of mental illness, in the same sense that anything from an upper respiratory infection, to dysentery, to a heart attack, to vasculitis, and to cancer are all forms of “physical” illness, not physical health.

**In the original sense of the term, coined by Richard Dawkins in his brilliant work, The Selfish Gene.

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What are the odds that this is worth reading?

It’s Monday, October 23rd in the year 2023 (A.D. or C.E., depending on your preferred terminology) and I’m writing this blog post on my laptop computer.  I took the computer with me when I left the office on Wednesday, expecting not to bring it back, but here I am.

It’s really quite stupid.  But it is more pleasant to write these posts on the laptop computer—quite a lot more pleasant—than it is to write them on the smartphone.  Though more compact and portable, the latter is just awkward and irritating, and it still causes the bases of my thumbs to get sore sometimes.  Well, really, the soreness is at the carpo-metacarpal joints more than it is at the metacarpophalangeal joint, but basically it just feels like my thumbs are sore, and it becomes more difficult to grip things as it continues.

That’s probably about all the news I have for today.  At least, it’s probably the only news I have that’s even arguably worth sharing on this blog, though the arguability of the shareworthiness of even that news would probably involve a lot of distracting rhetoric and sophistry, neither of which is a form of “argument” for which I have much respect.  They’re about as good as taking the word of someone you’ve just met about some matter involving significant (but not life-changing) amounts of money because they “promise” you can trust them.

“Give me 1% of your trust, and I’ll earn the other 99%” is an expression sometimes used in sales.  I guess it works on some people, but I can’t see it ever working on me.  First of all, it’s not really a sensible way to put something.  What is 1% of someone’s trust?  How does one quantify such a thing as if it were a substance or population?

I could see asking for 1% of someone’s trust fund.  That might be worth a bit, depending (obviously) on the size of the trust fund.  But 1% of my trust, however one might reasonably measure trust, is some number so vanishingly close to zero that it might as well be used to calculate derivatives and integrals.  This is largely because I don’t actually believe in or endorse “trust” as a generally good idea, though that certainly depends on one’s definitions.  I think trust is a mostly vacuous concept.

I used to say that I trusted my mother and my father, and with everyone else I took calculated risks.  But of course, that was really just me trying to be clever.  In reality, it’s all calculated risks*.  It’s just a Bayesian prior estimate of the credence we give that, for instance, this person in question will behave as they say they will behave.  Then we will update our future estimate depending on how things turn out this time, using a sort of loosey-goosey, intuitive version of Bayes’s Theorem.

If we started off without a particular preference for “trust or not trust” for someone, our prior would be something like 50%.  If we thought someone was a metaphorical weasel by nature, it might be much lower, though if we’re being good Bayesians, it can never be truly zero.  I trusted my parents—by the time I was fully an adult, anyway—at a level close enough to 100% that it was rarely worth thinking about much.

I honestly don’t know how I get onto these subjects.  I know it’s probably boring as Hell**.  I’ll just close that topic by noting that my Bayesian prior for trusting myself is way lower than my prior was for my parents.  It’s not that I don’t think I’m reliable or anything; I’m probably reasonably reliable as a general tendency.  I just don’t like myself, and I’m almost always disappointed in myself, so it’s reasonable to predict that I’ll probably let myself down in any given circumstance.

For instance, I’ve let myself down already by even doing this blog post, because I’m on my way to work, because I didn’t use this last weekend as a good starting point for the process of my dreamed-of trial by fire and ice (to be ludicrously melodramatic).  That “trial” is basically a notion of a means by which to put oneself at a not-insignificant risk of death—knowingly—without it being anything that could lead one to be forcibly locked up.  There are things that a person can do that will lead to a significant chance of mortality*** if carried on long enough, but which are otherwise entirely unremarkable.  Even water can kill you if you just keep on drinking and drinking and drinking.  In fact, it takes less water than you might think.

That’s not my specific thought, however.  I wouldn’t want to do that because I think I would spend just too much time in the effing bathroom, and it would be a terribly annoying way to pass**** one’s final hours.  But there are things that I could stand doing that, if things go right or wrong (depending on one’s mood or viewpoint) could kill me.  That’s the general idea.

Anyway, that’s enough blather about nothing (and potential nothingness) for today.  I don’t know what’s going to happen from here, but I’ll try to keep you posted if it’s not too much trouble.

*So to speak.  We rarely actually calculate the risk, but rather do a  quick estimate.

**That’s a weird thing to say, isn’t it?  It’s hard to imagine that Hell, as described in most religions, could be considered boring.  Demons and fire and brimstone and torture are things that at the very least don’t seem dull—though I suppose one might be tortured with a dull knife.  But as anyone who has suffered from depression probably would soon realize, “boredom” of a sort (i.e., anhedonia) is a major form of torture.  That’s one of the reasons I always found the apparently more modern notion (reputedly in Catholicism) of Hell as “being removed from God’s presence” a more interesting and subtle and less cartoonish notion of Hell than one gets in many evangelical forms of Christianity.

***If you were an immortal being, and you liked being immortal, taking any chance of mortality—i.e. of becoming mortal—would be something akin to Pascal’s wager, where the potential loss (of an infinite lifespan) would be so vast as to make the most miniscule possibility thereof essentially an intolerable risk.

****No pun intended, but nevertheless, not edited out.

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Sprechen sie David Deutsch? How about Japanese?

I’m writing this blog post on the laptop computer, which I brought back to the house yesterday with just that intent.  I did not walk to the train this morning, though I feel that I could have done so, had I chosen.  The weather is even more pleasant and cool than it was yesterday—62 degrees (F) out, which is even better for walking than 69 degrees.  I’m even wearing my hoodie to sit at the train station!

I’m also wearing my boots.  I thought that I might be lacing them too tightly—I might have mentioned that yesterday—particularly on the left foot, but also potentially on the right, which might explain the increased torque that’s caused strain on my right Achilles tendon.  If everything is reasonably well during the day today, and I’m able to resist the temptation to tighten the boots up too much, I mean to try to walk back from the train station to the house this evening.

I’m at the station very early, right now.  I woke up early, of course, and I had too much nervous energy even just to loll around, so I got up, did my things, took out some garbage, put out food for the stray cats, and then got to the train station well in time for the first train of the day, which should arrive in 3 minutes.  It’s all very exciting.

I’ve been packing some coats and a raincoat that I have in bottom of a large, hiking-style backpack, with a somewhat crazy idea in mind.  It’s relatively heavy, so far, but certainly not too heavy.  I’m going to need to get myself a new belt, though.  I had to punch a new hole in the one I’m wearing, since it’s tightened up a bit, but the next size (supposedly) of the same make and model belt—the one that I like—doesn’t quite reach to the first hole.

This doesn’t quite make sense to me, since there’s not supposed to be that much difference in their maximum length.  Something’s gone awry.  When I ordered that belt, maybe they sent me one that had been mislabeled.  But I don’t want to order another one of that kind to find out, because if it’s not an error, then I’ll have two belts that both don’t quite work yet.

So, I mean to get a fully adjustable belt, like the ones I wore in the Boy Scouts and then in the Navy.  To be honest, they were always a good style of belt, and if I make sure to pick one with good Amazon ratings (or similar) it should work well.

It looks like the first train is running approximately six minutes behind schedule.  I’m not sure quite how that happens as often as it does; the schedule is the same every day except Sundays and holidays.

I thought of an idea for a very short, rather gruesome story yesterday, when I was approaching the last bus stop (on foot) right before the train station.  Someone was sitting at the stop, wearing bright sneakers but otherwise dark clothes.  There are a fair few trees shading that bus stop, and it looked almost as though there was only the lower half of a person sitting there, until I got quite close.  That triggered an idea for what would be a very short story—especially for me—but might be fun.

We’ll see whether I write it or not, I guess*.  Well, you guys all might not see, even if I do write it, but I guess if I do, and if I find the time and the inclination to edit it, I may post it here, or I may just publish it direct to Kindle.

When I was first working on Mark Red and even The Chasm and the Collision, I intended just to publish them as serials via Kindle.  I think that’s not entirely unheard-of, and it’s almost the way Japanese “light novels” get published.  Each volume of such things—the truly “light” ones, anyway—are too brief to be full novels, and the story, like that of a manga, is expected to continue through a number of volumes.  Sometimes each novel is really a separate “adventure”, as in the Haruhi Suzumiya series, and sometimes they are truly ongoing, single overall stories chopped into sub-events, like Toradora.

I wish I could find the full, English translation of the Shakugan no Shana series.  I loved that anime, and have read what there is of the manga; it’s one of the most original fantasy stories (set in the modern world) that I have encountered.  But they only ever seemed to have released the first two volumes in English.  If it had come out after the advent of the light novel availability on Amazon (Kindle and otherwise) and the readily available purchase form thereof, I think it would have done well.  But I got mine at good ol’ Borders, back in the day, and of course, my copies are long gone.  I can reorder them from used book sellers via Amazon, but it won’t get me the later volumes.

Had I but world enough and time, I would seriously consider just getting the whole series in Japanese and honing my skills with the language by slogging through them, “translating” as I go, and trying to get the most out of them.  It wouldn’t make as much sense as, for instance, getting the Harry Potter books in Japanese, since I know those practically by heart, but it might still be useful.  Maybe I could get the English translations of the first two novels, just so I could get going.

I think I threw away my Kodansha Kanji Leaner’s Dictionary in a fit of pique a while back, but with the advances in Google Translate, one can draw (sort of) the Kanji one is trying to translate.  Also, Japanese books geared toward younger readers tend to have hiragana characters next to the kanji, so that readers can pronounce the words and recognize the meaning (since they probably know the words by sound), and can learn their Kanji in the meantime.

This is all pipe dream stuff, anyway.  I mean, I could do it, and I’m sure it would be interesting, but I don’t know that I could sustain my interest.  I can barely sustain interest in anything.  Robert Sapolsky’s new book, Determined, should have come out overnight**—I preordered it months ago—and I don’t have much desire to read it yet, though he’s a very interesting and wonderful writer and scientist (a behavioral biologist and neuroendocrinology professor, who himself has struggled with depression, apparently, and for which reason he too has been leery of things like psychedelics and so on).

Maybe he’ll be on Sam Harris’s podcast again now that he’s coming out with the new book, though with recent horrible “political” events, Sam may be distracted a lot in coming weeks.  Well, “distracted” is probably not the right word; but his attention will likely be elsewhere.

I have been listening to Sean Carroll talking to David Deutsch on the former’s podcast, and that’s good, though it’s lamentably under two hours long.  Still, one of my favorite physicist/writers is talking with another that I like even more in some ways—what’s not to like?

I wish Deutsch would write another “popular” science book, but he doesn’t crank them out quite like Carroll does (the latter’s books do not disappoint, at least).

Maybe I should start looking for some of Deutsch’s academic stuff.  Some of it may still be on arXiv or similar, and there may be public domain editions of the non-preprint material.  He is a terrifically original and deep and quick thinker, one of the first pioneers of quantum computing, an advocate of Everettian quantum mechanics, founder of what he calls Constructor theory (an approach to how knowledge and explanation work in intelligent life forms), and a guarded optimist.

He thinks, following Turing’s mathematical demonstrations about the universality of computation (which he fleshed out himself regarding quantum computation) that there is, ultimately, only one “form” of intelligent computation.  He sees, therefore, intelligent extraterrestrials, human beings, and potential AGIs all as “people” or “persons” in the same right.  The only real differences would be due to specific “software” and memory and processing speed.

Trust me, he makes very convincing cases for these things.  He is a rigorous thinker.

Again, though, I don’t expect really to make any progress in exploring more of any of this.  But it’s interesting to think about for them moment.

And now, my stop is coming up, so I’ll draw this post to a close.  Please have a good day.

deutsch Deutsch

nihon deutsch

*I doubt it.

**It did.

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Trivial nonsense on a pseudo-ominous day

I’d intended to walk to the train this morning, so of course I didn’t bring my portable, foldable computer designed to be suitable for use resting upon one’s lap with me yesterday.  Therefore, I am writing this blog post on my smartphone*.  However, I did not walk to the train.

I just felt really wiped out still this morning; my sleep wasn’t quite as bad as it had been the night before, but it still was rotten, and I feel rotten.  Also, this morning it’s three degrees (Fahrenheit…so one and two thirds degrees Celsius) hotter than it was two days ago.  I’m sweating even more than usual even though I’m just sitting at the train station right now.  There’s also, again, no breeze of which to speak, so everything is stagnant, and sweat doesn’t really do any work toward cooling one down.

I hope that, by this evening, it’s either cooler or at least breezier, and that I’ll have a bit more energy, so I might feel up to walking back from the train.  At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about sweating on train seats.

My coworker did come to the office yesterday, bearing pictures and stories of his brief family trip, mainly focused on his very young daughter.  It was quite charming.  Another person I know is currently on a trip as well‒two of them together, really‒and all these reports got me nostalgic about trips I had taken to (or times I had lived in) their various destinations.  I fear to talk too much about my own experiences in such circumstances, though I feel the urge‒I suspect that I’m just being horribly obnoxious when I catch myself doing it, and internally rebuke myself with things like, “No one gives a shit about all your stupid stories” and so on.

To be fair, no one has complained to me about it, so I evidently haven’t overstepped the bounds of good taste too much.  I probably do so overstep here, on my blog, but if anyone here doesn’t want to “hear” my stupid stories, they have only themselves to blame for reading them.

Today is Friday the 13th, isn’t it?  Back in the old days, some local network station would probably have used today‒and the fact that we are in the month of October, to boot‒as an excuse to show some highly edited versions of the slasher films named after the day.  For all I know, some of them still do.  Anyway, I tend to like Friday the 13th, largely because 13 is a prime number, and it’s one for which I feel a special affection precisely because it is so reviled by so many other people, for silly, superstitious reasons.  I myself am not superstitious.  I’m just a little bit stitious.  Ba-dump-bump.

I will be working tomorrow, so maybe I’ll walk to the train in the morning.  Timing things like that can be a bit awkward on the weekend, because the trains only run every hour, and none of the departure times is roughly comparable to the place in the hour that I usually catch them.  So if I get up at the same time as usual, whether walking or otherwise, I’m either “too early” or “too late” compared to my preference.  Of course “too early” is VASTLY preferable to the alternative, so I will err in that direction.  It’s not as though I can choose just to sleep in‒not without the use of pharmaceuticals‒so I might as well just get going.

I had a rather abrupt surge in my lower back pain this morning, above the usual baseline (to which I’ve almost become accustomed).  It may be because I didn’t put on my spandex knee and ankle support thingies**, since I had chosen not to walk.  It seems a bit much to think, though, that just the very small amount of walking I’ve done without them, wearing boots that give decent ankle support, would trigger an exacerbation.  It’s possible, I guess, but it seems unlikely.  It’s also possible that I slept in an unusual position, or just that fatigue and relative dehydration and whatnot are taking a bit of a toll.

Ah, well.  I brought my knee and ankle specialty spandex bits of supplemental clothing with me, in case I walk this evening, so I can always slip them on during the day.

I already gave away my folding massage chair.  It wasn’t doing me any good anymore, and it’s one less thing to have around or to leave behind.  I’m trying to farm off or just eliminate as much useless junk as I can.  The less clutter, the better.

That last sentence makes me wish I could legitimately say “and the less butter, the cletter”, but that last word, alas, has no meaning of which I am aware.  I suppose I could make up a meaning for it, but if you have to invent a word to make a pseudo-spoonerism work, then you’re really reaching.

One of the security guys on the train just walked by, and as he did, he muttered, “Damn, it’s hot.”  He’s far from overstating the situation.  The A/C on the train appears to be running***, based on the noise, but it doesn’t seem to be cooling the car much if at all.  I guess that at least means that my glasses (and my phone) won’t fog up when I exit the train, and that’s worth avoiding, so it’s a good thing.  See?  Who says I can’t find the positive in seemingly negative situations?

Some do say that cynics are really just frustrated idealists.  I don’t know that I am or ever have been an idealist, but I certainly am frustrated.

With that, I’ll draw (or write) this post to a close.  I hope you all have a good and lucky Friday the 13th, and that you have a good weekend to follow.  I expect to be writing a post for tomorrow morning, so if you like that sort of thing, come to this space then‒figuratively speaking‒at about the usual time.

*I don’t have any urge to clarify the word “smartphone” because it really doesn’t refer to any other entity in the universe of which I know, and‒certainly compared to any phones I used prior to the last ten years‒it is a very smart phone indeed.

**I’m not sure what the best term for these is.  “Brace” feels most typical, but that, to me, somehow implies hard, hinged, moving parts, which are lacking in the products I use.  “Support” seems reasonable, but it feels a bit vague.  Perhaps “compression sleeve” would work, but that feels a bit confusing.

***I would guess that it’s probably powered by alternating current created by an alternator (duh!) attached to the engine, but it could be run from batteries that receive their charge via rectified current initially generated in the engine.  If that is the case, then we have the rather pleasing situation of an A/C running on DC.  That’s better than butter and cletter than clutter.

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Vamonos a escuchar mientras caminamos

I am writing this post on my smartphone today, as opposed to my computer.  Though, of course, a smartphone is a computer, and indeed, is far more advanced a computer than any I’d used prior to the turn of the millennium.  It’s a lot more advanced than the computers that ran the Space Shuttle™ and vastly more advanced than the ones used in the Apollo moon landings.  Thankfully, Newtonian mechanics is straightforward enough to be computable using quite simple systems and some smart humans, of which there were many involved in that program, and Newtonian mechanics is all one really needs to get to the Moon and back.

Anyway, I walked to the train station this morning, as was my plan, which was why I did not bring my…my folding computer back to the house with me yesterday afternoon.  I plan to bring it with me this evening, and to take tomorrow morning off from walking, just to avoid overdoing things in the short term. There will be plenty of time for overdoing things; I need to pace myself at least a little bit.

I feel that my sleep has been getting even worse recently than it usually is, and it’s really quite frustrating.  Yet, even though I’m deeply tired, I can’t seem to get sleepy.  I’m not sure what I can do about this, but it’s quite frustrating.

I do have one rather fun thing to report:  this morning on the walk to the train, I listened to a new audio-book I’d ordered with this month’s Audible credit (which hit my account yesterday).  That book was the first Harry Potter book…but in Spanish!  If there’s one set of books I know well enough to be able to fill in the gaps in Spanish, it’s that set.  The only potentially better one would be The Lord of the Rings; all in good time for that!  So, my tentative thought is that I can listen to the whole Harry Potter series in Spanish and this should help me improve my spoken (and heard) Spanish skills.

Audible also has the Harry Potter books in Japanese, and I almost started with that, but I figured Spanish would probably be the one in which it would be more useful to improve my skills.  I am in south Florida, after all.  The other people who share the house in which I live are primarily Spanish speaking, for goodness sake.

There’s nothing that says I can’t do both, of course, and that is my tentative plan.  I mean to do a lot of walking, so there will be plenty of time to listen.  Even in my hour and a half walk so far this morning, I only got to chapter 4 of the first book, and it’s the shortest of the Harry Potter books.  Just wait till I get to book 6!  I read that one seven times between when it came out and when book 7 was released, because I was impatient.  By the time I finish that, maybe, the audio will feel completely natural.

Once again today, I let the 610 train go while waiting for the 630.  I’m glad I did.  Today’s weather was warmer and muggier than Monday, and there is essentially no wind to cool one down, so that time is well used.  The wait is only somewhat effective, of course.  I brought along a second shirt to put over my “athletic” one, just so that I’m not sweating all over the back of the seat on the train.  My shorts are designed to be very good at letting go of sweat, but even so, given the pattern of accumulation, I look almost as though I had wet myself‒though only if I had done so while lying on my belly.

It’s not that bad, I guess, and I have my little “scent bomb” spray to hide any bad odor…and I’ve been told that my initial sweaty smell isn’t too bad.  Far worse (to me) is the odor of mildew.  If it gets going, I feel nauseated.  I hate that smell.

This is probably why I can’t stand to eat pretty much any kind of mushroom; they all smell vaguely like mildew.  Also, their texture is gross.  I suppose if I were to eat a magic mushroom in order to try to treat my depression, I could probably just force a bit down.  But it would have to be in specific, deliberate, and controlled circumstances.  At least I’m highly unlikely to eat poisonous mushrooms accidentally, which is good, because by all accounts of which I’m aware, they bring about a slow, painful, and horrifying death when they kill, and there are generally no known antidotes.

I don’t have much more to report.  It’s been a weird few days at the office, because my colleague is out of town, on his delayed vacation.  It’s a bit hectic and I am slightly behind schedule on payroll, but that is largely due to a region-wide Internet outage we had yesterday afternoon.  The phones in our office are VOIP, and of course, the reports we get, from which I render the payroll, come through email.  We left the office not long after lunch, after waiting a bit to see if the Internet would return.

The irony is that, after everyone had left and I was just getting ready to lock up, the internet connection came back (earlier than predicted by Comcast, who I suspect use a sort of Mister Scot technique when estimating repair times).  It was too late to do anything about it, and I was practically heading out the door already, but it’s both mildly frustrating and rather amusing.

That’s about enough for today.  Tomorrow, I plan to write using my laptop computer, so the flow might be better.  It seems appropriate for what may be one of my final traditional Thursday blog posts.  In the meantime, please have a good day, today.

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“Walk this way…THIS way.”

Well, for the first time in a few weeks, I walked to the train station today.  The weather is perhaps ever so slightly better for such things because it’s been raining a lot and it’s slightly cooler.  Maybe.

I’m sure that all the people up north are unimpressed by my grousing, thinking such sardonic things as, “Oh, poor baby, is it too hot for you in the first week of October?”  But I’ve said before, as someone who grew up in Michigan, I like the cooling off that happens in Autumn.  One can always put on a jacket and so on, or wear a sweater (or both) when it gets cool out.  Down here, even if it were okay to go around with no clothes, there are times this would not keep you cool enough to avoid potential overheating and dehydration.

Also, during the day, you could be prone to some truly unfortunate sunburns.

Anyway, I had a pretty decent walk this morning.  I must have been going at a good pace in my new boots, because I arrived in plenty of time for a train twenty minutes earlier than the one I had intended to take.  I’m writing this on that earlier train, since I only had a few minutes to wait before the train I usually just miss arrives.

While I walked, I listened to the Audible version of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.  But here’s a surprise:  I was listening to the Spanish version!

I used to speak Spanish pretty well, after taking a couple of years of it in college, including a literature course, and when I was in residency, I had a fair few times to use it, since the Bronx has a large Spanish-speaking population (like most of the Western Hemisphere).  However, it has now been ages since I’ve used it regularly, and I find that when people speak to me in Spanish, I have a hard time understanding much of it.  That seems like such a shame, especially since, by the time of my last college course, I was thinking partly in Spanish.

So, I decided to get that book in Spanish (audio), and listen to it to try to reinvigorate that part of my brain.  I’ve read the book in English, so that makes it a bit easier.  I can’t say that I was honestly following everything that was being said (or read) but I caught quite a few words and sentences and concepts, and I think that will get easier as I go along.

I also recently got an audio book of a Japanese light novel in Japanese (I had to go looking for it on Amazon), and even recorded the audio‒or rather, imported the audio‒for several anime I have watched many times, figuring to do something similar with Japanese, of which I have only a smattering.  But it seems better to focus on Spanish first.  Spanish is all but ubiquitous where I currently live.

But I also want to go for the Nihongo on some of my walks.  I think that learning and using foreign languages helps one understand one’s own native tongue better, and also to recognize the nature and importance of grammar and careful communication.  I’ve said before that language is crystallized thought, and having more ways to crystallize it may at least give one different and more sophisticated ways to think.  Seeing the differences (and commonalities) of language is very interesting, also.

All European languages (as far as I know) have lots of evolutionary history in common.  Some, of course, are more directly related than others; Spanish and Italian are obviously close cousins, while English and Russian are less so.  But when one gets to the “Far East” things are much more divergent from the West (and vice versa), and though there are words imported from Europe (e.g., the Japanese for “bread” is “pan”, as the Portuguese introduced bread to Japan), the roots of the languages appear to be almost completely separate.  This makes it all the more interesting when one finds grammatical structures in common, especially when they do the same thing, but in different ways.  It makes one think Chomsky really was onto something with his notion of a universal, inherent human grammar.

I learn by hearing pretty well, almost as well as I do by reading.  In fact, when I read, I always subvocalize‒i.e., I say the words in my head.  It makes my reading slower, but I read more deeply than most people I know, and I tend to remember what I read better than many.

So, I’ll do some Spanish for now, but maybe I’ll intersperse it with Japanese as well.  It should be interesting, at least.  We’ll see how long this intention lasts.

Before I close, I figured I’d share with you a bit of what might be interesting trivia regarding my walk.  Before starting off, rather than using an “energy drink” replete with high fructose corn syrup or other carbohydrates (which I’m trying to minimize overall and even completely avoid when I can), I drank a few swigs of olive oil!

Ha ha!  That surprises you, I’ll bet.  But it makes sense.  At aerobic exertion levels, the muscles (like most of the rest of the body) “prefer” to run on fatty acids, not glucose, at least when insulin levels are normal.  And, of course, olive oil is all fat, which is a much more efficient form of energy than carbs.  One can’t drink much olive oil in a swig or two (and I did not try) but at least it doesn’t lead to any rebound drop in blood sugar and consequent fatigue.

I don’t know if I will continue to do that, or even if it had any effect on the speed of my walking (there were too many variables to make any credible determination of specific causation), but it certainly doesn’t seem to have impaired my abilities.

That’s enough for now.  I hope you all have a good day, and a good week, and what the heck, have a good month.  It’s one of the best ones of the year.

walk this way

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It’s a day more poached or boiled than fried

First, the latest updates on the work situation:  it looks like I am going to be working tomorrow, as previously scheduled, because my coworker’s wife is still sick, but they can’t get next weekend rebooked or some such, so he will be working then and doesn’t need to ask me to switch.  Of course, there apparently exists the possibility that they will be going instead sometime during the middle of one of the upcoming weeks, but you know what?  I can’t keep worrying about this crap.  I haven’t had a “vacation” since I went up north when my mother died a few years ago, so it’s not as though I’m not due, anyway.

Vacations are something people in general enjoy with their families or significant others or some such, and I have no one around here with whom to go on a vacation.  And being just off work and being by myself around the “house”‒or more specifically, the one room in which I live‒is in many ways worse than going to the office.  So I don’t tend to take time off except when I’m sick and/or in an exceptional amount of pain.

I know, it’s an exciting life, right?  I shouldn’t share such titillating tidbits too much or people will shrivel up with envy.

Ugh, it’s sooooo muggy and humid and the air is so still today.  I’m dripping with sweat so much that it’s fogging up my glasses and it’s getting in my eyes, even though I’m just standing on the platform waiting for the train.  Oh, and the announcement says the train is boarding on the opposite side from its usual one, so there are roughly twice as many people.  At least they’re all quiet at this time of day.  Of course, the northbound and southbound trains arrive at very close to the same time, for this pair of morning trains, but presumably‒and based on past experience‒the people running the system are on top of that coordination problem.  I’ve never heard of any train collisions since I’ve been using the system.

However, apparently they’re more than capable of screwing up in other ways. My usual train arrived just now on its usual side of the tracks, and everyone who had thoughtfully noted the announcement and waited on the other side‒which included me‒had to scramble to get over to the train quickly.  Thankfully, the train waited, but it’s really bad that they did this.  I had to rush down the stairs after riding the elevator up to the bridge with about eight or so other people.  I thought it might have been good if I had tripped and fallen on my way down, but such a fall would be unlikely to be fatal; it would probably just hurt a lot.  I suppose if that happened I might have been able to sue the Tri-Rail people, but that’s not the sort of thing in which I’m interested.

I’m so sick of my life.  This is it; you’re reading about the most interesting things that happen to me.  In fact, this blog is the most interesting thing I do.  But it’s not very interesting, is it?  The stuff in between is worse.  And, of course, I could try to find other things to do and with which to distract myself (and I still do try to read books that keep my attention, almost desperately) but there is nothing that makes me feel like I want to do it.

I guess I should stop writing about this stuff, huh?  My psychological/neurological issues are pretty dull.  Yesterday’s blog was longer than usual, because I was dealing with a lot of weird and highly personal and distressing subject matter, but I think I’ll leave off on things like that.  No one really wants to read it or hear it, there’s nothing anyone can do to help me with it, apparently, and I’m tired of beating that stupid dead horse.  I’m tired of metaphorically shouting into the void with this blog.  When you shout into the void, it seems, the void shouts back at you, and when the void is shouting, you just get emptier and emptier yourself.

At least the shout of the void gives an inviting hint of pure silence that might be waiting there for you‒silence not just in literal noise, but silence in the mind, in the heart, in emotions and thoughts.  Oblivion is preferable, eventually, to cacophony.

Of course, as Sauron (in a vision of the eye) said to Frodo in the movie version of The Fellowship of the Ring, “There is no life in the Void‒only death.”*  This is a bit contradictory, depending on one’s definitions.  Can there be death without life?  Was the universe “dead” for the billions of years that passed before life came into existence?  That doesn’t seem coherent to me, at least not the way I think of “death” as coming after life.

Mind you, if you define (or, rather, use) the word death simply to mean “lacking life” then I suppose the universe was dead, and in fact, almost all of it still is and probably will always be.

Maybe Sauron (as reimagined by Peter Jackson et al) just meant you can’t survive in the Void?  Perhaps he meant it was like a wasteland of sorts, a place barren of food and water, that holds only death for creatures that wander into it.  But no, that doesn’t make sense.  Sauron is one of the Maiar, and knows that he literally cannot die, though he can be reduced to a powerless, miserable spirit until the end of days (as he is).  Likewise, in Tolkien’s world, all men and elves and dwarves and hobbits and all those that are “kindled with the Flame Imperishable” do not die completely, though their bodies can die.  I assume that means that even orcs have an afterlife.

Anyway, enough.  Sorry to waste your time with my brain squeezings.  I should find something better to do, speaking of the Void.  In the meantime, I’ve got a headache from clenching my jaw, and I’ve written too much already.  Have a good day and a good weekend if you can.  I’ll be writing again tomorrow, probably.  More’s the pity.

*There is no comparable notion or connection in the books, and it’s hard to see why Sauron would speak of the Void.  Melkor spent much time in the Void both before Eä was even made and after, but he had been alone, and that was why he started to “think different” as they say.  Sauron, on the other hand, was originally a Maia  serving Aule; he wasn’t off in the Void with his eventual new master.  And, of course, Melkor was in the Void by the time of LotR, so there was life in the Void by then.

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Please imagine a clever title here

Well, after once again awakening hours before I could even have caught any trains, today I arrived at the station just as the first northbound one of the morning was arriving.  This time, to avoid temptation, I didn’t cross over, but stayed on the near side and took the elevator to the bridge.  I also hoped that I would sweat less by walking a slightly shorter distance (with a stop in the middle).  I think I am sweating a bit less, but it’s still annoying and relatively ridiculous.  I mean, it’s not even five in the morning now, and the weather app claims that it’s only about 75 degrees out!  Why am I sweating so much?

It would be nice if this were a sign of some underlying terminal disease*, but I don’t really have that kind of luck‒whether you want to consider it good or bad or whatever.

I did some pretty good walking yesterday evening, while talking to my sister on the phone.  I can tell it’s been several days at least since I’ve done long walking, because I developed a slight broken blister overlying my right Achilles tendon, where the rear of the shoe rubs it.  They aren’t brand new shoes‒I’ve walked good distances in them before‒so I know it’s just that my skin has gotten more sensitive, and probably, my walking posture has gotten a bit more slack.  Anyway, the blister is disinfected and taped up now.

You may ask:  if I claim to consider the possibility of a terminal illness a good thing, why would I bother to treat a blister on my “heel” and protect against infection?  It’s a good question; I wish I had thought of it, myself.  Well, the answer is, I want to be able to walk potentially quite long distances, without blisters and the like stopping me.  I wouldn’t greatly mind collapsing due to heat exhaustion and dehydration/volume depletion and electrolyte imbalances and kidney failure, but simply being unable to walk because of blisters and similar injuries‒that would be galling.

We’ll see what happens, I guess.  I already mentioned yesterday that I have to push my potential plans back about two weeks, anyway, out of deference to my coworker’s family vacation.  I don’t know why I trouble myself, really.  I guess I just really dislike causing more inconvenience to other people‒ones I know, at least‒than I must.

Still, eventually, one must reach a breaking point.  I think that, mentally, I’ve already reached that point, to be honest.  I no longer truly hope for, let alone expect, anything or anyone to “save” me, if you will.  I don’t expect to “recover”, or to rebuild any semblance of a life or career.

I don’t really do anything for enjoyment or fulfillment.  Even this blog is mainly just a habit.  I suppose there is some trace or modicum of the notion that it might end up being useful to me in some way, or might even garner help from some unexpected quarter, but that’s sort of akin to imagining one might win a big Powerball jackpot.  It’s possible, but one shouldn’t make any serious plans about it actually happening.

It is rather nice to be throwing away some things that I have kept for a while just out of inertia or habit or a tendency to be a packrat.  Not that I have a great many possessions; I certainly don’t.  Everything I own fits in a single bedroom with attached shower and “walk-in” closet, plus a few things at the office.  I’ve thrown out or given away some of those latter things already, and packed others away.  I hope to pare it all down further still.

I started listening to an Audible version of The War of the Worlds yesterday.  Of course, it’s a heck of a story, the first ever alien invasion story, and still one of the best.  I must say, though‒and I feel slightly bad about having to say it‒that the narrator is a bit disappointing.  I don’t mean the character who tells the story, I mean the guy who read the book for the recording.  This is a dramatic and scary tale, but he’s done only a bit more than reading it straight.  Even the iconic opening paragraphs came out rather lackluster.

I wonder how people find my reading of my stories, like The Chasm and the Collision and my short stories.  They’re up on YouTube, and they’ve been uploaded here as well.  Maybe I’ll embed one or two below, in this post, and anyone who wishes can listen.  I would very much welcome feedback on both the stories and my reading of them.  I tried to do the reading well, but I don’t know whether the effort produced the desired results or not.

I guess it doesn’t really matter much.  “The world will little** note, nor long remember…” yadda yadda yadda.

I’ve always thought those were truly ironic words that Lincoln wrote/said there:  that the world would not long remember what he was saying at the time, but that they cannot forget what the soldiers had done there at Gettysburg.  Meanwhile, there are many of us who can recite part or all of the Gettysburg Address***, but I don’t know how much high school history classes even teach the American Civil War nowadays, let alone any of the specifics of that battle.

Of course, if you believe some YouTube videos, many young Americans don’t even know what continent the US is on, or how many states there are, or from which nation the US declared its independence and when.  Goodness knows most Americans can’t even recognize the opening of the Declaration of Independence, and despite so many claiming to revere the US Constitution, I doubt many of them have read through the whole thing, even once.

It’s really not very long.

I doubt that many of them have even read the Bill of Rights, or would even have a rough idea of what they are (with the possible exception of the 2nd Amendment, which is concise at least, although it’s apparently difficult to interpret unambiguously).

Oh, well.  Individual, actual knowledge of any particular subject is often inversely proportional to the strength of one’s opinions/convictions on the matter.  I guess that’s nothing new, but it continues to sting nevertheless‒rather like a new, recurrent blister in a bodily location one thought had become inured to abrasive forces.

With that, here are some audio recordings of me reading some parts of some of my stories.  The first is my story Hole for a Heart, and the second is Chapter 1 of CatC  If you listen, I hope you enjoy them.

standing on ledge

*Apart from being alive in and of itself, which appears to be uniformly fatal as far as we can tell.

**Rather ironically, Google is suggesting I change “will little note” to “will have little note”, offering a (flawed) correction to what is widely considered one of the most grammatically perfect speeches in American history.  Heavy sigh.

***1863 Lincoln Park Lane, Gettysburg, PA  24601.

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Remember what the dormouse said: Decongest your head

Well, it’s Saturday morning, and I’m waiting at the train station for the first train of the day on this first day of the Jewish year.

I took a long-acting decongestant last night, and though it did make me notice more alertness when I had my frequent nocturnal awakening, I don’t think I actually woke up more often than usual.  If anything, as I’ve long suspected, nighttime decongestants improve my breathing (duh), and thus the quality of such sleep as I get.

I have a family history of some degree of sleep apnea, and I suspect that using decongestants‒as long as the side-effects aren’t prohibitive‒provide protection from, and possibly prevention of, that process (This, I suspect, is especially true if, as needed, inhaled corticosteroids are also part of the treatment).

I’ve long suspected that sleep apnea can be a long-term secondary consequence of chronic allergic (and/or vasomotor) rhinitis, with narrowing of the nasopharynx due to inflammation/swelling of the mucosa leading to snoring and worsening sleep, then the weight gain often associated with certain kinds of inefficient sleep and high carb intake secondary to the nocturnal relative hypercapnia (high CO2) and the elevated cortisol that often accompanies chronic insomnia.  That high carb intake, with consequent elevated insulin, may lead to worsening of the inflammation and further narrowing of the airways and the gradual reduction in the quality of sleep, leading to a vicious cycle.

This is hypothetical, of course, and there are many variables that would need to be controlled to test it; I’ve only ever “experimented” on myself, starting when I first had a cat and realized that I was allergic, and that I was sleeping horribly and developing many signs and symptoms consistent with early sleep apnea.  It worked.

I’ve tried (with incomplete success) to avoid having cats since my first one was no longer in the picture.  That helped some and I have intermittently cut back on decongestants, but in south Florida‒and when living indoors in general, I suspect‒it’s hard to avoid all potential airway allergens and irritants.  Over time, the decreased quality of sleep (especially in someone like me who has a deceased tendency to sleep at all) has its effect on my cognitive function, and on my general energy level and appetite.

I have noticed that, when I am treating myself assertively for congestion, I tend overall to be cognitively sharper than when I am not, and I do not think this is simply due to the stimulating side-effects of the decongestants.  Studies have demonstrated that even true stimulants such as amphetamines do not actually bolster measures of intellectual function, though in the short term, they can improve alertness.

The biggest problem with my use of such things is that they tend to increase my level of internal stress and anxiety, particularly social anxiety.  All chains break at their weakest link (at least when under uniform tension), and social interaction is evidently my weakest link.

I’m not terribly afraid of physical danger, though it could never be said that I am fearless nor even particularly courageous, and I’m relatively used to physical pain.  I also don’t worry much about people being “mean” to me or not particularly liking me, or whatever‒for the most part, I don’t really have a clear notion of what other people are thinking of me at any given time, or indeed, what they’re thinking of anything.  When I’m not in someone’s presence, their presence in my brain seems abstract and ephemeral at best.  There are rare exceptions to this rule, but they are countable on the fingers of one hand.

But I do get stressed out about knowing what to say or how to interact, especially with new people, and I worry very much about being a bother or an annoyance to others.  Phone conversations are particularly stressful, except with people I know very well.

So this is definitely a trade-off situation, as are almost all things in life.  The body is an extraordinarily complex Rube Goldberg machine, and to push down on the system in one place almost always causes something to pop upward somewhere else.  I know, that’s not quite a consistent metaphor, but I think it works to convey my point.

Right now, at least, I want to try to improve my sleep quality‒increasing its quantity seems an unachievable goal without using things that make me feel worse overall‒so I can have the energy to do more walking and the like, including quite long-distance walking.  And I want to try to optimize my thinking as best I can, to decrease the risk that major decisions and changes I hope to make are based on poor thinking.

As for social anxiety, well, my social life is nonexistent anyway, apart from work.  I don’t expect ever to make* any new friends or have any new relationships, romantic or otherwise.  That aspect of life just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me‒certainly nearly all such things have been disastrous hitherto for me.  Maybe if I could find some other member of whatever species I am, it might be different, but I don’t consider the odds of success, or the probable payoff, to be worth the likely cost and the probable rate of failure.

Plus, let’s face it:  I’m no one’s idea of a good prospect for a long term friend or partner of any kind.  I can be quite useful; I tend to be hard working and disciplined, and I’m reasonably bright, but my skills in romantic interactions, for instance, have always been horrible, and if anything they have atrophied over time.

I used to be tolerably good at friendship, but I seem to have no skill at keeping friendships going from a distance.  I don’t naturally think to try to reach out to people‒those times when I do think of it, I always feel awkward and anxious and am sure I’m just going to be an annoyance to anyone with whom I interact and to find the interaction stressful and even heart-breaking.  I’ve said before, even leaving comments on blogs or videos or what have you often leads me to feel real stress afterwards, and to regret doing it.

I just don’t think I’m well designed for this world, though there are attributes I possess that are useful and effective.  Overall, I’m just not a good fit, and the places where that fit is bad chafe and grate and grind away quite painfully at me.  Every day is painful, and not just physically.

If I could find some other world to try, I might do that, depending on what I judged my chances to be.  But I don’t think that’s going to be an option, probably not ever in my potential lifetime.  So, it seems better to consider and prepare for a relatively straightforward exit from this world.

I could say, “Prove me wrong”, like those stupid Internet memes, and I guess if anyone thinks they can do it, they’re welcome to try.  But I don’t expect any fresh arguments or evidence that I haven’t already seen or considered.  I’ve been dealing with this question since I was a teenager.

Anyway, have a good day and a good weekend.  Thanks for reading.

the doctor in the desert

*Google’s auto-correct tried to make me change this phrase, making it “to ever make”.  Yes, it actually recommended that I split an infinitive where I had not done so, though there would be no improvement in the clarity of my expression thereby.  It’s exasperating.  To quote a very sarcastic young Scrooge, “This is the evenhanded dealing of the world!”

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Would there be fewer late trains if we were less willing to accept sloppy language?

I did not walk back to the house from the train yesterday‒it was late and I felt quite low on energy and enthusiasm‒but I did walk to the train station this morning.  It’s muggy and hot still, but it’s cooler than it is when the sun is shining (especially if you just wear black clothes like I do, since, like Wednesday Addams, I’ve developed an allergy to colors).

The biggest drawback to walking in the morning is that, down where I currently live, at this time of year, at this time of day, the air is abysmally still and lifeless.  Now, at the train station, it seems there is at least some breeze, which I suspect is at least partly due to traffic on I-95, just behind me, not more than twenty or so meters away.

Of course, the station is also quite a bit closer to the ocean than is the house in which I currently dwell.  This can make floods more likely here, as I have witnessed first-hand, but the temperature differentials above the ocean and above the land seems to generate a more or less constant wind at or near the beach.

I’ve long suspected that such a breeze should be coming into shore during the day‒because land is heated more rapidly by the sun than the sea is, and the air above it heats and rises, and cooler air from the ocean flows in to replace it‒and then heading out to sea at night, because the water temperature doesn’t change as readily it stays warmer at night and so the process would reverse.  I am by no means sure that this describes the actual dynamics of the situation, and I suspect matters are more complicated than this, but this is how I hypothesize about it.

Aaaaaand, guess what.  They’ve just announced that the train for which I am waiting is delayed 15 to 20 minutes.  They then say “stand by for more information”, but no more information is ever shared over the speakers.

It’s infuriating just how often the trains are delayed.  If I had an employee who came in late this frequently, I would have to consider firing that person.  It’s unprofessional and disruptive; people make plans based on the expected, published schedules.  And while, of course, there are occasional, unforeseen things that happen anywhere and everywhere, the frequency at which it happens on the Tri-Rail ought to be embarrassing to those who work in the system.

I’ll give it some time, but I really hate riding trains that are late, because they’re usually more crowded than they would be if they were on time.  It’s rather infuriating that I deliberately dragged my feet to miss the previous train‒which was on time‒by just a minute or so, so that I would have time to cool down a bit before the next one arrived.

The next next train, which is almost on time, will be expected to arrive only 8 minutes after the train for which I was waiting.  I think I may sit out the first train and wait for the second one, which should be less crowded.  Right now it feels as though there are a few hundred people waiting for the next train.  I already wish I could just send them away, and this is while they’re just spread out on the platform.

I think I will wait.  The difference in arrival time will be negligible.

It will be a somewhat busy office day today, because I’m going to be doing payroll early, like I did last week.  But that’s not something for which I need to be in the office particularly early; it’s dependent upon two different weekly reports that will arrive today, during the day, so I can’t do it too early.

Yeah, the train platform is packed.  The train is coming now, but I’m not getting on it.  My days are stressful enough without having to squeeze into an over-crowded train car.  It’s not that I’m not capable of tolerating it; I’ve been through worse things, of course.  But it’s just so unpleasant, and too many things in my life are unpleasant, and I don’t have more than a brace or so of pleasant things with which to counteract them, so they wear me out much more than they might have in the past.

I’m not sure I properly used the term “brace” there‒I know it can mean two things, as in “a brace of coneys”, but I’m not sure it really applies to the concept to which I was applying it.

I guess I should cut myself a little slack, considering that even professional news organizations and publications seem to have‒for instance‒lost the conceptual difference between “fewer” and “less”.  Sloppiness of language may seem trivial, and of course, language does evolve, but these irritations are not changes due to legitimate adaptations and pressures that produce a more effective tool of communication.  This is a case in which language, which I see as a kind of crystallized thought, is mushy because the thoughts involved in using it are mushy, as is much of the “information” being conveyed.

Sloppiness of language is a symptom of sloppy thought, and I think it also engenders further sloppiness of thought.  The process feeds upon itself, and people understand each other, and the world, less and less and less over time, until finally, darkness and decay and the Red Death hold absolute dominion and sway over all (to paraphrase Poe).

Okay, well, I am now on the next train, which was indeed only about 8 minutes later than the previous, overcrowded one.  I’ll get about another mile of walking in between the station and the office, so by the time I get there, I will already have walked nearly twice as far already today as I walked the entire day yesterday (according to my pedometer).  The train car is over-air-conditioned, particularly since I’m still a bit sweaty despite a second shirt and my cool-down at the station.  Ah, well, it’s not a terribly big deal.  I’ve had worse, as the Black Knight said after getting his arm chopped off by King Arthur.

I guess I’ll call this good for today.  I hope you have a nice day, and especially that you have a nice day tomorrow.