Grammar Crackers

Have you noticed people in your life who constantly mis-use words or say things that aren't words at all or speak in endless double negatives? Does it drive you crazy like it does me?

I realize that the previous paragraph, and for that matter this entire post, is probably a MESS grammar wise, which makes me a bit of hypocrite but, I digress...

I guess I'm not talking so much about grammar. I'm more thinking about words and the effect that our usage of them has on others. For example, I had an instructor in a theater class once who often used the word "irregardless." Well actually, that's not a word at all but he used it regularly anyway. This particular person was someone that I had a lot of respect for. He was one of the smartest, most interesting teachers that I've had but, every time he used the non-word "irregardless" I stopped listening and started thinking about whether or not I should tell him that the word he wanted was "regardless."

I recently met another person who dropped the phrase "and stuff" into their speech at odd intervals like this:

"I have this project to work on and stuff and I'm just getting started and stuff and I get a phone call about the other project from last week and stuff and I'm totally busy and stuff and have no idea how I'm going to find time and stuff to get all of this done and stuff."

Then there are, of course, the users of the double negative. "I don't have none" which I think means that they do, in fact have some. Whenever someone drops one of these on me, I stop listening and try to figure out what the phrase means compared to what they think they are saying.

Mostly I'm just having a little fun here. I'm not the grammar or word usage police but I do think we could all benefit from an occasional look at a dictionary. As anyone who has read this blog can attest, my grammar is far from perfect so keep that in mind. I am merely pointing out things that I have noticed, irregardless of the fact that I don't have no reason to do so.......and stuff.

Daily Records

I've been fascinated with vinyl records lately. Don't get me wrong, I've ALWAYS been fascinated with vinyl records - at least since my brother brought home copies of "Who's Next" by the Who and "Sticky Fingers" by the Rolling Stones when I was around seven years old. There's just something about those big sleeves and the crackle and pop of the lead groove when you put them on your turntable that makes me shiver.

Although I bought thousands of them, I never quite took to the compact disc the way I did to my beloved vinyl. Sure I liked the convenience and I guess the sound is fine but, over the years I realized that they changed the way I listened to music. Some of it was good - it became much easier to listen to music in the car or at work or outside. But I also started to spend less time just listening to music as a opposed to listening while driving or working or hanging out with friends or doing dishes or cleaning the house or whatever. This is partly because I got older and had less free time to lay around playing records than I did when I was a teenager but, I think it was more than that. When you can play music whenever you want, what is your motivation to make time to just sit and listen to music?

With the advent of CDs and better car stereos it became commonplace to listen to a new record on your way home from the store you bought it at. In the era when vinyl was king, I'd race home as fast as I could, charge into the house and put that new slab of plastic on the turntable to see what is sounded like. This built up a level of anticipation that just isn't possible with instant gratification.

A few years ago, I bought an iPod and was amazed to see how easy it was to start selling off my CD collection as I backed the mp3 files up on my computer. I found that I didn't care much at all about the actual CDs, it was the music inside that I needed. Conversely, I've never even considered getting rid of my substantial collection vinyl. Hell, I've even continued to add to it, especially recently.

Records are somehow more organic for me. There is beauty in the sleeve and beauty in the label and beauty in the way they feel in your hand, in how careful you have to be with them to keep from fucking them up and finally there is also beauty in the music within. I don't think that they specifically sound better (as a lot of vinyl purists do) or worse (as most people do) than CDs or mp3s. I just think they sound different and that to me is a beautiful thing. Playing a record is just a different experience. I don't really know how else to explain it.

Most of the music I buy these days is off of iTunes or eMusic (the most amazing indie music store in the world!, check it out) and I really like the immediacy of that. I like the idea that I can download a new record on the morning of it's release and listen to it five minutes later on the way to work. But once in awhile I like to buy a new record - a new release or maybe something from the used bin, or a new single - just to bask in the ritual of it all. Just to feel that rush of anticipation as I claw my way through the cellophane and drop the needle on a new record for the first time. It always reminds me of everything I love about music.

By the way, "Daily Records" is the name of song by the Who from their "Who Are You" album, which is, of course, part of my vast collection of vinyl treasures.

Do I really have a lot to say?

I've been struggling to think of something to write about on this blog for about a week now and I decided it was time to just jump in, start writing and see what comes. I love the idea of writing this blog and hope that it is readable and at least mildly interesting but at times like this, when I can't think of what to say, I have to wonder. What exactly am I trying to achieve here?

With the millions of people around the world who are blogging, there has to be more writing being put in front of readers than at any other time in history. But are we all just blathering on, adding to the din of voices in the wilderness with very little to say and entirely too much time to say it? Do I have a responsibility to maintain a certain level of quality on this blog? It's entirely self imposed but, I think that I do. Blogging has opened up a whole world of interesting reading on the web and I hope that I am adding to that and not detracting from it.

Writing is something that I've always done but almost never done steadily. I seem to write in fits and starts (just look at the dates of my previous posts to confirm this) which I think keeps me from ever really finding my groove. Good writers can always come up with something to write about and great writers are always compelling to read, even when they have little or nothing to say. I'm rambling on, filling up space on the screen all the while confident that my writing is most certainly not great and quite possibly not even good.

Since I started posting to this blog again a few weeks ago, I've been spending a lot more time reading other people's blogs. I'm looking for inspiration I guess or just looking for interesting reading. The sheer quantity of blogs is staggering and I am also surprised by how often I find something interesting. There is, of course, a lot of light weight bullshit (some of it is no doubt right here in my own blog) but a lot of it is at least slightly compelling on some level.

I guess we bloggers are this century's journalists. I don't mean journalist as in a member of the press, I mean diarist, I guess - if in fact that is a word. I've read a lot of journals and collected letters of famous writers and I wonder if people a hundred years from now will be reading bound volumes of blogs to understand the way people lived in the early part of the twenty first century. Hopefully, people are keeping copies of their blogs, either on paper or as files on their computers so that they can be part of posterity. I know that I've kept most of mine.

I don't really know what point I'm trying to make with all of this. Like I said, I thought I'd just start writing and see what came out. If anyone has read this and has continued to read through to the end, I want to thank you and express my hope that I've held your interest or at a minimum haven't wasted your time. Hopefully next time I sit down to write, I'll have something to say. If not, I'll at least try to say it well.

The Theory of Moe Howard and Iggy Pop

Sometimes I wish I had a theory. I mean a BIG THEORY like the Theory of Relativity or …. uh…..now that I think about it, I can’t really come up with another famous theory. I know there are others but I just can’t bring one to mind at the moment. Hmmm… It seems unlikely that I have what it takes to develop a BIG THEORY if I can only think of the name of one such theory. Ah well, maybe it’s best to leave the really important thinking to someone else.

I have to admit that I’m at a bit of a disadvantage today. I’m on vacation in Myrtle Beach and spent most of the day lying around in the sun reading a book. Now I’m sitting on the balcony of my hotel, listening to kids scream in the pool (why do kids always scream when they’re in the water?) and writing this on my laptop. This, as I have often said to my wife, is the life.

In actuality, the screaming kids aren’t in a swimming pool at all. They’re in something called a “lazy river” which, if you’ve never seen one, is something to see. Basically it’s a swimming pool that is about three feet deep and, instead of being a circle or rectangle is actually a “river” that’s about eight feet wide and usually travels around the pool area in a meandering oval. The water is somehow propelled and usually heated and the idea is to lie in an inner tube with your butt in the water while you float ‘round and ‘round. At any given time, there are several adults, usually with cocktails in hand, doing just this. There also seems to always be at least ten, often as many as twenty, kids sort of running around in the water, hitting each other with inner tubes and, of course screaming. These activities, in my opinion, make the term “Lazy River” a bit of a misnomer.

As you wonder whether I ever plan to get back to my BIG THEORY, I’ll move on to something else entirely. As was often said on Monty Python’s Flying Circus: “And now for something completely different”.

Today I finished reading a book titled “Koko”, written by Peter Straub. If you’re not familiar with him he is sort of a horror, fantasy, thriller, mainstream fiction writer who also occasionally writes poetry (I guess he’s tough to categorize).“Koko” is about a group of Vietnam vets who band together to find a member of their unit who is apparently killing people. They also share a dark secret about some events that happened in a small village during the war.

The thing that I find fascinating about Straub is that his characters are so vivid and his writing often has a poetic, literary quality that you don’t often get from a genre fiction writers. I call him that because he’s probably most famous for his horror novels - “Ghost Story” being the most famous – and for a couple of books he co-authored with Stephen King. However, Peter Straub, much like Elmore Leonard has done in crime fiction, has brought an entirely different level of artistry to his particular genre. I don’t mean this as a criticism of Stephen King – I find King’s best novels to be excellent – more as praise for Peter Straub. Anyway, if you stumble on “Koko” it is an “excellent read”, as people often say.

So I started out this post to write about my desire to have a BIG THEORY and I haven’t really made any progress toward laying one out have I? I don’t think I’ve even really approached a BIG IDEA but I will say this: I like when Moe Howard of the Three Stooges says to one of the other Stooges “What’s the big idea?” And speaking of the Stooges, were they also in the legendary Detroit band, Iggy and the Stooges, with Iggy Pop? Does that count as a theory?

Logitudinal Latidude In North Carolina

I’m typing this while riding in my Honda Element on I-77 South. My wife Charlotte is at the wheel. We’re about fifteen miles north of Charlotte, NC and amazingly, we are listening to Car Talk on NPR. I say amazingly because I, like most Northerners, tend to think of the south as being some sort of uncultured wasteland. I don’t know why I have this bias when I know it isn’t true. In actuality, I’ve traveled enough in the South and gotten to know enough people to know that it is just as “cultured” as anywhere else. Besides, what’s so damn cultured about Car Talk on NPR anyway?

Actually, a few years ago we purchased this cool NPR station directory from, well I guess it would be from NPR wouldn’t it? Anyway, we keep the directory in the car and whenever we’re traveling and we feel like a break from music, we just whip out our handy NPR directory and before you can say “Nina Totenberg” we’re enjoying some fine programming courtesy of National Public Radio. We have yet to travel anywhere in the US that doesn’t have an NPR station within range and THAT is a beautiful thing.

This is the first trip I’ve taken with a laptop and it’s kind of fun in an embarrassing to admit, geeky kind of way. For example, my laptop has a program called Microsoft Streets & Trips which came with a cool GPS sensor that plugs into the USB port. This allows me to monitor the progress of our journey in a way that is only rivaled by such high tech activities as “looking out the window” or “checking the speedometer”. For instance I just took a quick glance at our location and found that we are at 35.395 degrees North latitude by 80.851 West longitude and I have to say….if you’ve never been here (and let’s face it, I’m not even there anymore), it’s a lovely place.

I should also point out that we are traveling at 85 miles per hour (yes Char’s a bit of a lead foot), which, I could’ve found out by leaning over and looking at the speedometer but, this is WAY cooler and far more practical. I could easily spill my coffee or strain my neck the other way. Also, we are traveling almost directly due South, which I couldn’t tell you unless I had a compass (which I don’t). I can also tell you that we should arrive at our destination (Myrtle Beach, SC) at around 2:30 pm this afternoon. Now THAT really is one piece of information that I couldn’t have gotten without this laptop. Well, unless I, you know, looked at a map and maybe did some math.

People always think I’m crazy when I tell them this but, I really like these long drives (this one will be around thirteen hours). We always wind up listening to music we haven’t heard in years, talking about all sorts of crazy shit that seems to only come up when you’ve been in a car for hours on end and laughing at things or people that we would never have seen from an airplane. I also like the idea of waking up in one place and, just by the simple act of driving (or in my case riding, since Char does most of the driving), going to sleep in a place that is several hundred miles away. It seems more, I don’t know, basic than flying in a plane. Flying is obviously quicker and has a different kind of magic going on, but there’s a lot more apparatus involved. Airplanes and air traffic controllers and airport security and science that I’ll NEVER know about, just to mention a few. When you drive, you just put some gas in the tank, get behind the wheel and hit the road. Well, unless you’re me. Then you also have to plug in your new laptop and fiddle around with your GPS sensor for awhile before you can even leave your driveway.

I guess I’ll wind this up now so that I can use one of the other high tech gadgets that I brought along to while away the hours on this trip. It’s called a “book”.

As a cursory glance at this blog will tell you, it's been a LONG time since I've posted anything here. Since the 2004 presidential election to be exact. I wish I could say that I abandoned this blog because I was too distraught about the state of our nation to continue writing. That may even have been a little bit true the first few days but the truth is, I just got out of the habit (I don't know if you can call a handful of posts a habit but...) and then sort of forgot about it. This is nothing new for me and I'm guessing it's nothing new for a lot of bloggers. I can't be the only person with a pile of half filled journals around my house, all of which start out with something along the lines of "THIS time is gonna be different. THIS time I'm gonna write in this journal every day until it is full". Of course, I've NEVER filled an entire journal in my life. I sometimes think I should tear out the pages of all those half filled journals, bind them in one book and VOILA! a complete journal!

And what IS a this blog if it's not a journal. Well, it's a bit more public than an actual journal but, it's kind of the same thing. I could make my big proclamation right here. Maybe something like this:

I WILL POST ON THIS BLOG EVERY DAY UNTIL IT IS FULL

Oh, wait, that wouldn't be right. I'm not positive but, I think it may be impossible to actual FILL a blog. There's always more space isn't there? Okay, how about this:

I WILL POST ON THIS BLOG EVERY DAY UNTIL I DIE

The trouble with this one is that last part. The "until I die" part. What if I'm very ill for a long time before I die and I am unable to post for the last several weeks of my life. I guess that would render my proclamation to be total bullshit. Maybe a simple time frame is better. Sort of a reachable goal. Also, who knows I could actually out live the internet which would also be a problem (especially for me because I would be incredibly OLD). Something like:

I WILL POST ON THIS BLOG EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT YEAR

But a year IS kind of a long time isn't it? What if I get bored or distracted? What if I lose my job and have to sell my laptop for food? What if am struck with amnesia and forget that I've made this proclamation? I know I'm probably over thinking this but, what's the point in making a proclamation if you're not gonna see it through? What I need is a much more attainable goal. Hmm...wait! I have it! How about:

I WILL POST ON THIS BLOG UNTIL I HAVE FINISHED WITH THIS PARTICULAR POST

And I've already done it.