Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Its only words...

People are offended by words. Especially the four-letter variety. There are some words I find offensive and mostly what that does is make me wonder why I find them offensive. They're just words. I'm the one who invests them with the power to offend me.

We have words that are collectively offensive, by which I mean that large numbers of people get down right testy if those words are bandied about. Mostly we (they?) get testy because they've been told those are bad words. Every person reading this has a list of bad words running through their heads right now. You're probably thinking, yup - that word, and that one, and Oh, Yeah, THAT one for sure. But there are also words that regionally offensive. Let me tell you a story...

There were two women who worked with me, both in their early twenties. One was from the north - Detroit. The other was from somewhere in Georgia. Georgia walked around the corner one day and said "hi-ho". She said that all the time, it's the way she said hello. Detroit went after Georgia for calling her a 'ho'. Ho is offensive to a lot of people. Another day, Detroit came in and said 'What you gals doing?' Georgia went nuts, came out swinging because - yup, Detroit called her a 'gal'! Apparently "gal" meant whore in Georgia's little corner of the world. Neither one of these women had actually called the other a whore, but both of them got violent because they invested certain words with heavy meaning. Maybe those particular words hurt because the women sort of believed they were true, I don't know. Neither 'ho' nor 'gal' is a bad word.

I try not to cuss. I fail a lot. Some days my vocabulary is stunningly poor. On good days I might get just as frustrated, but I practice creative cussing. I used to just substitute a similar word -freakin, shazbat. I met a lady who just as offended by freakin as she was by the other f-word. Said the intent was the same. I say that's just taking things too far and maybe its time to get over yourself.

Creative cussing is fun, it makes me laugh. I never quite know what I might say, though I do have stand-bys that get a fair bit of use. Scum sucking pig. Poodleflicker. Chicken-licker. Lemon-licker. Chicken lickin pickle flicker. Flipping french fried fruit loop. Scum sucking, liver licking, son of biscuit. Sometimes that one has 'yellow-bellied' to preface it. One I have used for years is "ackenflieganheimen". Doesn't mean anything, I made it up. Its fun to say and its versatile. If theres a big mess, I use the whole word. If I have a minor frustration - can't get the lid off the new jelly perhaps- then I just use part of it. So it breaks down to "acken", "fliegan", "ackenfliegan" and "ackenflieganheimen". I never use just "heimen". That'd be like shouting "vagina". If anyone noticed, I'd blush, and I hate blushing. Though now that I think about it, shouting "vagina" might be pretty funny. Someone try it in a crowded bar and let me know how it goes.

Every one has their "thingums" and "whatchamajiggits". I have dillies. Climbydillies. Rollydillies. Inkydillies. Sometimes rollydillies are "wheeled aparatuses", depending on my mood. I have clickydiddles too, and beepydiddles. None of these are single items. Climbydillies are anything that let me reach a higher elevation, so a strong box or a ladder both fall in the climbydilly category. Rollydillies let me move stuff without carrying it myself. Inkydillies make marks, though not always with ink. Pencils count, as does chalk. Diddles perform actions. Remote controls are usually clickydiddles. The bingbong alert at the store is a beepydiddle, as is the voicemail alert on your phone, whether it beeps or not. Why? Because there just aren't enough words in the English language! I feel so limited by the quarter million words already in existence, I need to make more.

That's right. A quarter of a million words in the English language, and I am not the only person making new ones up every day. There's probably not a single word in the pile that doesn't offend or annoy someone. Plus, we repurpose them constantly. Cool? Repurposed. Hot? Yup, that one too. If you think about it for, oh - 2 seconds - I am sure you can think of several words that have been hi-jacked for a new meaning. We sarcasticize them too. (Made it up, I needed it.) Fabulous might mean stunningly wonderful or it might mean stunningly awful, depends on context and tone of voice. We abbreviate them. Rad! I have one I abbreviate that gets me confused looks. Here's the scoop (see what I did there?):

I have a friend who says "absofuckinglutely" all the time. Its contagious. Now, this is not something you can say at work in front of customers without repercussions. But its in my head! So, I had to find a way to shorten it to replace the temptation. I say "lute." So when someone says "Are you sure?" I am likely to just say "Lute." I hear "absofuckinglutely" in my head, but I only say "lute."

Anyway, they're all just words. I try to remember that when someone says something that hurts or offends me, it's because of how I take it and I decide if it can hurt me or not.  I find life is easier if I don't take everything personally!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Zen Chores

I like washing dishes and ironing. I don't like getting started on either - like I said before I am an Olympic Procrastinator - but once I start I find both highly relaxing.
The thing with ironing and washing dishes is that you have to pay attention. You can't have your mind darting about or you'll scorch fabric, break glassware, or slice off a finger with a dirty knife. You have to pay attention to what you are doing.

We live in this crazy world where "multitasking" is worn like a badge of honor. Multitasking just means that you aren't giving full attention to anything, so really everything gets done in a halfassed way. Things are not done well, and they actually take longer to do. That's inefficient. When you switch from this to that and back again, every switch means your brain has to change gears so you can sort of focus on the new task.

Imagine you were crocheting a blanket and building a desk at the same time. You pick up the crochet hook, get the yarn arranged to hook, do a few stitches, then you put it all down and work on the desk. So, you pick up the screw driver and a screw, find the pilot hole, place the screw and set it in place before turning back to work on your blanket. Put the screwdriver down, pick up the crochet hook. You can imagine how long it would take to complete either task! That's what your brain is doing when you multitask. Eventually you have a blanket and a desk. The desk wobbles a bit, and the blanket is longer in some places and missing a few stitches, but they're done. Finally. And in the meantime, you've developed a short attention span.

You can't really flit about when you're washing dishes. You wash, look for and feel for stuck on bits you missed, rinse, stack, repeat. You might sing while you wash but you have to pay attention. And when you finish, there's a peacefulness. You accomplished this one thing, and the result is more than just a clean pile of dishes. Somehow, there's a clean pile of spirit inside you. That's because if you are fully focused on whatever you are doing, your mind can't run off in tangents. The 'monkey' settles down and becomes the 'monk'. Being focused is meditation. And meditation relieves stress and promotes well being.

People often say 'I don't have time for meditation' and 'I don't know how to meditate.' Go hand wash a sink full of dishes. Look at every dish, make sure its clean. It only takes a few minutes more to wash them than it takes to rinse and stack them in the dishwasher. That's a few minutes of focused attention - not worrying about how to resolve the 87,000 problems you face each day- just washing some dishes. When you tame the monkey-mind, even for a few minutes, you discover that in the quiet are the answers you need. They've been there all along, now you can hear them.


Friday, November 18, 2011

Mix Tape 1


 Each of the songs mentioned are linked for download at Amazon in the text and video linked at the end of the article. This is the first in a series.


Music tapped me on the shoulder, took me by the hand, and led me out into the world.  I was shy. I trusted no one. I lived inside my adolescent brain, in my own very vivid imagination.  In “The Sound of Silence” (P. Simon, 1964), I learned I was not alone:
“Ten thousand people, maybe more, people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening…” 

I heard people ‘talking’ as eloquent silences that cried out for love but were lost in the ten thousand other voices also crying out, all going unheard in the din. I found hope there. Those are the first lyrics I can remember touching me, personally. They opened the door, opened my eyes, and for the first time I could recognize fear and loneliness in other people. I wasn’t alone, and in not being alone I was free to go out and be among them. I could be open to enjoy “Saturday in the Park ”(R. Lamm).
           
“People dancing, really smiling, a man playing guitar…”
That is how it was, the perfect anthem to my teen years. We were a generation of children who sang. Everywhere we gathered, we sang. Someone had a guitar and we all sang along.  If there was no guitarist, we sang acappella, half a dozen or more voices joined in an instinctive harmony. Music was alive, it was everywhere, and people dance-walked their way through the ‘70s. Children went. We burst out the doors of morning and tumbled back home again through the doors of nightfall, and in between we danced a nomadic migration toward our future selves. 

But you've been told many times before
Messiahs pointed to the door
And no one had the guts to leave the temple!

I'm Free -I'm free
And freedom tastes of reality”
(R. Daltry)

My siblings and I were allowed to wander. We were expected to make reasonable choices, and we were expected to make mistakes. This, my parents said, is how you learn. We gave you, my parents said, the foundation you need, now you must learn to apply it. I feel sorry for children today. They are caged in a way I never was.  People claim the world was safer then. I had guns held to my head three times before I was 18 years old, and not once because I was somewhere I should not have been!  ‘Safe’ is an illusion. ‘Safe’ is a euphemism for a cage called fear. Music set me free from that cage and no danger was going to force me back into it. Danger passes. Fear takes root and strangles you like kudzu on a tree. It doesn’t look like a killer…

Freedom. Exploration. Adventure. Wanderlust. We all did it, my siblings and I, we all wandered off to explore the world. My exploration came when I was 18, the summer after graduation. We hit the road, my boyfriend and I, hitchhiking around the country with no particular destination or timeline. Where the ride went, we went.

You're sick of hangin' around and you'd like to travel;
Get tired of travelin' and you want to settle down.
I guess they can't revoke your soul for tryin',
Get out of the door and light out and look all around. “
(R. Hunter)

We didn’t have any money, so we ate when someone fed us. We slept wherever we found a sheltered spot if the night threatened rain, or in any little clearing we came across. Sometimes people offered their yards or porches for us to pitch camp on. One family kept us for the weekend. They had 11 children in a two-bedroom house. We slept on the lawn, ate blue cornbread, and played. There was some serious love for mankind in that family. I can still feel it thirty years later.

A different night, in a different town, we slept under a bridge. With the interstate running over our heads, we went to sleep alone and woke up to a community of homeless people there because they had nowhere else to be. These people, who had nothing and no real hope of ever having anything, fed us, reveled in our tale of wanderlust, sang with us, and sent us out to conquer the world with their love and well wishes to carry us.  A ‘long strange trip,’ indeed.

I miss the singing. I think progress did us in. We have so much music available on the Internet now. We load it into our personal pocket jukeboxes, plug it into our ears, and shut out the world. Those lyrics from ‘The Sounds of Silence’, the ones that set me free, have a different meaning for me now. We text and tweet all day long, in short, vague sentences. Our ears are plugged with music, but we no longer hear each other’s voices. Where are the impromptu sidewalk sing-alongs?  Children aren’t even allowed out anymore, much less allowed to gather into little gangs of joyous singers. There is no acoustic guitarist sitting on a picnic table strumming songs. Even if there were, would enough random passers-by even know his songs, much less sing along?

A few months ago, someone asked if anyone actually knew the words to ‘Kumbayah ’. I do. Would you like to sing it with me?

 “Someone’s singing, my Lord, Kumbayah.

Someone’s singing, my Lord, Kumbayah.

Someone’s singing, my Lord, Kumbayah.

Oh, Lord, Kumbayah…”

 The sounds of silence; Simon & Garfunkle, words & music: Paul Simon

Saturday in the Park; Chicago , written by Robert Lamm
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/chicago/saturday-in-the-park.html 

 I’m Free: The Who, Roger Daltry
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/the-who/im-free.html

Truckin: Grateful Dead, Words by Robert Hunter; music by Garcia, Lesh, Weir
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing;
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/grateful-dead/truckin.html

 Kumbayah, Gullah Spiritual
Lyrics:
(chorus)Kumbayah, my Lord, Kumbayah
Kumbayah, my Lord, Kumbayah
Kumbayah, my Lord, Kumbayah
Oh, Lord, Kumbayah
(verses) Someone’s singing, my Lord, Kumbayah (three times)
Oh, Lord, Kumbayah
Someone’s laughing, my Lord, Kumbayah
Someone’s crying, my Lord, Kumbayah
Someone’s praying, my Lord, Kumbayah
Generally, succeeding verses use whatever activity is going on – washing, mending, etc.


Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Dark Movies

What is the fascination with not lighting night scenes in movies and television these days? I understand its night time. I understand that they want it to be realistic. But if you can't see anything, why should you care what happens? If something grabs me in the dark, I am going to be terrified. If something grabs a character in the dark, and I can't see who the character is or what has them, I don't care. I may as well be watching the radio.  They've taken the concept of "reality" too far.

Things that go bump in the night are scary when they're in your night, for real. When they are in a movie, you need to be able to see something. I think today's lighting directors need to go back to school and refresh their memories on things like backlighting and the use of softboxes. Let's at least get a rimlight on the main part of the scene so the viewer has some idea whether the hero or the villain is on top at any given moment.

I had to watch part of Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott) for my lighting class. This movie sucks. The dialog is awful, the acting is worse than the dialog, the story is crap. (Okay, that was definitely a personal opinion - I never could stand Philip K. Dick's writing anyway.) I know it's a cult classic. Cult classics tend to be so bad you have to love them. This one's just bad. I don't love it.

What was good was the cinematography and the lighting. This is one gorgeous movie - if you turn off the sound so you can skip the dialog. Maybe play some Vangelis for background, but definitly kill the dialog. Anyway - you can see what is going on, but the entire movie is dark. Film Noir done well.

Its almost as if someone said well, if noir is good, no lights at all must be better. Honey, if the story is so bad you don't want viewers to see it, don't film it.

I'll be Zen later

 I excel at Procrastination. I put off everything, even things I like doing. Partly because I'm lazy, but mostly because I have this weird need to dread things. I know - intellectually- that I enjoy whatever it is, or that once I start, I'll get into the zen of it and end up floating in this awesome peaceful place where everything flows. I start things grudgingly. Ooooh, I gotta.... and then I get so involved in doing them that I step outside myself and become amazingly free. So why put it off? I don't know.

So this is the video that got me thinking:


Not only is the psychology in this interesting, the typography and animation are riveting.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with music | Video on TED.com

Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with music | Video on TED.com

Nothing more to say.

a pinch of this, a dash of that, its audio cuisine

http://soundcloud.com/dj-dain/dont-worry-im-yours-mashup
I love this. Soundcloud is totally awesome. I am amazed by the people who make these mashups. Some are just 'mashups', some are audio assemblages - sort of the difference between a good drawing and a masterpiece. They all make me say wow, some of them take my breath away, and some just take me away. Go there, explore, be amazed. Be inspired. Art is freaking EVERYWHERE! Gotta love that.

Ceremonial Circles

http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=newsleader&sParam=37902857.story

This very interesting article about a Native American Paleoindian site discovered in Virginia is oddly re-titled in The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va) as :
Virginia site linked to ancient Indians : PLACEMENT OF ROCKS 12,000 YEARS AGO SHOW NATIVE AMERICANS KNEW CHANGE OF SEASONS

Really, Fred?

If you don't happen to know Virginia, it has four distinct seasons. They are: 'cold as hell'; 'pleasant and sneezy'; 'steambath sauna'; and 'pleasant, sneezy and good grief, look at all those leaves we need to rake up'. You bet your sweet bippy they knew the change of seasons. What the rocks mark are the solstices and equinoxes. That implies much more than merely noticing a change in the weather. Surely if they could grasp the concept of a solar calendar 12,000 years ago, we can grasp 'solstices and equinoxes' without a poorly paraphrased revision today.

I should probably explain.

Most of the time, if I write about a newspaper article, I will commenting on the title. Why? Headlines often annoy me, sometimes amuse me, and occasionally baffle me. We live in a news-bite sort of world. Often the headline is the only part of the paper people read - as they pass the rack on the way to the soda fountain. Maybe they read the first paragraph, maybe a little more. It matters that the headline gives an accurate overview of the story.

Sometimes, the newspaper will unwittingly juxtapose inappropriate stories. We sometimes see this online in the ads that pop up along side something we are reading.  I can laugh that off. Seeing "Boy mauled by dog" next to "Humane Society Fund Raiser" isn't so funny. These are things I am likely to natter on about. This blog isn't just about newspaper titles though. Anything I think about may turn up here. If I can figure it out, I'll embed a video or two along the way.

I'd love to hear what you think. You don't have to agree, but please keep it civil.
~Savialeigh


American Spit



An AP article . by Christopher S. Rugaber, Jonathan Fahey, and Michael Liedtke , running in today’s (Nov.14,2011)  Fredericksburg, Va. Free Lance-Star newspaper, is titled  Europe’s woes will spill into U.S.

Really, Fred? Their woes will spill into our market? Like our woes didn’t spill into theirs first? Like the U.S. economy tanking had zero effect on the rest of the world?   American Financier shenanigans didn’t precipitate global economic disaster? American Politicians living in Corporate Deep Pockets didn’t cast pocket lint and other less savory detritus upon the European landscape? Letting banks wildly mix the types of credit they were allowed to dip their greedy little fingers into didn’t create the mess to begin with? 

The purpose of a law is to prevent the weak-willed from trampling the rights of others, and to lay out in clear terms the punishment of those who aren’t going to be deterred by some piddly little law. Corporations have been buying Politicians for as long as both entities have existed. Politicians have been re-writing laws to suit Corporations for about 1 day less than that. Loosen the laws, unleash the greed demons.

This is not unique to the United States – it goes on all over the world, in tiny little villages and ginormous countries. It is a big circle of economic dominos. America has (had?) dozens of dominos; fifty tiny African countries share one domino between them. Let that one domino tumble over and there’s a poof of dust when it hits the ground. Let America’s dozens, or Europe’s interlaced dozens, or China’s dozens go down and they take down all the dominos nearby, racing around the circle. It’s a big circle. It takes a while.

American is starting to get a few dominos upright again. They aren’t firmly seated yet. They still wobble in a strong breeze. European dominos falling make a pretty strong breeze, seriously, if our economy hadn’t tanked first – if our mess hadn’t shaken all the dominos in the circle, Europe’s problems wouldn’t be a massive threat to our recovery. This isn’t  “Europe’s Woes” spilling into the U.S. This is more like the backwash of our own unsavory spit gagging us.