At times, while perusing the chaos that is the interwebonet I come upon a piece of writing about the current state of verbal and/or written communications in our fair society. Once in a while the article is simply an observation but most often it is a full throated lamenting of the deplorable state and direction of our rapidly devolving skill in usage of the English language.
My first thought upon reading one of these latter pieces is to marvel at the delightfully subtle irony of a screed decrying the tragedy of the evolution of language written in contemporary English rather than Late West Saxon (the long demised linguistic ancestor of English) or any of the innumerable permutations that have since found their way to the communicative boneyard.
My second thought is usually that any difficulties caused by new or creative alterations in spelling, grammar, or usage is more due to a failure in compliance with context rather than any absolute shortcomings of contemporary language. Since it is possible that the phrase "failure in compliance with context" just now saw it's very first utterance, maybe I should explain.
In my brain (admittedly sometimes not being in congruence with reality), it refers to the idea that the use of any thing, such as a tool, eating utensil, clothing, or language, works best when the selection of a particular type of the thing from all the various sub-types of the thing is made with due consideration of the context within which the thing will be used. An alternative label might be "Eating Soup with Chopsticks"
While a fad diet and book titled "Eating Soup with Chopsticks" would probably make it's way to the top of various bestseller lists, the truth is that selecting that particular eating utensil to assist in the consumption of that particular foodstuff would be a definite failure in compliance with context, not to mention a really looooong meal.
The same theory would seem to apply to the changes we some times see in how members of our society, especially those with birth years in the not so distant past, make use of language. I don't believe there is anything inherently bad or wrong with slang, the abbreviations used in texting, or even "smilies", it's just that using those particular linguistic protocols when a more formal formulation of expression is appropriate is likely to yield results as unsatisfying as digging into a bowl of creamy tomato with a non-spoon utensil.
Possibly a better path lies in upping our efforts in teaching better compliance with context rather than using our energies to down the creative adaptations necessitated by changes in our society and the technologies that support it.
I'll even be kind and not insist that any dissenting opinions (always welcome, by the way) be presented in Late West Saxon... Chaucer's Middle English will suffice.
To answer the question many of you might now have in mind... Yes, an article I read this morning really got up my nose and has been irritating my brain cells all day long. Now it's been purged and I can move on to thinking about how to avoid the disasters that always seem a hair breadth away from every turn in my renovational journey.
..take care... tim b
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
A flaw in the system...
I will readily admit to being addicted to caffeine..my brain doesn't function very well without it. While there are some studies that suggest ingesting great quantities of caffeine will damage your body...my daily study suggests that not ingesting great quantities of caffeine will cause me to do damage to my environment and possibly ever greater damage to my body than whatever is being done by the caffeine.
Prior to our moving to Italy in 1987 I never drank coffee. Nine years in the Navy, having stood innumerable mid-watches (translation for those not navally oriented -- a job assignment from around midnight until about the time the sun comes up), and a stint on Subase Pearl Harbor where I worked 48 to 60 hours straight on a regular basis...all without coffee. I seem to remember drinking a lot of tea and sodas during those years though.
Upon our arrival in Italy, in the spirit of trying out new cultural experiences, I tried a latte. Immediately I started asking around to find out why this magic fount of taste and clarity had been hidden from me all these years. So began my willing embrace of this Ethiopian elixir.
Fast forward twenty something years and we arrive at a point where my few remaining brain cells refuse to function very quickly or very intelligently prior to as least a minimal coating of coffee based caffeine. Therein lies the flaw in the system.
My usual routine is to hit the five minute "In a minute Ma" button on my phone alarm a couple of times when it goes off at 4 a.m. but in a relatively short time, get up and ambulate a somewhat unsteady course to the kitchen. There I perform the high religious ritual of creating the pot of potential profoundity while in a very non-profound state of mind.
This morning, things went a bit awry. Our coffee maker has one of those semi-permanent metal mesh filters. The process goes something like.. Take pot, pot lid, and mesh filter from cabinet. Fill pot with water, pour water from pot into coffee maker. Put lid on pot, put filter in coffee maker, put appropriate amount of grinds in filter. Put pot into coffee maker, close lid, push button, stare blankly at the red happy light on button until enough time has passed for the first cup of coffee to have ended up in the pot. Take advantage of the "can't wait for the whole pot to brew before I get my first cup of coffee" feature of our coffee pot (Pause here for a small standing ovation for whoever first invented that grand device) and pour a generous quantity into my cup. It turns out that this is a VERY ordered process. If you hose up the order of the steps you are well....hosed.
This morning I reversed the order of two steps... putting filter in coffee maker and putting coffee in coffee maker. This is not good. The filter sits in a plastic filter shaped recess in the coffee maker. If you pour the coffee in the recess before you put the filter in there...no good things occur. You get to spend about 15 minutes in a coffee deprived state trying to get the grounds out of the recess. Some of them you can just kind of scoop out..but to get the remaining bits out requires some water, paper towels, then more paper towels to clean up the mess on the counter and floor that was created by severely non-coordinated fingers attempting to manage the clean out the grounds process.
Finally, got the grounds cleaned out, put the filter in place, put grinds in filter, pushed the button, stared blankly at the red happy light, and wondered why my toes were getting so warm..like in scalding coffee type of warm. Wrenched my stare off the happy light and discovered the coffee pot...sitting on the counter and not nestled within its proper nook of the coffee maker...dadgumit.
I promise you I said dadgumit at that point and not something more unsuitable for a mixed audience. A digression... If you go to Carlsbad Cavern and take the tour (highly recommended), when you get into the biggest room of the cavern the guide will tell you a story about the first person to climb up to one of the small passages leading off from near the ceiling. It took him several days to make the climb up the side of the cave wall. He pulls himself over the last ledge and falls face first into a huge pile of bat guano. His companion on the cave floor below inquires as to what happened... he replies, "I fell face first into a pile of bat guano." Yep, I'm as sure he used the word guano at that point as I am that I used the word dadgumit when my toes got coffeed this morning.
Another 10 minutes or so of cleanup in a coffee deprived state... I'm thinking that making use of the "program the coffee to start on its own in the morning after having set it up at night" feature of the coffee maker might be the way to proceed in the future to save my toes.
..take care... tim b
Prior to our moving to Italy in 1987 I never drank coffee. Nine years in the Navy, having stood innumerable mid-watches (translation for those not navally oriented -- a job assignment from around midnight until about the time the sun comes up), and a stint on Subase Pearl Harbor where I worked 48 to 60 hours straight on a regular basis...all without coffee. I seem to remember drinking a lot of tea and sodas during those years though.
Upon our arrival in Italy, in the spirit of trying out new cultural experiences, I tried a latte. Immediately I started asking around to find out why this magic fount of taste and clarity had been hidden from me all these years. So began my willing embrace of this Ethiopian elixir.
Fast forward twenty something years and we arrive at a point where my few remaining brain cells refuse to function very quickly or very intelligently prior to as least a minimal coating of coffee based caffeine. Therein lies the flaw in the system.
My usual routine is to hit the five minute "In a minute Ma" button on my phone alarm a couple of times when it goes off at 4 a.m. but in a relatively short time, get up and ambulate a somewhat unsteady course to the kitchen. There I perform the high religious ritual of creating the pot of potential profoundity while in a very non-profound state of mind.
This morning, things went a bit awry. Our coffee maker has one of those semi-permanent metal mesh filters. The process goes something like.. Take pot, pot lid, and mesh filter from cabinet. Fill pot with water, pour water from pot into coffee maker. Put lid on pot, put filter in coffee maker, put appropriate amount of grinds in filter. Put pot into coffee maker, close lid, push button, stare blankly at the red happy light on button until enough time has passed for the first cup of coffee to have ended up in the pot. Take advantage of the "can't wait for the whole pot to brew before I get my first cup of coffee" feature of our coffee pot (Pause here for a small standing ovation for whoever first invented that grand device) and pour a generous quantity into my cup. It turns out that this is a VERY ordered process. If you hose up the order of the steps you are well....hosed.
This morning I reversed the order of two steps... putting filter in coffee maker and putting coffee in coffee maker. This is not good. The filter sits in a plastic filter shaped recess in the coffee maker. If you pour the coffee in the recess before you put the filter in there...no good things occur. You get to spend about 15 minutes in a coffee deprived state trying to get the grounds out of the recess. Some of them you can just kind of scoop out..but to get the remaining bits out requires some water, paper towels, then more paper towels to clean up the mess on the counter and floor that was created by severely non-coordinated fingers attempting to manage the clean out the grounds process.
Finally, got the grounds cleaned out, put the filter in place, put grinds in filter, pushed the button, stared blankly at the red happy light, and wondered why my toes were getting so warm..like in scalding coffee type of warm. Wrenched my stare off the happy light and discovered the coffee pot...sitting on the counter and not nestled within its proper nook of the coffee maker...dadgumit.
I promise you I said dadgumit at that point and not something more unsuitable for a mixed audience. A digression... If you go to Carlsbad Cavern and take the tour (highly recommended), when you get into the biggest room of the cavern the guide will tell you a story about the first person to climb up to one of the small passages leading off from near the ceiling. It took him several days to make the climb up the side of the cave wall. He pulls himself over the last ledge and falls face first into a huge pile of bat guano. His companion on the cave floor below inquires as to what happened... he replies, "I fell face first into a pile of bat guano." Yep, I'm as sure he used the word guano at that point as I am that I used the word dadgumit when my toes got coffeed this morning.
Another 10 minutes or so of cleanup in a coffee deprived state... I'm thinking that making use of the "program the coffee to start on its own in the morning after having set it up at night" feature of the coffee maker might be the way to proceed in the future to save my toes.
..take care... tim b
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