This is kinda fun.  See if it works for you.

http://youtu.be/uMyNIYHa_Ko

Here’s a catchy little tune that may or may not have been inspired by my criminal butchering of the language here at LTG.

…everything put together sooner or later falls apart.

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” –Stephen King

Via Althouse comes this interesting post concerning the original grammar Nazi, Ben:Jonson.  I mean, he even had the cojones to criticize Shakespeare!  I guess it would be fair to say he wrote the definitive book on grammar.  Or at least the original.

Now, as regular readers well know when it comes to grammar I lean to Kelsey.  And given my libertarian tendencies I hold fast to my right to punctuate as I damn well please (provided of course than no one else gets hurt in the process).  Given my laissez faire attitude towards the conventions of proper written English one may wonder why I’ve chosen to blog on the topic.  The fact of the matter is that I couldn’t resist the temptation to use “A pause for two pricks” as the title for a post.

A grammar prick if there ever was one.

UPDATE:  It occurs to me that if you don’t click through to the Althouse link you’ll miss my joking reference which is: Jonson called the colon “a pause or two pricks”.  Now two pricks in a colon sounds mighty painful, but it does give one pause for thought.  Ok, I’ll stop now.

I’m talking comment spam here, not the meat by-product delicacy so popular here in Korea.

There was a time when spam comments were a real pain in the ass, so bad in fact that some bloggers just turned off commenting in despair. These days there are much better filters and other tools to defeat the spambots.  I rarely get any spam at all, and most of  that goes right into the moderation queue.  So I was mildly amused when this comment showed up at my Columbia Area Darts Association website:

Hi, i read your blog from time to time and i own a similar one and i was just curious if you get a lot of spam comments? If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much lately it's driving me mad so any assistance is very much appreciated.

Of course I clicked no hyperlinks nor did I otherwise respond but you do have to admire the creativity utilized in trying to trick me into doing so.  To what end I have no clue.

In an ongoing effort to be serve you, my reader(s), I on occasion look at my stat counter to try and discern the kind of posts folks are looking for when their Google searches lead them to LTG.

So, I see some guy in India put together this lovely string of words: “upskirt showing sanitary pad with bleeding”.  I couldn’t imagine what I had ever written that would have generated a hit for anything even remotely like that on my humble blog.  So I did some sleuthing and that pervert’s search was rewarded with this post about my recent medical checkup.

Ha ha, so sorry to disappoint but thems the breaks.

Let us pause now and lament the sad news that our common use of the comma may be contributing to it’s ultimate demise not because it is unnecessary unwanted or unloved but rather because we have used it ineptly improperly or not at all.  Or, so at least, says this article, although to be clear, I’m not taking a position regarding its veracity.

It may be a little late (years, misuse) to start caring about punctuation–but why now?  Because…I found this: to begin with. I just want to make a point, period, like this one.

Ha, that turned out to be a pretty lame attempt.  Read the link and you’ll see what I was trying to do.  I guess what impressed me was the craft and thought behind the punctuation these writers employed.  And that it was totally lost on me until now.

...what’s up with this?

The stuff of nightmares…

…and your misfortune.  I mean being stranded on a desert island is one thing, but having your rescue message found by the Big Hominid means you’re screwed for sure…

Sorry, Kevin. I couldn’t resist.

My journey through the annals of Life continues apace.  The magazine that is.  I’ve now reached August 1955, the month and year of my birth.  What keeps it interesting I suppose is finding tidbits of long forgotten stories and then trying to discern what happened next.  Okay, so I’m easily entertained.  But let me share a sad tale from the August 15 issue.

Life did a short feature on a group of American airmen who were shot down over China during the Korean war and had been imprisoned as spies ever since.  They were finally released after years of negotiations between two hostile governments .  One of these was Airman 2/c Daniel Schmidt.

An unlucky flyer, but things could be always be worse. And then they were.

While sad sack Schmidt was enduring years of Chinese torture, his lovely redheaded bride Una, who was also the mother of the child Schmidt had never seen, had remarried to a local lumberjack by the name of Alford Fine.  Schmidt was understandably distraught to learn this news upon his return to the U.S. and promptly filed for divorce.

Things then got rather messy as local news accounts of the time portrayed.  Una moved out of Alford’s trailer home and desperately sought reconciliation with Schmidt.  Schmidt, however, was not in a forgiving mood.  Meanwhile, the local sheriff pursued an investigation into whether Una was guilty of bigamy.  The Air Force insisted it had notified Una that her husband was still alive in China prior to her remarriage, but Una denied it.  It appeared the woman with two husbands might soon wind up with none.

Finally, Schmidt’s mother intervened and arranged a meeting between the two star crossed lovers.   And when Schmidt saw Una, he fell in love all over again. 

The newly reunited family makes an appearance on the Art Linkletter show.

It was a tale worthy of Hollywood, except for the happy ending part.  As this outstanding blog post recounts, Una and Schmidt divorced in 1960 and Daniel died in 1962 of a broken heart.  Well, during open heart surgery anyway.  He was 31.

Came across this mind boggling and thought provoking article that claims we are moving closer to having the capability to map a human brain to the extent that a person could live on in a “virtual” world after the mortal body has turned to dust.

Imagine a future in which your mind never dies. When your body begins to fail, a machine scans your brain in enough detail to capture its unique wiring. A computer system uses that data to simulate your brain. It won’t need to replicate every last detail. Like the phonograph, it will strip away the irrelevant physical structures, leaving only the essence of the patterns. And then there is a second you, with your memories, your emotions, your way of thinking and making decisions, translated onto computer hardware as easily as we copy a text file these days.

 

That second version of you could live in a simulated world and hardly know the difference. You could walk around a simulated city street, feel a cool breeze, eat at a café, talk to other simulated people, play games, watch movies, enjoy yourself. Pain and disease would be programmed out of existence. If you’re still interested in the world outside your simulated playground, you could Skype yourself into board meetings or family Christmas dinners.

The author goes on to make the case that actual creation of this technology is not necessarily a good thing, noting that the moral and societal implications of implementation will “transform humanity in ways that are more disturbing than helpful.”  I guess I can see the downsides, but given my lack of faith in any form of afterlife, I’d probably be inclined to accept immortality wherever I might find it.  Of course, that might be it’s own kind of hell.   I’m reminded of a story I read back in the 1970s entitled “I have eternal life and it’s killing me”.

Speaking of virtual worlds, of late I’ve been crafting a rather detailed fantasy life in my mind.  Yeah, I’ve got too much time on my hands I suppose.  But really, I just use these fantasies as a sleep aid.  A detailed version of counting sheep if you will.   I won’t bore you with the details of that world, although I’m young, handsome, and have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight.  So yeah, I avoid all the mistakes I’ve made along the way in my real life and do things like invest in start-up companies with odd names like Microsoft and Apple.  Anyway, I imagine novelists go through similar exercises as they craft their stories and create fictional characters to populate those worlds.  Which is to say I don’t think I’ve gone totally off the rails.

So that’s how I kind of imagine what a virtual afterlife might look like.  What do you think?  Do you prefer the great unknown of death or would you rather have a computerized version of yourself live on through infinity?

The midpoint of my life’s journey leads to this bridge in Saratoga, WY.

Well, I guess gravity has nothing to do with it.  But finding your geographic center is pretty cool and fun to do (linked fixed, sorry!). Turns out the midpoint of everywhere I lived is tiny Saratoga, Wyoming.  Population 1,690 proud souls and home of the annual Steinly Cup microbrew competition.  Gonna have to pay those punny folks a visit one of these days I suppose.

Westminster, CA (23 years), Prescott, AZ (5 years), Fort Smith, AR (3 years), Columbia, SC (12 years and counting), Stafford, VA (8 years) and Seoul, ROK (6 years) winds up looking like this.

And where pray tell is your center?

UPDATE: I changed the headline for this post after a commenter graciously pointed out that I had invented a new word for stupid…

Doing the treadmill can get a little boring.  But through the power of imagination aided by the wonder of the internet, I can almost see myself hiking here. While shitting my pants.

I like the pictures at the link, but here’s a little video as well.

Of course, I combine bad writing with poor grammar, and I’m sure that makes at least one person I know suffer…

I guess I can relate to this couple somewhat.  After all, I’m pretty sure I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body…