Sukipot.com: A One Woman Show

January 17, 2007

Doubtful

I've been intrigued enough by the Lifehacker Web site to order the new book, which, on first flip-through, seemed full of useful ideas. This sentence on p.6, however, has distracted me: "Plain text is application- and operating system- agnostic" -- by way of explaining why it's a good idea to keep your to-do list in a plain text file.

Agnostic? Plain text is doubtful? Plain text is noncommittal? Okay, maaaaaaybe it's noncommittal, but wouldn't a theological reference maybe be ecumenical -- of worldwide scope, universal -- rather than agnostic? Or maybe just throw out the religious metaphors altogether.

It's not worth not reading the book, of course. It's just faintly irritating.

Permalink | Posted on January 17, 2007 to fussbudget

May 23, 2006

I Blame Gatsby.

Well, Fitzgerald. According to OED, he used the phrase "reached a crescendo" in The Great Gatsby, circa 1925. And it's been madness ever since.

To be fair, Fitzgerald wrote, "The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home." So maybe he meant, "reached a passage in the music where they started to climb in volume and intensity." I doubt it. But it's possible.

I was thinking about this while reading the various Alias post-morts this morning -- that irksome phrase, "reached a crescendo," showed up again, and so I went spelunking in OED like Sydney last night in Rambaldi's Styrofoam Magic Mount Subasio. (Guys. Couldn't you have afforded a better set for that scene? But I digress.)

Crescendo is from the Italian (and, of course, Latin before that) crescere, to increase. You don't build to the crescendo. That doesn't make sense. It isn't the summit; it's the gradual process of heading to it. In music and in life. Growing. Waxing. Like the crescent moon.

Climax, crown, culmination, height, peak, pinnacle, summit, top, zenith. High point. Jaysus, just use "payoff." All those words mean the place the climb should take you, and what people think they mean when they write, "reached a crescendo." And don't give me the, "but everybody uses it that way now so usage makes it okay." If everybody else were jumping off a mountain before they reached the top, would you do it too?

It doesn't sound arty or learned or any of that. It just sounds like you want to sound arty by skewing the meaning of a specific artistic term to suit your artistic purpose. If you're F. Scott Fitzgerald, you may do that. Everybody else, just stop it.

Permalink | Posted on May 23, 2006 to fussbudget

May 19, 2006

Earworms I have known

Earworms come from unexpected places, and are not always taken from the most obvious candidate pool. Here's just a small sampling of audio-embedded earworm exotica that has tormented me of late:

"Under the Sea" (from The Little Mermaid)

"Two Outta Three Ain't Bad"

And just to show that it doesn't always have to be catchy to turn into an earworm:

"Let There Be Peace On Earth"

Permalink | Posted on May 19, 2006 to pure drivel

April 17, 2006

Real Conditional Texas

I'm having to write this short bio of myself for the TexShare site contributors page, and I'm having real trouble conveying what I want to convey, because it takes a lot of explaining, and I won't get into any of that here, but, it does put me in mind of this: Circa 1972, when my parents were planning what would be our migration back from Alabama to Texas, I would ask questions beginning, "If we move to Texas..." and my mother would respond, "*When* we move to Texas." And I would ask what the difference was, and she would tell me. "If" meant something might or might not happen; it wasn't a given. "When," on the other hand, meant it was definitely going to happen.

If. When. Texas. The three go together like beads on a string in my head, even today.

Permalink | Posted on April 17, 2006 to pure drivel

April 6, 2006

Words That Don't Look Right

Bookkeeping.

B-oo-kk-ee-ping. That's just not right. Even if it is.

Permalink | Posted on April 06, 2006 to pure drivel