I keep calendars displaying both the current month and the next month up in my cube at work. I figured I’d better post this configuration before it stopped being what I got to look at every day:
Author Archives: Katie
Blog Like a Pirate Day
Ahoy mates, and let the parrrrrty begin! Talk Like a Pirate Day be upon us, at long last, and folk like me get to let our inner pirate out o’ the brig. Fer those of ye what don’t talk like pirates nigh every day, today be the day to learn! Ye best not practice with yer customers or yer boss, tho—some would as soon have ye walk the plank, as it takes a bit o’ humor to get into the spirit.
…speakin’ o’ spirits, where be the rum?
In a word
I’m thinking of a word. The definition is "a feeling of shock, sadness, compassion and sometimes guilty relief in response to a disaster that happens somewhere else." It’s not "horror," "rage," pity," or "sympathy." It could be German in origin. It’s what a good chunk of the world felt after last year’s tsunami, and it’s what a goodly number of Americans are feeling now about Hurricane Katrina.
And it doesn’t exist.
People are good at making up words. The variety of creations added to the OED each year, and the number of suggestions that are rejected, prove that beyond a doubt. We even make up words without meaning to, running together utterances like "bighuge" and "goaheadand." We have a word—emo—for "loud, emotionally charged pop-punk music." Some of us know the word schadenfreude and aren’t afraid to use it. If we can encapsulate stuff like this, we should be able to pick a word or two to define the enhanced survivors’ guilt and horrific fascination, laced with uncharacteristic compassion, gripping so many of us.
So far, we haven’t.
Disasters happen all the time, and always have. We’re just getting better at broadcasting them all. Before the age of telegraph and radio, it was often too late to send rescue-type aid by the time bad news arrived. Today, we can get the news in an instant, but the majority of us are simply unable to give the kind of aid—airlifts, rebuilding, law and order—we perceive as most meaningful. We are isolated by distance and circumstance, so we send money, and watch, and hope. The more we are able to watch, the more we need a word for what’s making us watch. So everybody who’s working on the projects for how to write "whole nother" and finding the modern negative of "used to," you have a new assignment. Due date: next disaster.
Star Wars: Meditations on the Sarlacc pit
A collection of comments, thoughts and images, some highly spoilerish and not all of them canon.
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I framed through the end of the Vader vs. Obi-Wan battle in A New Hope after being a bit confused by it last night. Watch closely, and you’ll notice two things. First, Vader’s lightsaber appears to go through Obi-Wan’s, about an inch above the hilt. This I can pin on imperfect special effects and then get on with my life. However, the second thing is that Obi-Wan’s robes start collapsing before the lightsaber even touches him. Kelson, watching it, said, "Does Vader even connect with a body?" I don’t think he does. Which looks like a very plausible solution to the disappearing-Jedi conundrum: if Obi-Wan wasn’t actually killed in action, then all evidence points to non-violent death being the only way to disappear.
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This time through A New Hope, I had the strange experience of mentally hearing a parallel voice track for Vader, with Hayden Christensen speaking many of his lines. I don’t know how much of this is my own overactive brain (fueled by coffee and Honey Smacks, no less) and how much is a reflection on the acting/directing/writing, but it’s very cool.
New meaning to “pick yer poison”
Found these at Sterling Art:
There were four in the box; the last is on my desk at work scaring away dust bunnies. The company that makes them, Accoutrements, also has an Anne Bonny action figure, a sort of Dilbert-Playmobil collectible playset, and a cat-headed Buddha, among boatloads of other cool stuff. They don’t sell to the public (boo) but Sterling will ship (yay!).
Yarrrrr.