Category Archives: Writing
“Four score and seven…” (Ahem.) Excuse me, I meant… “Four years and seven (or more — it’s gotten hard to keep track) lifetimes ago, I brought forth upon this WordPress (dot com) a new blog, conceived in lunacy, and dedicated to the proposition that all blog readers would subscribe eventually.”
“Now I am engaged in a great deal of introspection, questioning whether that blog, or any blog so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. The truth is, the world will little note, nor long remember what I write here. It is for us the bloggers, rather, to be dedicated here to adding a few more drops to the ocean. Tiny cries of small critters in a very large wilderness.”
And at this point, I’m way off script¹…
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54 Comments | tags: Anniversary, blog, blogger, blogging, humor, July 4, wry | posted in Life, Writing
This blog is nearly four years old (I started on July 4th, 2011). This post makes it exactly 500 posts here on Logos Con Carne. To commemorate it, I’m giving myself the 500 Odometer Award (which I built myself from various electrons I had laying around).
As part of the party, this post consists of miscellaneous odds and ends that have intrigued me lately. I’ll leave it to you to decide which are the odds and which are the ends.
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22 Comments | tags: All of Me, Comic Sans, George Winston, Jon Schmidt, light, light speed, Linus and Lucy, Minnesota Twins, Monty Python, NASA, SDO, skydiving, The Piano Guys, Tom Scott | posted in From My Collection, Life, Music, Science, The Interweb, Writing
I was tempted — just for a moment — to call this The Lost Oeuvre, but it really doesn’t rate such a highfalutin title. (And until just now, I had no idea “highfalutin” was a single, hyphen-free, word.) Considering that “works” can refer to drug-taking gear, that word seems just right.
Going through some old stuff, I came across typewritten copies of a few scripts from my film student college days. Not just film, but television production, too. I ended up becoming a computer programmer, but for a while I aspired to be the next George Lucas (or more likely, Quentin Tarantino).
For fun, I thought I’d share one of the ones I’m not too embarrassed by all these years later.
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16 Comments | tags: Angel, college, dead, elevator, fantasy, Fiction, film student, FINCH, heaven, Heaven and Hell, hell, humor, Peter Finch, Purgatory, script, Stanley, teleplay | posted in Writing
Well, it’s that time of year when WordPress generates our Annual Report, and we find out how many sold-out Sydney Opera House performances we earned. My first full year (2012) as a blogger I didn’t even rate one! That year visitors were compared to Mt. Everest climbers, and I’m sure there was no intended connection with oxygen deprivation.
This year — identically to last year — I managed to fill the House “about” five times. That’s page views; I’m up just shy of 500 views from last year (not quite a 4% increase). Visitors is another matter. Over 2,000 more visitors stopped by this year (a 140% increase).
But I really wanted to write about the posts…
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17 Comments | tags: 2013, 2014, 9-11, blog, blogger, blogging, Laurel Coppock, Leon Wieseltier, Mr. DeMille, NCIS, NCIS:New Orleans, Rick O'Shay, Stan Lynde, Toyota Jan | posted in Writing
Gourdians are an earthy and generally shameless lot.
It was originally posted here in 2011. It was technically a re-post — I copied the text and photos from my 2008 article in an older social media site that’s since gone to seed. (First rule of Older Social Media Sites: No one talks about Older Social Media Sites.) This one is only interesting if you want to see the first appearance.
I re-posted it a year later, in 2012. Again I copied the text — it was a re-post, not a re-blog. As a bonus, I added some new pictures and an introduction that explains the piece. This is a good one to read if you only read one.
The following year, in 2013, I re-blogged the re-post. Combination of curiosity and laziness. I didn’t love the results — re-blogs edit like comments, not posts. There is some new content there, but you have to also read the re-blogged article. Still, it’s the recommended course of action.
So go read this one. Happy Kiss A Gourdian Day!!
See ya next month!
4 Comments | tags: dirt, Gourdian, gourds, humor, Jack-O-Lantern, kiss a Gourdian, orange, pumpkins, re-post, vines | posted in Writing
I was going to write about something completely different. Specifically: religion, spirituality, atheism, morality and ethics, faith and unbelief… that sort of thing. I like one day of the week to be different from the rest — a Sabbath, so to speak. For cultural and personal reasons (and pragmatic reasons — many businesses take today off) Sunday seems an appropriate day. I’ve got Sci-Fi Saturday; I suppose you could call it Sermon Sunday or something.
But when I sat down to write, something else came out. I thought I’d better grab it and stick it onto the blog wall before it ran away and, due to its youth and naiveté, ran afoul of Unpleasant Business. The thing about letting your mind drift is that you can never be sure where it’ll come ashore. In this case, mental notes about a possible future post morphed into… Well, you’ll just have to see for yourself.
And, yes, you have to look below the fold — no cheating!
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11 Comments | tags: blank verse, candy, female, free verse, global, local, male, men, poetry, Sabbath, Sunday, women | posted in Music, Sunday Sermons, Writing
Wow! Kansas City Royals — the wildcard team — take the Los Angeles Angels (the best team in baseball this year) three-zip in the ALDS. And that after an amazing wildcard game against the Oakland Athletics. The game last night — their fourth post-season game — was the first to go only nine innings and featured their biggest win so far: 8-3!
It’s hard to separate my rooting for them to win from how objectively great all four games have been, but I think anyone would agree these were great games. The Royals have been so much fun to watch. Their running game alone is a joy to behold.
Blue beat green in one and red in three; now they go after orange best of seven!
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3 Comments | tags: Albert Pujols, ALCS, ALDS, Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, haiku, James Shields, Josh Hamilton, Kansas City Royals, Lorenzo Cain, Los Angeles Angels, Mike Moustakas, Mike Trout, MLB, poetry, Schadenfreude | posted in Baseball, Writing
Voices. It begins with voices. Even before we are born, we hear voices. Human language is the most complex form of inter-species communication that we know. It takes years to learn and many more years to become fluent. Mastering it takes serious dedication and practice.
In the public square, it also begins with voices. The voices of men filled it first. As time marches on other voices are raised: the voices of women; the voices of nationality and race; political voices; religious voices; gay voices; vegan voices and more. Now the public square is filled with the dynamic clamor of many different voices.
To go beyond the beginning, we must listen to the voices.
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12 Comments | tags: listen, logos | posted in Writing
Spring!
The Earth.
Ever looping, ever spinning,
Passes a point.
Spring!
·
The Sun.
Ever higher, ever warmer,
Melts all the snow.
Spring!
·
The World.
Ever turning, ever changing,
Brings forth fresh life.
Spring!
·
Winter’s silence fades.
Birds sing, life renews.
A new year begins.
Spring!
⊥
∇
18 Comments | tags: birds, equinox, melting snow, poems, poetry, snow, spring, Sun, vernal equinox, winter | posted in Life, Writing
Computer programmers, and others who work with languages, sometimes use the related terms: semantics & syntax. They are concepts with a specific application to language, but language is communication and there are many forms of communication. For example, when music is viewed as a language one can apply the concepts of syntax and semantics.
This article (in my queue for years) was meant to introduce those two concepts, but my vision for this blog has evolved in ways that largely moot those original intentions. Why write about topics no one is casually interested in, and which are already covered in exhaustive detail elsewhere for those with a serious interest?
Besides… this one… turned out different…
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6 Comments | tags: communication, Computer programmers, forms of communication, language, meaning, poetry, red pencil, semantics, syntax, syntax and semantics | posted in Basics, Writing
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