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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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   PROMPT May 11th What was cool when you were young but isn’t cool now? Is there anything that has become cool in recent years that wasn’t cool in your youth? What was cool when you were young but isn’t cool now? Mammoth hunts. Come on, you knew I was going to make that joke. I gotta say, though, I don't know what's cool and I never did. The entire idea of fashion and popularity eludes me. I suppose the word "cool" itself might qualify. I'm pretty sure that this meaning of the word came about as part of whatever counterculture was prominent at the time, and it's been switching from cool to cold and back again ever since. One of the idiosyncrasies of English is how some words can mean their exact opposite also, as with "cleave." Such contronyms must be nothing but confusing for those poor sods who have to learn our language. Another is that words for opposite concepts can come to mean similar things, as with "cool" and "hot." And meanings can change over time; I'm told that the original meaning of "nice" was closer to how we use the word in sarcasm today. I do remember that one thing we did a lot of back when "groovy" was a thing was for kids to ride in the back of pickup trucks, or in cars without seatbelts. Do that now, and you get your kids taken away. Honestly, I'm not sure how any of us managed to survive. Some changes have been for the worse, sure, but I don't ever want to be one of those old guys who bemoans the loss of some bullshit "good old days." We have a lot more respect for nerds today than there once was, for instance. Learning science and math has become cool. There's tobacco, which has gone from cool to not-cool, and cannabis, which has gone from not-cool to cool. At least in mainstream culture; in La Résistance, it's always been cool. The only certainty in life is change, and it's best to try to stay cool about it. And yet some things endure; sunglasses, for example, have always been, are, and always will be, the Platonic ideal of cool.  |
| The prompt is running late again, and I can't stay up this time; I have a dentist appointment at some ungodly cow-milking hour tomorrow morning. I'll edit this at some point later today when the 30DBC prompt shows up, but I don't know when; the appointment could take all morning. Nothing major, just a time-consuming procedure. Just to be clear, I'm not upset about this. It's just I've been sticking to this just-after-midnight schedule for so long that I feel like I should explain when things don't go according to schedule. So instead, can I just say how damn relieved I am that Mother's Day is finally behind us for another year? Well, 11 months. Mother's Day creep is getting almost as bad as Christmas creep, starting as it does around late March, these days. Not to mention the crass consumerism the days share. Look, I get it; everyone has a mother, and most of us want to do something to show our appreciation for her labor (of both kinds). Mine died 22 years ago, though, and I really don't appreciate the reminders every goddamn year. No, I'm not trying to make the observance go away for everyone; I'm just trying to minimize my own exposure to it. I keep thinking I should make a filter on my offsite email to send any email containing any variation of "mom" or "mother" straight to the trash, but I can't even be arsed to put that much effort into it. Besides, chances are, I'd end up trashing something relevant among all the pleas to buy this or that product. Anyway, it's over, and that's probably the last I have to say about it until next year, absent its inclusion in some prompt or other. No promises about not bitching about Father's Day next month, though. Edit:  PROMPT May 10th Think back to a time when you felt completely calm. What made you feel that way? Beer. No, really. And I don't even have to think back very far. Just about two hours or so. As I said above, I had dental work done this morning. It took three hours, after which I went home and slept until the local wore off, at which point I felt just fine. So I did my regular weekly pilgrimage to the local taphouse, a bit later than normal so there weren't a lot of other people around. I sat on the patio, as has been my tradition since this whole bullshit started. The accursed daystar burned in the sky, but it warmed the air enough so the covered patio felt perfectly comfortable. I ordered a beer and a steak salad. Now, I know that I've described before that feeling that I get when the weather is perfect, I'm drinking beer, and there's good music playing. I call it beerenity. It is, quite simply, the only time when I can pretend that there is nothing wrong in the world, that everything is okay, things are exactly as they should be. It's a fragile state, so I nurture it while it lasts. There on the patio - I was the only one at the tables - I felt no pain, had no worries, made no plans. It's the closest I ever come to accepting the idea of "living in the present," because everything in that particular moment conspires to make me feel... good. Calm. And there's always one moment that triggers it. At some point, some song will play on the sound system and I'll remember, at least in part, all the other moments of beerenity that I've experienced, as if time has no meaning and it all blends together. In this case, it was this song. I've been crazy, couldn't you tell? I threw stones at the stars, but the whole sky fell Now I'm covered up in straw, belly up on the table And I drank and sang and passed in the stable on, on |
| PROMPT May 9th Write about language - What languages do you wish you could speak? What’s the most pleasant sounding accent? What’s the funniest word in the English language (or your native language)? Periodically, someone will come up with a "longest word in the English language" essay, probably because they're not being paid by the word but by the letter. Almost inevitably, the winner will be declared to be "floccinaucinihilipilification" or "antidisestablishmentarianism," the former of which means, roughly, "making a big deal about nothing." Which is appropriate, because English is largely arbitrary, and if that word were truly necessary, we Americans at least would shorten it to "flok" because why pronounce such a long word when we could use the time to stuff another Big Mac into our maws? Incidentally, I may have a shit memory, but I typed those words without Googling them. I can't promise they're spelled correctly, because my browser doesn't recognize them. Which means they're not actually the longest words in the English language; if Firefox doesn't know it, it's not English. In any case, neither word sees everyday use; the only time I ever see them is in "longest word" articles. Some of said articles are quick to point out that there are even longer words, but they qualify as technical terms. Those I don't remember as vividly, but as I recall they're from chemistry. Chemistry was heavily influenced by the German language, which I don't know a whole lot about, but which I understand is very good at stringing a lot of short words together to make a mega-word. Which, again, is appropriate, since a big molecule is a bunch of short molecules strung together to make a mega-molecule. Though English is technically a Germanic language, most of our vocabulary (about 60%, if I recall correctly) comes from Romance languages, largely through the influence of French. And Romance language words just don't have the same stringthemtogetherabilityness. Point being, "longest word" and "funniest word" are both pretty arbitrary, and at some point all you're doing is making shit up. Which, I suppose, is how language works in the first place. I mean, no name for a thing or action, no words that modify things or actions, no word at all, is an intrinsic property of the thing, action, or modifier. A case could be made for those words that are onomatopoeic, like "buzz" or "meow," in terms of them being intrinsic to the things they describe, but given that those words are different in different languages, it all comes down to how we interpret the sounds. Apropos of nothing, I've actually been to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, in Wales, which may or may not be the longest place name in the world. Put that on a map of the planet, and it will either start in Canada or end in Russia. That's not English, though. It's Welsh. Never call Welsh "English," lest you invoke the wrath of actual Welsh people. Then you might get a sheep thrown at you. I did have to look that one up, incidentally. As you can tell, and as you know if you've been following along, I kinda love linguistics. I don't know nearly as much about it as I'd like to. Given that the only other language that I have any facility in whatsoever is French, and that only on a beginner level after nearly two years of practice, it's difficult for me to engage in too much comparative linguistics. I used to know some Hebrew and Latin, but the funny thing about language is if you don't use it, you lose it. Unless, I suppose, you have a much better memory than I do. Speaking of French, even before I started learning it full-time, I always thought it was a very pleasant-sounding language. Probably not when it's being shouted at you from across a battlefield, but in other situations. I mean, compare the sound of « Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ? » with its rough English translation, "Wanna bone?" and you'll see what I mean. But no, I'm not learning French so I can pick up French chicks. I'm too old for that merde. (But, still, I wouldn't say non.) I'm learning it so I can drink wine in France and beer in Belgium. One language that I've wanted to learn for a long time is Russian. Of course, with the political climate today, that would probably get me put on a List somewhere. And I've found that I'm terrible at learning more than one language at the same time. Hell, I'm not that great at learning one language at the same time. But it's not going to stop me from trying. |
| PROMPT May 8th Write about your favorite outdoor activities to do in the summer. Are there any activities you haven’t done that you want to try? Well, my only favorite outdoor activity in the summer is: rushing from an air-conditioned car into an air-conditioned bar; if the accursed daystar is burning, add "while shading myself as much as possible." This is related to my only favorite outdoor activity in the winter, which is rushing from a heated car into a heated bar. I do not like the outdoors. Still, given a choice between being too hot and too cold, I will pick too hot every damn time, so if I'm going to do anything outside, it'll be in the summer. Of course, one is never given such a choice; either it's winter and too cold, summer and too hot, or a week or so in between when it's actually pleasant to be outside for five minutes when it's not raining. Which is not to say that I never do anything outside. I just don't enjoy it as much as anything I can do inside. Nor is there anything that interests me to try. Just as I have no intention whatsoever to ski in the winter, I don't want to windsurf, bungee jump, or zipline, none of which I've ever tried. People be like "aw, is little baby scared?" No. I just hate doing stuff outside; fuck off. I want no long (or even short) walks on the beach, no hikes in the mountains, no swimming in the ocean. The closest I want to get to nature is enjoying the natural result of yeast feeding on sugars, and while I have no objection to doing so on a patio, there will be air conditioning close by. No, I'm of the firm opinion that we evolved to build shelters for a reason, and that reason is that so we could use them. Don't get me wrong; I love nature. I'm a big fan of watching webcams of natural areas. Here's one of my favorites: The Brooks Falls Bear Cam  from Katmai National Park, in Alaska.You're welcome. |
| PROMPT May 7th In your entry today, write about dreams. Do you dream often, or do you rarely remember your dreams? What is the strangest or most memorable dream you have ever had? Many trees have been murdered, ink wasted, and electrons annihilated on the subject of "dream interpretation." I can't claim that all of it is bullshit, but enough is that the whole idea is, at best, suspect. I've written about dreams in here before. Not necessarily specific ones, but about dreaming in general. Last I heard, the best scientific approach to figuring out why we dream is tied up with some of the physiological effects of sleep on our brains.Dreams are, I think, a byproduct of these physiological effects. The brain is very, very good at drawing conclusions from inadequate data. Random firing of neurons, or whatever's actually happening in there, produces semi-random data and there's a part of the brain that insists on interpreting it. It usually does so in relation to events in one's life, whether those events seem meaningful in our waking consciousness or not. One odd side-effect I've noted from getting the Covfefe vaccine is especially vivid dreams. It happened to me, and I've heard of it happening to other people as well. These aren't necessarily bad dreams, just particularly realistic ones. Whether it's related to something in the vaccine, or (more likely) the psychological aspects of getting it at all, I don't know. Unfortunately, I don't remember them, just the fact that they existed and were particularly vivid. Memory works that way for me sometimes; I can more easily remember the feelings caused by something than the cause of the feelings themselves. There are, however, a few dreams that I remember, at least in part. Relating them risks opening myself to one of those silly interpretation things I mentioned above, but I do vaguely recall discussing some recurring themes in here before. Like, often, my dreams are dark. I don't mean like nightmares -- I have suffered from sleep paralysis and I know what a nightmare is, thanks -- but literally, visually, dark. Which I find odd because, like most sighted people, vision is my primary way of interpreting the world around me. It's really hard to describe, but it's like walking (or, more interestingly, driving or biking) down a black road on a moonless night with black trees all around. I can't see the road or the sky or the trees, or rather, they all blend into each other visually, and yet there is some other sense entirely that is able to distinguish, with perfect clarity, what is road and what is tree. That's just one example. Sometimes it's a wall that I just know is there, or people moving around in the darkness that I can easily avoid even though I can't see them. On one level this makes sense because my physical body is lying in a dark room with its eyes closed, so I'm literally in darkness. On another level, at other times the dreams are in brilliant Technicolor, so what the hell, brain? I should note that I had dreams of this sort even before I found out I will probably need eye surgery, so it's not just a matter of the phobia I attach to anything touching, let alone cutting into, my eyeballs (other than my eyelids; they get a pass), or any concerns about going blind. But yeah, they're worse now. For me, anyway, dreams seem to be about practicing emotions. Nightmares practice fear. Pleasant dreams practice contentment. The one where you walk into an exam late and then you realize you're naked practices the feeling of being in an uncomfortable situation. That sort of thing. Emotions are, at base, chemical reactions and electrical nerve firings, or whatever, and the brain seems to like rehearsing them in your sleep. Or perhaps the emotions come first (random neuron signals, like I said above) and the brain provides scenarios that fit them. You know, I kind of like the second hypothesis better; it makes more sense. I'll tell you what I hate more than nightmares, though. I mean, nightmares can be scary, by definition, but then they're over and you maybe have some story ideas. So while they're scary, they're still just dreams. What I hate is when you wake up and go about your day, but then you notice something's off, like the stairs have turned into a slide or whatever. So you realize that you're actually still asleep. So the alarm goes off and you wake up and go about your business, but the front door is in the wrong place, so you realize that you're actually still asleep. Then you wake up and do your usual thing, but when you open the refrigerator, it's full of cabbage. So you realize that you're actually still asleep... Or hey, maybe that's just me. |
| PROMPT May 6th Write about a community service or volunteer experience you’ve had in your life that made an impact on you. None. I realize that makes me look like an asshole, so I'll elaborate so that I look like even more of an asshole. It's not that I've never done such things. Especially in college and just after, I tried doing things like volunteering at a soup kitchen and doing some work with Habitat, but those didn't last long and I can't say they made an impact on me except, maybe, to reinforce for me just how much I hate doing work, regardless of how good a cause it supports. Also, I've never been in trouble with the law (well, not serious trouble), so I was never sentenced to anything like community service. And I am fully aware that I'm extremely fortunate to have never been on the receiving end of volunteering or community service, so I can't say they've made an impact on me from the other direction, either. No, I'm committed to being lazy. So when I get the inexplicable urge to do something beneficial for anyone other than myself, it's usually with money or property, not *shudder* work. I do have to admit, though, that sometimes, at least in the Before Time, I got it in my head that it might be good to volunteer at the animal shelter. I'd get a rare chance to socialize with other people, and more importantly, maybe pet some kitties. But then I remember exactly how much I despise picking up doggy-doo (the primary reason I don't have a dog is I won't do that), and I'm pretty sure they make all the newbies pick up doggy-doo. Well, that, and it would be impossible for me not to adopt all the kitties. |
| PROMPT May 5th If your job gave you a surprise seven day paid break to rest and recuperate, what would you do with those seven days? I'm familiar with a company that does this sort of thing. Every so often they hold a raffle of sorts, and whoever wins the raffle is obligated to take some time off -- I don't remember if it's a week or three days or two weeks or whatever, but the trick is, that vacation time begins right now. Grab your stuff and head out the door. No calls, no texts, no work-related e-mails. The point, as the employer explained to me, is twofold: One, it gives people a break, which is important as this is a finance company (that, by the way, is the only other clue I'm going to give as to the identity of the company), and you are probably aware of how stressful that industry can be. The other reason is perhaps a little more double-edged: they want to hammer home the fact that no one person at the company is indispensable, that other people can step in and do the work if need be. So this raffle applies to everyone, from the CEO on down (though I'm guessing not to contract employees -- think, like, Uber drivers). The reasoning is that anyone could get hit by a bus at any time, and they don't want to get left holding the bag if one employee, even the CEO, doesn't have a backup plan in place. The dark side of this, of course -- the other edge -- is that this means that since no one is indispensable, they could lay you off at any time and barely feel it. But meanwhile, hey, free vacation. Yes, if I recall correctly, it's paid time off. This is in addition to whatever their actual PTO policy is, which I'm not very clear on, but in finance it tends to be pretty minimal and discouraged. But I know they do get some. With regular vacation time, one has the ability to make plans: buy airline tickets in advance, make hotel and rental car reservations, whatever. But you can't plan to win the Time Off Raffle (that's not what it's called, but again, I'm not naming names here), unless, I suppose, you figure out a way to cheat, which would make you an even bigger asshole than most financial services employees. So your options are probably a little more limited. Now, I never worked for this company; they're just someone I do business with. But it did get me thinking about what I'd do with the time, so I can respond to this prompt as if I'm not retired and pretty much do whatever I want, whenever I want, anyway. Given the nature of the company in question, I'd probably be tempted to stay home, sleep, binge-watch shows, and play video games. Maybe do some writing, but, mostly, sleep. There's a stupid goddamn portmanteau for this activity, which I hate so much that I'm not going to use here. It's cheap and there's no planning involved, and it is pretty much guaranteed to help one destress after a few months working in finance. If I were feeling ambitious, I might use the time to look for better jobs, but I don't think they exist. Another option, again if it were me, would be to do what I generally do on road trips: pick a destination at random -- I mean, really at random, not just say something like "I think Des Moines would be nice; I'mma go there" -- and take a road trip. No real planning is necessary, though it might help to check ahead to make sure there's not some festival or sportsball game at the destination that would sell out all the hotels. (I don't use AirBnB; they suck. Besides, you know all those scary "we used a black light in the hotel room and ew gross" videos? That's about rooms that are thoroughly cleaned; imagine how much worse an AirBnB run by some random schlub would be. I have a whole rant on this practice in my head; perhaps one day I'll get to use it.) Of course, for me, such a trip would involve visiting all the breweries on the way to, at, and on the way back from, the destination; other people will have other priorities. If your passport is up to date, perhaps you'd have other options, as well. I always thought it would be nice to take a spontaneous trip to, I dunno, Sydney or something. But foreign travel generally requires a bit more planning than domestic. And with what's going on in the world right now, I don't know if that sort of thing is even possible. |
| Well, the 30DBC prompt is delayed, but I don't want to just go crash without posting something here. The problem is, since the last blog entry yesterday, nothing interesting happened. I made no new discoveries, had no great epiphanies, read no interesting articles. I didn't try any new beers, attempt any difficult projects, suffer any loss, celebrate any gain. Nothing bad happened to me. Nothing great happened to me. It was a day. Had lunch with a friend. Watched some videos. Played some games. I mean, it was good to see my friend, but it's not an uncommon occurrence that we get together for lunch. I mean, yes, I know about Bill and Melinda Gates. I only mention it here to try to ward off comments like "Sure something interesting happened! Bill Gates is going to be divorced!" I don't care. It's not relevant to me. I don't want to hear celebrity gossip, which is what that basically is, but one cannot be interested in news in general without getting some backwash from irrelevancies like gossip and sports. About the only thing I accomplished yesterday was finishing this week's Fantasy NL, which may be why I don't have much to say here right now; I shot my wad on that editorial. Very likely, the Universe will get the last laugh on this by making my next day a living nightmare. At least, that's what I'm going to expect, so I will end up either being pleasantly surprised, or right. Anyway, I'll edit this after the prompt pops up for the blog challenge. Edit: PROMPT May 4th May the Fourth Be With You! Write about a movie franchise or book series that you love.  Two of my nerdgeek friends got married (to each other) on May the Fourth several years ago. By "nerdgeek," of course, I mean that their interests, similar to mine, are in technical subjects as well as science fiction and fantasy movies, books and TV shows, and gaming. Like I've said before, everybody is a nerd about something. Their wedding date, however, was set by the timing of a local festival, and the May 4 date was purely a coincidence. Or so they say. Before this prompt showed up, I'd already titled this entry "A Day." This is also a coincidence, I claim, because other than appreciating the pun, I don't do anything for Star Wars Day. It's just another day for me. Oh, of course I venerate the original trilogy, and I've seen all the movies since and even liked most of them; it's more about just having to keep up with that particular culture now, not enjoying the movies for their own sake. Which is too bad, really. (Though, incidentally, yes, I very much enjoyed The Mandalorian.) Basically, remember the beer story from a few days ago? When I drank a beer I hated but enjoyed it because it made me appreciate good beer that much more? It's kind of like that. So for me, today is just another day. Point being, it's not so much the Star Wars franchise that I "love;" it's the entire universe and fandom it's responsible for. If that makes any sense. If the prompt wasn't limited to movie franchises and book series, I'd pick Star Trek to talk about, because like I said yesterday, I'm involved in a marathon rewatch of every episode. But while Trek also exists in movies and books, it is, first and foremost, a collection of episodic TV series. Now, don't get me wrong; there are a lot of movie and book series that I enjoy, and not all of them are of the F/SF persuasion. There are also a few that others seem to enjoy that I just could never get into (I'm looking at YOU, Game of Thrones). There are the obvious ones I like that I could talk about, like Lord of the Rings or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or The Dresden Files. But I'll plug a lesser-known fantasy series here, and that's Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive. Four giant books at this point, and more (one hopes) on the way. Sanderson is a prolific author, and a methodical one. As with most good fantasy, there's magic involved, but Sanderson is very careful about world-building; he sets up the rules of magic for his worlds, and sticks to them. And he comes up with the most interesting, detailed settings and characters. Plus the book art is really awesome. What else can I say about it without too many spoilers? I don't know. I'd say if you like fantasy, you'd probably enjoy the series. Oh, I'll say this: it's so good that it works for me as anti-inspiration. As in, there is no way I could ever write that well, so I gave up trying. |
| PROMPT May 3rd What was the best thing that happened in your life over the weekend? Looking at the week ahead, what are your goals and how will you motivate yourself to achieve them? Ha ha. Very funny. It is to laugh. Let's take this one step at a time, shall we? Some of this is going to require some background, even if you've been following along here. What was the best thing that happened in your life over the weekend? In the Before Time, one of my favorite activities was to travel around and visit breweries. Sometimes I'd visit breweries incidentally whilst traveling for other purposes, but most of the time the breweries were my destination. Each of them has its own take on the holy nectar. Some are focused on hop-forward beers like IPAs; I don't generally like those. Others avoid IPAs in favor of other traditional styles. Some like to go their own way, inventing new styles or fresh takes on old ones; others tend to stick to the basics. There's a lot of variety, is what I'm saying. So each one presents a new experience. One thing I've come to expect from them is the tasting flight: some number, usually four to six, small samples of beers of your choice. Now, certainly there are styles I gravitate to, like the Belgians and Imperial stouts. But I'll try almost anything. I say "almost" because some brewers, in a misguided effort to stand out, do completely weird shit. I mentioned hemp beer here a couple of days ago, but that's not the weirdest, or the worst, experiment I've seen. One brewer famously brewed beer using yeast that he'd extracted from his beard (all male brewers have beards; it's the law). Yes, they called it Beerd, but that atrocious name isn't the only reason I'm never going to go anywhere near that brew. But with those vanishingly rare exceptions, like I said, I'll try almost anything. Some I'll really like, some I won't; most fall in between. I purposely try styles I don't generally like so I at least know what the beer is "supposed" to taste like, and also because, in the words of the great philosopher, "If everything was cool, and nothing sucked, how would we know what was cool?" I like variety, so with two exceptions, I don't generally go out of my way to purchase the same beer over and over. But when the pandemic hit, my ability to visit breweries was severely curtailed. Fortunately, governments, in a rare case of getting something right, relaxed restrictions on beer delivery and shipping. So instead of me going to the breweries, they were able to come to me... at least on a limited basis. Enter BeerDrop, a beer subscription service out of Colorado, home of many a delicious brew. Think of it as a "beer of the month" club, where you can get five different beers shipped to you every month. You have some control over the styles. I'm not shilling for them, by the way, but I have to explain the system somehow. Basically I get two cans each of five different beers from, usually, five different breweries; most are from Colorado, but I've also had beer brewed in other states (they are all, as far as I've seen, American beers). So it's a bit like getting a tasting flight, only with full-size beers and not limited to one brewery. So far, so good. And I've generally liked every beer they've sent me. Until this weekend. Last week, April's shipment came in but, contrary to popular belief (that I foster), I don't drink every day or when I have something to do like a newsletter or a blog entry... usually. So I finally got to crack a couple open on Saturday, when I had some help drinking them. The first one I tried was nice, a Vienna lager that was nearly as good as the one a local brewery makes. But the second one... how shall I put this... sucked. It, too, was a lager (and this entry is already far too long to go into the technical difference between lager and ale), but the brewery mixed in lime and salt. I don't like limed and salted beer on a good day. Sometimes a bit of lemon in a wheat beer can be nice, but lime imparts a completely different experience. As for salt, the only reason to salt your beer is if the beer sucks in the first place, and if that's the case, why drink it? (Salt and lime are, of course, perfectly acceptable with agave-based booze like tequila and mezcal.) In this one, though, the ratios were all off and the beer was just plain disgusting. I think maybe they were trying for stealing the Bud Light Lime-a-Rita crowd; I don't know, because that particular abomination is one of the ones I'd steer entirely clear of. Hell, I don't even know if they still piss out the stuff. So. After all that. Why is this under "What is the best thing that happened in your life over the weekend?" Well, because I've had some mediocre beers in the last year, but this was the first one that I actively hated. And this was good because, as per the Beavis and Butt-Head quote above, it helps me appreciate the rest of beer that much more. Looking at the week ahead, what are your goals and how will you motivate yourself to achieve them? Allow me to laugh once more: Ha. Of course, I do have some goals. Obviously, this challenge is one of them. I don't really need motivation for it; having done a blog entry every day for nearly a year and a half now, it's more like a habit. Same with French lessons on Duolingo. Every day, 613 days and counting. It's just something I do. Later today (Monday), weather permitting, I'll make my traditional weekly trip to a local taphouse. That's a goal. It's motivated by some new beers they've acquired since last week's visit. Wednesday? D&D night. Videoconferencing and online gaming capability are some of the best inventions of the tech age. Probably won't drink that day; D&D requires some mental focus. Except for that one time I was playing a Drunken Master character, when scotch was my role-playing aid. Thursday is Three Notch'd Day for me (that's a nearby brewpub); during lockdowns, I'd get stuff delivered from them, beer and food, every Thursday. Now that I can venture forth once more, and they have bar seating again, I'll go there. The only motivation I need there is to get off my ass and walk the two-mile journey -- but, again, beer is a great motivator for me. I generally judge "The Writer's Cramp" [13+] on Fridays. So call that a goal. It's a commitment for me, so no other motivation is necessary.Saturday is Zoomies day. A bunch of us get together on Zoom every other week and talk about writing, life, and the writing life. Please feel free to join us; watch my newsfeed for details. (That is an advertisement. But it's free.) Other than that? Keep myself fed on the days I'm not visiting restaurants. Sleep. Take care of the cats. Continue my chronological rewatch of every Star Trek episode and movie. Try to choke down the second can of the horrid lime salt lager. What? It's not like I can allow myself to waste it. By the way... Yesterday, we talked about the sense of smell and how it can trigger memories. Well, today, I found this article talking about the science behind the sense of smell, and I think it's really damn interesting. So there it is if you want to read it. |
| PROMPT May 2nd What smell or sounds brings back great memories of your childhood? Come to think of it, I haven't heard a tyrannosaur's roar in quite some time, now... But seriously, though. When I think "childhood," I can't help but remember school. Not that memories of school are all that great. I tend to remember the other kids being mean, teachers being nasty, and principals not understanding the entire concept of "humor." A typical conversation would be like: Principal: "Why did you put a frog in Suzie's bag?" Me: "...because it was funny." (So, okay, it wasn't only the other kids who were mean. In my defense, Suzie was very cute and I was just trying to get her attention.) Principal: "It was not funny." Me: "Yes it was." Principal: *sigh* *opens the Drawer and pulls out a paddle* Yes, I may not remember dinosaurs, but I do remember, very vividly, that it was perfectly okay to whack someone's kid on the ass. I don't have any real opinion on the practice now, although I certainly wasn't a fan of it at the time. My dad was fond of paddling. My mom was more progressive on the subject of discipline, opting instead for less physical punishments. I'm not sure that was any kind of improvement. Her favorite thing to do was to take away something I enjoyed. A paddling was something that was, generally, over with fairly quickly, and then I could go back to reading comic books. But if I got the comic books taken away, I was never sure when (or if) I'd get them back, so I'd have to, I don't know, do homework instead. What I learned was: never show any interest in anything, because it could be taken away at the slightest infraction. But I digress. Those are not great memories (even if they do make me chuckle nowadays). In between stints of playing practical jokes on my fellow students, I actually learned a few things in school as a kid. One of the things I learned, along with everyone else, was that we have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. As with many of the things you learn in school, this is, at best, an oversimplification; and, at worst, a falsehood. We have other senses. The sensation of pain, for example, like when a paddle hits your ass. Sure, touch is involved, at first, for an instant, but the pain remains long after the paddling is over with. Or you could sprain your ankle or eat something gross on a dare, which would tie your guts into knots. And you can sense, say, the heat coming off of a stove without actually touching the stove. There's the sense of balance, and the sense of proprioception (which, for example, lets you know where your hand is even when it's behind your back). And don't forget the sense of humor, which is lacking in elementary school principals. You could argue that all of those are extensions of the sense of touch, but if you want to go there, I can argue that the other four "classic" senses are also, at base, touch: sight is photons touching your retinas; hearing is pressure waves touching your eardrums; smell is molecules touching stuff in your nose; taste is similar molecules touching your tongue. I don't know when or how we collectively decided that we only have five senses, but we did proclaim this as fact, same as we collectively decided there were only seven colors (that bit, I traced back to Newton, who decided on the number seven for mystical reasons). What does appear to be true, though, is that of all of the senses (classical or otherwise), it's smell that is most powerful in evoking memories. And you know, science has pretty much figured out why. This article discusses it, for anyone who's interested.Smells have a stronger link to memory and emotion than any of the other senses, and neuroscience may know the reason why. One of my favorite scents is the aroma of a fine single-malt scotch. That shit is aromatherapy for me. If I'm stressed, all I have to do is open a bottle and take a whiff. But, you know, since the bottle is open anyway, and the glass is right there in front of me, well, I might as well experience the taste as well. My sense of balance is a small price to pay for the delight of scent and flavor. When you see, hear, touch, or taste something, that sensory information first heads to the thalamus, which acts as your brain's relay station. The thalamus then sends that information to the relevant brain areas, including the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory, and the amygdala, which does the emotional processing. But with smells, it's different. Scents bypass the thalamus and go straight to the brain's smell center, known as the olfactory bulb. The olfactory bulb is directly connected to the amygdala and hippocampus, which might explain why the smell of something can so immediately trigger a detailed memory or even intense emotion. Scotch, of course, wasn't a big part of my childhood. No, I don't come from a family of drunks; I got that way all on my own. There are certain odors that do trigger memories of being a kid. Like the smell of bullshit. No, really, literal bullshit; I grew upspent my childhood on a farm, and while we didn't have cattle, a neighboring farm did. Still, I can't say that's a happy memory. One of the first things you learn as a kid on a farm is that if there is one single creature with even less of a sense of humor than a principal, it's a bull. Oh, sure, they look all placid and ruminatory, but if you even look at one of them sideways, they impart important lessons about pain. But hay. No, really, I mean hay, as in dried grass or clover. Slightly musty, a bit sharp, and somewhat sad because it's dead -- and yet promising, because it exists to keep horses alive. And bulls, but offering hay to a mad bull doesn't work the way you might think it would. Yes, the fine scent of hay will inevitably remind me of my childhood in fields of alfalfa. And those are mostly pleasant memories. Freshly mowed grass comes close, but it's not really the same thing; that odor is more suburban and rigid. I can't say I miss being on a farm. Turns out I'm allergic to work, and farms are the Platonic ideal of "work." But I do have some few fond memories of it, which I generally recall if I'm driving through the countryside in the summer or fall with the window open. |
| PROMPT May 1st Write about one (or more) of your creative idols. Who do you look up to? Whose work are you most inspired by? Why? Michelangelo once said, "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." Some people, like that famous Ninja Turtleartist, just have the talent. Almost anyone can learn the mechanics of art, but the essence of it is more... ineffable. Sometimes it seems like a superpower, or something supernatural is involved, but I believe in neither of those supers; I just think true artists have something that is missing or stunted in the rest of us. So it is with this guy I know named Dave. Dave is the brewmaster at a local brewpub. I can generally take or leave art; dance doesn't do anything for me; music can move me, but I can't say I fully understand it. What I do understand, though, is beer. It's art in liquid form; at its best, it's sublime and subtle, a whole that is far more than the sum of its parts. As with other kinds of art, almost anyone can learn the mechanics of brewing. I've never bothered, myself; as I have no talent whatsoever in any other art form, it would just be a waste of my time to try when there's so much great beer out there made by people who do have talent. But just as Michelangelo saw the angel when everyone else just saw a block of rock, Dave has the superpower of being able to take different basic ingredients of beer and just know what the final result will be like. Which is not to say that everything he does deserves to adorn the Sistine Chapel, or whatever the beer equivalent of that is. He's made some... questionable... brews. I tried one just the other day, a beer brewed with hemp. Hemp is a botanical cousin of hops, so you'd think, well, maybe the two can be interchangeable? But you'd think wrong. My first experience with hemp beer was at a brewpub I stopped by in West Virginia, not far from the Mothman statue (which, incidentally, would probably make Michelangelo groan in his grave). As is my usual practice, I got a flight of samples of several of their beers, including the hemp one. Most of the beers were okay. The hemp beer tasted like the Mothman himself had pissed it out after a particularly busy night of scaring the shit out of the locals.I looked around and saw all the hipsters gathered at the various tables (this was, of course, in the Before Time); they were pouring that foul swill into their beards and nodding like this was the Second Coming of Beer Jesus. The one place in the world where I feel like I actually fit in is at brewpubs, but even then, sometimes that culture eludes me. Anyway, so Dave made a hemp beer. After the Mothman pee incident, I was understandably reluctant to order an entire pint of the stuff; fortunately, you can usually get minuscule samples at brewpubs, just to check whether you like it or not. It's a Bad Idea to take advantage of this practice by requesting samples of everything on the menu; if you're going to do something like that, fucking shell out the few bucks for a flight. Don't be That Guy. I sampled Dave's hemp beer and... well, it wasn't terrible. Which, given my previous experience with that particular style, is high praise. I'd never buy a pint of it, though, and since there weren't too many other people around, I couldn't tell if the local hipsters had decided that the idea of putting the plant from which cannabis springs into beer was the Best Idea Ever. I hope not. This is actual Virginia, where we don't usually marry our siblings. Point being that even the few styles of beer that I generally avoid can't help but be touched by Dave's magic. One of these days I might even work up the courage to try his non-alcoholic beer. Maybe. Probably not. But I'm sure it's a fine example of that useless style. As for the other questions, well, one of the many, many joys of getting old is that, as time goes on, there are fewer and fewer people to look up to. You get to watch your heroes die off, one by one; and the ones that are left, you realize are just people after all; people with talent, maybe, but otherwise just as flawed as the rest of us. So I don't idolize people. I respect their work, if appropriate, but I don't worship celebrities. I'd have to say that, when it comes to writing, nothing has inspired me more than the work of Leonard Cohen, which, as I've noted before, I encountered first in poems before I found out he was also a songsmith. But even there, I soon found that my writing tone was going to have to be far less depressing (I mean, whose isn't? Apart from Morrissey) and that I'm more drawn to humor than to existential angst. But hey, sometimes existential angst can be funny. I mean, I still have this image in my head of the Mothman pissing out some sort of beer analogue that made it into the Point Pleasant brewpubs. And that's comedy. |
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