Baby Name Research.

I just had another one of those moments where the world made me sad.

I was just on a baby name website (for research, honestly...). I had scrolled down the page when I heard some annoying music and some American voices. Immediately struck with fear and suspicion, I scrolled hastily to the top of the page. What I found there horrified me - there was a banner ad to the right of the page with an automatically playing video. "Urgh," thought I, "even if I was looking for a 'more reliable pregnancy test,' an automatically playing banner ad with sound would immediately put me off! Why even would they bother?"

I then thought about where I was. I was on a baby name website. A website for folks who find it hard to name their child without help from internet. That ad probably gets so much traffic. All of the traffic.

:-(

Sam D Grover

Blogging Commitment Part Three

Christmas blog
 Christmas blog
  The terrible Christmas blog
 Oh what crap
  It is I write
    Every single year


Sam D Grover  

(To the tune of Jingle Bells)

Jebus

There is a religion whose very existence risks the well-being of many people on this planet. This religion holds sway over many of the most wealthy and powerful individuals in the world, and drives many of their most impacting decisions. This religion is racist, prejudiced, and brazenly hypocritical. This religion removes the worth of the individual, replacing it with guilt and dogma.
This religion is what I like to call "Jebusism" (/ˈdʒi:bəs.ɪz.əm/).
This religion, like many faiths, was named by an outsider: "Christians" were named thus by the Roman citizens of Antioch; Muslims were known for centuries by Europeans as "Mohammedans." Jeebusism was named by Homer Simpson, inadvertently. Jebusism bares many similarities to Christianity, though with most of Jesus' teachings ignored.
Rather unusually for a religion, it shares its holy text with another faith - this is unlike Christianity and Judaism, in that while Christians see the Jewish writ as sacred, Jews see the Christian "New Testament" as the writings of a few 1st Century heretics. With Christianity and Jebusism, however, the two share the same holy book in its entirety - Jebusism, however, mostly employs an archaic version of this book, one crudely translated into 17th Century English. Jebusismists refer to this version (which, to be fair, is a fine piece of poetic literature) as the true accurate version, with some even claiming that the highly popular (among Christians) New International Version (or "New Inaccurate Version" as some Jebusismists call it) is an evil book, or perhaps a test sent by their deity, Jebus.
Ah, Jebus. A dark God like the world has never seen. According to the priests of Jebusism, Jebus hates gays, believing that they should all be killed. Jebus hates foreigners, especially Arabs, but also looks unfavorably on Blacks, Mexicans, and Koreans. Jebus loathes Communists, particularly because of their desire to elevate the poor (whom Jebus also hates). Jebus almost certainly hates you. Jebus will one day take up all his loyal followers into the sky, and burn the hippies, public homosexuals, Catholics, and those who only went to church one week out of every four in an eternal lake of fire. He will enjoy doing this.
Jebusism started in Europe, with its first great manifestation being the Crusades. Later, the Spanish Inquisition can be seen as the point at which Jebusismists turned against Christianity. "Bloody" Mary I of England was almost certainly a Jebusismist. True modern Jebusism, however, can be found centered in the southern United States, specifically in the region known as the "Bible Belt" (see below).

The "Bible Belt", the main catchment area for Jebusism






Sam D Grover

Stuffed Orangutangs & Rearranged Joshua Trees

We got a kitten about 6 weeks ago (more or less). Shortly after we got her, I discovered that if you make a scratching noise on a worktop, sofa, table, carpet etc. she'll come running, looking for mice or sparrows or iguanas or something.
Yesterday, I found an old stuffed orangutang (not taxidermy, a toy). I started t̶e̶a̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ t̶a̶u̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶  playing with her using the artificial ape, in the hopes that she'd go for it. She did! Success. (By the way, she just knocked my coffee dregs onto the carpet while trying to kill the toy. Backfire.) Later on, I made a scratching noise on the sofa behind the orangutang a few times. I think, though I may be wrong, that she now associates the weeks of mysterious scratching with this orangutang that is rapidly becoming her nemesis.
I'm curious as to where this association will end up - if she hears a scratching in the future and it turns out to be a mouse, will she be disappointed by the lack of ape? ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

_________

Something's been annoying me for a while now. This irritation has been taking something I really rather love and tainting it. This annoyance is now here finally being adressed.

The running order of U2's brilliant album The Joshua Tree is absolutely appalling.
The way the band came to the order that we're familiar with was also appalling: they were stuck and gave it to a friend and just went with what the friend decided.
The method the friend used was appalling: they put the songs in order from most to least favourite.

Enough judging; onto solutions.^TM

OK so basically I was listening to Joshua Tree last night, and started with Bullet the Blue Sky for some mad reason. Hearing this song straight off the bat without my ears being first tempered by Streets, ISHFWILF, and With or Without You was amazing. As the album went on, I was astonished by how differently I was hearing the tracks having skipped the first three on the album. This reminded me of my running order annoyance, and I decided to get on the case.
My problem with the running order does mostly come from the first three tracks. These songs are all clearly single material, with a similar sound. It's never really made much sense to me at all that these three songs a) opened the album and b) were all lumped together. The current order, with these big songs all at the front, makes perfect sense for a concert set list, but I don't really like it as in an album.
OK enough blathering; here's my alternative thingummy. Forgive my arrogance.

1. Bullet the Blue Sky
2. Exit
3. Running to Stand Still
4. Red Hill Mining Town
5. With or Without You
6. Mothers of the Disappeared
7. In God's Country
8. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
9. One Tree Hill
10. Trip Through Your Wires
11. Where The Streets Have No Name

I really like the Bullet/Exit 1-2 opener. Rather than opening the album on a longing note, it opens on an angry one - I think albums should open with their crossest, biggest, silliest songs. The raw pity and sense of loss in Running is I think more effective following both these cross songs, as opposed to the already raw With or Without You followed by Bullet. That former track, however, makes a great paring with Mothers, which, with its gentle open and busy finish, serves as a stylistic bridge between With/Without and In God's Country. I put ISHF, Tree, and Wires together because of the gospel/blues flavour that they share (as an aside, I think that Tree would be very interesting as a partial instrumental - no lyrics until the final chorus and what follows it).
Streets is an interesting track, as, with the long opening synth, it can only really work as an album opener or closer - the slow intro would be a weird break mid-album. Even though I put it last out of necessity, Edge's jangly guitars do make for a great end to the album, and bookending the album with anger and optimism is quite effective, I think.

Try it! Listen to the album in that order, then thank or lambast me accordingly.

_________

Oh bugger, I arrogantly pretentious'd all over my blog again. At least the kitteh nonsense salvages it a bit. I think?


Sam D Grover

Stories & Lies

I think the key to being a good writer is to be a good liar. All stories are lies, some more convincing than others. 


The key to a good lie is balance.
    
     When telling a lie, detail is crucial - if your lie is vague and insubstantial, no-one will believe a word of it. Names, places, times - all of these must be established, else the lie falls apart. On the other hand, if you present a lie overburdened with detail - exact times, unimportant persons, and other minutiae - these irrelevances will sink the lie. Either the liar will come across as trying to hard, and so the spell shall be broken, or one of the multitude of facts will be contradicted or forgotten along the way, leaving a hole immediately filled with disbelief. Balance!
    
     People want the world to work a certain way. The best liars are the most effective at motivating this desire, but again there is a balance in this manipulation. If the lie is exactly what those being lied to want or expect to hear, They'll get suspicious at the way the liar's story is adhering so exactly to their expectation, at the fact that, even though this is what they wanted, it was not the lie they needed to hear for them to believe. A lie too far-removed from expectation, however, is also going to fail. The listener will meet a version of the world that contradicts with one inside their head - yes, reality does often contradict the world we hold in our heads, but not in overly dramatic way. When people in a lie act in a way that the listener believes that they do not, again suspicion is raised. Balance!

     Linked to the previous point, lies cannot be too like or unlike life. When a lie completely diverts from reality, the deception will be made obvious - if you say that a gorilla stole your car, then it's pretty clear that you're lying. Even if you're slightly more subtle, and  the lie merely departs completely from events as they were, without becoming ridiculous, the realism is lost and the absence of truth will be noted. However, a lie must never be completely devoid of the fantastic - a lie that is too close to the events as they happened will be seen as just slightly off by the listener, and so bee seen as an untruth. Balance and also balance, too.


Stories. Too much information, too many events, the reader is swamped. Too little, the story is hollow. Too run-of-the-mill, the reader is bored. Too trope-less, the reader is uneased and confused. Too removed from reality, the reader sees the fiction in the story. Too like-life and the suspension of disbelief is broken. Can you say, "balance?"

I swear I had a point in all of this, but it's now twenty-five past two in the morning and my brain is rebelling against consciousness.

Sorry I wrote this guff*

Sam D Grover

*Haha, jokes. I'm AMAZING, all I do is pure gold. No apologies, no prisoners, no surrender! 
GSF4LIFE

Pontifications 'pon not much at all

What mindless effervescence can I find to distract me from my weary boredom? A man with nothing to do at least has that – nothing. I am without a verb. When the internet fails one so used to her sordid and banal pathways, what then is a man to do? What fog-like entertainment can I find to while away a Sunday evening? Too late to engage in cinema (though were there anything to watch – !), too late to even turn thoughts upon watching a teleplay.  Music provides a distraction, yes, but when distraction is sought for distraction’s sake, what then? A man whose mind is too often involved in a passing mindlessness pursues a state of mindlessness in permanentia, and a mindless mind – what is that? A nothing; a wisp; a flit; a flash; a shell.... an effervescence...

SdG

Two Draculas

When I was younger, me and my friends would play a game called, "Monster Babies of Grandma's Closet."

In primary school, this was.  The premise behind the game was as follows: a group of babies manage to gain their way into grandma's (theirs or a general grandmother, I'm not entirely sure) closet. This closet (why closet? I blame the large amount of American telly we all watched) proceeded to transform each of us into monsters. Monster babies.

The way the game was played was as follows: each of us would stand in one of the many mysterious shapes that dotted our playground. (I'm sure that they were basketball court and football pitch markings, but at the time, I perceived them as both a mystery and a fact of life: there were shapes on the playground cement about which I had neither clue nor question). Having stood in said shape (or did we crawl in? I think we did, acting like babies), we would step out, acting like our chosen monster. We might be a vampire, and show our fangs; we might act a werewolf, and howl at an imaginary moon. We might even become an Egyptian mummy or a Frankenstein's monster, monsters for whom the respective actions were virtually indistinguishable: both walked stiffly, arms out, moaning.

I remember disagreements arising from this game, mainly in relation to two of us choosing the same monster.

Because two Draculas would be ridiculous.

Sam D Grover.