Grammar Nazis

Every day it seems I bear witness to some new de-evolution of our language. But there is a bigger problem than the increasingly poor grammar creeping into common usage and this problem actually promotes poor grammar. Criticizing a person using poor grammar or thinking less of that person for using poor grammar is a bad idea. People make it personal. It doesn't matter from which side you view it, there is always at least a tendency to make the criticism personal or take the criticism personally. This is what must stop. This is what puts the "nazi" in "grammar nazi." There's an adage that is often repeated in management training seminars that would seem appropriate to share here: "focus on the issue, situation, or behavior, not on the person." (That seems especially good advice as we go about the business of interacting with our fellow humans no matter the endeavor.) If our intention in criticizing grammar is to see it improved, then we would be wise to keep our criticisms pure and free from such distractions.

I recall a statistic from glottochronologists stating that a living language such as ours changes about 50% every thousand years. I recognize, accept, and enjoy that our language is alive and evolving. It's been said that "the written word is the mechanism by which we know what we know." We therefore don't come to know new things either as individuals, cultures, nations, or even as a species, without changing the way we speak and write.

The universe tells us that in a closed system there is an innate tendency toward disorder in all processes. The human mind should never be considered a closed system and entropy therefore should not rule in linguistics. Rather than accept the decay of our language, we should be moving toward refinement and perfection in our communications, both written and oral, all the while realizing that perfection in language is unattainable so long as the environment in which it is written and spoken remains in flux.

So while I accept and encourage the evolution of our language by necessity, I can not accept or even tolerate our language changing due to ignorance. Ignorance is our enemy. It's been said that we live too late to explore the world, too early to explore the universe, and therefore our present frontier is the capability and capacity of the mind. So I will continue to speak out against poor grammar rooted in ignorance and I will continue to encourage critique of my own communications for all the reasons I've cited. But I will not make it personal and so long as a critique is delivered in that spirit, I will not take it personally either. I will not be a "nazi" and I will discourage that behavior in others. I will continue my attempts to advance our abilities to communicate, not diminish them, and therefore will never accept poor grammar.

Fishing for Truth

It is not that I have an aversion to fishing or even fishermen. What I have is an aversion to inflicting pain and suffering on an animal for pleasure. If tomorrow we awake to the world seen in John Milius' Red Dawn (Wolverines!) and I find myself needing to fish, hunt, or employ any traditional survival skills, I would survive. I think these are valuable skills worth learning, I'm glad I possess them, and I would certainly pass them along to my progeny.

My aversion is to "catch and release" and "trophy fishing" and fishing for "sport." My aversion is to anyone whose smile grows larger in direct proportion to the animals' fight to survive. In my experience that's most fishermen. Sure, there are those who are out there strictly, reverentially, and responsibly taking only what they need to sustain themselves or their family. This I have no problem with.

I grew up in North Carolina where fishing is a significant portion of the local culture. I can remember all the people who, as I once did, went fishing for bluegill using a beetle spinner and 2# test line. It wasn't about finding a fish to eat (not much on a bluegill), it was about the "thrill of the kill." They used 2# test line to make the catch more challenging and to enjoy the feeling of a proportionally bigger fight. The bigger the fight the animal puts up, the more stress the animal endures, the more pleasure is derived from the experience.

What I see as far more commonplace and equally tragic, especially dockside here in FL, is the conflation of catch size (either number or physical size) with self-worth, and quite often, virility. This behavior is so widely entrenched culturally that it is accepted practically without question and anyone daring speak out against it, as I am now, is inevitably labeled a "left-wing, liberal, commie, tree-hugging, socialist, wacko," who is out of touch, and even worse perhaps, "out of the mainstream."

I'm sad to say most seem to disagree that this kind of behavior is disgusting, immoral, perverted, uncivilized, aberrant, and utterly unjustifiable. But in a sense I gladly acknowledge and accept this disagreement. As J. Krishmamurthi has noted, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

D

Five Guys Walk Into A Bar

Five Guys Walk Into A Bar is the best box set I've ever owned I think.

Artist: Faces
Box Set: Five Guys Walk Into A Bar
Date: 2004
Discs: 4 w/ 58 pages of history and liner notes
Produced by: Legendary producer, Glyn Johns
Dist by: WB/Rhino

Who were Faces?
Kenney Jones - drums
Ronnie Lane - bass
Ian McLagan - organ, piano
Rod Stewart - vocals
Ron Wood - guitar

It started in 1969 when the band "Small Faces" broke up due to Steve Marriott leaving to form the band "Humble Pie" with Peter Frampton.

Then two former members of the Jeff Beck Group - Rod Stewart and Ron Wood - joined the remaining Small Faces and Faces was born.

They were only a band from 69 - 75. They all went their separate ways and we know that Rod Stewart went on to be Rod Stewart and of course Ron Wood went on to join The Rolling Stones.

They didn't have a lot of commercial success compared to the other British Invasion bands of the era. But their influence on music is still felt today. Check it out:

Jeff Tweedy of Wilco wrote:
The Faces' importance as punk-prototypes cannot be questioned; they never appeared to take anything too seriously. Cutting all potential pathos with a wink and a healthy shot of rubbing alcohol - pinky raised, no less. Like the ne'er-do-well that can't even keep a straight face while his clothes are being tossed out on the lawn. Always falling apart and having a great time at it. I love 'em and doubt seriously if we could have had a Sex Pistols much less a Replacements without them.


Slash of Guns n Roses wrote:
As far as I recall, there was not one glam, punk, or even heavy metal band in the 80's that wasn't influenced by the Faces' look and/or sound, not to mention their party attitude. The Faces had a unique style of songwriting, great hooks, great melodies, and, of course, Rod Stewart's inimitable vocals. They were Britain's ultimate good time R&R band, notto mention R&R's first hair band! Trust me, we all wanted to be The Faces.

I must say, this was a GREAT birthday present!!

D

It took me until Election Day. But I figured it out. I finally know what George Bush meant when he said, "I'm a uniter, not a divider."

The Two Party Trap

Friedrich Hayek said:
"We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis in our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected."

If you find yourself "embracing party politics," that is to say, if you label yourself as one or the other, engage in the us/them democrat/republican rhetoric, or think seriously that in the long term one is more or less injurious to the welfare of our society, you are not only missing the big picture, you are playing right into the game of the true "elite" in this country, those behind the scenes and pulling the real strings. More to the point, you are the problem with America.

Though I detest sports analogies, they can work well (providing people don't want to tangentially debate the analogy) to "dumb down" an issue to the lowest common denominator. So for the sake of only clarity and with no disparagement intended, let me suggest that the two parties need each other just like Seminoles need Gators, just like NC State needs UNC, like Ohio State needs Michigan, etc. If one of these teams disappear, then another "arch-rival" will immediately replace them.

Why? Because most people won't think critically beyond a dichotomy; they won't evaluate multiple alternatives. It's not their fault, they're just wired that way. However, I believe most of us have the ability to exceed these limitations but do not for reasons of either apathy, laziness, or a refusal to move beyond the primal urges of tribalism.

H.L. Mencken said:
"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos."

The choice of republican/democrat is, classically speaking, the horns of a dilemma, a rhetorical device that is analogous to the horns of a charging bull. It is an argument designed to put an opponent into the position of accepting either of two unpleasant choices such that accepting either is a losing proposition.

Learned and enlightened participants will realize, should they be able to rise above the aforementioned tribalism, apathy, and laziness, is that acceptance of either lemma is ultimately to find oneself "impaled" on a horn of the bull. Therefore, the only valid approach, in this case, is to step aside and reject both propositions.

Two horns on the same bull, two sides on the same coin, two alternative ways to embrace the same failed political system. Democrats want you to hate republicans. Republicans want you to hate democrats. It is through this method of codependent antagonism that their mutual survival and our perpetual disenfranchisement are assured.

Robert Higgs wrote:
"After a century of fighting a losing battle against their own governments, the American people have finally accepted that the best course open to them is simply to label their servitude as freedom and to concentrate on enjoying the creature comforts that the government still permits them to possess. They may be slaves, but they are affluent slaves, and that condition is good enough for them."


So while you are "freely" embracing one of the horns of the bull that has been purposely foisted upon you and while you are gladly accepting it as virtuous and lauding it as the solution, the path, and the way, take a look from outside the box as Goethe did.

Goethe wrote:
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."


Now ask yourself - how many different labels do you embrace for yourself? Christian/Jew? Democrat/Republican? Gator/Seminole? Why not climb out of the boxes the world has put you in and discover yourself? Why not get rid of labels and focus on ideas? Why not come up with your own ideas? The world is a discontinuous spectrum of all colors with lots of gray in between. To remain black or white is to miss the big picture. It's time to evolve beyond that kind of thinking.

Light

Humphry Davy gets no respect. Have you ever heard of him? More than 75 years before Thomas Edison filed his patent for an "Improvement in Electric Lights," numerous others, Davy being the first, had conjured photons from flowing electrons. Edison, not to diminish his achievements, simply built a better mousetrap.

We've come along way since Davy connected a battery to a thin platinum strip. More to the point, we've come a long way since Edison made a better vacuum, found a better filament, and envisioned a systemic application rather than an isolated instance of "look what I can do!" Edison's light bulb has been the standard for more than a century. Even though more efficient flourescent lighting is not much younger than incandescent lighting, still, incandescence has been the standard. Until now.

There is a movement building. At the grocery store, at the home improvement store, and especially at your local mega-retailer, we are seeing the new "compact fluorescent bulbs" (CFLs). Environmental blogs and magazines all seem to be pointing at these "new inventions," as the answer to our most common energy concern: how do we lower the cost? Never mind for a moment that evironmentally speaking CFLs are a disaster for the environment, they will lower your electric bill each month. And that's the problem. People equate a savings in their bank account with saving the planet.

You're probably wondering why I call CFLs a "disaster for the environment." Especially when we all know that they last four or five times as long as an incandescent bulb and often deliver the same light for a fraction of the electrical consumption. What is hidden, what is not seen, are the costs to the environment in producing the electronic ballasts and the increased loading of mercury to our landfills, and ultimately, our water supply. And although it may seem a minor consideration, have you looked at the packaging for a standard incandescent compared to the packaging of a CFL? We don't need a complex model to immediately discern the important differences here.

So why are CFL's gaining popularity? They do allow the user to save money on electricty today. And they're here now for a relatively inexpensive price. I just hope they're not the incandescent bulbs of the future. Fluorescent light should have been the standard but they lagged behind Edison's incandescent system by at least a decade. Today, we are seeing the emergence of this new CFL standard and unfortunately, lagging it in time, and in price, is what should be our newly embraced standard for the future:

LED

Light Emitting Diode lighting is almost here. Well, it is here. It's just not as bright as we want it for the money we have to spend. It's not that big a stretch to get a consumer to spend $5 on a light bulb instead of $1 as is the case with CFL vs. incandescent. But it's still an almost impossible leap to get someone to spend $40 on the LED when they could "feel good" about spending that $5 on the CFL.

But it is still cheaper in the long run to go with LED - if only we would embrace it as the standard now! In terms of it's potential envrironmental impact it is vastly superior to CFL. It also consumes much less energy. And it emits much less heat. And it is available in a variety of colors and configurations that will satisfy any application.

It's not my intention here to provide statistics and figures and cite reports. There are endless stats available on the internet quanitfying the efficiencies of each type of bulb. I'll leave that for you should you have an interest in discrediting or crediting my words herein. My intention here is only to say, "let's not make the same mistake again." Let's look to the future and embrace the newest technology. Let's not let CFLs become the standard for the next century when there is a far better choice already available.

Review - Blazing Guns at Roaring Gulch

“And now for something completely different.” ~ M.P.

If you only see one play this year, then please, re-prioritize your life and see three. And if you only see three plays this year, then by all means, make one of them the Titusville Playhouse’s production of Shubert Fendrich’s Blazing Guns at Roaring Gulch – Or – The Perfumed Badge.

Imagine a villain most foul, a real Snidely Whiplash, replete with the necessary accoutrements indicative of evil: black cape, top-hat, waxed and thin handlebar moustache above a slightly raised corner of the upper lip, and a leering, sneering sidelong glance at the audience as he ties his beautiful and innocent victim to the railroad tracks.

Perhaps you already may be imagining a dashing Dudley Do-Right, white teeth refulgent in the sunlight, galloping in to rescue the damsel in distress from locomotive doom just in the nick of time. Yes, Rocky and Bullwinkle taught many of us about punctilious villainy long before Mr. Burns ever tented his fingers together on The Simpsons and malevolently declared, “excellent,” in his sinister and poisonous voice.

Regardless of where we learned it, and none of us learned it in a saloon or playhouse in the 19th century, these villains and heroes have been Jungian archetypes deeply embedded in the American psyche ever since the advent of the modern melodrama. Their stories are not always told seriously for they are not serious characters, they are stereotypes, caricatures personifying elemental values of good and traits of evil. They, along with the accompaniment of an attentive and alert pianist, a “good vs. evil” plot-driven storyline, a full cast of other stock characters, and a happy ending bountiful in poetic justice, are all the key ingredients to a melodrama.

This is not a play to be dissected and evaluated like a conventional drama, comedy, or musical. Though it is comedy, it is drama, and it is musical, there is nothing conventional about it. It is melodrama. It is by it’s very nature unsophisticated, guileless, raucous, rowdy, bawdy, and filled with romance, suspense, silliness, and an absolute and unabashed deconstruction of the so-called “fourth wall” separating cast from audience. If a prop malfunctions, if a line is flubbed, this is not cause for awkwardness nor vexation, rather, it is treated as an opportunity for these skillful players to ad-lib, to embrace the accident and convert it to comedy.

Blazing Guns has no top-hats or railroad tracks, but it has everything else. And more. As I approached the Titusville Playhouse from the street, I thought that it was a nice touch to have painted the classic western-style swinging saloon doors on the outside glass of the entrance doors. Once passing through, I immediately gleaned the significance of the door decoration. I hadn’t realized but this is where the play began, at the front door.

Almost immediately, one steps back in time to 1892 and becomes transformed from observer to participant. The lobby is the jail, the ushers are cowboys and cowgirls, and saloon girls in frilly, colorful, satin dresses, are draped in boas and chasing blue jean-clad cowboys up and down the stairs. (It should be noted here just what fantastic work the costumers did in this play.)

It’s not long before a saloon girl or cowboy flirtatiously solicits you for a dance or before you find yourself in the midst of an audience sing-along. And never fear, if you don’t know the words to “Oh My Darling Clementine,” or “The Band Played On,” the words are printed in your program.

This is all just a part of the pre-show and more broadly, part of the olio that also comprises the Entr’acte entertainment. There is a butterfly-winged pixie who laments in song the perils of turning 60. There is a sexy saloon girl who elicits catcalls and whistles from the audience with her rendition of “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey.” There are fistfights, a woman singing, beautifully I might add, in a chicken suit. Even the Little Tramp makes a silent appearance. There’s so much more and still I’ve not touched on the actual play in two acts yet.

Mary Purdy as director has created something that though simple, is larger than life. Though there are many opportunities for the production to improve, overall the performances are nothing short of fantastic and the production is nothing short of hysterical. With more attention paid to timing of certain entrances and exits, such as with the cue-card girl for just a single example, and with some serious work on the choreography of the chorus line, cowboys, and saloon girls, the night could be taken from joyously grand to absolutely stupendous. Also, I felt that the selling of raffle tickets in the middle of the evening’s presentation was completely out of place and an unnecessary interruption that detracted from the performance as a whole.

But that’s not to say the evening’s performance was anything less than stellar. Every single player was in their own way memorable. Though I could easily praise each cast member individually, the cast is just too large. It would be, however, a great injustice to overlook a few of the key players who made the evening spectacular. And it’s no surprise that they are the leads.

Laughter flowed continuously from every seat in the house and this is in no small part thanks to Richard Jones and Lucas Beecham. Richard Jones as outlaw sidekick Bill Filbert created laughter at every turn. His animated delivery and mannerisms were more often than not simply side-splitting. The young Lucas Beecham as hotel clerk Barney Black, with his ridiculously comedic southern drawl and snoring shtick, delivered a performance so playfully exaggerated that it stopped just short of absurdity.


The heroes, and one villain, in this play were Melody Schilling as Sheriff Willie Lovelace (applause, please) and Jeff Ferguson in a dual role as Detective Harry Heart-throb, er, Heartstone, and also as the contemptible outlaw, Snipe Vermin (insert boos and hisses here). Ms. Schilling’s asides with the audience were beautifully executed. Not only were they funny, but her ad-libbed interactions in both speech and mid-action mannerisms provided a deeper connection between audience and cast than the aside alone could have possibly attained. And Jeff Ferguson had the same profound effect on uniting audience with cast. A master in portraying both villainous sneer and chivalrous obeisance, Mr. Ferguson was simultaneously loved and loathed. I couldn’t help but see the serious actor thinly disguised beneath all the silliness and wonder what he would do with a more traditional role.

Last, and immeasurably far from least, is Gladys Soler as Widow Black. The name is perfectly befitting of the character and needs no synonymic amplification to convey the role that Ms. Soler so vividly and expertly brought to life. She will make you laugh, she will demand your cooperation in her malevolent plotting, and she will be the one to elicit the loudest booing and perhaps even the most rejoicing cheers at one point. Though seemingly counterintuitive, you will crave her scolding and reprimands and do all you can to elicit them.

There is at least one unsung heroine in this play. One who does not take a curtain call, one who does not get any stage time whatsoever and one who will not be present to shake your hand as you exit the saloon (theater) for the night. And that is Ms. Barbara Lee, the pianist. Along with musical director Barbara McGillicuddy, they expertly implemented a soundtrack that spans a vast musical century from old-fashioned tunes like “Oh! Susanna,” and “Home on the Range,” to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” and Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.” The attention to onstage action required for a successful accompaniment can not be overstated. The music must react to and be reacted to as if it were itself a character on stage. Ms. Lee and Ms. McGillicuddy are to be commended on their success.

The roots of melodrama are far deeper than the saloons and playhouses of the 19th century American west. However, that venue is the basis of origination for Blazing Guns. Often a rowdy playhouse was full of lowbrow, drunken, philistines who were completely disrespectful of the thespian’s art. It is said that out of that environment evolved the modern melodrama with it’s exaggerated movements and audience asides. So please, when you arrive, check all modern sophistication and high-falutin’ pretenses at the door. Expect to hear your fellow audience members engaging the cast loudly. And by all means, do buy a bag of popcorn – no, not to eat, to throw at the villains!