Blogger Killed the Journal Writer?

For some reason today was the day that I suddenly had a moment of hand-written journal crisis. Meaning that I began to seriously consider making the switch to an electronic journal. Maybe just in a Word Document on my laptop, or something similar. I am currently on volume XI of my old-fashioned, pen-and-ink, love-affair with my own life, and I am starting to get a little frustrated with the medium. It is pretty much the only thing that I hand-write anymore, and I am becoming increasingly aware of how much slower things come out when using just one hand and a pen.

At work I occasionally do transcriptions of 19th century journals, and I am constantly frustrated by one journal writer in particular who is fairly esoteric (he himself being the only initiated) in his handwriting. I then look at my own journal and realize that I am not really one to be calling the kettle its proverbial dark color. Granted, it is likely that not even my children or grandchildren will read more than a page or two of my journal--if that. Still, on the off-chance that they do I would like it to be legible, but since it is the only thing I hand write these days my penmanship is going the way of certain 19th century journals writers that I complain about.

I can see some disadvantages as well though. I think I will have to come back to this dilemma.

Church Dance

My wife and I went to a church dance tonight, and we even brought our children because it was a "family" dance. For the first hour or so everybody stayed glued to the tables and finger food lines, and not a soul was dancing. There was some palpable awkwardness in the air to the point that I was reminded all too well of junior high. Well, it reminded me of the stereotype of junior high, not of my actual junior high because the dance floor was never empty at my junior high, though there was plenty of awkwardness back then as well. .

This church dance was also different from my junior high dances because when people finally did start dancing there was no bumping and grinding, or "freaking" as we used to call it. Wow, I feel old when I say things like "as we used to call it." Yes, in terms of dirty dancing, my junior high dances resembled the Viper Room--though probably not quite as many drugs, but close. I swear the school spend its entire budget on the DJ and the electricity used by his light show, etc...I was also always a little deaf for several hours afterwards.

With what went on you wouldn't have thought that we had chaperons, but we did. Sure, they were usually huddled in the the corners in the fetal position, but they were there, and they sure didn't stop the near copulation set to music. I'm sure that I had some sense of the inappropriateness of 13-year-olds trying to become one flesh with clothes on, but it was certainly difficult to avoid if you didn't want to sit on the bleachers. I would be dancing in a small circle with a group of friends, none of us actually touching, when all of a sudden there was some girl I had never seen before somehow attached to me at the leg or hip. Ah, those awkward adolescent moments.

I'm happy to say that there were no jiggy leeches at this church dance. Once all of us married folk loosened up with a nice, classic Limbo-rock things went pretty smoothly from there. It was obvious that a lot of us hadn't danced in a while, but thankfully we stopped caring how we looked after a few songs. And, hey, we got to take home some vegetables--always a sign of victory in my book.

Lock and Load.

Whenever I try to staple together a few papers with an empty stapler I must own that I get a little miffed. But then I remember that what this means is that I get to load it. Now, I'm not sure what it is, but I really do like loading staplers. There is something about that subtle metallic clicking when things get put into place that relaxes me, and at the same time makes me feel powerful. Maybe it is just the ten-year-old boy in me, but I feel a little like I am loading a gun, and I like it. There is something relaxing about loading a gun--I really probably shouldn't say this online. Now, I should say that I am a little left-leaning in most of my politics, but as far as guns go...well, I like guns. I grew up in a family that enjoyed going to the mountains a couple of times a year to shoot. For further clarification, we don't hunt, and I am really not interested in it, but we like to shoot at bottles, cans, paper plates etc...I'm not interested in creating blood when I shoot--unless of course there were a mountain lion or a rapist charging my family or myself. I actually only own one gun, and it is a WWII Russian, bolt-action, riffle. The bullets are so darn expensive that I have actually only fired my gun 15 times, and at the present time I only have one bullet. So, its not like I am going to be taking down any mountain lions or rapists with it--that would be unpractical, and I really hope to never encounter either. I just take a little pleasure in loading things.

Yes, He's Human

I went to the career fair earlier this week and there were mostly businesses there this time. Okay, actually I think that there are always mostly businesses there, but I never talk to them. I don't think that I would enjoy working for most businesses, which really limits my pool of potential jobs, but that is another story. What I was struck by at this "business" fair, was that people with finance backgrounds look just like anybody else.

I don't know exactly why I was so shocked, but there were people in front of me talking about their backgrounds in finance and marketing, and they looked so completely normal. I mean, it struck me that I could have been giving that spiel--in a strange, nightmarish, parallel universe of course, but still...they were human.

I don't know why, but I always expect finance people to look a little robotic--you know, like androids or something. But I am here to tell the rest of you people who have been completely insulated by the Humanities for the past few years like I have, that They (at least by all appearances) seem to be full-fledged members of the human race--not just humanoid creatures as I had supposed.

And then today, in the New York Times, I saw a picture of Ben S. Bernake, the man just voted in for his second term as the Fed chief. This is a major panjandrum of finance and he looks...well...almost cuddly. He looks like a guy who might read Charles Dickens to you, and all of the other kiddies, by the fire. You certainly wouldn't know to look at him that he has numbers flowing throw his veins.

Well, just another day that confirms the suspicions of my ignorance. I guess a person's a person, no matter how financial.

Broad Roads

I have got to learn the art of the short post, or I will continue to let months go by without writing anything. I keep thinking of little ideas here and there, but I am never in a position to write them down. Also, I find myself constrained by my own artificial constraints. This is unfortunate. I feel obligated to write about the etymology of words only. THIS IS A BLOG, for crying out loud, and no one is really reading it, so why the *&%$ do I care about constraints?
I had meant for there to be a double meaning in this blog's title: not only would it be the etymology (history and origins and linguistic stuff) of words, but also my life. And if I write anything, it should fall under that category. But again, I am bound by my own unintentional rules. I tried to give myself a broad road, and frankly I like broad roads, at least I think that I do. I don't know, the fact that I tend to create new rules for myself, in addition to all of the rules I am already living by would suggest that broad roads aren't my thing.
Broad roads are great: I can breathe on broad roads, but I also find breathing constricted without rules. Paradoxical? Yes. So, I guess I need more balance. I think I need to break a few more rules. Not laws or anything (this bit of clarification in here is especially for any future employers who might be reading this) but definitely some of my self-imposed rules. I think that I should down right rebel against some of my arbitrary rules.
I want to stop thinking about writing for an audience for a couple of reasons. For one thing, there are only about three to five people who might read my blog anyway (my wife hasn't even read my last five entries), and as much as I would like to entertain them, if I go into it with that attitude I will probably do stupid things, or just not write very often. Secondly, I need to place to experiment, to babble etc. In other words, I need to combat my paranoia about being read certain ways, or being read period.

Moustache Movement Update

Just an update on the Moustache Movement. I did some online research only to find out that I did not discover what was going on. I am relatively late in studying the scope and timeline of this phenomenon. I'm still quite fuzzy (no pun intended) on the foundations--maybe that is something that we won't be able to see for years to come, but I think that I have discovered the flash point. Brad Pitt grew a moustache in 2008, reputedly for his film Inglorious Bastards, but he wore it proudly off set, even out to Hollywood social events.

And let's face it, Brad Pitt is like the Queen of England. Not so much Elizabeth II, but Elizabeth I. If any of you have taken a college Shakespeare class you probably know that the Queen was the trend setter in terms of fashion. Men's and women's fashion changed in "Elizabethan England" depending on what the Queen wore. Who knows, maybe someday historians will call our time Pittian America. Okay, so that's going a little too far, but seriously, Brad Pitt is a force to be reckoned with.

Okay, so the moustache has had no credibility for over a decade, and during that time you risked looking like a pedophile to wear one. But put one on Brad Pitt, the man who consistently wins "Sexiest Man Alive" (and is a family man to boot)and some of that pedophile exoskeleton begins to be chipped away.
So what happened after that? That's right, George Clooney--bosom pal of Mr. Pitt and another Sexiest Man Alive emeritus grows one. When you have that kind of credibility behind a moustache people are going to start questioning those negative assumptions that they had. Since the Pitt-stache, Mel Gibson, Matt Damon, Orlando Bloom, and Jude Law have been caught with Moustaches. I predict that once the entire cast of Ocean's 11 (including Julia Roberts) has had one, moustaches will be fully embraced by American society.

There is still an element of humour behind this movement. I still maintain that no one is wearing one in the same spirit that they would wear Prada, though it certainly is a statement either way. Wearing a moustache is also a sign of supreme confidence. You have to be very secure in yourself, and your appeal, to disregard the usual connotations. But now people can say, even if it is only subconsciously,"Well, Brad Pitt had one; why not?"

I typed in "moustache comeback" into Google, and there is no end to people with pictures of themselves who are bravely "reclaiming the moustache." This grassroots movement smacks of freedom and is marked by bold self-expression. Again, I find myself being seduced by the message. I have been appalled in the past by the negative connotations that have unfairly been attached to lip-hair, and it is high time we stopped discriminating against and porn-profiling those who choose to have a push-broom on their face.

A day late and a dollar short: Movember

Okay, I know that November was so yesterday, but I have been wanting to post about Movember all month. Yeah, that's right--Moustache November baby.

During the second half of November I couldn't help noticing that mustaches were on the rise, growing, perhaps, to epidemic proportions. Could it be that mustaches are making a comeback? Something must be horribly wrong, I thought. I have been having flashbacks to the 70s, even though I never lived in that decade, and my fear of being mugged or molested has increased. Come on, mustaches have very few positive connotations these days. I must admit, though, in all honesty that I think it is very sad that they have come to be associated with pedophiles--I think that is pretty unfair. But I am a product of the aesthetics of my time in that I only know about 10 people who look good in a mustache. I should mention here that my father is one of those people, and he's one of the least creepy people on the planet. He just looks like a Tom Selleck throw-back from the seventies--harmless.

So, despite the fact that a well trimmed beard or goat-tee looks infinitely more respectable these days than a stash, my university's grooming standards only allow facial hair on the upper lip. Unless you are a woman, of course, in which case you could look like Karl Marx if you could grow it. Perhaps the University knew that only those men who didn't care about getting dates, and didn't mind frightening small children, would grow one. Perhaps this was the master plan to achieve bare faces across campus. Anyway, so when I started seeing all of these moustaches last month I thought it evidence of an organized, underground, cabal--bent on reclaiming at least a modicum of facial freedom. There is even a prominent work of art on campus, that appeared in early November, of a large metal-tubed moustache that is apparently filled with kerosene because at night it becomes a flaming stash. It's even in the style of the 19th century saloon keeper moustache--you know, it perks up at the ends, like an extra, hairy smile. Well, the work is entitled, "Self-Portrait" and I have seen the artist--who looks like he must be the leader of the underground movement.

Then I heard of no-shave November and figured that growing a stash is the only thing that BYU students can do, so no surprise there. Though it is definitely more prominent this year than ever. Well, then I stumbled upon Movember in the urban dictionary. People grow moustaches in November and then compare them at the end to see who grew the best one. What a fabulous fad--or is it only a fad? I am going to keep my eyes open today to see if they begin to disappear. I'm going to make a prediction, however, that Moustaches will make a brief comeback in the next few years.

First, they have to get past the ridiculousness that moustaches seem to invoke right now. Moustaches have to be brought back into fashion through a joke. There's no feeling on campus that people are growing moustaches because they seriously think that they look good. There's really something tongue and cheek about it, with a bit of a wink, wink in every moustache that I see. It's a bold, slightly subversive, expression of whimsy and I think I like it. I am tempted to be part of this group myself, but now I fear it is too late. If I grow one now I will be that guy who is still making April fools jokes on April 2nd. So, I'm going to keep watching faces to see if the lip hair trend continues. Time will tell whether this was just a Movember thing or if there really is an underground coterie that will accept me into its ranks.

P.S. Notice the two different accepted spellings of moustache/mustache--nifty.