It seams that sum employees are hving problems with their righting. Yep the remedial english market is wirth around $3.1 billion annually.
A study by the National Commission on Writing concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.
You can read more about this interesting artifact of the email phenonemon in New York Times but beware, there are some big works, errr words.
It was cold and wet in Melbourne yesterday so The Green Man settled himself down in front of the fire to veg out on junk TV. He was confronted with a choice of football or a range of repeats on both free-to-air and cable TV. The choice fell to "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" which should be complete crap but from time to time raises above the genre to deliver some thought provoking television. Yesterday was one of those days.
As usual Buffy is occupied with the business of despatching vampires and other undesireables from Sunnydale where she lives. One of them injects her with a poison and she finds herself alternating between two quite different realities. One, of course, is the Sunnydale/vampire experience and the other is a psychiatric ward in which she is a patient. In the room with her are her mother and father and a doctor. They tell her that the Sunnydale experience is a reality she has created for herself inside her mind and that she has been locked in the ward for 6 years.
The doctor says to her
Think about it Buffy, what is more likely? That you are a superhero killing all these fantastic creatures or that you are a poor sick girl who has created this exciting imaginary world
You have to admit it is a pretty cogent argument and Buffy thinks so too. The problem is that the Sunndale/vampire reality is just so much better than the psychiatric ward reality. Which will she choose?
Before you dismiss this as a piece of nothingness, consider that this is a choice that must be made by many individuals with psychiatric disorders. They are confronted with what we like to think of as the "real reality", a place in which they are probably homeless and poverty stricken; where they are looked on with suspicion by the majority of the population. In summary their life is miserable and depressing.
Many of these people have their equivalent of the Sunnydale/vampire reality where they are happy and respected. They have friends that they have known and who have been with them for many years. It is an exciting and happy place.
We think it is important that they spend all their time in our reality, the crap one. We have medication that we give these people to prevent them from living in their alternative reality. If you were them would you take the medication? Would you choose to forego happiness because some guys in white coats said it was what you should do?
Here are Buffy's choices, which would you choose?
Buffy chooses Sunnydale and the vampires and it is hard to blame her.
For many people suffering this condition in real life this is also the choice that they take. Who could blame them either?
Ever wondered what a person making a complete fool of themselves looks like. Well wonder no longer. Here is a photo of The Green Man on day one of the National Folk Festival.
Who would have guessed that it would be so scary getting up in front of a few hundred people and reading poetry.
It was a bit of a mistake to present "Out Back Yard" (which you can find below) on the first day. I think it was one of my better poems but it was stuffed up because I was so nervous.
Not to worry, there is always next year. Perhaps it will take the poor unsuspecting fools who attended that long to recover from The Green Man's poetry from this year. Who knows, next year I may even start writing the poems more that two days before the festival.
I can be a good bush poet
I'm sure I'll make the cut
I've got a checkered shirt
And I'm working on my gut.
I'll come from South Australia
I think a farm is best
And when it comes to growing up
I'll have suffered like the rest
I write of fluffy creatures
A koala and some sheep
Hey, this stuff is easy
I can write in in my sleep
Socioeconomic norms
I'll endeavor not to flout
Oops, that word is way too big
Better chop it out
Now a serious bit
My voice is soft and low
It's sunrise in the bush
And I watch the Darling flow
And like that mighty river
All poems must have an end
I think that very shortly
There's a few less I'll call friend
This poem has an end
And I'm getting there at last
Hey, make a path down there
I may need to get out fast
Bush Poetry is fairy floss
It is very light weight art
Even if it is being read
By a deep voiced chubby fart
So enjoy your bush poetry
But read some good stuff too
And now there's only one word left to say
Ah yes, It's kangaroo.
Like so many had before them
By sea they smuggled in
little food in the container
half starved but still alive
When illegal and unwanted
They arrived upon our shore
The government it was paniced
It was clear it had to act
To address the rising threat
New laws they did enact
When illegal and unwanted
They arrived upon our shore
Desperation to settle
Marked their early days
The new land will accept them
Despite their foreign ways.
When illegal and unwanted
They arrived upon our shore
The government moved swiftly
The public on its side
The media it was utilised
To keep the anger high
Report any sightings
That was what we’re told
To prevent this new invasion
From ever taking hold
Now they have arrived
Illegal and unwanted on our shore
The message it was simple
We can not accept their presence
Through townships and through country
We must stop the fire ant menace.
Don’t speak to me of being tough
I bought that line through the years
I toughed it out despite my growing fears
Don’t speak to me of being cheery
Optimism is not the answer
When you gut is full of cancer
Don’t speak to me of being brave
I’ve been brave since school
I bought that stupid myth, now I feel a fool
Don’t speak to me of manhood
I lie here, living and decaying
I will not hear a word that you are saying
When I said I felt strange inside
She’ll be right is all you said
You thought that it was in my head
When I started to loose weight
When I began to sweat and shiver
You laughed that I had stuffed by liver
When I started shitting blood
You told me it would all work out
And told me that it was time to shout
Now you talk of our good times
As if they somehow even up the score
Really, they just don’t matter any more.
Now you have a job to do
My son will need a caring man to show him how its done
To live a life that is rich and full of fun.
When my son is 9 and crying from a fall
Don’t tell him to take it like a man
Hug him and support him in everyway you can
When my son is 15 and going to a dance
Don’t make him feel a failure if he doesn’t score
Tell that his time will come for this and so much more
When my son is 18 and finally has a car
Don’t encourage him to get pissed behind the wheel
Teach him to care. To love. To feel
Australian men are vulnerable just like all the rest
If you think that toughness means an Aussie bloke
I’ve news for you. It is just a sad malicious joke.
If you are an Aussie man here’s the message in this poem
Regardless of what you’re told, none of us are tough
If you can’t describe your GPs décor, you haven’t gone enough.
Dreams were of the great outback
Astride a horse on a distant track
With dust and Spinifex under hoof
The Milky Way was your nightly roof
Such were the dreams of Australian boys
Before the coming of hi-tech toys
They are men today and wear their ties
Cocooned in buildings safe from flies
They have a debt and are working hard
Today they dream of the Out Backyard
The horse and saddle have given way
To ride-on mower from extra pay
The dusty track is ten yards in length
And runs past shrubs to the paling fence
The outback bore with native fauna
Is now the pond in the right back corner
Some in latter years, in car with caravan behind
Pursue the dream, with failing eyes and failing mind
For the rest, whose lives were hard
Contentment is the Out Back Yard.
Birds of a feather do, in fact, flock together and few do it with greater determination than penguins.
Few that is except for Australian females, known in the vernacular as "birds". The challenge of any young testosterone filled male, when entering a social situation, is to try and separate one from the pack. Initially, of course, new participants spend time identifying the most appealing specimen and commence the game of manouvering her away from her group of friends. Many hours can be fruitlessly frittered away in this futile endeavour. More experienced males, on the other hand, have learnt through bitter experience that fortune fancies the less fussy and focus their attention on any bird who drifts away from the collective security of the flock.
The first step is to envagel your way into this exclusively female group and pretend you are interested in the outcome of the prevous nights episode of Australian Idol or whether Tom and Nicole could ever get back together again. Next, and this is the really tricky part, is to move the topic of conversation onto something that the object of your desire finds interesting but the rest of her friends do not. Thereby making an opportunity for you to move yourself and said female away from the group. Usually your exploits at the pub last Saturday night and the ensuing vomit will not achieve this objective. It takes many years for men to appreciate that women cannot understand the masculine pride that accompanies such an event.
For those who are not battle weary males, who have endured far too many social disasters to find the pathetic exploits of their conterparts amusing, hours of enjoyment can be derived from watching lanky and selfconscious adolescents attempting to not only understand but also pretend that they are interested in the topics that occur withing the female domains at a party, typically the kitchen and lounge room.
There are always the male domains of the area surrounding the BBQ and the rumpus room to which a young buck can retreat to lick his wounds after being savaged by a group of females. Here he can return to discussions in which he is completely relaxed, of the footy and exploits at the pub.
All is not bleak however. As the night progresses bordom and alcohol set in amongst the females of the group. At last the simple minded exploits of their male equivalents start to sound, well not interesting, but mildly amusing anyway. They breach the male domains. Older men, making futile attempts to suck in their beer guts, make way for them to enter the group. A collective "If only I was 20 years younger" thought ripples through the middle age contingent. They are the only ones there, waiting for their wives, the younger ones have given up and gone to the pub.
Forget the Blog, The Green Man wont be posting much for a little while, he will be off writing a childrens story that Disney can buy for $1 million (and I am presuming that is US$)
Clive Woodall 47-year-old supermarket manager in Hitchin, Hertfordshire is showing the way. Having signed just such a deal for a childrens story entitled One for Sorrow, after the first line of an ancient children's skipping rhyme. One for Sorrow is about a lone robin who is given the apparently impossible task of saving a world called Birddom from evil magpies.
He drew his inspiration from the aggressive nature of the magpies that he observed each driving to work.
Good on ya Clive, it gives us all hope.
Structured play, in the form of playgroups, is all the rage these days. Young mothers can be observed with their designer prams, taking their offspring to have their lives enriched by engaging in constructive activities that have made numerous child psychologists wealthy from the proceeds of books about the subject. Whilst the children engage in activities that allegedly teach social skills, improved cognitive ability and creativity the mothers can drink coffee and socialise amongst one another.
Isn’t it great to have your obligations to the creative development of your child so conveniently catered for? No need for any nasty unstructured mess around your model house. Cute finger paintings and crayon drawings can be restricted to the ten square feet of whiteness that is the fridge door.
These women are achieving exactly what society expects of them. They are raising sons who will have to fit into the rigid world of industry and daughters whose time will be taken up taking the children to structured playgroups, socialising with other mothers whilst maintaining the house in a tidy and germ free state. These future adults will have their time for their minor creative endeavours carefully regulated by society and they wont care.
Heaven forbid that you inadvertently raise an artist! Imagine arriving at the home of your adult child to find it in chaos, children on the rampage, exploring, learning what they want to instead of what they are told to, creating, and having fun. All this whilst their parents are engaged in having fun themselves. Not only are they poor but they don’t care.
Obviously they are being irresponsible. How will they afford the world cruise when they age? Think of what they are missing out on, the opportunity of seeing the world in a luxury version of a troop ship. Herded from one carefully sanitised parody of some local culture to another. If they travel at all they will be forced to actually associate with the locals and take the trouble to conform to the social mores of the community in which they find themselves.
I hear you thinking “Society would collapse if everyone behaved like that” but, of course, they wont. There are too many young mothers training the future fodder for the factory and the home as we speak. You however can give you child the most rare and precious gift that you have to offer. The ability, when they approach a fork in the road, to choose to take the path less travelled. You give them this gift by showing them the way. Be brave. Stop pretending that you are happy. Stop trying to be what society expects you to be. Follow your dream and to hell with the consequences.
Deep inside a mountain in a cave that had been their winter home for generations this small family group was drawing protection from the thousands of tons of rocks that encased them. As the environment outside plunged into a bitter winter they sealed, as best they could, the entrance to the cave and drew on the essential warmth that was stored in the heart of the mountain. Living off stores of dried meat and grain that were collected during the warmer months they were challenged with the task of passing the long dark months of winter. Some time was spent on practical tasks of course but much time was left to devote to art of story telling.
Skip forward several tens of thousands of years and the situation has not changed that much. The accommodation has improved so that now there are constructed dwellings that, for warmth, domesticated animals share with their human masters. The tradition of story telling remains essentially the same. Long nights are passed with the elder members of the group passing on the oral history of their community to the younger members of the group. The stories told had a number of roles, entertainment of course but also education, development of imagination and the passing of cohesive information about the group. Stories convey modes of acceptable behaviour and social mores to the younger members of the group. In this safe environment they had the opportunity to consider how they would handle themselves if they found themselves in the situation in the story.
A mere century or two later and the whole situation had changed. Story telling had been taken out of the context of the dwelling, indeed it had been taken out of the context of the local community as a whole. It is substantially removed even from our own culture. We vest the responsibility for story telling in large American conglomerates whose responsibility is primarily to their shareholders. If you wish to take the view that story telling has no greater purpose than entertainment then you may view this as an essentially harmless eventuality. If on the other hand you take story telling as a crucial vehicle through which children and adolescents establish and role-play their approach to dealing with others in their community then possibly there is room for some concern. Movies promote a monoculture, the colourful kaleidoscope that was world culture is being homogenised into a sort of muddy brown version of American culture.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the movies; I am one of those people who doesn’t pick up the small inconsistencies. I can easily suspend disbelief and become engrossed in the story. In spite of this I fear that the richness of childhood fantasy has been fundamentally eroded. That children’s ability to embrace the spoken word and to use their imaginations to fill in the pictures is only a shadow of what it was. But most of all I fear that our children’s ideals and ambitions are those that a group of corporate executives in Hollywood deem to be the most fiscally appropriate.
If you have a child or adolescent ask them to tell you a story and, most importantly, tell them some of yours.
It is a glorious spring morning and you are strolling carefree across a meadow. A zephyr plays tricks with the seed laden heads of the grasses. As the grasses wave they reveal a myriad of tiny multicoloured wild flowers that are blooming below. You lie down and are embraced by the grass and amidst the flowers, accepted by a benevolent nature.
Although you are completely hidden by the tall grass, the slope on the meadow means that you can still see the rural vista spread out before you. It is a living version of a Constable painting of the old English rural countryside. There is small river winding its leisurely way through the slightly undulating paddocks and a small farmlet, which is far enough away that the grimy details of farm life are invisible and the romantic ideal remains.
A large eagle rides a thermal current, it’s wings stationary as it glides in a lazy spiral ever vigilant for an inattentive rodent with which to feed its …. ring ring ….. ring ring – damn I forgot to switch the office phone through to message bank again. Oh well I might answer it.
“Yes I know we are late.”
“I can contact dispatch and find out the status and get back to you”
“Of course I don’t take you for an idiot”
“I promise. I will get straight onto them and ring you right back”
“Speak to you shortly”
Now where was I? Ah yes that eagle……
Such is the domination of English that, if your name means something inappropriate in English then you are destined not to be taken seriously. The quintessential example of this is the Oops tribe of Central Africa. They spoke an ancient dialect of Swahili and, as you could imagine, in their language the term has no other meaning than their identity.
You may think this is a trivial issue however, in our shrinking world, how we are perceived by the rest world has a fundamental impact on how the community is viewed, which, in turn, has an impact on the survival of the traditions and culture of the community. When we think of The Bushmen of the Kalahari we conjure up images of a happy race of hunter-gatherers living a “noble savage” type existence in the harsh, mostly arid Kalahari dessert. We see a value in their maintaining their lifestyle and traditions.
Compare this with the Oops tribe. Living in the Congo River valley, they were first encountered by Livingston on his legendary journey into darkest Africa. As they possessed no written language it left to Dr Livingston to phonetically interpret their language when writing of them. To the untrained English ear it appeared that they referred to themselves as “Oops” and, as such, that is what Livingston wrote in his journal.
Even when your name sounded noble it was a hard task to maintain some semblance of cultural integrity in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The unfortunate Oops were destined to be ridiculed and their chances of cultural survival were negligible. The last record of people identifying with the tribe was in 1936 when an anthropologist visited the area. Some older people still new the name but everyone else were identifying themselves as “Uyanzi”. It seems that being laughed at for generations had taken its toll.
Wake, shower, eat.
Commute, work, eat.
Work, commute, eat.
Sleep – Ah blessed unconsciousness.
Wake, shower, eat.
Commute, stress, eat.
Stress, commute, eat.
Sleep – Ah blessed unconsciousness.
Wake, shower, eat.
Commute, submit, eat.
Submit, commute, eat.
Sleep – Ah blessed unconsciousness.
Wake, shower, eat.
Commute, sicken, eat.
Sicken, commute, eat.
Die – Ah blessed release.
Time to start planning your Science Fiction/Fantasy reading for 2004. It is a large domain with a few gems to be found amongst the garbage, like most creative writing genres. Rather than troll through garbage to unearth the gems why not benefit from the work of others and focus on these gems from 2003. Here is the list, courtesy of Locus Online.
Ilium, Dan Simmons (Eos)
The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday)
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, Stephen King (Donald M. Grant)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books)
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood (Doubleday/Talese)
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson (Putnam)
The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger (MacAdam/Cage)
Fabaceae is a large family of trees, shrubs, vines, and herbs bearing bean pods that have a distinction that they share with "cabbaged". Their name is the longest word in the English language that can be played on a keyboard, click here to listen (not very exciting).
I am betting you are now wondering how you have lasted this long without that key fact in your lexical toolbox. Well cop this then, aegilops, at eight letters long, is the longest word whose letters are arranged in alphabetical order and spoonfeed, at nine letters long, is the longest word whose letters are arranged in reverse alphabetical order.
Phew, you are going to sound knowledgable in the office today. Those of you still attending school should be aware of the high nerdiness rating of these factoids. Use in the classroom or playground could result in being labelled a nerd.
Are you already labelled a nerd? Then there is no further danger in checking out more word oddities at Fun With Words.
Imagine "Spider, an intelligent rock drifting through space listening to and absorbing everything – especially music – and looking for a place to nest and lay his children. " This is the basic plot of Lavie Tidhar’s story Temporal Spider, Spatial Webs which won this years Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction Competition that is sponsored and organised by the European Space Agency.
Lavie has only been writing fiction for one year and and has had several stories accepted for publication in various anthologies and magazines. He also writes a regular review column for an online site and reviews short fiction magazines for a bi-monthly magazine.
To misquote Mr Olivander (of Harry Potter fame) "One thing is clear, I think we can expect great things from you Mr Tidhar"
Attention writers:
Do you waste valuable creativity on thinking up names for you characters? I know I do, here is the site for you.
http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm
Using data from the US census it generates random male and female names for characters. Try it out. It is quite handy.
(via J-Walk)
Black sarcophagus
Hides your utility
Through tiring eyes I see
The echo of your presence
Sprung sarcophagus
Releases your power
The world slips into focus
I bless your refractive elegance
© 2003
.
He had arrived at the asteroid alone. The darkness here was far more complete than anything that he had experienced on earth. He would have said that it had an oppressiveness, a malignancy but that was human nonsense. It was a merely a complete vacuum, a vacuum that was cold, dark, alien. His co-occupant of the asteroid arrived later that day.
How long did they sit huddled here together, one minute, one hour, one day? "Yes", and "No", to all of them. Days and hours and minutes marked the rotation of a distant planet that had no relevance here. They did not even know if that planet still existed.
His companion switched on a torch. Eyes at full dilation were instantly blinded by the meagre light source and attempts to shield their eyes were made ineffective by the convex face shields of their helmets.
As their eyes adjusted to the light they stood and turned to face each other, the reflecting face panels providing each man with only the distorted view of his own helmet where the other’s face should have been. Here was the greatest of all ironies. They may be the last two human beings. In fact, if the current state of the search for extra terrestrial life was to be believed, they might be the last two living things, if one excludes bacteria they were carrying and will die with them.
The last two living things and they could not see each other. They will die here together, each not knowing what the other looked like. Was this a malicious god playing his final card? That card that proved his existence by the display of his knowledge of man’s greatest need and hence his greatest weakness; the need, in the last minutes of your life, for human companionship; to be able to see a face, to feel a touch.
The light from the torch was slowly fading and their eyes dilating, it could have been because of the darkness or because of the fear. Huddling down, they clutched each other, but they could feel nothing through their suits.
I stand chastised.
Members of the blogosphere may be tolerant of, what I like to think of as, my creative spelling and grammer.
The writers group to which I belong are not so tolerant. Some have started to read the blog and they are not happy. We met last night and I was in strife. From now on the spell checker will be given a good working.
