Musings

I think the reason why I can't keep this going steadily is that I take it too seriously. Instead of just posting any old thing up here and letting the words flow for the day, I end up drafting and editing the post.

I realize that's silly. This is a journal, and since I'm treating it like Julia Cameron-style Daily Pages, I should just let loose. No one reads this stuff anyway, and if anyone did so what? It's just stream of thought musings and I wouldn't mind showing anyone the notebooks that I filled up longhand in the exercise.

So, the battle cry from now on is "be like Neil" and don't overthink it.

Who Owns Language?

This post on Miss Snark's weblog points to an interesting discussion on who gets to decide how we all write English.

I fall on the side whose argument for leaving well enough alone stems from etymology. If the English language started spelling "plateau" as platoo, or "pizza" as peetsa then how would we know that the words were stolen from other languages?

That argument aside, it would be a nightmare to retrain everyone. It would be like learning to read a whole new language that you already know. Kids who would be taught in the "new" phonetic (fonetik?) composition would be unable to read much of the English body of work.

I won't call the whole thing stupid, but there's too much of a switching cost to even consider it.

Back and Not Alone

Billy Mernit not only worships Jess, he proposes that she be The Candidate.