Few can argue against the idea that the invention of the microprocessor has forever altered the evolutionary path of mankind. With the exception of fire, no other discovery has so quickly and completely inserted itself into every aspect of our existence. Computes continue to change not only how we interact with our world, but the definition of what our world consists of. Our entire concept of what a thing is has been rewritten, and is continually altered based on technology improvements. In essence, computers have completely redefined what is, and what isn’t.
In 1986 my entire music collection consisted of tapes and records, their cases/sleeves, the shelves they were stacked on, as well as the space in my bedroom where the shelves were placed. This menagerie filled a gap roughly 3’ x 4’ x 1.5’ and weighed close to 150 lbs. With each new format released, my collection shrank in weight and required space without any decrease in content. Flash forward to now. My music collection is roughly 100,000 songs from several thousand albums. The strange part is, it doesn’t really exist in any physical form. Sure there are some ones and zeroes in a mostly non-existent place, riddled with electrons that make up the data of my music collection, but for the most part, my audio library doesn’t exist in any 3 dimensional sense. It doesn’t end there, several hundred books, most of my movies, 3 boxes of recipe cards, and nearly everything in my filing cabinet have vanished into thin air as well. Not to say that I can’t access them whenever I want, rather I no longer have to lift, store, or maintain them in a real sense.
In the future who knows what else will join my media in the unreal cyberreality it exists in today. Scientists constantly use digital copies of matter, DNA, and even the basic forces that allow us to exist in the first place to run simulations, or create electronic models. Who knows? In one hundred years or so, the digital realm may reclassify what life is in the first place, just as soon as we fix that global warming thing.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Literacy Memoir (Or how I learned to love the WORD.)
There are times when I truthfully believe that no person on this planet has ever loved reading as much as I do. There is no romance novel or date movie in existence that can ever accurately portray the love affair I have with the written word. During my childhood, either through my relatives’ influence or my first schoolteachers’ prompting, both reading and writing clicked with my juvenile brain in ways few other things have. I believe at times, I am so infatuated with literature I would marry it if I could: priest, honeymoon, and everything. This writing assignment is just the self-reflective vehicle I need to take a nostalgic trip to my early literary days.
I remember in the first grade, the Bookmobile would visit my school. The teacher would shepherd the whole class into the thing, so we could each borrow a book until its next visit. During one such trip, almost as if by magic, the books containing no pictures started to appeal to me. Compared to the other first graders, this was highly abnormal, but nevertheless tolerated. At least it was, until I dug into the large cache of pulp horror novels, and started reading the works of a Mr. Stephen King. Whether it was the subject matter of those stories, or the fact that I was reading at a higher level than some adults, I was strongly encouraged to read books more appropriate for my age. This turn of events only spurred me to consume even more books, with ever-increasing numbers of pages. I thank the literary gods that my parents had the sense to empower me with my own county library card, allowing me to read to my heart’s desire.
Little did I know, much like crack cocaine or ceramic clowns, reading is an addiction. I’m sure there are important moments in time that I was completely oblivious to, my nose buried in a book. Long past my one genre days, I devoured any and all print media that came across my path. Sadly, this horrible affliction continues to this day, though I have learned to balance my ‘disease’ with the saving graces of physical activity, and terrible take-out food. Jests aside, the act of reading has probably caused as much trouble as it has kept me out of. I believe during the sixth through ninth grades, I probably would have been less of a miscreant in the eyes of my teachers, if I had simply acquired several tattoos, and a smoking habit. By High School however, my reading endeavors had been curbed immensely by the joint distractions of organized sports, and the opposite sex (in no particular order.)
Following graduation, with little career or college prospects, I was all but forced into the Military by the powers that be. Not to say that enlisting was anything but a blessing; my hometown was too small to contain my ambitions anyway. It was during my service tenure that I not only rediscovered reading, but found other like minded soldiers with whom I could discuss books. The constant “hurry-up-and-wait” pace of training and deployment leaves many idle moments to enjoy a page here or there. Should you ever find yourself without written material to enjoy, the Department of Defense was more than happy to provide some of theirs. From the moment I stepped into the recruiter’s office, till my day of discharge, I can only speculate at the forest worth of pamphlets, reports, and bulletins I’d been inundated with.
After my promotion to Sergeant, I quickly came face-to-face with another aspect of literacy, one I had somehow shammed my way through during my prior school years. Of course I can only refer to the act of writing. As a NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) I was expected to write and proofread hundreds of reviews and reports, on every aspect of my unit. I came to the sudden realization that I was not only a terrible writer, but I’d miss mistakes in reports more obvious than an 18-wheeler in an “expectant mothers only” parking space. Don’t get me wrong, any person with a pencil and half a brain could write the basic performance checks, and day to day activity reports that my branch seems to thrive on. Writing training outlines and other drafts, meant for the higher grade officers of the unit would all but leave me broken out in hives. I would literally draft something months in advance, edit it dozens of times, and stay up all night polishing it before submission, only to have it thrown back in my face for obvious punctuation errors, or clownish wording. It took me an eternity before I could whip out even a page with any sort of timeliness. I’m thankful for the volume and repetition of these reports, eventually with practice, I started getting them right.
Unfortunately, how the U.S. fighting forces writes, and how the rest of the world writes are two different things. Following my enlistment, I became a civilian contractor, hoping that my past experiences would somehow put me on a higher rung than others in the same field. I was shocked by the fact that very few “Military Support Personnel” have spent any time in the actual military. More surprising however, was the vernacular used in the writing of reports that accompanied any and every project with which I was involved. It was almost like my officemates had learned a completely different form of English than I had. Daily I would ask myself if this was truly how professionals wrote. Turns out it was. I have never felt more outclassed as my proposals were benched by better written ones time and time again. At this point, I had that gut feeling that only a proper education would get me where I thought I needed to be, writing wise.
Flash forward to today. Like many others, I’ve discovered that both the reading and writing level in this country have taken a turn for the deplorable. Who among us doesn’t receive some manner of alphabetic travesty in our e-mail inboxes daily? If the downfall of the English language is in our near future, then put me out to the pasture right now. I have no desire whatsoever to be part this trend, quite the opposite. I’m hoping that through college English courses, my writing will not only be understandable, but respected as well. Yet old apprehensions arise. Just to get to this point took me over three decades, how much longer will becoming a coherent writer take? Patience with my own shortcomings has never been a virtue I’ve held in quantity. Perhaps I’ll satisfy these questions by the time I receive my degree from whichever academic deems me capable enough to hold it without severely paper cutting myself. In the short term, I would like to know the real deal with that semicolon thing.
I remember in the first grade, the Bookmobile would visit my school. The teacher would shepherd the whole class into the thing, so we could each borrow a book until its next visit. During one such trip, almost as if by magic, the books containing no pictures started to appeal to me. Compared to the other first graders, this was highly abnormal, but nevertheless tolerated. At least it was, until I dug into the large cache of pulp horror novels, and started reading the works of a Mr. Stephen King. Whether it was the subject matter of those stories, or the fact that I was reading at a higher level than some adults, I was strongly encouraged to read books more appropriate for my age. This turn of events only spurred me to consume even more books, with ever-increasing numbers of pages. I thank the literary gods that my parents had the sense to empower me with my own county library card, allowing me to read to my heart’s desire.
Little did I know, much like crack cocaine or ceramic clowns, reading is an addiction. I’m sure there are important moments in time that I was completely oblivious to, my nose buried in a book. Long past my one genre days, I devoured any and all print media that came across my path. Sadly, this horrible affliction continues to this day, though I have learned to balance my ‘disease’ with the saving graces of physical activity, and terrible take-out food. Jests aside, the act of reading has probably caused as much trouble as it has kept me out of. I believe during the sixth through ninth grades, I probably would have been less of a miscreant in the eyes of my teachers, if I had simply acquired several tattoos, and a smoking habit. By High School however, my reading endeavors had been curbed immensely by the joint distractions of organized sports, and the opposite sex (in no particular order.)
Following graduation, with little career or college prospects, I was all but forced into the Military by the powers that be. Not to say that enlisting was anything but a blessing; my hometown was too small to contain my ambitions anyway. It was during my service tenure that I not only rediscovered reading, but found other like minded soldiers with whom I could discuss books. The constant “hurry-up-and-wait” pace of training and deployment leaves many idle moments to enjoy a page here or there. Should you ever find yourself without written material to enjoy, the Department of Defense was more than happy to provide some of theirs. From the moment I stepped into the recruiter’s office, till my day of discharge, I can only speculate at the forest worth of pamphlets, reports, and bulletins I’d been inundated with.
After my promotion to Sergeant, I quickly came face-to-face with another aspect of literacy, one I had somehow shammed my way through during my prior school years. Of course I can only refer to the act of writing. As a NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) I was expected to write and proofread hundreds of reviews and reports, on every aspect of my unit. I came to the sudden realization that I was not only a terrible writer, but I’d miss mistakes in reports more obvious than an 18-wheeler in an “expectant mothers only” parking space. Don’t get me wrong, any person with a pencil and half a brain could write the basic performance checks, and day to day activity reports that my branch seems to thrive on. Writing training outlines and other drafts, meant for the higher grade officers of the unit would all but leave me broken out in hives. I would literally draft something months in advance, edit it dozens of times, and stay up all night polishing it before submission, only to have it thrown back in my face for obvious punctuation errors, or clownish wording. It took me an eternity before I could whip out even a page with any sort of timeliness. I’m thankful for the volume and repetition of these reports, eventually with practice, I started getting them right.
Unfortunately, how the U.S. fighting forces writes, and how the rest of the world writes are two different things. Following my enlistment, I became a civilian contractor, hoping that my past experiences would somehow put me on a higher rung than others in the same field. I was shocked by the fact that very few “Military Support Personnel” have spent any time in the actual military. More surprising however, was the vernacular used in the writing of reports that accompanied any and every project with which I was involved. It was almost like my officemates had learned a completely different form of English than I had. Daily I would ask myself if this was truly how professionals wrote. Turns out it was. I have never felt more outclassed as my proposals were benched by better written ones time and time again. At this point, I had that gut feeling that only a proper education would get me where I thought I needed to be, writing wise.
Flash forward to today. Like many others, I’ve discovered that both the reading and writing level in this country have taken a turn for the deplorable. Who among us doesn’t receive some manner of alphabetic travesty in our e-mail inboxes daily? If the downfall of the English language is in our near future, then put me out to the pasture right now. I have no desire whatsoever to be part this trend, quite the opposite. I’m hoping that through college English courses, my writing will not only be understandable, but respected as well. Yet old apprehensions arise. Just to get to this point took me over three decades, how much longer will becoming a coherent writer take? Patience with my own shortcomings has never been a virtue I’ve held in quantity. Perhaps I’ll satisfy these questions by the time I receive my degree from whichever academic deems me capable enough to hold it without severely paper cutting myself. In the short term, I would like to know the real deal with that semicolon thing.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
10 Albums you probably missed. (Or not.)
I understand music can be the touchiest of subjects. People are passionate about the sounds that they willingly subject their ears to, and often react to musical suggestions in much the same way Dracula would to the suggestion of a suntan. If you are uneasy about exposing your fragile auditory receptors to possible trauma, read no further. Compiled here are the 10 albums (for 2010!) that I think are most overlooked, or bypassed entirely.
Please, don’t crucify me for making the effort, my intentions are wholesome. Or not.
#10 - Ric Ocasek, Troublizing (1997
This is one of those albums that everyone knows a song or two, but NO ONE knows the artist or album. Both the singing voice of Noodle on Gorillaz debut, and one-half of the awesome that it Cibo Matto, Miho has already paid her musical dues in spades. In fact, nowadays, we owe her. If you remain unconvinced that this is a must have, youtube up the video for “Barracuda”. Besides, if a chick is into bugs, mean fish, and the karmic physics of the universe, you don’t question things. You just buy her albums.
It’s been said that prior, and during his albums with Weezer, their frontman Rivers has recorded nearly 800 tracks. That statement alone makes him not only a one-man musical army, but worthy of a double entry here as well. His wiki entry states that he had over 100 stock songs going into the recording of Weezer’s “Make Believe” alone. Imagine if for every album you recorded, you had to write 100 songs, and only keep the best 12 or so. The worldwide quality of music would increase exponentially. Lesser musicians would die from exhaustion, and only the truly devoted would remain. In such a kingdom, Mr. Cuomo would hold a post something akin to Pope. Between the two albums there are 37 tracks, I shudder to think how other tracks lie on the cutting room floor, post-edit.
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