A Public Service Announcement

rain: The condensed moisture of the atmosphere falling visibly in separate drops.

reign: Hold royal office; rule as king or queen.

rein:A long, narrow strap attached at one end to a horse's bit, typically used in pairs to control a horse in riding or driving.  Cause (a horse) to stop or slow down by pulling on its reins.

If something is out of control, you do not rain it in.  You do not reign it in.  You rein it in.

Seriously, I've read two scholarly books in the past week that used the phrase "reign in."  It bothered me more than the book on phenomenology that used the phrase "irregardless."

 Later Days.

It's Time for Buddha Lite.

Remember a week or two ago when RIM pulled the Blackberry network offline? And Apple chose the same time to put out a new version, and it was crashing for some people? Well, as the owner of outdated, outclassed, antique 3G World phone, I looked up the term "schadenfreude" on Wikipedia, so I could properly spell exactly how I was feeling on the Facebook. According to the austere wikipedians, schadenfreude refers to "feeling happiness in the misfortune of others." Which I already knew; I was looking for spelling, not definitions. But what interested me was the related terms list, which was formed basically by taking the schadenfreude definition and cycling through the binary possibilities:

"feeling unhappiness in the misfortune of others" -- empathy.
"feeling happiness in the fortune of others"--envy.

And, most interestingly: "feeling happiness in the fortune of others"--mudita.

If you're not familiar with the last term, don't worry; it wasn't exactly a common occurrence in my daily vocabulary either. It's a Buddhist term, and its more expanded definition is sympathetic joy, taking delight in the well-being of others rather than begrudging them of it. I'm not a Buddhist; there's something about their emphasis on non-being that doesn't mesh with my Western sense of the importance of individuality. And everything I know about Buddhism comes from a second year religious studies course I took nine years ago. (Man, I'm old.) But it seems to me that mudita is a concept worth adopting. So yes, I thought, moved considerably from my initial contemplation of cell phones and smart apps, I will try to cultivate a spirit of mudita.

It is surprisingly hard. According to the research (okay, Google search) I did, mudita is directly contested by jealousy and envy. And it is hard (maybe just for me?) to look at someone else's joy without envy. Even just thinking, "I want that." And if you do share in something similar, it then becomes a sort of self-congratulatory smugness: I'm doing pretty good, too. And that relates directly to another issue: it's not mudita if you are congratulating yourself on helping the person get to that happiness--if you're thinking about your contribution and investment, then you're thinking about how awesome you are, not the other person.

The "non-obvious" opponent of mudita is interesting as well--exhilaration. That is, it resembles the joy of mudita, but it is a joy that you cultivate in order to mask some sort of lack in yourself. So to a recently dumped individual, for example, going to a wedding is risky business. You not only have to evade jealousy and envy, but you also have to keep from throwing yourself into it emotionally to cover up for your own loss.

Again, I can see how the mudita concept relates to some core Buddhist philosophies. There's a level of detachment involved--thinking of others, feeling for others, without drawing your own baggage into things. At the same time, I wonder if that's really possible. We're all individuals, and our experiences are subjective experiences. There's always a filter on what we perceive, and trying to pretend it's not there seems like it could cause greater problems down the road. Dealing with your emotions shouldn't mean suppressing them.

But for the moment: mudita. Even if you don't subscribe to the Buddhist way of thinking, keeping mudita in mind, for me, has really drawn attention to how much jealousy and envy could influence my actions, if I let them. So let's all try to be a little more aware, and cultivate some mudita in our lives.

...Oh, I just know you're cultivating more mudita than me. And I hate you for it.

Later Days.

Never Do Any Research

...using Urban Dictionary, at least.

The story: Today's post was going to be a quick "my confessions" category entry: "Instead of swearing when something goes wrong, I started to say "tssk." But now I saw the word "titch."" And that would have been that. More nonsensical than actually humorous or confessional, but they can't all be winners.

Then I looked up "titch" in the Urban Dictionary. For those unfamiliar, Urban Dictionary is an online dictionary specializing in pop culture slang. Each entry is user-contributed and first definition you see for a word is the one that is most often given a "thumbs up." So, conceptually, it's like Wikipedia with a rating function. In practice, what you get is a dictionary in which every entry means porn, or some variation thereof. As a cultural artifact and a collection of cultural artifacts, Urban Dictionary is fascinating in the way it utilizes the anonymity of the internet and the profane and socially unacceptable margins of language to form a database. As a tool I use, it makes me feel unclean.

The first definition of "titch" is "a small quantity or a "tisk-tisk" noise, which is fine. The next was ""a measuement; equivalent to the height of a tit/nipple." Now, I'm not sure what a measuement is, but if you're going to attempt to create a profanity substitute, saying "tit inch" in public is probably a step in the wrong direction. The next definition is worse: "little annoying person. especially a girl. Tiny + Bitch = Titch." I
1) I am vertically challenged myself, and have no business deriding others for a lack of upward growth.
2) I have, to my knowledge, never called anyone a bitch. All joking aside, it's not a very nice thing to call a person (and yes, there's a whole debate about why it should be derogatory for a human to be compared to an animal, and a gender debate on top of that, but it's all very long and very involved, and it's easier to just agree that it's not a very nice thing to call a person.) So to go from occasionally muttering "damn" under my breath to uttering the portmanteau of "tiny bitch" is once again a step in the wrong direction.

I need, clearly, a new swearword substitute. Maybe I should try that curseword on "Red Dwarf." What was it again? Smeg?
*A quick UD search later.*
Nope, not going to be using that. I need, clearly, to never use Urban Dictionary again.

Later Days.

WORDS WHAT BOTHERS ME

I dunno if this will turn into a regular thing or not, but this post is one that I've been meaning to do for a long time. I think everyone has a few words that, for one reason or another, become the equivalent of fingernails down their lexiographic spine.

--The phrase "fair enough." First, it offends my sense of the word "fair." To me, fair is a binary state. Either something is fair or it is not--in which case, the word "unfair" can be brought out. "Fair enough" introduces a level of gradation to this issue that I am not comfortable with. If that sort of nuance needs to be brought in, why can't we just leave the "fair" part out of it? Second, I know that a lot of people, when they're using the phrase, just mean it to act as a synonym phrase for "that's fair." But I've also heard it used in a very passive-aggressive manner. Under that usage, the "fair enough" is shorthand for "I don't think that's fair at all; at the very least, I think it could be more fair. But I don't have the time or inclination for outright disagreeing with you, and I want to appear as if I'm rising above the argument, so I'll reply in such a manner that preserves the chance for my later disagreement and indicates my disapproval, but in a way that makes it impossible for you to challenge me on it without sounding small and petty yourself."

It's a pretty complicated shorthand.

--This one isn't so much a word that annoys me as it is a word that may grow to annoy me if its frequency persists. Have you ever noticed that when your attention is drawn to an unusual word or phrase, you suddenly start seeing it everywhere? And then you can't tell whether people have just started using it, or they always have and you're finally paying attention to it? Well, for me, the most recent incarnation of "that word" is wheelhouse. As in the phrase " is in my wheelhouse," to indicate that you're an expert on said . And I'll admit it: I have only the vaguest idea on what a wheelhouse actually is, besides the obvious connotation that it is a house full of wheels, and perhaps has something to do with carriages. A quick search of the Oxford English Dictionary tells me that it refers both to that, and to the enclosure surrounding the steering wheel of a steamship. (It doesn't actually include the "in my wheelhouse," because the OED is above that sort of gutter talk, thank you very much.) So essentially, it's one of those phrases whose original meaning has been largely antiquated, like "book on tape" or "buribunkist" (all right, that last one isn't technically antiquated, but it is sufficiently obscure).

--The word "similarly." Don't like it. Never liked it. Never will like it. If there comes a point in some academic article I'm writing where the word is appropriate, I will perform whatever acrobatics are necessary to avoid it. "In a similar manner," "In a similar fashion," even "likewise." In this case, my distaste for the word is purely because of the way it sounds. I don't like the combination of the "lar" and "ly" syllables. I don't know why, I just know I don't.


And that's it, for now at least. And if you think that I've gone into far too much detail over such minor things, that I'm making mountains out of molehills, that I've become the cyberspace equivalent of an old man telling kids to get off his verbal lawn, well then...
Fair enough.

Later Days.

He Also Teaches

I'm taking notes on a book I'm reading right now (and more on the book later). The current heading is "Making Visible the Invisible," but I typed it "Making the Visible Invisible," thus reversing the meaning. And it struck me that the error might make a good lesson in a first year grammar-based discussion to illustrate the importance of clarity (and articles), and the use of nouns and adjectives. Something to remember for next term if I'm stuck teaching the non-English based English courses again.

*EDIT: fixed the second statement by switching the visible/invisible order.

Later Days.

Random Thoughts Day

This is one of those occasions where I felt like doing a post, but didn't have any topic that really jumped out at me. So: Random Thoughts Day.
--The spacebar on my home computer has decided to start a new employment era were it only works part time. Soallmysentenceslooklikethisnow.It'sreallyveryannoying.Onthehand,
itdoesbringout
someinterestingwordassocations:
'thinking'and'thin''king',forexample--whichoneamIreallyreferingto?Nooneknows...
But experimental writing aside, it's probably time to get a new keyboard. I am resistant to this. I'm exactly the sort of person who holds on to antiquated, half-broken technology forever (just ask my bike)--not because I fear technology or change, specifically, but because on some fundamental level, I believe that a failure in the objects I own translates into a failure on my part. "What kind of a man can't take proper care of his possessions?" Etc. (You can fill in the rest of the "poor little white man" speech as you see fit.)

--Building on that vein of misogyny, I came up with a line on Tuesday that I'd like to work into a story or some other creative endeavour at some point: "If Woolfe has taught us anything, it's to be wary of women who fill their pockets with stones." I like the phrase, but I can't decide whether it's more pretentious or profound--I can use it in a story either way, but the context would have to be very different.

--Just finished the second week of my graduate classes: one is on art & persuasion (the connection between art and rhetorical activism), and the other is a gender & postcolonial, with an emphasis on travel narratives. In a perfect world, I'd do a paper on Dr Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog for the first one, and a paper on the presentation of colonization in the Civilization computer game series in the other one. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to settle on something less interesting in both cases.

--Along the same time I was making light of the tragic suicide of a great writer, I got the idea that I wanted to write a shortstory about someone who could tell the future. That's it, that's as far as I went. Then I started thinking about what kind of life such a person would live, and the etymology of the word clairvoyent--really, it breaks down into "clear" and "voyage". And suddenly the purpose of my story was set: I wanted to write about the clarity of the voyeur, and what it is gained and lost when you choose to set yourself apart. (The future telling bit's there to draw in the sci-fi crowd.)

--As I discovered writing this post, I apparently have trouble with the difference between etymology and entymology. Everyone take a moment to appreciate the irony in having difficulty in remembering a word that basically means remembering what words meant.

I think that satisfying my blogging crave for the moment.

Later Days.

The stars were out too, which was nice.

I was out with some friends last night at a pub (definitely a pub, not a bar. The distinction is subtle, but significant.) and I walked home at around midnight afterwards. Putting aside the fact that I was walking in -30 weather--which is admittedly a lot to put aside--the walking itself was a welcome experience, just because it was such a familiar experience.

I've always enjoyed walking home by myself after a night at the bar. A part of it, I think, springs from fairly selfish motivations: after spending some time in the company of others, I want to immediately follow it with some "me" time. (Hence the reason that on such walks, I often stop by the local convenience store and purchase some entirely nonhealthy "me" foods.) There's also a safety valve issue: while it's not such a big issue anymore, I used to get a sensory overload when I was around a large group of people socially, and I needed some time to process by myself. But nowadays, the walk mainly gives me a chance to just dwell on the night, who I spent it with, and what they mean to me.

(Have I talked about the verb "dwell" in the past? I should have, because it's a favorite of mine. In the context, it means the same thing as thinking, but it also has connotations of home. I like that--the idea that your thoughts are a mental embodiment.)

Last night in particular, it was a mix of old and new. I don't do a lot of the night walk in Blank, so it had a heavy nostalgia flavor to it; this flavour was somewhat tempered since I was walking with my I-Pod, something that did NOT occur in the old days, since I didn't have an I-pod back then. But at least it made me feel less crazy for singing loudly in a public street at 12:00 am in the morning.

The best part of the walk (not the evening, which of course was the conversations with friends) was when I went past a house with a sign in the window that said "Have a Great Day!!". I deliberately chose my path so that I'd be going by the sign, and I had been really hoping it was still there. For more times than I can count, I've passed that sign late at night, still warm with the glow of the evening. And maybe it's because I'm usually a little drunk (ok, it's probably because I'm drunk) but it never fails to make me smile. It's just such a positive thing, a simple act of benevolence. It's a wish of good will to complete strangers, with no strings attached. And I think we all need that sometimes.


Cold Weather Running Aside: People get all kinds of excited when they see someone in a ski mask running quickly towards them.


Later Days.