Hobby Guilt

International Day of Peace
UN International Day of Peace
Independence Day (Armenia)
Independence Day (Belize)
Independence Day (Malta)

 

I have been remiss in conlanging this summer. I could offer all sorts of excuses, but the truth is that I just haven’t been able to get into it. It’s one of those slumps where you just don’t do much.

 

Not that I haven’t done anything. I made about three new signs for the orlys’ main language,* and I have been seriously thinking about starting a language for arhods. So far, work on that has taken a strenuous, two-step process:

 

1. Sneak into a corner at work when there is absolutely nothing left to do and nobody to look busy for, and scribble down a couple of phonemes and phonological rules on a scrap of receipt paper with a ballpoint pen.
2. Lose the scrap of paper.

So I have not made a lot of headway in it. I haven’t even checked out any conlanging sites this summer, haven’t perused any fascinating natural language descriptions, haven’t scanned Omniglot. I have considered a few outlandish ideas for communications systems, but that hasn’t gotten far, either.

 

And then, wouldn’t you know it, I wander back onto a community for a minute and discover that not even conlangers are free from that unique form of Intarweb Drama.**

 

And I thought I was weird.

 

Right then. Back from the sordid recesses of the small community of creative linguists, and on to my own.  Gods dammit, I’ve got ergatives and free word orders and a mess of weird media for communication, and I need to do something with them.  Maybe I'll look into this BPAL everyone's always on about, because I know you won't believe it but I could use some study into various scents and chemistry for one project.***  Because seriously, I may not have delved into it, but I've got some ideas.

 

 

*Allow me to rant again. It always annoys me that in science fiction and fantasy they assume that an entire species or an entire planet gets along with one damn language. Just like how it is with humans on Earth, you know. So I always qualify a language I make for a certain group of aliens with some explanation that it’s their planet’s/species more common language, or a language for the people in a nation on the southern continent, or the trolls from the north mountains. Nobody pays attention to the lessons of King John Ronald, except in the rule that all conlangs, especially elven ones, have to sound vaguely Welsh or Finnish.

 

**I love Intarweb Drama. It’s such a small, venomous drama, full of mystery and intrigue—is anyone who they say they are?  No matter who they are, what are their motives? What makes a troll do what they do? It’s perfect for soap operatic voyeurism.

***So much for my claim that conlanging is a nice cheap hobby.


EDIT: Here is the link to the Livejournal explanation of the scandal.

Last Piratical Hurrah, Two Days Late

By the way, if anyone's interested, I decided my pirate name would be Bloody Rose Brazen.  I didn't like the ones the quizzes gave me, so I made my own.  Neither "Amelia" or "Mia" is real piratey, so I went with my Auxiliary Backup Name.

Brazen I stole from one of my own characters.  He won't mind.  I'll sink his ship if he objects.

I can DO it, too.  I control his universe!  HAHAHAHAHA!

The Life Experience ~ Summer '06

Things I learned this summer:

 

• The LDS church’s Salt Lake Temple has a special waiting room for underage Mormons and heathens.
• Sincerity goes a long way toward selling people things.
• The Star Wars approach to trilogies seems to have set a precedent, although its best legacies are swashbuckliness and mythic magnificence.
• My mother’s old friend was not only married to a pinup artist; she was also a model for pinups.
• Camisole racks are evil.
• Hank does blush purple.
• There are all sorts of possible ways I could structure my alien hospital, but it required a lot of study of an overview of medicine.
• It is considered possible to create universes in laboratories.
• Admitting you like a Lifetime channel original series is harder than mentioning you like the Justice League.
• If there are two possible orientations for stereoisomers, all life on Earth uses only one, and no one knows why.  Whatever the hell that means.
• There used to be sabretoothed kangaroos in Australia, which is a truly wonderful visual.
• When Mom tells a story about her past, it involves a specific anecdote; Dad’s childhood stories involve a lot of statistics and general overviews of who lived where, how he got to school, etc.
• My cuzzins still think about me.
• Headaches are interesting.  The best name for a headache is 'crash migraine.'  And the meanest headache ever is really a cruelty of nature: it's a splitting migraine you get whenever you reach the point of orgasm.
• Sometimes you don’t realize how well-know a person is until they get killed.
• Sin City doesn’t make any more sense if you watch it again.
• All fig trees are pollinated by wasps, who in some species of fig die and then when you eat figs you're eating teeny tiny almost microscopic baby wasps.
• You will never eat figs again.
• Apparently it’s perfectly acceptable when getting a pedicure to not socially inteact at all with the person you’re making scrub your ugly feet.
• If a song has the word ‘jive’ in it, I will hate it with a burning passion.
• ‘Prosopagnosia’ is the medical term for face-blindness, which is an inability (of varying) to recognize faces. I may have a very mild form of this, which makes retail kind of hard and explains why I always have trouble watching any movie or show where there are a bunch of guys in uniforms.*
• Las Vegas is actually really, really fun if you have money and ignore the casinos.
• Damn, magicians are observant.
• Mac King’s grandmother apparently made a lot of couches into suits.
• Dead bugs are easier to wear than live ones.
• Some summers aren’t as fun as others.

Tomorrow I’m off to Eugene again to do more college.  Liz says she’s setting up the Fortress of Terror pretty well, and I’m bringing loads of stuff with which to fill it.  But while we got a great promotion from Comcast, it may be a week and a half before I get the internet in my house. Unless they come sooner. But given how busy I’ma be, I’ll probably hardly miss it.


*Seriously, why don't those guys wear name tags?