Halting State by Charles Stross

I discovered only recently that I'm a huge fan of science fiction. By 'recently' I mean a couple years ago, but considering that I've been an avid reader since before kindergarten, I'm surprised I didn't notice this before.

I specifically enjoy sci-fi stories that aren't cautionary. Cautionary tales are nice and whatever, but it has almost become a necessity for futuristic stories, and I like when writers are able to tell a story that uses the future as a setting, not a main plot point (and I feel obliged, here, to bring up "I, Robot," an Issac Asimov anthology which seemed to acknowledge that expectation and show the flip side. The 2004 movie ignored Asimov's original intention and transformed the anthology into a stereotypical cautionary tale again).

To foster this newfound love, I've been looking for enjoyable sci-fi stories, and I found one when I heard about Charles Stross' near-future novel Halting State.

Sarcasm Hand

The problem with sarcasm is that it isn't always easy to detect.

In speech, sarcasm is relatively easy. There's a certain inflection used when being sarcastic, stressing words to point out how obviously untrue, and thus sarcastic, a statement is. This becomes less clear when being sarcastic with a person you don't know very well, but most people tend to shy away from sarcasm with anyone besides friends.

Sarcasm becomes more of a problem in writing, because there isn't any good way to point it out. For example, I could write the statement "I love that movie," visually stressing the word 'love' with italics, but there's no clear way of knowing if I stressed that word because I seriously do love that movie, or if I stressed that word because there was obviously no way on earth I could love that movie.

Treadmill Reviews: Fullmetal Alchemist

Walking on a treadmill, if you've never done it before, is actually quite boring. We happen to have one in my house, and it's become one of the few ways I can get exercise reliably, but the only way I can stand to use it is if I sit a laptop on the top tray and watch TV shows. And of course, when I watch something interesting, I want to tell you guys about it.

The show that I've been watching these last few weeks is the newest anime adaptation of a very popular Japanese manga, Fullmetal Alchemist. I read the books years back when I was in high school, and I didn't mind going through the story again in anime format because I already knew that the entire thing was and would be incredible.

Avast! These be Strange Waters!

 Aye, and they'd have to be, too; today's tide bring in one of the best holidays ever: International Talk like a Pirate Day! That's right, landlubbers, ye heard it here. It's the one day a year dedicated to the fierce, rogue, sea-loving pirates, when everyone around the world can affect an accent and dress up for school or work (assuming, of course, you've explained yourself to your captain).

I'm pretty bad at Piratey lingo, so I wont even pretend to try to keep it up for long.

Intense

Of course, you understand, I keep hearing 'In Tents'.

I know it's a stupid joke, but I'm not exaggerating; every time someone uses the word 'intense', I think of tents (such as 'that movie was in tents!' or 'this book is in tents!' or 'that was an in tents car ride'). When I'm in mixed company, I refrain from actually saying anything, but I always think it in my head.

I was hanging out with friends today, which is why today's post is short and late. My friends are leaving for far off colleges in a week or so, so we're trying to fit in as much "chillax" time as possibly before we can't anymore. How did people handle this before in internet? Well, I guess they wrote letters, right?

The Amazing, Versatile Semi-Colon!

A few months ago, when my mom was boasting about how smart all her children were, I turned to her and proudly said, "My favorite punctuation mark is the semi-colon."

My mom looked back at me and said, "Never, ever, say that in public."

Sorry, mom; I'm obviously still in my rebellious phase.

Five Interesting Facts

Several months ago, I attended a "You're growing up! Welcome to the older-kids class!" party-type thing at the house of one of my church leaders, with a few other girls my age. It was intended to encourage us to leave the teenage Sunday School classes and join the adult Sunday School lessons, though I admit that we haven't exactly done so since then. At the beginning of the lunch, we were each given a bag of M&Ms that we were told not to eat, and each M&M color was assigned a random category (red was hobbies, blue was college plans, etc.). For every M&M of each particular color we had, we had to share that many facts about ourselves within that category (for example, I had two reds, so I had to share two of my hobbies).

One girl had two yellows, and she was asked to share "Two random facts." The idea was to share two random facts about herself, but she ended up saying some random world facts (I forget what they were), and we all laughed at her wit. We ended before I got to yellow, and since I had five yellow M&Ms,  it would have taken me a while to think of five interesting facts anyways. I decided to save those five facts for an interesting blog post (much like my previous, and hopefully reoccurring, "What's Up With...?"s).

This weekend, I had lunch with my brother for his birthday. While touring his new apartment, he asked if I wanted to borrow the Goldeneye Wii game that I had gotten him for Christmas. Part of his reasoning was to "distract" me, because I was writing blogs so quickly. So I decided to fit my "Five Interesting Facts" blog in now, since it should be a quick read, and I can go back to playing Goldeneye when I'm done.

Bookshelf

I talk a lot about video games, movies, and TV shows on this blog, and I worry sometimes that people might think I'm not as bookish as I really I. Because I really am.

These are the bookshelves in my room. As you can see, they're nicely decorated with knick-knacks that I've collected over the years - the majority of those kick-knacks being books. For some reason, I prefer to own the books that I read rather than borrow them, so if I get in the mood to read something, I almost always go out and buy it instead of checking to see if it's at the library, or if a friend owns it. I do occasionally get rid of books, but currently the number of fictional or otherwise narrative novels (or anthologies) on my wall is 232 (given a 1% margin of error).

My Valedictorian Speech

Last year, I tested out of High School early, because my classes were boring me and I wanted to get on with  my life. I felt a bit like a traitor, leaving all the friends I loved because of my own desire to get out of school, but watching them graduate this week, I felt such a nervous excitement for them. I decided that, in their honor, I would write the speech I would have given had I stayed in school and become Valedictorian. Not that I ever would - I'm very happy with my B+ average, thank you very much, and don't see any need in overachieving. But the idea for this speech came to me, so I decided to write it anyways.

Weekdays

The MacCallum Theater is hosting a musical this weekend called Anything Goes, preformed by the students at the local college. My brother is working as their stage manager, so we decided to go on tonight; we'd originally been planning to go yesterday, opening night, but my dad wouldn't have been able to make it. Since Thursday was unexpectedly open, my mom decided that she and I would go see Thor (I'll probably write a review for that later). I realized that morning, as we were making plans, that seeing Thor was extremely appropriate, seeing at is was, after all, the day of the week named after that particular god of thunder

The Norse god that particular comic book hero is based on.

My oldest brother, when I was younger and he still living with us, would always call Wednesday "Woden's Day" and Thursday "Thor's Day," explaining that those days were originally called that. I always thought that sounded silly, but as I got older I got in the habit of saying "Woden's Day" and "Thor's Day" to myself as well.

Isn't it Ironic?

A couple years back, a friend of mine and I created an Altered Book for an art project, the assigned theme being 'something unexpected.' We chose to focus on the many uses of the word 'Irony'. Irony is a bit of a problem because the majority of people seem to misuse it nowadays, so our project highlighted correct examples of irony. The word 'ironic' usually refers to events in which there is a stark contrast between what is expected, and what actually occurs.

This, therefore, is the opposite of Irony - a 'dead end' sign in a graveyard might not be expected, but the two objects do not contradict in any matter at all, and in fact support each other, if in an unorthodox manner.

Everyone blames Alanis Morriset and her song 'Ironic' for everyone's misunderstanding of the adjective. That's not entirely fair - irony is a confusing conception anyways, especially when we try to use it to describe situations. In fact, all of the situations in the song fit under one category of irony or another, most under 'Cosmic Irony', which describes any situation in which the cosmos or fate is stopping us from doing what we intend. For example, one line states 'traffic jam when you're already late'. While this is technically Cosmic Irony, it's a bit of a stretch, and would be more accurately described as an unfortunate coincidence. No other form of irony would cover such plain situations, as a traffic jam isn't exactly unexpected. Read on.

Fluently Improper

(This post'll be short, as I'm having a Firefly marathon with a friend today and don't have much time to write.)

Like most people who speak more than one language, I sometimes tend to slip between the two. There's a lot of Spanish spoken in the desert where I live, and some people may start a conversation in English and end it in their home tongue. I don't know Spanish, and while I've been taking French long enough to break into it when writing notes to myself, the language I find myself slipping into in common writing and speaking is a fairly new one: Lolspeak.

 

Literally

You know I'm a literature major when the incorrect use of common words bugs the heck out of me. I wont mention the word 'Ironic' - that's for another blog - but instead I'll focus on a poor, unfortunate word that's been unnecessarily turned into a hyperbole.

Literally, obviously, comes from the root word 'literal', which comes from the Latin word 'literalis' which means "of or pertaining to letters." The idea, as the word was formed, was that when a text was copied literally, it was copied letter by letter, to be as correct as possible. It's a bit ironic surprising, then, that the definition becomes figurative, having jumped from talking about letters to talking about whole ideas and abstract nouns, when the actual definition of the word is the opposite of figurative.

When something is literal, it is exactly as stated. We don't tend to use the term 'literal' a lot, because generally when we say something, it's assumed to be exactly as we stated it, unless we're being sarcastic or figurative or using some sort of idiom, which is the also implied by common knowledge (such as when I tell people, "Well, that sounds fun") or intonation (Depending on how you say it, "Thanks a lot" can mean two different things). The word 'literal' then generally only comes into play when we're referring to something or someone else, as "they were being too literal" or "I thought it was meant in a literal sense."

We never use the term "literal" to mean "figurative." It wouldn't make any sense. So then why do so many people use the term "literally" to mean "figuratively?" "She literally devours every piece of music I give her," or "cars were literally flying down the road."

It's true!

In most cases, I wouldn't advocate the idea of using the term "figuratively" instead of "literally," (such as "cars were figuratively flying down the road") because that just sounds weird, and is unnecessary. The term in these cases is an intensifier; by saying 'I literally', people actually mean "Listen close because this was intense [or shocking, or awe-inspiring, or any other intense emotion] and get goosebumps just thinking about it," or something like that.

The word 'really' is an intensifier. "He was really fast" means the same thing, literally, as "he was fast," but adding the word 'really' in there makes the sentence more intense. 'Really' has been used too much, however, so people are turning to the word 'literally' to make their sentences even more intense (similar to how the intensifying terms "awesome" or "epic win" have become overused lately). Saying 'cars were flying down the road' just doesn't give you the same hurried feeling as they "were literally flying down the road."

However, the word 'literally' should not be used as an intensifier, even though scores of people want to make it such. Why?

• "He literally has the heart of a lion." ("No, really, he collects really weird animal organs")
• "We were literally jumping for joy!" ("Seriously, actually jumping up and down, we couldn't help ourselves!")
• "I was literally rolling in money" ("I actually withdrew half a million in ones just so I could roll around in it and see how it felt.")
• "My mother was literally heartbroken." ("I'm serious. That's why she had surgery last year. Don't worry, though, she's fine now.")

When we use 'literally' as an intensifier, we can't use it the way it's supposed to be used, and a clarifier. We have to explain that no, we actually did bite our tongue, and now it's bleeding, or no, we didn't get married, we've just been learning how to tie complex knots.

Literally is supposed to take a sentence that has multiple meanings, generally metaphoric, and clarify that the intended meaning is the literal one. If 'literally' was only ever used to clarify our meaning, we wouldn't have this confusion with the figurative, and our language would be that much easier.

Musical Update

I've never been extremely good with musical instruments, though in saying that I'm of course comparing myself to my youngest brother, who could pick up almost anything and master it in a few practice sessions (He played the flute in middle school, and the quad-tenor drums, the glockenspiel, the oboe, and a few others in high school).

I took Clarinet lessons in 5th and 6th grade, when my local middle school had a program that allowed 5th graders to take Beginner Band lessons first period, before the Elementary school started. I was pretty good at it, but in 7th grade I moved to a school closer to where I lived, and their band program was famously the worst in our district, so stopped practicing clarinet. I still have my clarinet, and with a bit of practice I'm sure I could play it, but what I really gained taking that band class was an understanding of music theory. I can read the music staff (though it takes me a moment to translate), and I understand sharps, flats, time signatures, and scales pretty well.

I don't quite remember where it came from, but we've also had a piano in my house since I was in elementary school (I think it was a gift from someone who was moving and couldn't take it with them). Before taking my band classes, I had no idea how to play it, except for a basic C major, since anyone can find C on the piano. After taking the class, it still took me a while to find which keys corresponded to which notes, but with a better understanding of the music I could figure things out.

Recently - in the past year or so - I've been picking up piano practice again. Not conventionally, as I dislike playing the piano, or any instrument, where others can hear me, but when I have the house to myself I'll tinker out whatever I have. If we're practicing a song in church, I'll play my part so I can get it down better, and lately I've been printing out video game sheet music. I have to admit, I'm sounding pretty good.

At least with things I've practiced. It still might take me an hour to get a flow for something I've never played before, and that's not even considering the bottom hand. It takes a lot of concentration, or skill, or practice, or whatever, to get the bottom hand on the piano working. We never learned bass clef in band class (Well, some of the other instruments did, but us clarinets never learned it). Combine that with the fact that, once I've figured out what I'm playing, I have to play two different chords at different times on different locations on the keyboard.

I've got the bottom hand accompaniment figured out for a few of the video game songs I'm practicing, but I'm not exaggerating when I say all of the notes are next to each other, in order, repetitively. If it gets much more complicated than that, I start to lose it.

I am proud of what I've taught myself, however - it sounds like a real song! - so I don't mind playing it when my parents are home anymore, and even at church, on the new electric keyboard we have in the Young Women's room. Unfortunately, this gives people the impression that I actually know what I'm doing, so when my mom suggested they make me play the music for the opening song, the Young Women's leaders happily agreed.

So now they're making me learn a song out of the hymnbook to play in two weeks. Because I've got enough time on my hands to figure out another set of bottom-hand notes.

I'm happy that I have the musical training that I do - I can sing Alto now while a few others who purport to be more musically inclined can not, and I can lead the music as well. I'm a bit annoyed on this fact - leading music is really easy, yet I seem to be one of only a few who can in my youth group, and possibly the only one who can do more complicated time signatures like 2/2 or 6/4. I volunteered to attempt to teach everyone else, though I'm not sure how willing or how easily they'll learn. But actually playing music, while fun and endorphin-releasing, is really only a pastime for me.


(Because you truly care, these are the songs I've learned:
Pokemon Route Theme: Piano (Simplified, no chords)
Majora's Mask Clock Town: Piano
Zelda 1 Dungeon Theme: Piano (Simplified, still working on bottom hand)
Monkey Island Scumm Bar: Piano (Simplified, bass clef only on ending)
I'm also attempting the Wind Waker Ocean Theme (Piano, tho' my sheet music is different), but I'm having trouble with the bottom hand, and the chords during the second part. Especially hard since this song is supposed to be a call-and-repeat, and you can't call-and-repeat with one instrument.

Twenty Something

This may seem a bit inconsequential to some of you, but I assure you this is a problem that desperately needs to be fixed. As you might be able to guess, I'm referring to blatant use of the term "two-thousand..." when stating the date - as in, 'two-thousand ten, two-thousand eleven, two-thousand twelve.' While it's true that, in this new century, the full number that represents the year isn't ten syllables long (Unlike one-thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine), we should still be mindful of the number of unnecessary syllables.

I was born in the early 90s, and like everyone born before the year 2000, I got used to shortening the year-date into two numbers - Nineteen and Ninety-five, or ninety-six or whatever (Of course, we never actually said the 'and' part). I remember thinking it was a bit strange, until I tried saying the year as one number - One thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-seven is WAY too much to say in one go. (However, in my French classes we were always taught to say the whole number, as if the French actually take the time to pronounce all that whenever they're giving the date. Still not sure if this is true.)

That's why the next decade was a bit strange, because there is no way to shorten two-thousand or two-thousand one (Unless you want to say 'twenty-zero' and 'twenty-oh-one', but that just sounds ridiculous). It didn't take extremely long to get used to however, and I think everyone will agree that we got pretty used to saying 'two-thousand nine' by the time it rolled around.

However, there's a serious problem with saying 'two-thousand ten'. If we get used to saying 'two-thousand ten', then we'll be saying 'two-thousand thirteen', and eventually 'two-thousand twenty' and 'two-thousand fifty-six' and so on. IT'LL NEVER END. Whatever we start with, we'll have to keep up, to keep face. Our kids, hearing us say 'two-thousand thirty', will say 'two-thousand sixty-four' to their kids, who'll say 'two-thousand ninety-three' to their kids, and a hundred years from now everyone will be saying 'two-thousand one-hundred eleven' like the FRENCH.

You may think this is ridiculous, that having experienced the twentieth century we'd never start saying the whole date out like that, but that's just the point - we wouldn't be! Who among us is going to be living for another hundred years? It'll be our kids, and our kids' kids, who, having heard our pronunciation their whole lives, wont think to revert back to the lesser-syllable version.

And I assure you, the lesser-syllable version is far superior. I love the English language, in part because it's open, always changing and shifting to make it easier for the speakers to communicate. That's why our non-living nouns don't have genders, it's why most people don't pronounce the 'h' in 'wh' words (even though the 'hw' pronunciation is technically more correct) and why we pronounce 'Colonel' as 'Kernul (Try saying 'Col-oh-nel' in a sentence a lot, and you'll see why the pronunciation changed over time. I'm personally against this one, however - I'll pronounce it the way it's spelled, thank you very much).

That's why we invented 'ten twenty' when 'a thousand and twenty' got to be too hard to say. We haven't had a reason to challenge the shorter pronunciation, which cuts down anywhere from 1-5 syllables from our speech, until now. 'Two-thousand ten' isn't far off from 'Twenty-ten', but it's enough to cut a syllable, and if you can cut anything out, and still keep the same meaning, then you're a winner.

Please, if you're one of those grammar nazies who insists on pronouncing everyone they was they did in during the Renaissance, do not procreate. Our language is evolving, changing, because people are still speaking it. That's how languages work. The responsibility of a fluent English speaker is to communicate as effectively as possible, and if that means cutting out sounds or syllables, creating portmanteaus, or adopting words from other languages, by all means (Just try not to slur your words - the point is to increase communication, not baby-babble).

This year is 'Twenty Eleven', and in a year it'll be 'Twenty Twelve', and the sooner we figure that out, the sooner we can focus on some more important problems facing us today.

Let's Play!

I already wrote a blog describing what Let's Plays are, but in case you didn't read it, or refuse to click the hyperlink, here's another brief explanation.

Person with too much time on their hands (hereon known as LPer) decides on a game they want to LP (Let's Play, the type of video). They use some fancy twenty-first century trick of technology to record their computer/TV screen and audio as they play through (generally) ten minute segments of the game they've decided to LP (Ten minutes because that used to be Youtube's video time limit. Now, some LPers make 15-minute videos, and some base their video lengths on other factors, such as available save points). As they play, they record their own voice through a microphone, making a commentary of the gameplay action, occasionally explaining bits that may be confusing, giving deeper detail on the game that might not be noticed during actual gameplay, and most often being humorous and fun to listen to.

I decided to start watching LPs after Youtube recommended to be a LoZ: Wind Waker LP video by Chuggaaconroy. I was intrigued with that video (About halfway through his LP series), and decided to start from the beginning and watch it the entire series. Keeping in mind the fact that I had played this game twice - and beat it once - I realized that my liking for this video series must give the LP video genre some merit, and the idea stuck me - if I'm having this much fun watching other people on Youtube play video games I've already beaten, how much fun will it be to watch them play games I've never played? Essentially, I could watch other people play all those 'must-play' video games, and be just as up to speed as the people who played them for themselves - without having to buy the game, or the console, or taking the time to figure out the confusing in-game puzzles, too!

Thus, I became addicted to Let's Plays. I watched some more by Chuggaconroy before picking out some games I wanted to watch and searching for Let's Play-ers to play them for me. In this manner, I found NintendoCapriSun, another popular Let's Play-er, and HCBailly, probably my favorite LPer at the moment. I've seen videos by others, and I now have the names of some more popular LPers to look for, but these three are the only ones I'm subscribed to at the moment.

My whole reason for writing this blog, however, is to point out something I noted earlier. These three LPers, each noted for being quite popular among the community, don't often use curse words. It's not uncommon to go several videos with them without hearing one of the 'lesser' curse words (not to put profanity in a heiarchy system, but there are some words the MPAA will not allow as often in PG-13 movies), and a number of entire LP series have gone without the more disgusting words.

I can't say as much for other popular Youtube LPers (and I'm talking here strictly about good Let's Plays. There are some pretty terrible ones on the interwebs; I wont even give you a link, since you could probably find some easily enough on your own anyways). I haven't branched out enough, especially since part of me still feels a bit pathetic about watching other people play video games all day. But after watching some weirdo from the "Something Awful" forums play through the first Legend of Zelda game, cursing at least every other sentence and being pretty much annoying the whole time, I've been a bit more picky with who I devote my time to (It was only after that when I discovered NintendoCapriSun, who had already done the original Legend of Zelda).

But the LPers that I follow don't curse very much, and when I'm looking around for a new game series, and I notice that the more curse words an LPer uses in the video, the lower their subscriber count is and the less views their videos have. Isn't this revealing?

Even if cursing is something that a lot of gamers do all the time, they apparently still prefer others to refrain. Either that, or the people who waste their time watching other people play video games on Youtube (I.E. me) are the kind of people who don't curse like addicts.

I still find this revealing. How many Youtube celebrities curse like gangsters in their videos? I wouldn't even know - I'm not exactly a member of the Yotube subculture. But I find it interesting that you don't have to look very hard to find clean, tasteful entertainment.