One idiot's blog

Kudos, B of A!

I just looked at a mail I got from Bank of America (one of my myriad cretidt cards turned into a B of A card of late). It contains the new(?) privacy policy, which states, "We do not sell or share Customer Information with outside marketers who may want to offer you their own services". Period. Well, actually, there is no period on the actual brochure, but nor is there the statement "without your permission". They just don't sell your info to third parties at all. That's a nice change.

Now, I don't know all of BOA's policies and business practices, so I'm not saying they are or aren't a paragon of ethical behavior, but this is definitely a good thing.

Me Play Ultimate

The above picture is currently featured on the home page for Greenbelt Ultimate. I'm pretty sure it is me. Pretty unflattering, on the whole, but it does at least give the impression that I am athletically catching a difficult throw. It doesn't show me actually catching the disc, however, and I'm pretty sure I hardly ever succeed with those jump catches. I'm willing to bet that somewhere on the cutting-rooom floor there is another photo, taken a split second later, with me in about the same position but with the disc on the other side of my hand, having effortlessly sailed past its would-be ensnarer.

Language: Bubbles in Wallpaper

It is a fact that language changes. Many people point to this fact to argue that we shouldn't complain about widespread misuse of our language of choice. I think those people need to take a course in logic. But that's not the point of this post. I've just spent long enough writing the last few sentences that I have forgotten -- presumably temporarily -- just what the point of this post is. But it is a fact that language changes.

One of the words in the English language which is undergoing a great change is "literally". If you're a reader of this blog, you presumably have so much time on your hands that you've had a chance to notice that it is often used in contradictory ways. The original, "correct" meaning is "I'm not speaking figuratively here; the words mean exactly what a naive person would take them to mean." So if someone says, "It is LITERALLY raining cats and dogs out there," if they know what "literally" means and they are using that original meaning, they are trying to convey that what is falling out of the sky is not large quantities of water but rather domesticated or domesticable members of the order Carnivora, a sight I should be most interested to see in my lifetime.

Of course, somehow the common usage of the word has become almost the opposite of the original meaning. If someone were to say, "when he told me that, I literally fell on the floor" today, they probably would not mean literally -- or, if you like, they would be using the *new* meaning of the word. But not always. I find myself taking the speaker's intelligence, education level, and audience into account to guess which meaning is meant, in those cases where either interpretation seems valid. Audience may not be that important in interpretation, actually; most people who understand the original meaning would not use the perverted meaning, even when speaking to a more plebeian audience. They'd simply find another way to express that sense of impressiveness that most people wish to convey when they use the word.

But what to do when you know the original meaning of the word, and really need to use it, AND you need to make sure everyone understands that you really mean "literally"? Is it enough to be surrounded by smart, educated grammar-stickler-type people? If not, how can you recover the use of that word?

What I've been hearing lately is the phrase "quite literally". People use this in exactly the way I've described -- when they really mean the original sense of "literally". I'm not sure exactly why this is. Is it a shibboleth that just came out of nowhere? That's my guess. That seems to be the solution to the problem of filling the empty space in the lexicon so recently vacated by plain old "literally". Well, it's not a completely different word, but it's still a change in the way it's used.

And so we see that language is sometimes like the proverbial wallpaper with bubbles under it. One concept migrates to a new word, and the original concept of that new word has to find another place to call its home. You push a bubble down, another bubble appears somewhere else in the paper. This is just another of the ways that language changes.

WSEOTD

[Wacky Search Engine Of The Day]

Cthuugle.

Unfortunately, the search does absolutely nothing, but the humor value is such that I'm going to make it my primary search engine, no matter what the drawbacks may be.

R & J: Epilogue

In stark contrast to my feelings of the last concert, I am not depressed tonight. I'm pretty happy with myself; a little less so with the orchestra, but what do they matter.

The Sibelius went better than I expected. I got all the important parts, except, well, possibly the most important part, where I have to play high, long, loud notes. That part was always in question, and this time, my lip simply decided it didn't feel like doing that high A today. Luckily, that note was also being played by our first, Joe, who's more reliable in that respect. But I never cared much for that Sibelius as a playing piece, so this won't keep me awake.

Then there was the Mozart. I went into the audience for that one, where I realized two things: 1) Mozart is boring. OK, I already knew this, but sometimes I forget. 2) The horn parts in Mozart must really be a bitch, because I know our horn players don't normally suck.

Intermission. I was pretty hungry, so I high-tailed it to the Encore bare, and bought the worst-tasting potato chips I've ever paid money for. I somehow thought potato chips would be better than popcorn for eating right before playing. Not sure if I was right in my conclusion, but I do know that I was eating strictly in an attempt to satisfy hunger.

And finally, Tchaikovsky.

I had four really important fff notes to play as the 2nd bone. The former two of these notes are merely really important, because the 2nd bone is doubling the trumpets. As in dress rehearsal on Saturday, I hit these, but something was wanting in the tone and power, which I just couldn't put my finger on -- something like giving your car lots of gas while the clutch isn't fully engaged.

The latter two notes, however, are really, really important: For an eighth note's span of time, it's just me, with the 3rd bone doubling me an octave below; no other sounds from the orchestra. And I nailed those bastards. That's right, you heard me. I just called those two notes "bastards", and I'll do it again. Sadly, the 3rd trombone was a little weak on those notes, so it probably didn't have the full impact it should have.

As for the whole orchestra, well... the loud, exciting parts went pretty well, I thought. The woodwinds started out a little better than they had in practice, but in some of the interior parts there were long sections featuring people who were off by a beat... or a measure... or by a meter. And right after Dr. Ross begged everyone to, if they do nothing else in this concert, count right.

Anyway, the fact that I didn't singlehandedly cause the total collapse of the final work on the program has been quite buoying, and I'm still kind of on a high from having played something I just totally dig.

Romeo & Juliet, part 0x6E

All right, it's official. Tchaikovsky's Romeo & Juliet Fantasy Overture is overplayed. Did I mention we're performing it tomorrow?

Some time earlier tonight, I thought to myself, "I really feel like hearing R&J tonight, but I don't have it on CD. I should turn on the radio. Maybe they'll play it; after all, I've heard it quite a bit since I learned UMRO would be playing it."

Well, it took two or three hours, but they're playing it now. At some point both the remaining classical stations were playing Mozart Concertos, so I had switched over to (rather hard) rock. But I got bored with that, switched to the one station, heard something decent on it, but thought I'd better just check to see what was on the other one. And there it was, somewhere in the middle of the intro section of R&J!

Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it.