142 pages, 14,000+ words, and over a year's work (I've been trying not to be melodramatic and say "my whole life's work"...), and it's been submitted, defended, revised, and published online.
(just in time, of course, for there to be actual developments in the U.S. military that could have proved crucial pieces of cultural analysis for my argument. Me: "Why must this come out right after my thesis defense?!" Trevor: "So that you have something new to say in the next degree?" Arrggh. Also, I find it funny they're naming their knockoff Iron Man suit after a God from Skyrim. Maybe not consciously, but that's all a lot of people are going to here. Seriously though: with $10 million already invested and no budget cap[!] for this stupid idea, I can afford to make fun of it. "Hammer tech: ten years away.")
Ahem. But yes. It's done. I'm done. No more school.
Let that sink in.
And do let that sink in. That's essentially all I've been doing: trying to sort out frustratingly unresolved financial affairs, preparing for camp work, and generally shuffling around in a daze feeling like this.
(Shuffling. Yes. Remember this kind of word choice - it comes to play, and soon)
Thankfully, amidst all of my increasingly obsessive Skyrim playing (I finally know where that accursed "I took an arrow in the knee" meme that was so popular about three years ago is from!) and indulging myself with non-superhero films (the rather excellent Orson Welles Nazi-hunting film The Stranger [from 1946!], which I've been meaning to see for years), I'm finally allowing myself to creep back into creative work as well. There are play plans a-brewin' (more on that next time, hopefully), and, on a hike yesterday with Becky and Cyrilla, I decided it was time to actively begin my campaign for more eccentric vocabulary use.
As usual, Bill Watterson thought of this first (and better):
(When I posed this same "wet leaves" query to Becky and Cyrilla while hiking, Becky, the pragmatist, replied "Smells like fall". Touché.)
But, of course, there have been Facebook and Buzzfeed posts circulating for years regarding "Words there are no English equivalents for" (sometimes with clumsy use of the word "foreign" in the title, but I digress, grumble grumble snuff snurff). And, although Cyrilla raised the astute point that there is something rather beautiful in having certain sensations or feelings that can never fully be exemplified in words, I also find that there is a certain sense of deep satisfaction and fascination at doing our darndest to find exactly the right word for exactly the right moment. That's the joy of writing, isn't it?
I thought of this largely in terms of movement. We move, to paraphrase U2, in mysterious ways (it feels wrong to namedrop that without mentioning that Becca and I used to quote this while frantically doing an octopus dance in front of each other in high school, so Ima mention that as well). So why not have vocabulary that reflects the nuances of it?
Why, for example, would you say you "walked down the hill" when you could GALUMPH down the hill? I hadn't even realized this was an officially dictionary-sanctioned word, but it is! "Galumphing: verb, informal. Move in a clumsy, ponderous, or noisy manner." Pretty ideal for walking down mountains while exhausted, wouldn'tcha say?
There's another I've used this week: JUGGERNAUTING.
I like to think that a lot of people would know the Juggernaut.
If only from this:
Hilarious when I was 17. A bit less so now.
Thank you, oh thank you, Days of Future Past (not only for retconning Ratner's mess, but for giving us the glorious Quicksilver scene that got such a euphoric response I ended up mentioning it in my thesis. I mean, it's no Nightcrawler White House attack, but it's an extremely close second for me).
But think about Juggernaut as a verb: to run in a singular direction at such a destructively fast pace that nothing is going to stop the runner. How much more apt is that then... well... the lengthy description I just gave? So much better!
So, the next time you're moving along, think about how you're moving. I daresay there is just about always a more applicable verb (whether an existing one or not) to encapsulate the particular nuances of your movement more than "walking". Give it a go!
And look! I've even dredged up a fact after all this time! Huzzah!
#62: You can give yourself an ear infection by plugging your nose and blowing really hard to pop your ears. And, as I very usefully learned here, there's a better way to do it anyway:
- Hold your nose, close your mouth
- Turn your head to the right until your chin touches your shoulder
- Swallow hard until your left ear pops
- Turn your head to the left until your chin touches your shoulder
- Swallow hard until your right ear pops
- Continue doing this until hearing is fully restored
I've since tried this. For SCIENCE (and also because my allergies are still so flippin' bad that I'm blowing my nose and promptly plugging up my ears quite regularly still). And guess what? It works!
So go forth, my plug-eared children, and divest thyselves of thy infernal auditory congestion in a safe and likely more effective way!
But remember to slap an appealing verb on your manner of doing so. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment