Just about anything
When confronted with the cry “But that’s not fair!” some reply “who said life has to be fair?” For a comeback to that, try
“Who said unfairness must be tolerated just because it exists?”
As a human being, with the ability to think of “future” and the ability to learn from the past, the concept of “fairness” and my application of that concept is what differentiates me from the bare-bones reactive universe.
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“The whole point of society is to be less unforgiving than nature.”
~Arthur D. Hlavaty
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
~Isaac Asimov
When I was in high school, we had a foreign exchange student from Norway. She did pretty well here, having taken five years of book English before attempting Southern California spanglish-speckled English. She got most idioms fairly well, but was forever stumped on uh-Huh (yes) and Uh-uh (no). She couldn’t hear the difference between them. It came to mind when I got the following piece in email. I don’t know who wrote this, but if that someone wants to get in touch, I will be more than happy to give credit.
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is “UP.” It is listed in the dictionary as being used as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].
It’s easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?
At a meeting, why does a topic come “UP ? Why do we speak UP , and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has a real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this up is confusing:
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP . When i t rains, it wets UP the earth.
When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dry UP.
One could go on & on, but I’ll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP , so ….
Time to shut UP …..!
Oh…one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?
U P
Originally published August 11, 2008
Friends in Denver had been warning me of hot weather, and a need for rain for some time before arriving. There are a number of us who “bring rain” when we travel. So we brought some. There was some talk we may have gotten carried away.
My first day in Denver, it rained that glorious warm summer’s rain I remember from summers spent in Winslow. It rained in fits and spurts over the next day or two. Then Friday afternoon, while on my way from the convention center to the Sheraton, it started up again. Thunder. Lightning. Big drops of warm rain. Wonderful stuff. I took off my hat and walked with my face turned up.
The rain came down harder and I was getting seriously wet. That’s ok. It’s warm. It’s summer. I’ll be fine.
Then the little blighter turned cold. And mean. The rain started coming down hard enough to wash paint off buildings. It added insult to injury by hailing. Swell. Not happy with trying to wash me off the sidewalk, I am now running the risk of being shredded by little bits of ice. Fortunately I got to the bus stop just as the bus got there. There was some talk on the bus of starting a wet t-shirt contest, as there wasn’t one of us that didn’t have some water damage.
That bus was a life saver, in many ways. Not just that day, but for the entire convention. Our hotels and the Convention Center were spread all over the place, and if it hadn’t been for the free shuttle down 16th Street Mall, the convention would have been a disaster. Even for someone like me who likes to walk.
During the day, buses ran up and down 16th Street Mall, past shops upscale and down, “This Is Colorado” tourist kitsch, the inevitable multi-screen movie theater, stores you can find in any mall in any town, and a used bookstore I managed to avoid. For a bookaholic, that may sound like blasphemy, but my car was already suffering from “Wait! Since we’re driving, we can take…” from the trip out. Any more stuff, and I wouldn’t be able to see out the back window. LA has a pretty good set of used bookstores to get lost in. I said that loudly to myself a couple of times, as I headed away.
In the evenings, the buses were joined by bicycling pedicabs dodging around the trees and seating areas in the center of the “street”, around the buses, pedestrians, and the random police car touring the town. Staying up past the time the buses ran, sometimes quite a lot after, the pedicabs made the trip back to my hotel refreshing and quite personal, kinda like a friendly taxi ride with a breeze. The drivers were willing to chat, sharing tidbits about their job and the town. Friday and Saturday nights, horse drawn carriages were also scattered about. I would have liked to ride in one, but never quite arranged it.
Denvention, Aug 6-10, 2008
There are convention reviews all over the net, detailing events, people, awards. I enjoyed the gathering of friends, the sharing of stories of happenings more personal. Some friends I see several times a year, some I haven’t seen in far too long, and some I met for the very first time. The party thrown by Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden was a great gathering of friends in person, having gathered for months and years on the blog Making Light. Teresa made her (in)famous Scurvy Cure. Made in typical fannish fashion—in the bathroom—it consisted of hand-squoze citrus, including itty bitty limes, to which was added Everclear. A lot of drinks will numb the mouth over a few sips, so the last is milder than the first. Not so with Scurvy Cure. Between the juice and oils from the citrus and the Everclear, the last sip packed as big a wollop as the first. I told Teresa so, and got a big grin in reply.
Wandering in to a party serving sloe gin gave me another alcohol first. Family history has it my grandfather took my grandmother to a speak-easy, fed her sloe gin, thus causing her memory to cease functioning for the rest of the evening. I, on the other hand, seem to have inherited my father’s head for drink, as I remember every silly, laughing moment.
The same friend (hi, John) who introduced me to Rhum Agricole, rum made from sugar cane as opposed to rum from molasses, introduced me to WristRockets. Since WristRockets are legal in the UK but not in many places in the US, I of course do not have said fun thing in my possession. Any remarks made in jest about hitting everything I aim at, because I aim at the ground, does not mean anything. Really.
Wandering thru the dealer room caused several items to leap off tables and racks, demanding that I take them home. Several pairs of earrings have been added to my collection, along with an absolutely amazingly beautiful hand-painted silk scarf. I avoided the art show, as it has proven more and more difficult to make it out of one without some far too expensive item, or whimpering because I can’t. I know my limitations, and art shows test them greatly.
Spent time in ConOps with friends, old and new, including a crazy Brit (hi, Dave) who read the real estate advertisements with great zest and silliness. Nothing like perspective! I enjoyed pictures from Japan (hi, Robbie) and the worldcon last year. I met up with a friend who’d moved to Denver from LA several years ago (Hey Jude!), and had a wonderful several hour chat. Sunday afternoon’s get together was both magical and wonderful, full of silliness and laughter. I’m sure the concom was delighted when the convention was over, but I was sorry to see it end.
I visited the Denver Fireman’s Museum just before packing the car and heading home. UPDATE: Pictures here.
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Everybody else still sees a rock pile until someone gets the permits, files the environmental impact report, and actually gets the guys with the money to do more than say “What a great idea! It’s too risky for us to finance.”