iTunes Sux (Suxty)

Every now again someone gets up and does something awesome. Sometimes it’s me, usually it’s not. This week it’s my mate Chris.

Chris is one of my oldest friends, who, while travelling in New Zealand, had the misfortune to fall in love, marry a Kiwi and become a pastor. I realise that this doesn’t sound that unfortunate, but the fact of the matter is that he now lives in New Zealand, which has to be a bummer. His wife, daughter, congregation and fans probably don't see it that way, but what would they know? Mind you, he’s made a good fist of it.

When not pastoring, Chris plays bass for a New Zealand band called Six60, which would have to be the most optimistic band name for a bunch of Kiwis ever (Sux-suxty? Really?). This aside, they’ve gone and landed themselves New Zealand’s number one single this week, so full respect to them. Check out Rise up 2.0 by Six60, if you can find it.

Of course you might expect his best mates to all have bought a copy or twelve to boost the numbers along, but incredibly this isn’t the case. The single is only available through iTunes, and you have to be registered in New Zealand to purchase it. Apparently Apple is still figuring out how this whole global economy thing works, being just a small company that hasn’t been around very long and isn’t very good.

The long and the short is, my best friend has a number one single and until recently I hadn’t even heard it.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs
(It is pretty good, isn't it?)

Evacuated

Well, Australia has done it again; bushfires at one end of the country and floods at the other. If I never hear the word ‘devastated’ again it will be too soon. Across the country, thousands of people are being forced from their homes.

And what do you know? I’m one of them.

No, my house is neither on fire nor underwater, for which I am exceedingly grateful. I’m being forced out by that other great natural disaster; dumb luck. My house mates, including the one who actually holds the lease, are all moving out to new jobs in different states, leaving yours truly in the lurch once again, with just under two weeks to find a new place to live. Again.

For everyone this week, the chief lesson has been a reminder of how small we really are, and how transient even the things we regard as permanent, like houses, really are. As I was filling out application forms this afternoon, I got a real sense of powerlessness as I realise that something as crucial to the next phase of my life as where I’m going to live is going to be decided by an office worker somewhere who has never met me. An office worker who, for some reason, believes that in order to make that decision they need to know who I work for, who my previous landlords were, how much I earn per week and what sort of car I drive (seriously). I might not be burning or drowning, but I feel like I have just as much control over events as I would if I were facing down a fire or a flood tide. I suppose that’s a healthy state of affairs, but just at the moment it sucks.

There again, I haven’t actually lost anything from my soon not to be room. I’m definitely better off than the Queenslanders whose lives have been d… ruined by the floods. There’s a lot to be thankful for. I have a job; a job at which I am treated as an inconsequential child, but a job nonetheless. And I live in a city which hasn’t been destroyed for almost forty years now (we must be just about due). And I’m still able to keep focussed on the really important things in life, as evidenced by the fact that, in a week when thousands of my countrymen are without electricity or even a roof, somehow I’ve still managed to make this post all about me.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Conduit

I'm sure we've all had times in our lives when a certain word or phrase seems to be following us. Like when you learn a new word while listening to a radio interview and then hear the same word three times in the next two days despite never having heard it before. Or like that time you couldn't stop yelling 'trousers' while you were supposed to be giving the valedictory address.

I've been going through one such experience recently, except it has been going on for two and a half months now. In some ways I brought it on myself; living the lifestyle I live in the questionable linguistic environments I do I suppose it was only a matter of time before I attracted the attention of some of the less reputable lexemes around me. But I never believed it would come to this.

I'm being stalked by the word 'conduit'.

It started back in November while I was writing that crazy Nanawrimo project. In the course of focussing on nothing but a single science fiction story for a whole month it was inevitable that some words would pop up repetitively; words like 'Cavalier' 'calibre' and 'lizardy'. But I was utterly unprepared for the frequency with which 'conduit' jumped in to fill the void whenever I needed a spaceshipy sounding noun.

I realise this doesn't really count as stalking. It's just me taking the lazy, uncreative route around writer's block and not having the time or inclination to go back and fix it.

Furthermore I think I've figured out where it came from. Last week I got in one of my 'bored with the world so I'll lose myself in an entire series or two of some escapist American television program' moods. Unfortunately the season of Boston Legal I'm up to wasn't available at the DVD shop, so I diverted to another old favourite of mine: Star Trek Voyager.

Yes. I have diverse, eccentric and obsolete taste in conduits. I mean TV shows. God damn it.

The thing is while I might have overused the word 'conduit' in my writing, those Voyager crewmen had conduits coming out of their ears. Power conduits; energy conduits; subspace conduits. If there's a made up physical phenomenon, it's got a conduit. But I'm sorry. Even if you live on a spaceship on the other side of the galaxy in a universe that includes telepathic two year olds, sentient nebulae and omnipotent continua with suicidal tendencies, there is no referential framework in which 'temporal conduit' could possibly mean anything sensible.

If all that wasn't enough (and I can see how you might be of that opinion, come to think of it) the next encounter came from a source completely disconnected from science fiction. My old friends the Newsboys put out their first post-Peter Furler album last year and I recently picked up a copy. Imagine my surprise at hearing the Newsboys - now fronted by Michael Tait - sing the following lyrics:

What will people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak? What will people do when they find that it's true?

This has nothing to do with conduits. I just need to get this off my chest. There are some songs that you just shouldn't cover because they can't be improved upon. This goes double for a band that already has several perfectly smash hits of its own.

There again, if we're talking about a vessel, substance or catalyst through which another substance or energy flows, then I suppose you could think of the whole universe as being one big temporal conduit. But it still doesn't make sense in the context of just one localised spaceship.

Meanwhile, in a different song on the same album:

When the 'boys light up you know
Who gets the praise. Who owns the show.
When the 'boys light up it's on
And we ain't stopping 'til we're done.
We ain't nothing but the conduits
He's got the power. He'll flip the switch.
Leaving the dark behind
Light up and let it shine.

See? It's everwhere I tell you. And ... Because... I...

Okay, look. I know this one's not very funny. To be honest I'm struggling to come up with a punchline as I watch extended news coverage of South East Queensland slowly going under water. My phone beeps periodically as my friends in Brisbane let me know they're alright.

I considered not posting this at all on grounds of lameness, but let's be frank. No one other than my family and maybe K.Kim is going to read this far anyway. I'm too distracted to self-censor at the moment, so I guess I'll keep typing and wait to see what tomorrow brings as I use Blogger as a nervous energy conduit.

God damn it.




Garry with 2 Rs

New Year's Morphological Nightmares

My mate Phil was rostered on to preach at church last Sunday. He was bouncing some sermon ideas off me, and told me that since it was a service for the second of January, he was thinking of taking a New Year’s resolution theme. He was very excited about his idea of changing it to “New Year’s Revolution”. Thankfully he had come up with some better ideas by Sunday morning.

I, on the other hand, have been musing on the quirk of the English language that makes ‘revolution’ the noun of both ‘revolt’ and ‘revolve’. I like the idea that a complete overhaul of the system, and just another spin of the endlessly turning wheel are both represented by the same word. It’s like taking the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” and expressing it in just one noun. Brilliant.

I thought it seemed especially appropriate at this time of year, when so many of them are being made. We all have these great ideas about what we can achieve in the new year, but in the end it’s just another tick around an endless cycle. And then I realised I was thinking about the wrong word. Damn it Phil, that would have made for an awesome, and potentially even moving, sermon. I mean blogpost.

There again, if the verb of ‘resolution’ is ‘resolve’ (and it is), then if we follow the revolution paradigm (there’s a science fiction film title in there somewhere) then ‘resolution’ should also be the noun of ‘resolt’. Tragically that’s not actually a word.

But it’s not that far from ‘result’. I’m sure if I tried hard enough I could come up with something deep about the journey from “Resolve” to “Result” being only a morphological derivation away. Unfortunately, “Result” is already a noun, so the methodology falls away a bit. I mean, it can be a verb if it wants to be (Garry’s pointless and boring morphology tutorial resulted in people throwing potatoes at him and ceasing to read his blog), but even so I think the link is a little thin.

The point is…

What about ‘re-salt’? As in, “after the application of the first pinch of salt, the broth was still too bland, so I re-salted it, in a frivolous act of re-salution.”

Oh never mind. Last year’s running totals have been removed and replaced with a set of New Year’s … goals. Some are more achievable than others, but we’ll see how many of them I can check off by this time next year.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Oh good grief. Does anyone know if ‘resolution’ as in “My monitor’s resolution is set to 1689x1050 pixels” has a verb form? This is going to keep me up all night.