I think traffic goes down when I talk radio.

As a former colleague of mine liked to say, "It is what it is."[1]

My passions are an inch wide and a mile deep and not too many people have tripped and fallen into the same ones I have.

My writing friends have commented that they they enjoy the writing and introspective posts better, and I do too from a creative perspective. Sometimes they overlap.

Know what I'm trying to find time for today? Program my Wouxun KG-UVD1P with the new cable that arrived from China this week. I've spent some time cleaning up my spreadsheet of repeaters and offsets for major cities between here and Erie, PA so I can scan as I travel.

If you're curious, I'm using Jim Mitchell's (KC8UNJ) KG-UV Commander.

I also collect vintage barbed wire, Tootsie Pop wrappers, and discarded shopping lists I find on the floor at the grocery store. Oh, honey, don't let me commence! [2]

[1]
I never cared for that phrase ("it is what it is"). I like looking for ways to replace clichés with what the phrase actually means. That can be difficult, because a) those phrases develop in a speech community for good reasons (they say what they mean in a way speakers and listeners connect deeply with), and b) it 's often more difficult than you might think to find an alternative, because we've been so conditioned to use them without thinking.

(There must be some linguistic selection going on there, a la biological evolution).

The challenge is to say the same thing without sounding like Mr Spock. Usually you don't have to say anything, clichés are understood as much by the context as by the words. But in this case, you might say, "Well, there's not much that can be done about it," or, "It's just the nature of the problem, we have to find a way to deal with it," etc.

[2]
Truman Capote, "Hidden Gardens," Music for Chameleons. If there's one fiction book you read in your life, read Music for Chameleons. No book is so tightly and lightly crafted; it will give you more delight per page than any other writer of this generation (or any other generation IMHO, but that would make a good dinner conversation).

When my time comes, I'm not going to run up to Peter or Moses or Abraham, I'm going straight to Truman. There may not be too many of us up there that are fond of him.

And no, I don't collect vintage barbed wire, Tootsie Pop wrappers, or discarded shopping lists, though the shopping lists would make an interesting anthropological study, and at one time someone was posting them online. How interesting? Retailers only know what you bought. They don't know what else was on the list, how the list was organized, and what you came in for and left without; add a little handwriting analysis and some DNA sampling and you have an anthropological PhD dissertation.

Started: 2012-04-07