Richard Harris's Blog, page 40

Quote of the Day

Srinivas Rao (@UnmistakableCEO) recently posted a thoughtful piece called “Measure Your Life in Meaning, Not Efficiency.”

In it, he refers to today’s QOTD, which comes from Courtney Martin (@courtwrites), author of Do It Anyway and The New Better Off, co-founder of @soljourno & @FRESHSpeakers, as well as a self-described @TEDPrize strategist, electric slider, momma, lover, and fighter.

“Your entire life is built on inexplicable miracles that you mostly don’t notice because you’re so busy cleaning up around them.”

A Necessary Return to the Long Novel?

@Borisk (Boris Kachka) over at vulture.com has come up with some rather hefty books he thinks we should all read. Entitled “26 Very Long Books Worth the Time They’ll Take to Read,” the list for me includes some obvious choices (Don Quixote, War and Peace, A Suitable Boy), some I’ve been meaning to read for years (Infinite Jest, Bleak House, The Stand), some surprises (Middlemarch [yawn], 1Q84 [The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was a much “bigger” book, if a much smaller published work]), and some I simply have to disagree with (Life and Fate, Underworld).

Still, on this day of reflection, I can’t help but wonder if our collective blasé/anti-establishment/angry mood couldn’t best be tempered by a serious sit-down with a tome heavy enough to buoy a ship in stormy weather and insightful enough to make us actually “think” (yes, it’s in quotation marks).

As Kachka points out, “Binge-watching is easy; just drag the laptop into bed and go. But savoring a book of, say, 800 pages or longer is a project.”

Although my book club would draw and quarter me if I suggested it, especially after our last pick, Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice (128 pages), perhaps it is time for all of us to make at least one book a year one of those tomes we’ve been promising ourselves for years we’d read. For me, that starts with what is currently on my bedside table, Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, a paltry 608 pages. I know, I know. Weak. But it’s a start.

Word/Quote of the Day

solemn: see November 9, 2016

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

Rutger Hauer as replicant Roy Batty, Blade Runner (1982)

 

 

Quote of the Day

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While doing some accounting yesterday for the 2017 tax season (does this make me a nerdish nerd?), I was also putting on my shoulder pads and helmet in preparation for tonight’s battle royal, and reminded of something my father used to love saying: “There are only two certainties in life: death and taxes.”

Much to the chagrin of a young boy who couldn’t give a damn about taxes and knew that, because he was built of a mixture of Inconel, steel, titanium and tungsten, the first part didn’t apply to him, it grew tiring listening to that same rant throughout the years.

Until I first paid taxes. Then had knee surgery. And then had to pay for the ambulance that drove me to the hospital even though my taxes pay for a “universal healthcare system.” (ed. note: Canada also has the distinction of being the only country in the world with a universal healthcare system that does not include coverage of prescription medication.)

But to the Quote of the Day! I was always curious who that famous statement about death and taxes could be attributed to, and now I think I have the answer. The year was 1789 and a real go-getter named Benny F. (aka Benjamin Franklin) was writing a letter when in it he stated:

“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Quote of the Day

On the brink of Armageddon 2016, something to think about from Cormac McCarthy’s epic novel, The Road.

“If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.”

 

A Love Post to Words

While I definitely consider myself a logophile, I do detest lexiphanicism. As evidenced by the story , I also love playing Scrabble, but often run into a logastellus or two who will use one of those online cheat programs. That is a hot issue.

On a day when I would like to talk about anything not related to you know what in you know where, I came across something and thought I would add my own two cen…er…two toonies to the mix.

According to Merriam-Webster, their “10 Most Liked Words of the Day” (as voted on by users of The Facebook) are as follows: bathetic (a ludicrous descent from the exalted or lofty to the commonplace), canoodle (to caress amorously), crapulous (gross excess in eating or drinking), flummox (to bewilder or confuse), gumption (resourcefulness; initiative), kismet (fate), numinous (mysterious), sagacious (shrewd),  vamoose (scram) and vicissitude (changes; ups and downs).

Ex) Elder Bum-suk and Junior Young-bum were quite crapulous after a night of noraebang merrymaking, but Elder Bum-suk flummoxed his young friend when he began canoodling him in numinous yet sagacious ways that displayed real gumption; sadly, Bum-suk’s bathetic offensive had Young-bum vamoose for the nearest side street, where he could expel his soju demons in public and ruminate about the vicious vicissitudes he had experienced that evening.

As fun, funny, and funnily as those words are, however, users of The Facebook are missing a bunch of real doozies, notably those that make great showstoppers in Scrabble. These include, but are certainly not limited to, the following how-d’ya-like-‘dem-apples:

aerie, aileron, bezique, caziques, cwm, muzjiks, neonate, syzygy, zemstvos, zymurgy

As for mellifluously euphonious words, Dan Dalton (@wordsbydan) over at BuzzFeed asked readers for help in coming up with his “32 Of The Most Beautiful Words In The English Language.” It’s a great list, so check it out, especially if you’re using an online dating site and need to impress someone with your prodigious lexicon.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have a word(s) to add to any of these lists.

Quote of the Day

On the eve of the eve of what pundits and voters alike are calling “the most important U.S. presidential election in a generation/lifetime/ever,” it might be helpful to harken back nearly two centuries and a then-unknown 28-year-old named Abraham Lincoln. The time was January 1838, and Lincoln was giving a speech to the Young Men Lyceum in response, at least in part, to the murder of an abolitionist newspaper editor, Elijah Lovejoy, who was murdered by a pro-slavery mob near Alton, Illinois.

Today, part of what he said he said has been simplified as follows: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

However, what Lincoln actually said is the subject of the Quote of the Day and sage words to digest as we all, as a world, wait with bated breath for Tuesday’s election decision.

“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.”

Upcoming Art Exhibit in Hamilton, ON

I can’t paint to save my life. That is why I write. Let me provide an example. If someone were to say to me, “Hey, Mr. Rick. Draw a nice, Sweet‘n Low picture of you and your girlyfriend doing something fun and splashy!” then this would be, more or less, the final product. More or less.

Obviously I would do a much better job describing this scene through the written word: “There is a man. He is clean, musculoskeletal, and handsome. There is also a girl. She is testing for electricity in heaven. But, the sun is out. So, they are happily.”

Fortunately, there are better painters (and writers?) in the world than yours truly. One of those gifted young artists is Lukas Mouka, who will be in attendance at Hamilton’s Earls Court Gallery on November 10, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. for the opening reception of a new exhibit, Epic Stories and Tails: Exploring a Journey’s Encounters, which will run until January 7, 2017.

Also in attendance will be Richard Ahnert, Edward Falkenberg, Allen Egan, Chandler Swain, and Mary Philpott.

If you happen to be in or around Steeltown at the time, make sure you drop by and see some of the fantastic works on display.

P.S. The above photo is Lukas Mouka’s Ferris Wheel.

Quote of the Day

Call Oscar Wilde what you want – except late for dinner – but never think he was shy about being outspoken or exceptionally talented at his craft.

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”  

Quote of the Day

As part of the 2-for-1 George Orwell package that I began earlier with my post on “Perseverance,” the Quote of the Day comes from none other than Mr. Orwell himself and his Magna Carta…err…magnum opus, Ninety Eighty-Four.

For all you cunning linguists out there who speak one or more foreign language, you’ll probably read into this on a deeper level, all too aware of how language can shape our biases – and the other way around – when we step out of the comfort zone of our mother tongue.

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”