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 |   Maybe meandering, possibly peripatetic and indisputably irregular. |
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So here it is.. a blog. Repository of some of my present musings and interests. Sometimes things pop into my head that should probably stay there - it is possible I shall share at least some of them here. (Naturally I shall filter out the ones about my sordid obsession with the culinary dark arts, one has to protect the innocent!) Please feel free not to take this too seriously, much of it could wind up being snippets of things that amuse me. Yesterday I came up with this: Few politicians can be considered first class, but not a few are number twos. What can I do with it? Nothing springs to mind, except perhaps blog it. Perhaps in some other life I'm a failed stand-up comedian. I have the beginnings of an idea to introduce another player into the Mr Moonlight story, a nice visual has occurred to me, and a summoning gone wrong seems appropriate. When I finish up here I shall literally put pen to paper. I find writing at least initially longhand helps my ideas flow. When I type up what I've written, I give it a first revision at the same time, and as a bare minimum check my spellings and grammar . I do want to keep tabs on my current reading here. I usually have several books on the go at the same time. Currently I am working through 'Pyramids' by Terry Pratchett. I reread Pratchett's books over and over - usually at work where they provide much needed amusement whilst I eat breakfast. 'The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle', by Stuart Turton was loaned to me by a friend who shares a love of murder mysteries, (especially Agatha Christie's works). It is a new take on the genre and very very clever. The protagonist occupies different bodies - a selection of the guests at the house where Evelyn is murdered. Each day he spends in a different guest, and he has been tasked with discovering the murderer - or maybe saving Evelyn from actually being murdered, it is hard to tell. The book twists and turns and is quite intriguing. 'New Science - Principles of the new science concerning the common nature of nations' is an English translation by David Marsh of 'La Scienza Nuova' by Giambattista Vico, published in 1725. Not far into this yet, I had to find a copy of the frontispiece online, as it wasn't included in the Kindle edition. The first part of the book explains the idea - and uses a detailed description of the frontispiece to convey this. So being without it would have made things somewhat harder. 'The Complete Works of Michael De Montaigne' is again a translation, this time by Donald M. Frame. Montaigne's Essays are famous, I kept reading about them, so treated myself to a nice hardbound copy to dip into - usually just before bedtime. So there we have it - a blog entry - enjoy! (whispers almost inaudibly 'Bon Appétit). |
| There are two words that are used nowadays in a negative sense, and I feel that this is both sad, and a reflection of how society has been manipulated. Those words are 'amateur', and 'artificial'. An amateur is basically someone who pursues an activity purely for the love of doing so, and the word derives from the Latin amatorem, lover. The negative attached is of course that such a person is a dabbler, a dilettante, and not as good as a professional. A professional does something for money. They may be no good at what they do, they may hate it and do the bare minimum, or they may be a 'cowboy', who takes as much money as they can from you because you don't know their trade well enough to know they are swindling you. But they are professionals, and the implication is they are better than mere amateurs. But, this is a Capitalist opinion, the person who does anything for the love of doing it, cares about what they do, and will take time to do it well. Of course not all professionals are useless, but then, not all amateurs are either. The word 'artificial' applies to anything that is not natural, so an imitation or a substitute for something else. The frequent assumption is that this means something somehow inferior. The word derives from the Latin 'artificialis', which is something that pertains or belongs to art. The art of anything was the skill obtained through practice and learning. So again the origin didn't contain that negative assumption of inferiority. Likely the negative has been applied because a lot of mass produced artificial goods are extremely tacky, a symptom of the making everything as cheap as possible and sell it for as much as we can get away with. The point I am hoping to illustrate here is that we have been conditioned to see everything in terms of money. Everything. Even life. I would argue that our lives are much richer doing something we love, and are good at because we love it, than working because we need to pay the bills and believe that we have no other options. Happy is the man (or woman) who's work is their pleasure, yet many people discover turning a hobby into a business saps the pleasure out of it completely. Value your amateur activities for the pleasure that they give you, and if they involve making something artificial, then enjoy the art of making it the best that you can. |
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). I mostly reject that. I'm eating rice with an egg this morning but Pannya just brought me chocolate milk from 7/11 (bless him; I really don't need it).
