Reflections 2014

Wow. It’s almost the last day of 2014. Can you believe it went by so quickly? Now, what was it I wanted to accomplish this year…

Resolutions 2014

1. Get my newest book, REMEMBER, to the point where it can be beta read.

            It’s still pretty rough right now (the first draft still isn’t done), so it will take a lot of work to get it there.

I did not get it to beta read point, but I’m getting there—maybe another month or two. So, not bad.

2. Start working on a (gulp) query for COLLAPSE.

            I have a few rough copies, but I doubt any would entice readers. Ooh, this is the most terrifying goal.

I did do this, although not successfully…sigh…

3. Try to find some way to post my progress on my goals, both yearly and monthly.

            I’d like to see how I’m doing and whether I need to work harder.

Hey, I actually did something completely and correctly! Amazing!

4. Read more dystopian/apocalyptic/paranormal YA.

            For, you know, research. This is probably going to be an easy goal.

Of course. Still not enough, though ; ).

5. Think of ways to make my blog posts more interesting.

            And implement them. That last “Informal Poll” thing was a huge bust. I have some other ideas in mind, but who knows if they’ll be successful.

Whee! I did it! All because you guys are easily amused by stick figure comics.

6. Try to start a movement to simplify the English language.

            Seriously, is the letter C really necessary? And don’t say we need it for the “ch” sound. We can use Q for that and not for “kw”, which is weird anyway. Every other use of C can be replaced with K or S. I’m also not a fan of using G for the “juh” sound, but one thing at a time.

All you people complaining “We need C!” [grumble, grumble]

7. Get over my doubts about selling an apocalyptic story in a glutted YA market and just DO IT.

            I feel like this one is self-explanatory.

Sigh…no…not for lack of trying, though…

Not bad. I’m just disappointed that I didn’t succeed where it counted. Man, this post turned depressing. I’m going to go eat my weight in chocolate.

Shopping

More tales of me making the mistake to go shopping in a store instead of online.

Ninety percent of the time, I’m completely ignored. The other ten percent…

Seriously, I said I didn’t need help three times and he still wouldn’t go away. He was hovering over me like I was trying to steal something. You know what, annoying salespeople? Sometimes people are just oddly proportioned and don’t need to be stared at while they find something that fits!

Merry Christmas!

Or whatever you celebrate. Although today is Christmas. So have a happy day no matter what.

You might think this is the same as Thanksgiving, but not so. We have candy instead of cookies on Christmas.

My blood is probably mostly sugar by now.

No regrets.

Holidays

How lazy can I get this holiday season? How about reposting a stick figure comic from three years ago and pretending it’s a new post?

Honestly though, this is one of my favorites. And still applicable (although it’s a different orange cat this time).

It’s going to be filler on Thursday, but I’ll see if I can scrounge something up for Saturday. Happy holidays!

Berserk Button

Everyone has a berserk button. This just happens to be mine.

Okay, one of mine.

They had it coming.

Language of Confusion: Animalia II

My last animal post was pretty well liked, so here’s another! This time we’re looking at small pet mammals.

Mouse/mice

Mouse comes from the Old English mus, which means small rodent…and “muscle of the arm” (no, I have no idea why). That word comes from the Proto Germanic mus and Proto Indo European mus…well, that’s surprisingly stable. There’s also mice, which comes from the Old English mys. The reason mice is the plural of mouse is because of I-mutation, which is what happened when a bunch of Old English words went from an A, O, or U sound to an E or I sound because of linguistic laziness. Plurals in Old English ended in iz, which means mus would have been something like musiz (I’m just guessing here, so don’t take this as fact). From there, it went to mis, keeping the consonants of the first syllable and the vowel of the second, and then it became mice.

Rat

Rat comes from the Old English raet. Before that? No one knows. But there are similar words in other languages—Italian has ratto, German has ratte and Latin has…rat. Hm. Not much of an origin story.

Hamster

Hamster has an actual date attached to it, appearing in the early seventeenth century from the German hamster (eye roll), and before that it comes from the Middle High German hamastra. There are theories about the word hamster going further back, but nothing definite has popped up.

Guinea pig

So why are these cute little critters called guinea pigs? Well, there’s a lot of debate about that. The name first popped up in the mid seventeenth century. One theory is that they were named because they were first brought to Britain on ships called guineamen (which were popular slave ships…ugh). Theory two is that the country of Guinea in Africa was confused with the country of Guyana in South America (where guinea pigs are from).

Gerbil

Gerbil has an even more specific year, showing up in 1849. It comes from the French gerbille and classical Latin gerbillus, which is the name of the entire genus. Now, 1849 isn’t when the species suddenly popped into existence, so we called them something else before that. They were called jarbuah, which was taken directly from the Arabic word for them. I don’t know if gerbillus and jarbuah are related at all, but they are kind of similar. So…maybe?

Ferret

Ferret first showed up in the late fourteenth century, making it the earliest word that we have a date for. It comes from the Old French furet, which was a diminutive of another word for weaselly animals, fuiron, which, as you may have read as a factoid at some point, also means thief. Before French, the word was furionem in Late Latin and fur (or thief) in classical Latin. It’s thought trace back to the Proto Indo European word bhor/bher, to carry, the origin word for words with the suffix -fer (which I did a post on way back when) as well as furtive.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

Orbis Latinus

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Grammar.about.com

ARKive

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Colors

Okay, this totally isn’t the color partition post. The title is a bit of a tease. Sorry, but I’ve been too busy doing the actual editing to write a post about it. Maybe next week. Oh, wait. That’s Christmas. Then there’s New Year’s. Hm. I guess you’re going to have to wait until 2015. I think you’ll survive.

So why is this post so titled? Well, it’s because I stumbled across a fun, addictive, as-complex-as-it-is-simple, game.

The object of this Chinese-born game is to find the one square that is colored differently from the others. For the first ten levels, it’s pretty easy to do. Then the grids get large and the colors vary so slightly that it’s nearly impossible. There are no penalties if you click the wrong square, but the entire thing is timed so you try to get through as many levels as possible in under sixty seconds. I’ve only been able to get up to level 27, and that was a lucky shot : ). Be careful. This is one of those things you do that you say to yourself, “Well, I’ll just do it one more time.” and then it’s 3 a.m. and you’ve given up pretending you’re not trying to find the end of an endless game.

The game is absolute genius. What level did you reach?