Crash

What do you think is the absolute worst thing that could happen to a writer?

Hint: look at the title of this post.

That’s right. Last Thursday, the worst of the worst happened to me. It wasn’t a complete crash, and I (thankfully) didn’t get a blue screen of death, but it did require me to restart my laptop back to when I first got it. I’m not even sure what happened exactly. When I turned it on, it wouldn’t connect to the internet. The wi-fi seemed broken somehow, although every other device in the house was connecting okay. The laptop just kept flashing “Can’t detect signal” (or something like that). The troubleshooting feature kept telling me to search for a new signal, except it wouldn’t do it. Oh, and here’s the kicker: Windows Help wouldn’t work at all either.

When help wouldn’t work, I got nervous since that really shouldn’t happen. So I used the restore feature on my computer. Except that didn’t do a thing! I was finally able to connect to the internet with an Ethernet cable, but Windows was still having trouble loading (big shocker). In the end, I had to…oh, it’s too hard to say! I mean write!…wipe the whole thing. Back to October 2011.

I lost a ton of stuff. My WIPs are all right of course. I have those backed up in like three different ways (as you should, too). But I did lose a lot of old stories that weren’t any good, but I liked to have for sentimental reasons (the short story I wrote for creative writing when I was a senior in high school!). Plus I lost my idea file, which had a bunch of random thoughts that I tried (and failed) to make into stories but maybe could have used in some way, probably not but still, I might have thought of something. I’m not too upset about that, but it’s still kind of a bummer.

The only thing I lost that I’m really kicking myself for not having a backup of is my file of Spam messages. There was about sixty of those that are lost in cyber oblivion, and I’m stuck without anything to post on the Spamfiles. So that sucks.

If you want to help me in my hour of need and can’t afford to buy me a new laptop, forward me some amusing spam messages you’ve gotten (click that link or the one in my profile!). Surely that’s not too much to ask!

And for your own sakes, back up your hard drives.

I’m going to go eat a gallon of ice cream.

Distractions from Writing

More specifically, distractions from editing, because man, that isn’t fun. I’ve mentioned more than one of these before, but

My favorite distraction du jour is called Pixelo. The game is a version of what’s known as Nonograms, where you have a grid and you use the numbers above and along the side to determine which squares should be colored and which should be left blank. If you do decide to try this, I recommend ignoring the tutorial, which is needlessly confusing (the developer doesn’t seem to speak English, which means the translations aren’t great). It’s perfect if you like logic puzzles similar to Sudoku.

The Impossible Quiz. It’s not totally impossible, but I haven’t beaten it yet. It’s crass and weird at times, but funny and constantly making you think outside the box (sometimes literally) in order to answer a question. Some of the questions are easy (running the mouse over a cat to “pet” it), some are frustrating (having 0.5 seconds to click on something so you don’t lose the game), and others just require you to do as instructed (click “the answer” to continue). Oh, and there was a sequel.

The Company of Myself. Okay, this is a game for people who like simple platform games but also a deep story (all twelve of you?). The gameplay is easy and the puzzles challenging enough to keep your attention.

Doodle God. Like the Impossible Quiz, there’s a lot of random chance in it as you match different elemental representations (fire, water, earth, etc.) together in order to make something new. There’s over a hundred things to make, so it will take a lot of guessing to get one hundred percent completion. If you really haven’t had enough after the first game, you can try the sequel.

Say goodbye to productivity.

I swear, this isn’t part of an evil scheme to distract all the other writers.

Heh heh.

Language of Confusion: Post

Post is one of those words that shows up in a lot of different ways. This right here is a post. If you see a fence, I’m guessing it has posts, too. My brother is in the navy, and he’s posted in Japan. When you send a letter (is your computer broken?) you use the post office. Putting up a sign is called posting it. Also, should you need to describe something that is after something else, it would be post that something else. Okay, that description is a little convoluted, but you get the idea. And what is up with “posthaste”? Is there a reason for these eclectic meanings? I don’t know. Let’s check.

The fence post doesn’t have a date. It comes from the Old English post (…sometimes, I swear, they’re not even trying) and before that, the Old French post (okay, now I know they’re not), which basically has the same meaning. Like most French, it’s derived from classical Latin, in this case postis, which means door, post, or door-post. I’m not even kidding, that’s what Google Translate says. The origin ends there, although it’s possible that postis is a combination of the Latin words por (the prefix pro) and stare (stand). Now, this isn’t definite, but it would be interesting if it were true.

What about a post, like when you’re on duty? Is that related? Nope! That post showed up in the late sixteenth century, coming from the Middle French poste, with the same meaning. The French actually took the word from Italian—posto, meaning place—but before that, things are back to normal because Italian took it from the Vulgar Latin postum and classical Latin positum, meaning set, as you’d set something down. So it went from placing a thing to placing a soldier. That kind of makes sense.

The post we see stuck in front of modern or script comes from the Latin word for after. Which just so happens to be post, because of course it is. It can be traced all the way back to Proto Indo European apo, which means off or away.

The rest of the posts come from one or the other of these definitions. Posting a sign (or, you know, a blog post) is from the idea of nailing something to a post. The duty post is where we got the mail post from—riders posted at intervals along the mail route. Plus, the post in posthaste comes from post horses moving fast, basically telling the posted mailriders to move with haste.

TL;DR: All the posts come from three completely different Latin words that we English speakers decided should all be the same. Anyone else think that eventually, all language is just going to be one word said over and over? Because sometimes that’s what it seems like.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

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

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Ottawa, Canada

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Apocalypse Survival Guide: Pandemic

I’m doing this on Tuesday this time because I couldn’t think of another post for Tuesday. So here it is.

It’s a plague! That somehow kills everyone and doesn’t respond to any modern medicine. Hey, at least no one’s turning into zombies this time.

So I’ve scoured everything I could find that has world destroying plagues (sans zombification…wow, that’s a real word, who knew?) and while there’s a pretty good chunk of literature (THE STAND and THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN are probably the most well-known) and movies where the world is wiped out by some illness.

Survival Tips: Plague Addition

1. Don’t assume you’re immune. Even if you’ve been having vivid dream-messages from God. In fact, that might be a symptom.

2. If you hear word of a plague, stay away from all strange animals. I have seen entirely too many pandemic movies that have started with someone deciding, “Ooh! A monkey! There can’t be anything dangerous about touching a wild animal with a medical tag on its leg!”

3. Remember to always wash your hands. But don’t use antibacterial soap. All that stuff that promises to kill 99.9% of germs just means that the remaining 0.1% has evolved to kill you better. Seriously, antibacterial soap probably caused the pandemic in the first place.

4. Make sure you’re not with anyone who will kill you the second you come down with a case of the sniffles. Which pretty much means make sure you’re not with anyone.

5. Depending on the severity of the plague (i.e. if it infects all the animals, too…which is impossible, but if we’re imagining a plague we might as well go all in), you might not be able to eat any meat, even if you hunt for it yourself. Stick to dried goods and vegetables.

6. One of my general apocalypse survival tips is to find a doctor and stick with her/him. This goes double for plague-pocalypses.

7. Remember: everyone is a potential carrier, so it’s probably not a good idea to invite the neighbors over for tea in the middle of an outbreak.

8. Good news! Unless all the movies have lied to me (why would they do that?) there’s probably a research facility somewhere that will keep searching for a cure until the bitter end! Bad news! They probably aren’t accepting lodgers. But you should try to stay alive as long as possible so you can get said cure (if they find it).

That’s all the plague tips I have. If you can think of anything else to add, be my guest. And remember to stay away from monkeys.

Last Saturday

Actually, it was two Saturdays ago now, but who’s keeping track? Anyway, as anyone who follows me on Twitter may know, I had some, well, trouble when a piece broke off of my ceramic salt shaker.

Click to embiggen. Then you'll actually be able to read what's going on.

I’m not even kidding. I put glue on the broken ends, stuck them together, and the chipped piece was attached to my finger, not the frigging salt shaker. If there were more panels on my poorly drawn stick figure comic, it would include me sitting at the computer looking up “how to remove crazy glue from skin”. I know you’re supposed to use nail polish remover, but I only had one almost empty bottle. Suffice to say, getting it off was not fun.

If any lesson can be learned from this, it’s don’t use super glue unless you have liberal amounts of acetone in the house. And keep your hand in your pocket when you go out to buy more.

Language of Confusion: Imbibe

I have to say, imbibe is a surprisingly interesting word. Yes, I’m aware of how crazy that sounds, but come see what I mean.

Imbibe showed up in the late fourteenth century, and like most words, it comes from Old French and classical Latin. In French it was imbiber/embiber, which meant soak into, and in Latin it was imbibere, where it meant assimilation or absorb. Although we never drop the prefix in English, bibere is an actual word in Latin meaning drink, and the im- comes from in-, which means into. And it might not seem like it, but bibere is also related to another Latin word for drink, potare, the origin word for potion. Potare can be traced back all the way to the Proto Indo European po, also to drink, meaning it went from drink to mentally absorb (“drink inward” in a figurative sense) and then back to drink as it moved through the centuries.

The cool thing about imbibe is how it’s related to other words—like beverage. Beverage comes from the Anglo French beverage (if you can wrap your head around that radical spelling), and before that the Old French bevrage, which is the basically another Old French word, boivre, with the suffix -age stuck on. And where does boivre come from? The classical Latin bibere, of course.

There’s also bib, which actually kind of makes sense when you think of the “absorb” definition. It showed up in the late sixteenth century, coming from the word bibben, which apparently was a real English word once upon a time. Although crazily enough, people aren’t one hundred percent sure that bib (and bibben) are really from bibere.

That’s not all, but there’s less certainty about the other words bibere might be related to. Imbue is a possible relative, which makes sense since it means to saturate or cause to absorb. It can be traced to the Latin imbuere, same meaning, but there’s no actual evidence it’s related to bibere. Beer might also be related, coming from the Old English beor, but it’s origin beyond that is “disputed” (i.e. they’re even less sure about it than usual). Still, the theory is there that the German originator of the word (of course it’s German; what did you expect?) took it from the Vulgar Latin word biber, which meant a drink, and you know it’s related to bibere.

TL;DR: Tons of words might be related to imbibe. They also might not be. Language!

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Dictionary.com

Omniglot

University of Texas at AustinLinguistic Research Center

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

Fordham University

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Encyclopaedia Britannica

June Goals

June is here. 2014 is already half over. We march ever onward towards death.

Sorry. That got kind of dark there. So what was I up to last month?

May Goals

1. Send out ten more queries for COLLAPSE. I hope I garner some interest this time…

Yeah, I did it, and I haven’t gotten even a glance. It’s weird how a win can feel so much like a loss. Boo…

2. Finish MALICE. I’m not sure how many words I still have to go, but I should definitely be able to get it done this month.

Yep, done. At least this one feels like a win. Draft one is done and ready to be ripped to shreds and put together as something readable. Maybe.

3. Update my blog’s etymology pages. I have a feeling this is going to be more complicated than it looks (it sure was last time!).

Did it! Did you see? Well, it’s kind of hard to notice since there’s like a million words there (that might be exaggerated a tad, but whatevs), but I updated it. If I’ve etymologized it, it’s up there.

And now for June…

June Goals

1. Read aloud of Malice, including taking notes, and then fixing said notes. I’m fairly certain I can get this done, although reading the entire thing out loud might take longer than I expect.

2. Sigh…do SOMETHING about my query. Obviously it’s going to need a complete and total rewrite. I may end up having to join some forum or other just to get some opinions, which I’m really not looking forward to. Did I say sigh yet?

3. Two more apocalypse posts! I’ve kind of done zombies to death lately, so I’ll see if I can whip up something about one of the million other apocalypses waiting to take us out.

Okay, so that’s what my June looks like. What about you guys? You up to anything this month? Any writing goals you want to share?