A Moment of Brilliance
I love technology.
Mostly, I love to break things. I am a fantastic software tester, because I do things that no user in their right mind would ever do and invariably break the application. Anyone who has worked software support knows there is no such thing as “things no user in their right mind would ever do,” which is why I am an awesome tester. Actually, anyone who has worked support knows there is no such thing as a user in their right mind, which is how the ATT guy and I got to spend yesterday trading euphemisms for user error issues. Hardware, software—people run afoul of the ID-10T error everywhere.
I digress. I break things—that’s what you need to know. I break software, I run computers into the ground, and I have a box of 1,000 cords whose electronic counterparts are landfill in half a dozen countries. I would throw away the cords, too, but I am afraid some of them may be relevant to still-working electronic counterparts that I have in the house. The cords come with me, a sort of tangled testament to my love—and abuse—of gadgets.
Despite my ability to break things, I have never put any stock in extended warranties. If I buy one, I don’t break the gadget until after it expires. If I happen to break the gadget during the extended warranty period, the company refuses to honor it. Ever want to see me fly into a frothing rage? Ask me about Circuit City. I celebrated the day I heard they went bankrupt. What a bunch of crooks.
Back to the point.
In my box of 1,000 cords, I have a wall charger for my Kindle. My Kindle, sadly, is interred in a landfill somewhere. It was a tragic scene - I dropped it, and then slammed it against a table leg while trying to keep it from falling. I murdered it twice over.
That lost, lonely cord haunted me, but it took me a while to replace the Kindle. First I had to mourn Plastic Logic’s decision to scrap the Que and go straight to a second-generation product. Then I had to waffle about the evils of Amazon vs. the stupidity of all other eBook readers for a while. But I finally gave in and bought a Kindle DX, which has arrived. This time, I even bought the two-year extended warranty, which will ensure I will get 49 months’ use out of this Kindle before I break it.
I have been spending all my free time downloading free books and browsing through them. And playing with the Kindle, to see what happens if. So far I haven’t broken the Kindle, but I did manage to break the software I downloaded to manage my books on my computer. I am awesome like that.
One nice trend I have been seeing lately is that authors—particularly ones with many books published—will sometimes offer a free book to get people hooked. This is useful, and I’ve picked up a few here and there—I feel justified in picking up a free eBook if I already own 9 or 10 of the author’s books in print, and I appreciate the chance to sample an author or two whose name I recognize but whose cover and blurb (I am a shallow, shallow shopper) never convinced me to spend money on their books.
I am reading one of the latter books right now. I am 22% of the way through (so says the Kindle, and who’s to argue with an algorithm?) and am still not sure if I want to be reading this book, so it’s probably just as well that I didn’t pay money for it. I would stop reading it, but the next book on my list is War and Peace, and I’d rather save that for the holidays, when it will be fitting.
But as I was reading the equivalent of a luke-warm bath, one character said “thrall” and another thought “slave.”
And I had a moment of brilliance. Or perhaps a moment of “duh.” It’s hard to tell the difference, sometimes.
Thrall: someone in service to a feudal lord. In reality, not very far at all from a slave. Enthralled: to put someone in the state of being a thrall. Thus, to captivate or enslave someone.
For a moment, I basked in my own brilliance. All those times I used enthralled, I thought, and I never really thought about its etymology. It makes perfect sense!
And then I realized I never use “enthralled,” and neither do the people I know, and my revelation has as much practical application as a fireplace popcorn popper. Amusing to trot out at parties, perhaps, but difficult to justify when standing around the water cooler at work.
Nevertheless, I can add “enthralled” to my literary junk-drawer—a hodge-podge collection of ideas of no real use to anyone, anywhere, ever, but kept around in case they become useful sometime. And you never know—maybe I will need this in the future.
After all, I’ve already had to dig through my box of 1,000 spare cords to find my old Kindle charging cord, since my new Kindle charging cord is at the office. For once, my hoarding laziness pack-rat mentality thriftiness paid off—you never know when it could again.
Time to Get Back into (Mental) Shape Again
My family is starting another fitness challenge. This is good. I’ve been cruising.
Meanwhile, I’m reading The Know-It-All by A. J. Jacobs.
It’s a post-modern memoir-ish thingy predicated on the idea that he is reading the entire encyclopedia. It’s not a plot-driven novel; each chapter is devoted to a letter of the alphabet and covers facts he discovers and his reactions to them. Along the way you get some plot, but mostly it’s a post-modern collection of observations.
It’s exactly the kind of book I would write if I were ever going to write a book, in fact.
Which is odd, because I’ve never actually finished reading it. I get about to P and grow bored. Every couple of years I pick it up and try again. I’m at G right now, and growing bored. I shouldn’t be, but I am.
On the other hand, I can devour This is not a novel by David Markson in a single sitting. Markson’s book is comprised almost entirely of one-liner facts organized in a free associative manner, with periodic interjections from the narrator, who is confused about what he is writing.
It has even less plot than Jacobs’ book, and it inspired me to go out and buy all his other books. None of which I have read, by the way.
Actually, now I remember what happens—I start reading Jacobs, remember Markson, and abandon Jacobs for Markson.
There is a lesson in here somewhere, but I don’t want to think too hard about it. It probably involves comparing my brain to a shriveled peanut incapable of reading anything more substantial than a one-liner.
So I think that with this family challenge, I’m going to have to work on some sort of mental health challenge. I need to get back into reading something serious. Important. Informative. That focuses on a single topic for longer than one line. Or even two paragraphs.
While I try to figure out exactly how to do that (start with “See Spot Run”?), here are snippets from both Jacobs and Markson, just to make this horse related (or at least equine related):
The more I progress in the alphabet, the more successful I am at stifling that eleven-year-old boy inside of me, the one that still thinks a good Beavis-and-Butt-head-style scatological pun is cause for great joy.
It’s not easy. Just the number of asses alone will tempt even the most evolved mind. I’ve learned about The Golden Ass (a book by a Platonic philosopher), and the Wild Ass’ Skin (a novel by Balzac). I’ve read about the half-ass (a type of mule in Asia) and Buridan’s ass (an animal in a philosophical parable). But it goes way beyond asses. Asses are just the start. You can also take a trip in the river Suck (in Ireland), where you could fish for crappies (a freshwater bass) while you drink some Brest milk (the town in Belarus is known for its dairies). If you’re bored, you can have a stroke-off (while playing bandy, a version of ice hockey) and fondle a bushtit (a small bird). If you’re feeling smart, you might want to argue the impact of Isaac Butt (an Irish leader), or debate the merits of the Four Wangs (Chinese landscape painters), who might have been collected by the Fuggers (an art-loving family). Or else, just take a flying Fokker (a German airplane).
The Know-It-All
Or this from This is not a novel:
Realizing idly that every artist in history—until the Writer’s own century—rode horseback.
For instance Keats doing so beside the Tiber each morning until not long before his death.
George Sand, disdaining sidesaddle on a favorite mare she by chance called Colette.
Or twenty-three centuries earlier Pindar even reassuring readers that there would be horses in heaven.
Or later on (still Markson):
The Reader.
Being Aristotle’s nickname at Plato’s Academy.A colt that kicks its mother.
Being what Plato personally called him after an early disagreement.
You see? This is the sort of reading I am reduced to. Short, to the point, totally and utterly random.
But not a healthy diet for a brain. Must go find something substantial. I’m definitely thinking “See Spot Run” will be a good starting point.
A Tale of Loss, and Woe, and Deep Despair
It’s taken me several days to pull myself together enough to write this post, but I thought you, lovely readers (and spambots, and the odd person whose unwise search results stranded them here) would understand my grief.
I broke my Kindle.
Apparently, it doesn’t like being knocked off a table and then slammed against a table leg in an effort to keep it from hitting the ground. In retrospect, I might have been better off letting it fall.
But then a small ray of light: Amazon slashed the price of the Kindle, putting it under the $200 range. I was tempted, but I waited. Plastic Logic’s Que is… somewhere in production. I figured when the grief was less keen, I’d find out where “somewhere” is and see if I could buy a Que instead. Would I have to mortgage my soul to afford it? Sure, but it’s the Que.
Not that waiting changed the fact that my Kindle was broken. Deep down, I don’t think I believed it. Maybe, just maybe, the battery would run out, I could charge it, and this would all be a bad dream. (Denial: the first stage of grief. It’s nice here. It’s quiet, peaceful, serene with my fingers in my ears and my eyes closed.)
Then today, an entire sun’s worth of light: Woot had Kindles for $149. What is Woot? I don’t know. Some sort of Tack of the Day thing for non-horse items. I saw it mentioned on a tech blog I trust, and I hurried over to buy a replacement Kindle.
Sold Out.
My grief continues.
I’m still not entirely sure if I’ll buy a new Kindle or wait until Que’s production line gets rolling. The under $200 price on the Kindle is hard to ignore. Que is pretty awesome.
If nothing else, let this be a lesson to you. Expensive electronic toys do not like being body checked against hard surfaces. Take note. Be smarter than I was.
The Importance of Clarification
In literary circles, you have to have a theoretical approach to literature. You can’t just say you like a book. You have to interpret it according to _____.
My personal theory can be boiled down to one statement: Communication is impossible, but we do it anyway.
Consider: I say I saw an animal and it scared me.
You think: A tiger? They have claws and fangs. That’s reasonable. Maybe a giraffe. Giraffes are kind of stoned, chilled-out creatures, but you never know. I wonder if I left the gas on at home. I need to remember to pick up my dry cleaning.
And because I can see your eyes glazing over and your attention wandering from the astounding revelation that I was scared, I add: It was a horse.
And you think: Freak.
Actually, you are probably more charitable than I am, and you imagine a Shetland Pony or a giant draft or something plausibly frightening.
There’s a complete lack of communication here. You have no idea what sort of horse scared me, or what the situation was, or why I’m telling you this.
On the other hand, it probably doesn’t matter if you’re picturing a Shetland Pony and I’m referring to a rabid Mustang that attempted to cull my car from the herd. The general idea is there: general type of animal, general emotion.
For the PETA and legal types out there, now would be a good time to mention that this situation is entirely hypothetical and my car was not savaged by a feral horse. A bug did have a particularly violent encounter with my windshield recently, but I have managed to put aside my grief at the world’s loss of such a fine insect and moved on with my life.
The point is that even though we’re imagining two separate scenes that really have very little to do with each other, something has still been communicated. For normal day-to-day stuff, that’s probably ok. If it weren’t, the English vocabulary wouldn’t be full of terms as elucidating as “stuff.”
But sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes, we need to be very, very precise. Otherwise, there can be misunderstandings.
Consider today. I was talking to someone who doesn’t know my history with jumping, and mentioned that my goals were 2nd/3rd level dressage and maybe some low-level eventing.
When I say “low-level eventing,” I mean “a twig on the ground, and you wave at the water as you pass by.”
Later in the conversation, he said something about 3’ jumps.
There is a big difference between a twig on the ground and a 3’ jump. Three feet of height, for one thing.
But while I was contemplating the suicidal nature that would compel someone to jump over a 3’ solid object in a field, the moment to correct the misunderstanding passed.
Fortunately, there was a positive side effect: he didn’t laugh when he said 3’. That sort of confidence is empowering. I can almost envision myself going beyond my definition of low-level eventing and up to the next level: branches, and the horse’s hooves get muddy when you gallop along the edge of the water.
The More Things Change
Although I don’t really follow what is happening in the racing world, even I am aware of certain events and debates. They percolate into common knowledge. There’s a race called the Kentucky Derby. It’s pretty popular. And a series of events called the Triple Crown? No one wins that anymore, but every year the winner of the Kentucky Derby is touted as a “serious” contender.
Even I, in my fog, know about the ongoing debate on the age at which Thoroughbreds are started. I know the arguments against it, and I know the defenses: look at history, they say. Horses used to race all the time as two-year-olds and go on to long and glorious careers. It isn’t the starting young; it’s the modern tracks. Or training. Or not racing them hard enough. Or we aren’t breeding sound enough horses.
On the last—surely you know what people say about Unbridled offspring? I figure if I do, everyone must. And you can browse through any sport-horse breeding forum to find people blithely reading pedigrees and talking about how X offspring are known for bad knees and Y offspring have brittle feet.
What I find interesting about all of this, aside from the fact that I’m aware of it, is that it is often debated as if these are modern concerned and in the Glory Days… I don’t know what people think about the Glory Days. Is there an assumption that historically people didn’t care about these issues? That they weren’t issues at all, because horses were inherently sounder and better managed?
At any rate, I was reading The English Turf by Charles Richardson this morning. It was written in 1901—over 100 years ago—and I found these quotes from the first chapter interesting:
It can hardly be denied that the average modern English racehorse is a poor creature. Nine out of ten of those which have been before the public of late have neither constitution nor stamina. Speed they certainly have, but there are far too many horses who cannot travel an inch farther than five or six furlongs, and many more who cannot get beyond a mile. These are not the sort of animals to maintain the supremacy of the English Turf, and their presence is accounted for by the fact that we have got into a bad groove, both as regards breeding and training, and also because we have had far too many short races and too many selling handicaps. [...] Many, perhaps a majority, of these sprinters that have been a natural product of the system are as unlike the typical racehorse as it is possible for them to be. High on the leg, too short from shoulder to quarters, narrow, split up, and light of bone. How many of this stamp of horse, and yet gifted with speed for a short course, do we not see in any race paddock nowadays? The question hardly requires an answer. These are not the right sort of horses, and the more of this stamp we continue to breed, the more we make room for the Americans and Colonials.
Unsoundness of limb has far more weight with most breeders than roaring has, and as a consequence a yearling who is unsound of limb is seldom seen at the sale ring, or in any lot which is sent to the trainer during the autumn. Yearlings with suspicious limbs, on the other hand, are common enough, but limb troubles do not as a rule develop until the horse which bears them has been broken and put to work. Then it is either a case of breakdown or of putting by until the limbs have become stronger. We need not, however, concern ourselves with this side of the question, for a good judge will hesitate long enough before he puts into training a youngster who is wrongly formed, or who shows a marked weakness in some part of his anatomy. A much more serious matter is the fact that the present fashion of putting thoroughbreds into training far too young breaks many of them down before they have a chance of distinguishing themselves. Dozens of likely-looking yearlings who bring big money when sold are never seen on a racecourse, and we may take it that a fair proportion of such have developed hereditary unsoundness when put to work. So far as the colts are concerned not much mischief is done, because only a very exceptionally bred horse can command any stud patronage if he has never run in public, and even then he must be loudly trumpeted as the victim of an “accident” in his yearling days. The fillies, however, are often put by for the stud, and thus the supply of unsound matrons is increased.
It is a curious reflection that at the shows held under the auspices of the “Hunters Improvement Society” no horse or mare is entitled to a prize until he or she has passed a veterinary examination, and yet there is no obstacle whatever to breeders of thoroughbreds using either an unsound sire or dam, or both in their attempt to raise a galloping machine.
There’s no real question or point here. I was just surprised to see that a 1901 book on racing would be touching on the same concerns that swirl around modern racing. It’s easy to scream “why hasn’t anything been done, then?”—but the truth is, I don’t know what, if anything, is being done.
It’s important to realize that what the casual racing fan “knows” is almost certainly not a reflection of debate and discussions occurring within the industry. And I’m not even a casual fan. But I do know how the media and popular opinion work—I know how it latches onto sensational stories and ignores anything that may counter the sensational nature of those stories. I know that once the public gets an idea in its head, nothing will shake it. I know statistics can be manipulated to support any position.
So while I know what popular opinion says about the modern racing industry, and I was surprised to see these criticisms reflected in a book 100 years old, the fact remains that I don’t know what the actual state of the modern racing industry is.
I’m trying to be optimistic here. I’m trying to hope that, after 100 years, we’re not making the same dumb decisions.