I’ve been needing a push recently.

Needing to go outside to run and play.
Wanting to start something new but not knowing what to start or where to start it.
Wishing the stars would just align and get the ascension of damnation over with already, thank you very much.

The push has arrived, mid-back and with an overabundance of force, in the form of Hugh MacLeod’s new book, Ignore Everybody. His crazy deranged fools mailing list and twitter feed are culprits as well.

I’d charge them with assault if I didn’t like the jolt it gave me, popping me right back into the reality of following my creative urge. [Particularly pertinent cartoon to this effect today.]

Last Summer I wrote flash fiction in the form of Ficlet Friday. [Archives]
Last November I crossed the finish line of NaNoWriMo 2008.
Last year is over and this year is half done and what have I done?

So, thanks to Hugh and the always helpful/supportive/creative Will Hindmarch, I’m getting back on the writing train.

Finding an easy outlet (for me) to let my creative juices pool in places online.
Taking care of myself by doing instead of putting off until later (which never comes) when I’m “ready” or I have the “right” tools.
Lowering the barrier to my entry into the things that give me joy and vibrancy and meaning.

For the remainder of the Summer, Ficlet Friday is becoming Ficly Friday (due to the closing of the former/replacement of the latter).

I’m also going to start doing some random 140-characters-or-less poetry on Twitter using the hashtag #poetweet. I think this is practical, clever and productive.

Feel free to join me in either endeavor, if you’d like. We had a ton of fun last year doing flash fiction on Fridays and poetry on Twitter is (theoretically) easy. It makes a great canvas for haiku (nudge/wink).

Anyhow, I think this will be good for me. After a hiatus (too long for me) I’m ready to get back on the horse and start being creative again. Stop taking my inner voice for granted.

Cheers and thanks to both Hugh & Will!

Breakfast cereal a go-go:

Me: I swear, it’s on the box
The Fiber One box: Cardboard no. Delicious yes. (TM)
Jenn: I don’t care what it says, that box is lying!

This exchange brought up an enlightening little bit of verbal back-and-forth that I won’t recap here, but that ends with me investigating the differences between “relate” and “correlate”.

So how do I decouple two words that seemingly mean the same thing? How does a relationship differ from a correlation?

As always, my trusty guide is Merriam-Webster:

“relate“:

: to show or establish logical or causal connection between

“correlate“:

: either of two things so related that one directly implies or is complementary to the other (as husband and wife)

If I’ve learned one thing from both research meetings and the XKCD webcomic, it’s that correlation and causation are two different (but related [nice!]) concepts.

If “relate” can be taken to imply a causation in at least one of its forms, then the difference is clear.

I was going to argue that relate seems more active – something applied to the humanities and live sciences – the relationship between spouses, children, animals or the environment. Correlate seems somehow colder, more distant; clinical.

I’m pretty sure those thoughts are at odds with Merriam-Webster but their differentiation is more elegant since it focuses on “relate” being causal and “correlate” being, well, “correlative”. I leave it to you to figure out the rest.

Until next time.

I’m not losing my mind (well, I may be, but that’s beside the point) but I need a clever way to talk about the suffixes “ate” and “ant”.

Here, briefly, are Merriam-Webster’s definitions.

“-ant”:

1 a: one that performs (a specified action) : personal or impersonal agent b: thing that promotes (a specified action or process)
2: one connected with
3: thing acted upon (in a specified manner)

“-ate”

: act on (in a specified way) : cause to be modified or affected by : cause to become : furnish with

I bring up the two similar suffixes because of two equally perplexing constructs I’ve encountered this week: “conversate” and “medicant”.

The fist, “conversate”, comes directly from a reality show competition on HGTV. Whereas I would have simply said “converse” or even “talk” one of the gentleman involved in the contest chose to say “conversate”, but why?

Even as I’m typing out this post, Firefox is angrily underlining “conversate” and insisting I change it to “conversation”, “conversant” (we’ll hold off on that one) or “converse”.

Maybe he thought “conversate” sounded more formal or that it related to some subset of normal conversation or that it described a specific act of conversing in some altered state.

I really have no idea except to say that it sounded incredibly forced and just plain wrong to me ear.

The only other time I can remember someone appending such a regular construct on to a word to get some grand new chimera was the use of the verb “orientate” as a stand-in for “orient”, “instruct” or “guide”. I think part of the problem here stemmed from the fact that I was an “Orientation Leader” at UGA. Since I held the title “Orientation Leader” my job must have been “orientating” or “to orientate”, right?

It was frustrating and grating to hear, but language can be like sandpaper now and again and I became deaf to that word by Summer’s end. Hearing “conversate” on TV brought it all back to my consciousness in a rush of memories (good AND bad) that compelled me to mention it here.

The second new word I heard this week comes from my wife, who wondered aloud if “medicant” could be an acceptable form of what most of us currently use, “medication”. Her touchpoint was irritate/irritation/irritant and so I gave her props and fired up my browser.

Merriam-Webster (again) agrees; medicant:

: a medicinal substance

So, not exactly “medicine” or “medication” but any medical substance, it would seem. Maybe a bandage or a topical ointment?

I’m not really clear as to why certain noun forms rate “-ants” or certain verb forms deserve “-ates”, I just now that my daughter says “Aten” sometimes when she means “Eaten” or “Ate” (depends) which is, itself, another blog post.

Until next time, ponder “ants”, “ates” and the word “conversant“.

While packing Raelyn’s lunch last night (she’s at YMCA day camp most of the Summer) I noticed a not-so-subtle branding change on the Fig Newtons packaging. Below is an artistic photo of the new wording, which reads: “Fruity Chewy Cookies”

Fig Newtons by turnthecity

Above: Fig Newtons by turnthecity

If you did any of your TV viewing during the 90’s, you’ll likely remember that Fig Newtons were being hocked thusly:

“A cookie is just a cookie, but a Newton is fruit and cake.”

Here’s an ad to refresh your memory. 4:48 mark:

Now I’m no nutritional anthropologist (thank you, Deb Duchon, Alton Brown and Good Eats) but I don’t think fig jam counts as fruit, nor that a baked crust counts as cake. More like pie.

Other, more learned scholars have made the point that Newtons are likely “squares” or “bars”, but I’ll leave that to you, gentle reader, to decide.

Whether or not the Newton is, in fact, “fruit and cake” or some kind of cookie or something else entirely shouldn’t actually matter. What matters is how quickly Nabisco has reversed course in their marketing and promotion.

Of course, I seem to be a couple of years late to both the new positioning AND mockery of the same. Still, I feel it’s my duty to point out the idiocy of changing course so dramatically.

But what do I know, right? Fig Newtons are still the only cookie/fruit-cake combo/bar/square on the market that either called Newton OR made of Fig. Their uniqueness of form, function and name seems to trump whatever marketing their laboring under currently.

I can’t help but draw the comparison to another food-stuff marketing catchphrase of the same era: Polaner All Fruit.

For those of you who don’t recall, much was made of the fact that as, you shouldn’t call Polaner All Fruit “Jelly” since it was better than all of that. It was, after all, “spreadable fruit” and not at all like lowly, common jelly.

Here’s the money shot of the spot:

So imagine if Polaner all of sudden relaunched calling themselves “Jelly” despite keeping the name All Fruit; wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

Granted, Newton is a nebulous descriptor not at all as recognizable or finite as “jelly” “fruit” or, more directly, “cookie” or “cake”‘. Still, the whole thing seems like a bait and switch to my younger, sweet-toothed mind.

A cookie, for all its benefits and joys, is just a cookie. A Newton – unique in all the snacking world – is fruit and cake.

Or at least it used to be.

Bonus linkage: Fruit and Cake (Fig Newton Song)

And, in the end, the Fig Newton you take, will always be fruit and cake (with apologies to The Beatles).

Since Google Wave is all the internets seem to be talking about today, I thought I’d try to get in on the action.

Turns out, Google wants more than my email. They also want poetry.

Write a message to the Google Wave team
(Haikus, sonnets and ASCII art all accepted)

I gave them this gem (in the rough) just now:

Google wave, swelling
Sound of surf crashing, the buzz
I want to take part

I’ll keep you posted if my creativity had any effect on my participation in any sort of beta testing.

Happy Friday!