12.2.97

Soooo…. It’s been awhile since I’ve written. I haven’t felt like writing, nor doing much else that’s good for me. Actually, my mind is preoccupied with something that I can’t express to anyone, and am trying not to think about myself. Since I’m pretty much consumed with that, it seems a waste to sit here in front of the computer staring at a screen and trying to come up with things to report. I’m feeling a little better though, a little more connected to living again, and so I felt like pecking out something today. But right now, again, I’m starting to feel like I don’t want to. Oh well, I’ll keep pushing forward. I am amazed at the spelling errors I’m seeing lately, not because they exist, but because I keep seeing the same two errors consistently in emails I receive or out on the web. It’s nuts! ‘Cause it’s like, didn’t anyone learn to spell? Can’t they see how obvious the blunder is? The worst mistake is "lose" misspelled as "loose." Sorry if I can’t relate (I’ve always been a pretty decent speller), but how the hell can anyone make that mistake? I was telling Dave about it, pointing out an example in an email he was reading that I was reading too, over his shoulder. This morning he calls me up from work to tell me that in his company’s weekly (or monthly, I forget) "Directive" some dork had made the above spelling mistake. The thing about this is that you know someone edited that company newsletter or whatever the hell it is - uh, propaganda. Maybe the problem is the spell-checker. Maybe people are relying too heavily on it and flaking on checking content. It’s possible. The other mistake I’m always seeing is "definitely" misspelled as "definately." (Geez, just as I wrote that my spell checker corrected it.) I was thinking that maybe these two mistakes seem so ubiquitous because out on the web almost nothing is edited, approved, or accepted for publication in a traditional (corporate, professional) manner. Maybe the populace has had poor spelling education and the mistakes are far more common than I ever realized because the prowess of meticulous editors has shielded me from the truth. Or, what if everyone is learning from other’s bad examples? I mean, what if someone wasn’t quite sure how to spell "definitely" or "lose" (even though the latter is so insanely simple) and followed the examples on the web? Or WORSE, what if the prevalence of such spelling errors are actually changing the way people spell words? Gads. It’s an annoying epidemic. It got really cold here yesterday. I mean, it wasn’t cold and then suddenly it was really freezing. I went out for a walk last night and I couldn’t feel my chin when I came back inside. One hour after being inside and my jeans still felt cold. I guess it decided to be winter. Fewer people are out on the trail when it’s chilly and I like that. It feels isolating. It’s dark now when I’m out there and I’m able to gaze up into numerous apartments all lit up with their shades open. In one way or another, it seems everyone’s apartments look the same: the same type of furniture, always a TV in the living room, and the huge overhead light hanging like a flying saucer from the ceiling. In the block east of our apartment building, huge towering skyscrapers are growing like weeds. They are so tall that I have to drop my head all the way back to see the tops from the trail. Really amazing that in a few years there will be a mini-city just a quarter mile from here. Further east on the trail, when I’ve turned around and am walking west toward home, I can view the skeletons of the new buildings from about half a mile away. In the night they look dark and menacing, like something from Bladerunner or some other futuristic civilization-gone-amuck movie. Skinny yellow cranes have attached themselves to the rising concrete and steel monoliths. They rise up into the night like predators feasting on a carcass. I noticed that, as tall as they are, there are no little red lights atop neither the cranes nor the new structures. It’s not surprising to me, after all the other safety violations I’ve witnessed here. But I couldn’t help thinking about the numbers of military helicopters that fly low overhead daily, right over the top of those buildings. When you wait for death to come and it doesn't - not as fast as you thought it would anyway - you start to live again, even if only to calm your nerves.

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