BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS and OTHER HYPERBOLE

BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS and OTHER HYPERBOLE

All languages change over time.  New words or spellings of words are added. Sometimes words go out of favor and are eventually considered archaic or are never used again.  If the word or terminology is used for a while, a few decades, it can be show up in the dictionary,  Then there is slang which sticks around for a season or a generation or two, usually a short cut in language.

I had a friend who used the term BOSS. Just about everything she liked was BOSS.

Lately BOSS got turned into THE BOMB...

Technology has introduced new words and definitions for words such as Cookie.

Are you using slang or terminology from another culture or era?

I know I sometimes say something that my mom or dad would have said and I wonder where they got it from.  Sayings that, when it comes right down to it, do not seem to relate to our culture or life experience such as.  "After a while crocodile."  To which one responds. "See you later alligator."  (We did not golf, so this cannot have to do with perhaps wearing the right shirts.)

Film informs us of how people talk or talked, such as all those gangster films (1930's-1940's) which brought organized crime slang into our pop culture language.  I use the term moola for money, which I think of as funny or dismissive of money. (Mafia and criminal slang of more recent times in films overuse the slang term that originated in Germanic language, f*ck.)  I cringe when I hear people calling murder, "Taking Out."

But, re my criticism of a recent Politically Correct film in which historical figures from decades ago were envisioned as heroes of civil rights and used present day slang and terminology such as "Conversation,"  and "People of Color," maybe we should be skeptical of dialogue in Old Hollywood films as well. Maybe gangsters did not all go around calling money, moola, or maybe they too had regional or cult terms. Maybe they were stereotyped in those films.

Why would anyone who knows criminals do damage to individuals and society as a whole want to honor them by using their slang?

Then there are the words used improperly to exaggerate, words that are histronic.

For instance, the term BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS has been used in recent years every time there is a threat of a natural disaster associated with climate change, such as hurricanes. Well, the storms do seem to be getting more and more destructive, impacting thousands. Still, Biblical Proportions always implies the Great Flood in which the Entire Earth was destroyed, covered in water. There has not been a rain storm on earth that Great since, so I do wish newscasters and the reportage media would quit using it inaccurately, as a means to hype people up with fear and make them evacuate.

Think of how subtle but powerful a simple word such as BAD is instead.

You get a phone call about someone who has just gone to the hospital. The caller simply says, "Christine, it's BAD," and I'm on my way to the hospital to see that person as they die.

Another wrong usage of our language seems to have started with young, hyper-positive teenagers and young people, especially girls and young women.  That is the use of SUPER, which is being used as a modifier. SUPERSWEET, SUPERIMPORTANT...

SUPERMODEL is also an exaggeration. SUPERMODEL is applied now to models or actresses and entertainers who said they modeled, which they did a few times perhaps, or did without ever earning a fortune from it. Supermodel has been in our language over 2 decades but should be applied only to those models who appear on numerous magazine covers with the effect of becoming known throughout the world and become rich from modeling. Gigi Hadid for instance is a Supermodel, but what's-her-name Heidi Klum was never and is not. She's pretty, has no embarrassment of showing her breasts, and perhaps has other things that are nice about her personality or talents, but she was never a SUPERMODEL.

SUPER has taken the place of VERY, which is also overused. The words sweet, important, all words, can stand alone in their meaning.

Hyping words up with SUPER actually has a dulling or deadening effect to their meaning. Hyping up attempts to create more importance and drama to the word to the point where we search for or invent a word that implies even more. Overall, we are better off using an exclamation point but, before we do, asking ourselves if really the word or the sentence deserves one.

I know that once one gets the hang of using words like SUPER or f*ck, somehow it's difficult to rid yourself of them.  A good reason why one ought to is that the older you are, the more you sound ignorant or stupid, like you actually don't have much of a vocabulary.

Sometimes I think hyperbole has something to do with the whole Positive Thinking movement, for along with SUPER, SO is also used to exaggerate. In a revved-up, sometimes sing-songy way, the young woman thrills,  "We had SUCH a good time. She was just sooooooo excited.  I am so-ooo going back there!"  

If she's talking about Burning Man, I get it, but if she's talking about a birthday gathering at the local pizza parlor, I take it this person doesn't get out much.

Fantabulous, supercalifragilisticexpealadocious, or giamonstrous?

Hell no... these are creative terms but...

Fantastic, fabulous, giant, monster, are all stand alone words.

Even using them, a more accurate description might be good, big, or lizard.

I ask you to think about this and urge you to use accurate words, expand your vocabulary, cut the slang, just as I'm trying to.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

DAVID LYNCH ABOUT HIS CREATIVE PROCESS and THE UNIFIED FIELD and ART HOUSE THEATER VERSUS SMALL AN TINY SCREENS

He loves bringing people into a different world.  He misses the quality of celluloid though obsessed with digital.  Loves a continuing story - such as a TV series.

HOLIDAY FILM JAG and EXCELLENT EATING

Over the holidays I had the opportunity to house and dog sit for three days for some friends who headed to the mountains and snow, just me, a warm blanket in an unheated house, and their Netflix. I do not own a TV, have not in years, and it's been a long time since I binged on film.

I brought a book with me, Joyce Carol Oates "The Falls," but once I realized that (at last!) I'd encountered a remote that I could manipulate without frustration, I decided to sit in a wonderful easy chair with the dogs on my lap and watch a few films. This turned into a three day personal film fest with no human to consider except myself.  Sweet aloneness!  

I got up between films only to bake; pumpkin flax seed dog treats, pumpkin oatmeal cherry bread, applesauce oatmeal raisin bread, a pork roast with sour kraut and yams. The later being something reminiscent of my upbringing.  Pork and kraut was supposed to be "good luck" if eaten on New Years Day. The dogs loved it. I became their new best friend. Even the cat begged for some, followed me room to room.  I later discovered she had propelled herself onto the bed in a swirl of blankets and sweaters, sleeping as if she had not in weeks. 

I made some New Years Resolutions that all have to do with diet. To drink at least one tall glass of pure water every morning. I'm well hydrated but...  To reduce the amount of sugar and hidden sugars. Hidden sugars, in case you're interested include breads, corn, carrots, rice, and many "vegetarian" foods. To also continue to read labels to look for hidden soy.  I eat a lot of beans and legumes... Frightening possible consequences to too much soy intake in new vegetarian burgers includes, according to one news article, the feminization of men. To eat more animal protein. I've learned about myself that the best way to avoid eating something is to not bring it home in the first place.  Temptation is, however, everywhere.

There I sat, eating more than enough, just for the taste, and including a bag of gum drops that had turned up in a gift someone gave me.  They were unlabeled but were moist and good.

I watched "The Irishman," the film about the murder of Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa, that's all the rage and the short discussion by the actors of the film.  It was cool to hear Buddy Knox's recording of "A White Sports Coat and a Pink Carnation" early in the sound track. (Wes loved Buddy as a human being and this was one of his favorite Buddy Knox rendered songs.)

Rolling Thunder Review : Bob Dylan tour long ago with Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith; a question of song lyrics as poetics and poets who are song writers.  (Dylan's song She Belongs To Me was a private theme song of mine, before Elvis Costello's I Write The Book.)

Above Us Only Sky about John Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon. The film seemed to be an advert for Yoko.  OK, she did not break up the Beatles.  I just kept thinking how YOUNG John was, how I have lived past the age of Elvis Presley or John Lennon were when they departed. I was a kid Beatles fan but then I let all fandom go. That quality, of not being overly impressed by "stars," has been a good thing for me personally and my writing.

Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives.  Gee, I can't recall anything about this film.  Maybe I went to take something out of the oven.

Amy (about Amy Winehouse) : A documentary that made me cry.  I've posted in this blog about Amy and mental illness before.

27 Gone Too Soon about the "27 club" musicians who died about then - Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain,  Janis Joplin, Mama Cass. Amy Winehouse. I did not cry.  I wasn't that impressed with this film as it was so tied in with drug use and seemed to have one book authors opinion most expressed, even if drug use was the reason why these stars died, even if they turned to drugs unable to handle stardom. I have an alternative theory tied into astrology and reincarnation theory.  I think these people lived only till their Saturn Return, that they came to do what they did and went.

A film about Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones in which he seemed to be happy and laughing about everything, including what he just said. The Rolling Stones seem to be taking credit for crediting Black musicians who came before them.  I sure hope they have forked some money over to these Black musicians.

Echoes In The Canyon. I loved this documentary, especially seeing Michelle Phillips thrilled with a Mama's and Papa's cover. However Bob Dylan's son, the musician, seemed to not have a full range of human emotions. He didn't quite disappear in the film, not with his gathering of present day singers and musicians to do good covers of some of the hits of the 1960's that were not his fathers. It was a relief to hear him sing and know that he does not sound like dad Bob and isn't trying to. He was just there otherwise, hearing testimonies without asking too many questions.  Maybe he had asked and the film was cut to the testimonials. I kept wishing someone would get a rise out of him.

Bombshell.  A surprise and delight.  Learned that actress Hedy Lamarr, whose film work I do not know, was not only a beautiful and sexy woman, but also an inventor whose inventions may include technology that is used today in Internet and Cell Phones.  She never got paid while others made a fortune.  A too common story for women, including me. Again I wonder, sometimes believe, that people are born to do something for society as a whole and in her case, perhaps she was doing her part to help the United States or the Allies win World War II and stop Nazism.

Bikram.  Excellent.  The yoga guru who has fled prosecution, perhaps a megalomaniac, who apparently was also a sexual harasser and rapist but has devoted yoginis all over the word. He has set up teaching elsewhere in the world.  I've wondered about how he managed to copyright the athletic moves in yoga that have been part of Hindu/Indian culture for centuries.  His attitude towards women in particular seems to be despicable.  Women need to stop giving their all in exchange for a pat on the head, back or rump, so to speak.  He gives Hinduism (yoga) a bad reputation, the guru fear that so many Fundamentalist Christians have.

And so the New Year begins, a new cycle we hope if not a new opportunity for hope.

Christine Trzyna

C 2020  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

EVALUATING YOU TUBE VIDEOS

Once upon a time I had an embedded YouTube player in this blog.

I enjoyed listening to the favorite songs I loaded on to it as I wrote.

Then one day YouTube got sold, soon enough my password into it which was attached to a Yahoo account stopped working, and the forsaken YouTube channel still shows up on the Internet though I want it taken down and many of the songs I loaded on it went poof a while back. 

There were a couple ways to look at the borrowing of music from YouTube. One was that it was a lot like a lending library.  We've used books, films, music and so on from our lending libraries without guilt about what happens to the intellectual properties involved.  Re YouTube, those were the days when people posted videos with some notion of community interest and volunteerism - not much for profit.

However, the more commercial YouTube got, the more posters profited - while original artists languished in unpaid hell - the less comfortable I got with this borrowing.  It seemed to me that crediting the artists might have given them some advertising or some patronage. But I've met artists who were ripped during their careers and seeing their work up on YouTube just ripped them back up.

Some people are making a living on creating YouTube videos with original content and art.  

Some of these are of high quality, a pleasure to look at, intriguing, and worth your time.

Finding videos that are worth your time is increasingly difficult.  It's one more thing that can waste your time.

More often I find videos that are confusing because they have agendas, sound authoritative, but are spinning opinion.  Conspiracy theories are often in this category.  There's nothing wrong with having an opinion.  It's all American to have an opinion.  However, I WISH YOUTUBE WOULD HAVE AN OPINION CATEGORY when you chose to advance or refine your search.  I'm sure that those who are trying to present themselves as alternative news stations would hate to put themselves in the opinion category, but to a viewer/listener it would be helpful.

Among the things I would like to filter out are ROBO VOICES.  I don't want to hear any "news" delivered by a robo voice, which often mistakes words and pronunciations and has a hint of "anonymous" in it.  I'd like to filter out the names of accounts.  If I determine that an account is fake news (exaggerated gossip) maybe I would prefer to eliminate it from selections.


C 2018  Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

AM I BACK?

I've made myself no promises.  So I can't say that I'M BACK. 
I don't want to put any pressure on myself to produce content for this blog.
I'm back to being blasé about watching films.
I started reading e-books.  I like the time I save by finding out that I really don't want to read a particular book after all.  Notes and Reviews became a habit.


I know that I waste time by reading headlines, especially repetitive headlines. 
Especially headlines and stories that have no impact on my life at all.
So any headline and story I link to, must be part of a scrapbook.


I need to not scatter my time.


Lately my interests have turned back to music.
My personal music inventory is immense.
I've been ordering in and listening to jazz and singer-songwriter albums that I haven't ever heard by my favorite artists or that I haven't heard in a while.


I don't feel sentimental, at least not enough to only remember good things.
Is all history revisionist?
There's a good argument in favor of that idea.
But I think we owe it to ourselves, if no one else, to tell ourselves the truth about ourselves and the person we were in our past.
Can you conjure the person you were at 16?  21?  Last year?

BOOK EXCERPT : CATCHING THE BIG FISH by DAVID LYNCH

From DAVID LYNCH
CATCHING THE BIG FISH
Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Pengiun Publisher

Chapter called SUFFERING page 93

"It's good for the artist to understand conflict and stress. Those things can give you ideas. But I guarantee you, if you have enough stress, you won't be able to create. And if you have enough conflict, it will just get in the way of your creativity. You can understand conflict, but you don't have to live in it...

In stories, in the worlds that we can go into, there's suffering, confusion, darkness, tension, and anger. There are murders; there's all kinds of stuff. But the filmmaker doesn't have to be suffering to show suffering. You can show it, show the human condition, show conflicts and contrasts, but you don't have to go through that yourself. You are the orchestrator of it, but you're not in it. Let your characters do the suffering...

It's common sense: The more the artist is suffering, the less creative he is going to be. It's less likely that he is going to enjoy his work and less likely that he will be able to do really good work..." DAVID LYNCH