Blogged Up

Being a weird one I am prone to many silly and childlike faults. Alliteration is one. Of course being weird I am apt to conjure up complicated alliterative conjunctions that rely upon the reader having a similarly off-kilter view of life in order to appreciate them. One way to do this might be to use rhyming slang to mask the alliteration and -- in doing so -- changing the whole apparent meaning of the relevant sentence. I agree. It is not big and it most decidedly not clever. It is just childish nonsense. The nonsense of a precociously clever child possibly ... but still the work of a child's, mostly, febrile mind. And here I go .... Febrile mind? Whatever am I thinking! Are the minds of children febrile? Well it is true, I suspect, that for most of the time between birth and the age of 16 or 17 the average child is either about to become feverish, actually febrile, or else in recovery form a particularly nasty virus that was accompanied by a truly dreadful fever that was just barely within the powers of Calpol's® abilities to control. Some even go to the extreme of actually fitting; an event that is a truly frightening experience for any parent. A while ago I came across one of those witty pages that breed like lemmings in the dark corners of the virtual-reality of cyber space. I have wasted a good 30 seconds of my life today in trying to find it again via the auspices of Google but all I keep finding are websites for childhoods ailments. The page I found was a long and detailed examination of the pandemic affliction known as childhood which seemed to afflict a large portion of the human race. The disease's principal signs were dwarfism and ignorance. The paper noted, speculatively, that many cases of the disease seemed spontaneously to go into a remission that is characterized by sudden height gain and a growth in common sense.... Well, I guess you get the idea. Trouble is I cannot find it again and, frankly, I can't be bothered to look too hard. The only reason I mentioned it at all was because of my casual use of the epithet febrile mind in relation to a child. It is, one has to grant I feel sure, an apt usage. And so, by association we also readily accept the silly concept of childhood qua childhood being ipso facto a disease of humanity. It is rather comic. It is also sad. When we cease to like the behavior of a grown person we insult them by labeling them as childish when, maybe, what we really mean is mad. Why is being slightly crazy an affliction (to be ashamed of)? Where was I? Oh yes ... Being a weird one I am prone to many silly and childlike faults. Another one is a fondness for overuse of new-found tools, toys and gizmos ... like for example alliteration (and no ... don't bother I haven't hidden any here today, too tired, too lazy!) I was messing around with Windows movie maker for the first time the other day. Imagine my delight when I found that I had a simple, but complete set of video effects available to me ... and, more to the point, I had never suspected that were even there all the time! So I edited together a quick 3 minute movie and managed to use every single transition effect that was on offer. I also used almost all of the video effects on the various clips (scenes) mostly doubled and trebled-up, for example, blurring plus colorization plus slo-mo. When I had finished I was thrilled. It was a masterpiece. I was clearly bound for Hollywood and Oscar ceremonies. I would dine with Bushes or the Kerry's -- I'm not fussy, nor too proud (to hobnob with mere politicians). But, whatever else may be true of second childhoods and/or premature senile dementia, one is at the peak of one's powers of self-criticalness in those dreadful first hours after the daily miracle of raising oneself miraculously out of bed. It was during such a period, that for nonce I shall call "this morning", when I viewed my masterpiece with a more savagely critical eye than had hitherto been employed. How ironic that I had chosen to name the wretched opus: "Shattered Dream". There are many writers of great skill with the literary tool, irony who have chosen many and varied paths that all, essentially, seek either to prove or else to disprove the existence of God or of Fate by the expedient of finding a real life example of the deux ex machina at work in their own, or someone else's life. Well, I just found mine. The taste is bitter. Thank you Jaweh or whatever Your name is!