Obviously the Float-e-cast seems to have taken somewhat of a permanent hiatus.
As probably anybody who’s reading this already knows, I have gotten my hands on a piece of dictation software that allows me to just speak into my computer instead of actually taking all of the energy to lift my fingers and slam them back down again on the keyboard in order to make words for you to read. This means, that I am likely to journal for a while in a manner that I have not done before. I have no idea why, but I have this compulsion to broadcast my life to the universe, or more accurately, to the 1 ½ people out there who can raise enough interest to actually bring themselves to read the drivel that erupts from my flappy mouth.
I’m taking this opportunity to procrastinate in a much more useful way than just surfing the Internet endlessly, as I am prone to do. My full-blown Internet addiction waxes and wanes, and since I’ve gotten this software, it has much less of a grip on me, because I have the compulsion to commit my words to the screen, rather than just sucking up detritus with my eyeballs. For some reason, I have a memory of being about 11-13 years old, and watching an episode of Gilligan’s Island that for some reason led to it strain of thoughts that culminated in me thinking long and hard about how great it would be to be able to just speak and have it automatically get written down. I still don’t have my bipedal robot that I was promised as a kid, but I do have my automatic writing machine, mother Fokker (can you tell that the stupid machine doesn’t like me to use expletives?)
I just have been reading a bit of one of my mom’s old journals. It’s the one that I’ve read the most of, which means that I have read much of it at all. Part of the reason that I continued to pick it up, is its form factor. It’s a real small book that she bought when we lived in Japan. It’s white and light green with a cartoonish picture of a little girl, sitting down, holding a bouquet of pink flowers. She’s wearing a 70s-type hat and bellbottom overalls, both of which are green, and she sitting on some grass surrounded by more pink flowers. There aren’t many entries in the book – as a matter of fact there are only a handful, but I keep being pulled back to them over and over again. The two most significant entries have to do with me moving out when I was 18.
I really miss her. I think about her every day – multiple times throughout the day. Sometimes, it feels like I’m sort of aware of some level of thought about her all day long.
This is sort of off topic – but, it’s interesting to me what different parts of me come out when I’m “writing”, then when I’m recording audio. There’s something about the written word that doesn’t make you feel like quite so much of a blowhard compared to when I’m speaking. My more serious podcasts – aside from the one the night my mom died – tended to make me feel like I needed to roll my eyes completely out of my head. There’s something about the act of recording my voice when I’m being serious, that tends to make me feel as though the act of doing so, and posting it online, is taking myself way too seriously. The Goob Lorber knows that I can certainly take myself way too seriously, which is completely retarded more often than not, and the last thing the world – or the inter-web – needs is for me to share it with everybody.
Anyway — I should be studying for a test right now, and I suppose I will get to it, but there was something about the act of reading a journal of my mom’s got was really taking me back to when I was younger, before I moved out on my own. It’s amazing how long ago that was now — though I’m sure any of these pipsqueak 20-year-olds in my classes would not find it that amazing — and it’s also weird to be reading these words, knowing that my mom had such little idea that in 22 years she would be dead, and I would be reading what she wrote with her dog on my lap, while sitting in San Francisco.
None of us really know how long we havw, you’ll be reading this and thinking “wow, little did he know that in 20 short minutes from when he wrote that, he would be laying at the bottom of the stairs with a 3 foot piece of rebar protruding from his temple…”
I suppose that I should get to work. Welcome to what might very well be the beginning of a word-caked blog habit of mine.
The big, fat words of eeno at March 20, 2008 04:55 PMI think I'm the 1/2 who's tuning in to your Dick Tatian station. You know, that thing could be dangerous for me. You should see the boxes full of journals I already have. I'm in the middle of moving to a tiny new apartment so size matters, when it comes to stuff and where to put it. I've considered just scanning them but I have a hunch that in 30 years whatever format it's saved in won't be viewable anywhere on anything, so back to the trusty paper notebook and pencil I go. But for kicks I'd still like to try Dick. Um, that didn't come out quite right. How do I make this thing stop... quit it, it's writing everything I say. Doesn't it know when I'm just talking to myself. STOP THAT! Alright, ok, I've had just about enough of this now. You're repeating everything I'm saying and it's starting to get annoying. Fine then, you asked for it you little Dick Tater Tot. Whav toirre helif eyvjg ehifjz;o;jf g;a rkj zlfjisof cow poo whuothaieaj, ehoho! There. I made you write cow poo, how do like that?.... Hal? Open the pod bay door, Hal. Ok, I was just kidding. You can let me back in to my web browser now, Hal. Hal? Oh, boy.
Sacto Seano's werdz of wizdum, deposited here on March 21, 2008 11:28 PMFor anybody who's interested,this is a link to the software that I'm using.
If you are a PC user, the PC version that runs the same speech recognition engine is called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Here is a link to that fine piece of software. Do not get the cheaper versions, because they're limited, and will not let you dictate into Microsoft Word and such.