The King Kong syndrome

Just one of my silly writing projects to keep me out of trouble. Contests at Helium are off for the summer dang it and I needed to write about fifty extra pages to compensate.

I have been thinking about how I wanted to use something from pop culture to use as a moral allegory, initially for one of my talks a while back but then expanded from there because someone said it was interesting that heard my talk. I probably gave about five talks worth in that talk, it was fairly terse.

Please note, any of you that actually read these long boys, which is probably not many of you and I understand: I am not particularly obsessive or anything about these topics that I go into, it isn't why I write these things. I never care about things as much as it seems like I do from writing these.

I am certainly not on a soap box about good and evil or religion or heaven forbid politics or any of these topics I go off about, that might actually be important to clarify lest any of you think I am nutso. These things for me are just writing exercises.

I am a writer, not really a moralist, theologian or philosopher or politician or nutritionist or whatever else. I would say that I AM a linguist and I am, I am even a historian of sorts but that isn't really why I write about linguistics or history. I think that most of my posts are weird just like any of you would. But I like to do things just like some people try to climb mountains. It is a silly thing to do but I just wonder if I can so I try.

Writing things like this one to me is a fun challenge but hard - coming up with something unusual like a moral allegory that doesn't make someone sick it is so forced or totally absurd is VERY difficult, even if it doesn't seem like it would be. Because most original writing that makes it to the public sphere comes off as not looking hard, hence it gets published. But most of it is not really that ambitious in that it doesn't try to do something that hasn't been done. Consider how hard it is to say somthing unique in SS without it sounding silly. And that is just in a simple comment. Most things have either been said before or make no sense. Slade says that I am pretty good at saying things that he hasn't heard before, and he has heard most things, so even though I need a lot of work polishing it that's probably a good skill to have.

Also I need an outlet to do things that wouldn't get published elsewhere. I just sold an article on parenting tips for parents of multiples, but that is pretty boring. I can hardly stand writing in that 'Ladies Home Journal' voice except probably most marketable things are that way.

But anyway, it is in my random thoughts blog. If you dare. You need to be pretty bored.