HAWMC and Social Networking

Prompt #11:                                                                                                                                             Write about your favorite social network. Do you love Twitter? Facebook? Pinterest? Why?

Apologies at the beginning--my English  is all tangled up...

I confess I'm grateful for the "push" to contribute to my blog daily, glad of the sense of regular putting out (and output) in this topsy-turvy time--my homeward journey, in which I regain the eleven lost hours and, if I make the two tight connections, get to Anchorage by the middle of Friday, starts this evening--but I also confess this is not one of my favorite prompts. The alternate prompt to the one I've featured required extolling one's favorite iPhone app related to our health condition. Well, I'm sure some helpful stuff will come out of that. And I actually have an iPhone and really appreciate it. However, most of my life I have lived far behind the technological leading edge and know very well what it's like to live in a society that expects you to have a certain technology and predicates everything on that state of entitled possession. So everyone has a cellphone, so suddenly no one can make a precise plan for where to meet. You don't have a cellphone and came all the way from another town, and it's "call when you get there," but everyone has a cellphone, right, so no one bothers to repair the payphones when they're out of order, so then what do you do? Wheedle passers-by for a quick call?

I'm just leery of focusing health activism on something so specific, not available to everyone by any means...and what about apps for other smartphones anyway?

Of course, if we get into branding, we're on the path all the way back to whether I'm an anorexic bipolar or a witch or a saint in the making, since I'm sure there are arguments that our diagnostic terms are brands of their own.

Anyway, I haven't had my iPhone long enough to explore all the wonderland it offers. As for social networks, the only one I really have spent time with is Facebook, so that'll have to be my pick. I like it first of all because I was invited to join (years ago) by a very dear real-life friend who had moved far away, and the core of my large base of friends is composed of dear real-life friends who are far away. That depth of contact/connection makes the experience real, sincere, and personal. The few FB friends with whom I don't have a strong personal connection are either friends of friends or are people from whom I can learn or with whom I might be able to share something.

The more I give Twitter my attention the more I like it. I can learn so much more, and share so much and do so much. I'm relatively new to it. Thanks to the HAWMC last year, I have a Pinterest account, but that's the extent of it. I'm not visual. And ze ma yesh...

Nu yalla chev're. N'daber b'karov...

Talking, Pictures

The willows are budding...

..and Bidarki creek falling to the beach is making icicles of cathedral grandeur...

I sent in my fourth of the five packets for the second year of the MFA program. Can scarcely credit I have only one more to do. This one was delightful to me, as I'd had the space, with Phil gone, with the house-sitting, to focus and get excited about my work. It feels somewhat like the picture above--falling, falling; but with such a sense of uplift. A pointer to my new life. I also read a poet about whom I'm excited in a full-blown epiphanic way, more than I have been even about my very favorite poets. His name is Andrew Joron. He writes speculative lyric, and he is auditory! I get it! And he did things around words and alphabet that I'm doing in my work right now, so there were lots of spooky coincidences. I'm in awestruck admiration, and also avid to make a connection with the poet and share enthusiasms. Now, a day or so of busyness, and then back to the writing and work...until an Anchorage trip next week.

"Why is Roxy barking so ferociously?" one morning when I'd let her out. Here's the view from the bedroom window, what she was reacting to. Moose's butt. She thinks moose are for barking at, which is scary at times. 

Do you see the moose in this one? Bedded down. They are everywhere at the moment.

Sometimes all you need to do is show someone a picture. I always seem to have all these auras and epiphenomena (ephemera?) I need to include radiating from the picture. See how monochrome all these pictures are. See how each of them is subtly colored, each with a different shade and cast. Oh, and I try to speak that, in real time talk. No wonder I stammer and backtrack.

Siri is teaching me to speak, it turns out, far more than the other way around. I'm surprised by how quickly I can type on that tiny iPhone keypad with one or two fingers, but it is awkward, put mildly, and makes everything sore very quickly. So I dictate my texts and dates and to-do lists almost exclusively. Even with the time correcting Siri's mistakes, it's quicker. I'm learning to speak slowly but not too slowly--this is a speech recognition system that recognizes words in context and too much space will lose that context. On the other hand, I have to leave more space between the words than I would ordinarily, not run words together; I have to be precise about my front and back vowels, avoid affricating t's and d's at the ends of words...Not only is Siri teaching me to talk; also making me even more self-conscious about my own pronunciations. 
But if you're saying something to a speech recognition system that's going to start anticipating the next thing you'll say, accurate transcription will be more likely if you say something predictable. Yikes, what does that say about our communications with one another? Do we WANT to be predictable? I think I need to stop this right now. Sometimes when you go through and correct, Siri will offer its own correction. And sometimes this alternative would be more predictable than what it originally offered. I was dictating a text saying that I was booking Roxy to get her hair clipped (so she wouldn't have icicles in her eyes all the time), and this was transcribed as "I'm f***ing her to get clipped..." I was horrified. Yes, there's a bit of prude in me, which is why it's so scary for people when I actually curse. How did Siri come up with that in the context? When I went to fix it, I was sweetly offered "booking." Siri, you're a twit!

The dogs are teaching me to talk, too. Alone (otherwise) in this big house, I'd rather not talk, but I talk to them, and some of it they definitely understand, good things like "Wanna come to bed?" and "Ready to load up?" as well as things like "Lay down!" (they understand that better than "lie down," which shows that this verb "lay" has extended its meaning in contemporary English). They are keenly tuned to body language, but because they have certain biases, they anticipate (like Siri), not always accurately. They are very very biased toward outings and food. 

Back to the bluff as envoi--some of those icicles are at such interesting angles, especially toward the top left. A frozen weeping mane... 

Teaching Siri my Name, and my First Feather.

I am trying to teach Siri my name. It (she? he?) is calling me "əla ," not quite "Ella;" the fudging schwa of the first vowel affording my whole name barely two moras--almost a monosyllable. We haven't been properly introduced. I don't like it when someone starts using my name without introduction; it's a virtual guarantee they'll get it wrong. Even with introduction...
For the rest, click here http://feathe.rs/201302041959


My first "feather," as I experiment with possibilities for this blog's future. (My blog, mini-me, parallel life.)
I hear the request not to get rid of pictures, so this one may not ultimately work out. I also very much appreciate the dialogue possible with comments. However, I like the clean simplicity.

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