Miscellany

Just a number of different things I want to write about.  They don't go under any heading, except that they're all thoughts I happened to have today!

Caitlin C.

I finally saw a video of her playing basketball.  It was a sort of highlights reel, so it looked like she did nothing but sink baskets!  Later on she talked to reporters, and I could tell that she was sort of wiped out. Boy, does she ever talk fast. 

[Added later]  OK, this popped up on my Facebook feed:

Caitlin looks adorable, and slightly weird at the same time!  It's impossible to say, but the media types could be leaning on her to wear this thing for the sake of publicity!  Who knows?

Josh Johnon.

This guy appears on Fb; I don't know whether he's a comedian on Comedy Central, or whether he has something to do with Fb, but he's funny.  And good- looking, too. 

Dogs.

One thing about dogs is that funny stuff happens with them.  With a cat, there's no jokes; they take everything literally.  Actually you can't talk to a cat; you're just talking to yourself, the cat just does what she wants.  With dogs, they're trying hard to figure what you want, so there's lots of opportunity for misunderstandings, and therefore, laughter!

Sales.

Nothing is selling, as I knew would happen; but you guys are off the hook, because I assume you people have read everything already. 

Well, goodnight to all, and hope you guys are not starving, because, you know, inflation. 

Kay

 

Blush

I'm not sure Caitlin Clark is blushing, but it is adorable!

Well.  An opposing team (LA?)—one of them knocked into Caitlin really hard.  Well, this sort of thing is SOP in games like Football, or Soccer; if you have a star player on the opposing team, you sort of bang them up.  You make them feel that they should give up the game!  I don't think that's the way it's going to happen with Caitlin.  Well, the officials penalized the offending player, or her team.  But I guess CC has been given a warning (by the opposing players). 

The Irritating Gentleman

The commentary suggests that the young woman is a working-class girl, either on her way to (or on her way back from) a funeral.  Note the handkerchief; she's been crying.  From her dress and hairstyle, it concluded that she's a teenager.  Put it all together, and it's clear the man is being a pest.  Artist is Berthold Wolste.

Fiction, Its Canvas, and A Writer's Palette

I've heard the words 'Canvas' and 'Palette' used about authors, when someone is trying to describe an author's style or technique.  (I earlier spelled this word "pallette"; I've repaired that.)

Think about Tolkien.  His world, where his fantasy takes place is essentially Middle Earth.  (It's not a planet, it's essentially an enormous flat world, consisting of a single great continent, and some islands far away, to the 'west', the Grey Havens.  You can't go around Middle Earth and come back to where you were; and nobody really tries.)

This is Tolkien's canvas.  His whole story lives on this canvas, and in a sense he manages to convey the greatness, the dimensions of it, and we never feel cramped in it. 

But recall that his action takes place on this canvas, this stage, over several generations.  There are the elder gods, and they have their adventures, which have consequences centuries later.  So his canvas extends N, S, E and W, but also back in time.  If his stories extend over many eons, his Canvas would be considered to be proportionately larger.  So the concept of a canvas is a necessary tool when talking about epic fiction.  I don't know much about these matters; I'm just guessing. 

Another word they use about an author is his (or her) palette.  The palette an artist (a painter, to be precise) uses, is the set of colors he uses.  Some artists use all the colors they need, mixing and blending and shading until they get the exact hue they require.   Other artists, intentionally restrict themselves to a very few colors, though they do mix those colors among themselves.  In modern art, I think I see this trend towards a minimalist palette. 

The word palette is used in a different sense to 'Canvas'; it is talking about the tools the author uses, the shades of meaning she uses, the particular brush-strokes she uses, whether—and how—she mobilizes the experiences of her audience, the stories in the news, the mythology that we see in the Bible, all as the raw material of her story and her character drawing.

I don't mean to imply that an enormous canvas, and a huge palette make an author effective.  I myself use a modest (read small) canvas; my stories are not at all epic; they're little intimate things.  Even Galactic Voyager has a small canvas, because of the very few people involved.  Alexandra has a bigger canvas, but not much bigger.  And I have to admit that my palette is small, because (despite being a 'published' author,) I have little or no training.

But my modesty is enormous, as anyone can see! 

Kay

This silly cat ...

Well, my little feline friend seems to like to lick my potato chips!  Not the whole lot, but just a couple.  My friend (the owner of the cat) says she's just licking the salt off the chips.  One time she just licked my skin, and apparently it's the same principle: I had been perspiring, and she was enjoying the salt on my skin!  Man, it was the strangest sensation; her tongue was like sandpaper—which I was actually expecting—and it felt like she'd scrape my skin right off!

I never expected a cat to be so interesting!

Kay

I'm Reluctant

Poor Caitlin Clarke.  She takes all this madness so calmly, (and they have her meeting Billie Jean King, and have lots of interesting encounters like that) and it's featured ón Fb.  But I'm determined not to respond positively, or I'll never hear the end of it.  The Fb algorithms don't know the meaning of the word moderation.  As it is, without my responding to these advertisements at all, they're showing me so many of them, i'm beginning to suspect that they're stalking me here, too. 

Oh, CC, I wish you all success; just wait out all this maniacal attention, and hopefully things will get back to normal.  Unfortunately, the more hype the media generates around Caitlin, the more money the Indiana Fever will make, and they keep switching the games to be played in larger venues ...

Next, they'll get CC to meet Taylor Swift.  Then they'll send her to Russia, or North Korea, and it'll be Brittney Griner all over again.  OMG, I have too much of a dangerous imagination. 

An Elf Called Dani?

One of the most entertaining features of DA used to be their captions, or whatever remark accompanied the artwork. 

It used to be that if someone posted a picture of an elf, say, and the caption was 'Dani', well it could be:

(1) An elf called Dani.  This is the least likely possibility!

(2) It was a cosplay.  Someone called Dani had dressed up as an elf. 

I can't think of anything else it could be!  A friend of the artist's, who looked a lot like an elf?  A character from popular culture—a TV show or Anime, or a game, called Dani?

Why is (1) so unlikely?  Because Dani is the root of a Biblical name, Daniel (and its feminine form, Danielle or Daniela), and I've seldom—never, actually—seen stories featuring the fae, with Judaeo-Christian given names!  It's not a law, but there are traditions; the stories have to be plausible, after all. 

(2) is unlikely as well, simply because AI has made cosplay very uncommon.  Or maybe I'm just not being shown any cosplay on DA.