Naturally, the right answer to give the inquisitive child who asks this is to say, “They gave it to us.” When asked who they are, you are free to elaborate however you wish to build your psychological domination of the nasty child. But if you are interested in the truth about this word origin, Howard Markel gives it to us. Robot was the creation of Czech playwright Karel Čapek in his 1920s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Of course, it’s a play about mechanized men who break their labor union contracts and try to take over the world. File that under The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same (via Books, Inq.)

If you check the comments under my review of Whittaker Chambers’ Witness, a few inches below, you’ll see that we got a comment and a link from a David Chambers, whom I take to be Chambers’ son. This sort of thing happens more often than I ever expected, and it’s always gratifying.

I won’t be posting as usual tomorrow or Friday, as I’m going down to my Viking event in Missouri. The location is Ravensborg, near Knox City, Missouri. The web page is here.

I improved my new Viking table this weekend, with the help of my friend Shawn. Because we couldn’t find the kind of screw-in legs I wanted, we bought some closet poles and some hanger bolts, and with drills and epoxy made our own. The result looks like this:

Yes, I know it looks pretty much like it did before, especially in a photograph. But trust me. The legs are un-tapered now, and I’m much happier with it. Someday I hope to drill out my fake joinery plugs and replace them with larger ones, better aligned. But for now this is essentially what I aimed for.

I’m gearing up for my big trip to the Viking encampment in Missouri this weekend. My big acquisition has been a Sony Handycam (used), which I acquired on eBay. The guy who sold it to me got sick the day we closed the deal, so delivery was delayed and I chafed a bit, but the thing finally arrived on Saturday. All in all I love it. It’s a sweet device.

My purpose is to produce a book trailer, because they’re all the rage right now and my publisher has been hinting broadly that I ought to make one or get one made. I’ve done some reading on film making, and I think (I suppose hubristically) that I have a fair grasp of the essentials. Long shots, tight shots, inserts. Rhythm. Increasing tension. (It’s not entirely unlike writing a story.) Background music makes a huge difference (I’ve already downloaded a free track I like very much.)

Now to see how well I handle the actual shooting. I want to enlist some people to deliver a couple lines of dialogue. Will I have the boldness to ask them to help me?

Also it’s supposed to be rainy down there on Friday, the set-up day. I was hoping to get some filming done that day, but that may not happen. At least I should be able to shoot some interiors in the hall.

I am an artist! I cannot work under these conditions!

No, Gloria, you are not ready for your close-up.

Someone has prepared a humorous video of a “Spaniard” reading from Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook. It’s about two minutes of lines like “Could I use some butter and cheese and eggs in my cooking without going down some kind of hippie shame spiral? Yes. Of course I could.”

I should have known better than to declare spring yesterday. Today it only got up to around fifty, and there’s even a little snow predicted over the weekend.

I have the superpower of always being wrong. I must learn to use this power for good.

I have just joined The Fellowship of the Viking Dragon. This is not a heathen religious group, but a group of supporters of an ongoing project to build the largest replica Viking ship ever constructed. I’ve offered them my services as a writer and translator. If you want to keep up to date on the project, or help in some way, information is here. Look around. There’s a lot of interesting photos of the process.

The ship’s being constructed in Haugesund, which is essentially the ancestral home town of the Walkers, who came from Karmøy just across the sound. So I’m very keen on this project, aside from its essential coolosity.

Somebody needs to do a good, epic Viking movie one of these days, featuring a big sea battle. There’s a growing fleet of very fine replica Viking ships in the world, just aching for a shot at stardom.

I’ve been doing a lot of Norwegian blogging lately, haven’t I?



For a change of pace, I’ll add something about the weather. Yesterday was the day I relaxed at last. I tense up every year around the beginning of November, and I don’t ease again until spring is firmly in place. Yesterday I felt that had happened. I saw one tiny snow pile in the shade of a tree while driving to work this morning, but I’m betting it’s gone as of this hour. Had a lovely walk by the lake tonight.

Tomorrow’s only supposed to get up to fifty, but I stand by my decree–spring is here.

Another Viking from my group posted this video of us on Facebook. It’s not one he made; he found it somewhere. I’m not entirely sure who made it, but it’s very well done.

You’ll note that I “kill” Ragnar in the first fight. A phenomenon that rare deserves to be memorialized on film.

Watched the movie, The Hangover last night. I’d heard a lot about how hilarious it is.

Well, it’s funny. I laughed (snorted, actually) in a couple places. But mostly I found it distasteful.

It purports to be an affirmation of manhood and male bonding, in the face of a feminizing culture.

But that affirmation of manhood is actually an affirmation of boyhood. These men aren’t asserting their right to their status as men. They’re asserting their right to be irresponsible and make idiots of themselves. As if that’s what being a man is about.

I was particularly troubled by the attitude of the father of the bride (played by the great Jeffrey Tambor), who sends the bridegroom off to his Vegas bachelor party with a serious, fatherly speech that says, “Remember, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

What kind of father is that? What kind of father will his son-in-law be?

Yeah, I’ve achieved fuddy-duddy status at last.

My creative juices are a little clotted tonight, so I’ll fall back on an old standby—a family photo from my scan collection, one which apparently sat in the sun too long at some point in its history, getting badly faded out.

Analysis:

This one isn’t strictly a family picture. It’s a photograph (dated around 1930, I’d guess) of the class at a country school, containing at least one of my family members. The second girl from the right on the bottom row is my aunt Corene, I think. Though it could be Aunt Jeannie. But I think it’s Corene.

The thing is, I had the idea my dad was in this picture. But it’s hard to pick him out. The little boy second from the left in that same bottom row might be him, but the hair looks a little dark (Dad was extremely blond). The story I recall is that the picture also includes, among other people, the girl who someday would be the mother of a guy who was my college roommate for a while, years later. But I don’t recall which girl it is.

I also recognize the two boys on the right in the middle row. Not as individuals, but by their family. They were neighbors of ours, and the face genes ran strong among them.

Actually, saying they were neighbors is redundant. This was a country school, built on the old Northwest Ordinance principle by which one section of land in each township was sold to pay for a school, which the kids in the township would attend. As you probably know, it was a one-room operation, in which the older kids and the younger kids all sat in class together. There are those who argue to this day that that setup was actually a benefit to all concerned. The younger kids had the older kids to help them, and the older kids got to help teaching, which is one of the best ways to learn.

You’ll note that almost all the boys are wearing bib overalls. A very practical garment for boys, those were. They cover the most vulnerable parts of the shirt (except, of course, for the elbows), preventing stains and wear. Oddly, although I grew up on a farm, and my dad wore them all the time, I don’t recall ever wearing one myself. There is, however, an old picture of me as a toddler in a small pair.

If I’d been born only a few years earlier, I’d have gone to this school. It was only about a half a mile from our farm, and was still standing, abandoned, when I was a kid. A friend of mine lived on that farm, and we sometimes went inside and goofed around.

Our township schools around Kenyon consolidated just a couple years before I started, so I went to the “new” school in town while it was still pretty new. It was a light-colored, one-story brick affair built in a U shape,with two wings branching off a central administrative section. I suspect somebody thought we kids would play in the space between the wings, but we almost never did, and the teachers didn’t encourage it. Too many windows there. The building was state of the art, equipped with the green chalkboards that, all the best minds agreed, would streamline the learning process and put us years ahead of the Russians. Each room was equipped with an asbestos fire blanket, I recall.

I don’t remember any of my classmates ever wearing bib overalls to school. That age had passed.

I don’t often travel alone, and when I do, I don’t turn on the TV. Watching it isn’t how I want to spend the little time I have in the room, and since my on a working trip, I don’t think my managers want me to lollygag around the room for long, especially when I could be lollygagging right under their noses. (Lollygag is a distinctly American word from 1862, perhaps deriving from the old world loll meaning “to relax completely.”)

I know many Christians will approve of my habit of ignoring the hotel room TV, because it guards me from any temptation to watch the soft porn or worse which is usually available on premium cable channels. (Pornography, by the way, was first used as an English word in 1858. It comes from a similar Greek word which meant “writing about prostitutes.” I wonder how many models or actors would want to think of themselves as prostitutes.) I wonder if a growing number of other believers, those who vocally criticize “fundamentalists” for hiding from the world in their church-bunkers, would see what I do as hiding from the world also or maybe a lack of self-control due to a prudish morality.

(A prude is an excessively modest or discreet person. The word comes from an old French world, which meant “good, virtuous, modest.” The word had variations for male and female, the male version meaning “a brave man.”)

Regardless any criticism, I think leaving the TV off is one step in cultivating an acceptance of silence, a small detox from the constant noise in our media-saturated world. Doing that should help build contentment, self-control, and even purity. How can I surrender my indefatigable pride to the Lord of Life if I hide in a bunker made by the world markets? Isn’t that one of the many meanings of Psalm 119?

The last generation to have TV as their major media source is nostalgic for the good ole days of 90s programing. How could Nickelodeon turn down an opportunity like that?

This brief NPR report is interesting, because it states that 20-somethings are so deluged with media throughout the day they will relax in front of the TV with familiar programming, a single media source taking them to their childhood comfort-zones.