Gizzard's ramblings

My mulberry tree is no more. It was so small that last autumn my father mowed the lawn and didn't see it.
How sad is that.

I still would like that global warming to come back though. 4 inches of snow for Easter, come on.

"Orthography is the science of the dunce" - when I was growing up in France that was one of these sayings. I was very good at orthography (and grammar in general), and I think that generally I can still write decent French if I concentrate enough and can find the words.
Spelling mistakes really annoy me. Mine even more than other people's, but as I generally do not re-read whatever I write I tend to see that less.
Bad spelling is endemic though, even with people whose job it is to write (e.g. journalists). How many times do I get infuriated when reading the BBC news website and see somebody who is paid to write prose enter stuff like "compliment" for "complement", "it's" for "its". It's not THAT hard is it, if even a Frenchman can get those things right?
But no. It's there. Is it laziness or ignorance? Well I guess to the vast majority of people it doesn't matter. Only sticklers like me get wound up about it (well, within the boundaries of my own knoweldge of course...).
A few years ago I read "Eats, shoots and leaves", and I felt soulmate-y with the woman who wrote it (Lynn Truss?).
On the other hand it worries me that I should be one of those anoraks or people who get wound up about futilities like that.

Oh I'm not aging well. The grey hairs are eating at my positive brain cells.

P.S. Thanks for not pointing out spelling mistakes in this post.

Remember Big Brother, any series? Participants compete as to who is the most "genuine".
"Genuine" seems to mean to react and speak without thinking first - a la Jade Goody. Is that commendable? People like that worry me, because I know that first instincts are far from always reasonable, sociable and even less altruistic. I believe that "genuine" means completely instinctive, and let's face it a human being without thought is an animal. That's not to say that thinking human beings are not animals, there are enough genocidal leaders, present and past, to prove it.
But I think that glorifying non-thought is dangerous. Oh yes some people are "genuinely nice", but that's because they think of other people before acting.

At the other end of the scale there are people who weigh everything they say, I believe, or at least who are able to pretty much completely tailor their actions to achieve a certain goal. I feel sorry for myself for not being able to do that, as I think it is a key factor in success in business. I know there are people I talk to who have goals to achieve and are able to orientate all their responses towards that. People who see through the present situation, rise above it and put it in a certain context that suits them.

Example: somebody who is completely career-focused and in many environments act in order to boost his prospects.
Question is, if I was able to become like that would I be the same person still? Would I just be a calculating scheming bastard (as opposed to simply a bastard)?

I believe such people have the ability to compartmentalize their personality according to the context. Something I haven't managed to do yet. If I am angry, I am angry with everybody around me, I am not going to smile to anybody. And I fear that closes the loop to me being in the first category mentioned - feral.

But who knows.