Unlocking the Secrets of Productivity

We can have it all.

Remembering Jay Fretz

I have learned a lot from Jay Fretz over the years. He taught me about sustainability, 90's music, and girls. Jay once invited me to his house for a small get-together. I remember seeing his young, growing family and feeling a great admiration for him. That night I told him I wanted to grow up and be just like him. I immediately felt silly for telling him that, but now I'm very glad I did. I will miss you a lot, Jay. You've left us far too early.


(Jay with his daughter Anika)

ZB

Ladies and Gentlemen, Zach Bernal:



(photo credit: Stacie & Geoff Lang @ http://www.langphotographers.com/)

I am back from San Francisco.



"What are YOU looking at?"

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.
-David Byrne

A man set before him a blank sheet of paper and scrawled "I WILL" at the top.


He sat upright, resolute and unmovable. A rhythmic moment passed before he drew both ends of the paper and, with squinted eyes and precision only limited by human hand, folded the paper in perfect fourths. He gently slid the paper in the coat pocket nearest to his heart. He stood, nodded, then marched out into the snow. His greying mustache resembled something of a smile.

On the Use and Misuse of "Literally"

The wise Marshall Hunt and I have, on occasion, discussed the misuse of this problematic word. The questions preposed: have years of misuse altered its meaning for the greater public? Is it slang? We have also seen this with words like, "random". Marshall noted that it is a peeve of his when people use "random" as a sort of catch-all adjective describing any sort of unexpected circumstance. He claims that, while unexpectedness is a quality of a random event, not all unexpected things are truly random.

Popular misuse of "literally" has been similarly appropriated in American neo-descriptive language. Yet, where "random" succeeds in a slang context, "literally" fails. This is because when misused, it is, by definition, used in a directly contradictory way. So why is it so frequently misused? Most people could probably tell you its true definition, yet that hasn't prevented this phenomenon.

Perhaps it is because "literally" is now used to create emphasis on a predicate rather than clarify it. For example: "I was so hungry, I literally could have eaten a horse." Here, "literally" is meant to intensify the degree of hunger, as if the (ironically) figurative expression wasn't sufficient, rather than to mean with certainty that one could truly consume an entire horse from extreme hunger. Marshall and I have agreed that the word "literally" owns certain phonetic and linguistically prosodic properties that instigate this error.

1. It has four syllables with the stress occurring on the first, like other emphatic words, "seriously" and "actually". Three syllable emphatic words like, "totally" and "honestly" also contribute.

2. It ends in "ly", giving it an adverbial quality. Adverbs are used to modify actions and, while not necessarily emphatic, may offer a sense of stress or urgency. "We ate quickly.", "She drove speedily about town."

Considering this, it is easier to see why "literally" is misused with such frequency. Still, I prefer its literal definition.