one t-shirt larger

Fascinating story. On NPR this morning I heard the tail end of On Point, the brilliantly mediated discussion show, where Tom was talking with a linguist/cognitive neuroscientist, Arika Okrent, about invented languages. She brought up Klingon and Esperanto, two of the more well-known invented languages from recent history. And as interesting as it is to try to understand why people would invent languages I haven't been able to stop thinking about how lovely it is that naturally occurring language is so consistently disjointed, obtuse, illogical and contradictory.

It is obvious why it would be advantageous to devise a flawlessly structured, immutable language but the fact that our very humanness hatched the strange and hopelessly complex communication standards and patterns we use without even thinking about it says more about what it means to be human than could ever be explained by the means allowed by any language.

Oh, and speaking of NPR, at my place of business we just got in an NPR shirt bearing a faded pair of headphones, the National Public Radio logo and then the somewhat snarky phrase "Get Smarter" across the bottom. I think my wardrobe is going to get one t-shirt larger very soon.


brandonpiercegeary

in the same house

I had grand plans/illusions to drive to a semi-remote place with trees and perhaps a bit of grass poking through the snow. I would arrive around five o'clock slip into the back of my car where I have the seat down and turn on NPR because at five o'clock they played an episode of American Routes featuring John Prine. John Prine always reminds me of my dad. Not necessarily the man's particulars but my father introduced me to his music and I was stymied by my lack of knowledge of someone who was so terrific and had been directly under my nose, living in the same house even (his records anyway). Perhaps that is actually the similarity I find between my dad and John. I remember telling one of my roommates in college how fascinated I was with my dad. I was going to write him a letter while I listened to the radio show. I will write him later this week.

brandonpiercegeary