EP422: Deshaun Stevens’ Ship Log

[Unblinking]

Was entertained.  Had plausibility issues, but unimportant because funny.  Alasdair perfect read.

[Kaa]

I found this entirely enjoyable. So much so that I listened to it twice. Alasdair's narration was as much a part of that as the story itself.

Was I the only one reminded of the character Whip on the awesome show "Tripping the Rift"?

[albionmoonlight]

Read this while walking the dogs.  Perfect light fun story for a beautiful fall night.  I love it when the story and the situation in which I listen to it come together.

[Fenrix]

This perfectly captured the EP mission of Have Fun. Loved the butterscotch pudding line, and the redacted section of the diary due to the security agency.

Not sure why so many people think the diary is text. If it was text, the redacted statements would have been redacted if they were typed (because he was admitting to rulebreaking on a monitored medium). If it's a Captain's Log format a la Star Trek, then the verisimilitude is better. Also fits perfectly with the presentation we received. Only possible violation is the use of "v" in place of "very" like in antiquarian letters, but this could as easily be an affectation similar to how LOL and OMG are currently used in verbal conversation.

[Cutter McKay]

Short and sweet. This was a fun story and I enjoyed it. Not deep, not one I'm urgently telling friends to come listen to, not likely to be remembered for long. But fun. It's nice to have these sprinkled into the feed occassionally.

I can agree with the complaints about the text shorthand, I HATE text shorthand to the point that I won't even use LOL. My "laughs" are typically "hehe" or "haha" depending on the level of humor and my actual reaction to the joke. However, I think Fenrix is right in that this ship log is in audio format and therefor not so much text shorthand as just broken speech. This does bother me a bit because if it really was recorded orally, then why would Deshaun not just speak normally. In an audio recording, there's no need for shorthand because it doesn't really make the recording any faster. So I think this is a bit of a contrivance on the author's part because the shorthand is kind of a key element to the plot. Still, the story made me smile, so I'm not holding too much against it.

Only possible violation is the use of "v" in place of "very" like in antiquarian letters, but this could as easily be an affectation similar to how LOL and OMG are currently used in verbal conversation.

This drives me crazy. I have a friend who will literally say aloud, "Oh Em Double-you (OMW)" when leaving. To which I reply, "You know that OMW has the same number of syllables as "On my way", right? So you're not actually saving any time by speaking in text shorthand and you just sound stupid."

*sigh* Some peoples' kids...

[ArbysMom]

Was entertained.  Had plausibility issues, but unimportant because funny.  Alasdair perfect read.

This.   

[Varda]

Not sure why so many people think the diary is text. If it was text, the redacted statements would have been redacted if they were typed (because he was admitting to rulebreaking on a monitored medium). If it's a Captain's Log format a la Star Trek, then the verisimilitude is better. Also fits perfectly with the presentation we received. Only possible violation is the use of "v" in place of "very" like in antiquarian letters, but this could as easily be an affectation similar to how LOL and OMG are currently used in verbal conversation.

For me, the Bridget Jones connection probably biased me to think of it as a text journal, but good point. There's no reason it couldn't be a spoken log, aside from the sprinkling of abbreviations, which could indeed be spoken aloud.

[Prophet]

Short, light and fun. I loved it. And it was a much needed piece here on Escape Pod. Ever since the Metacast went out, I've felt a bit heavy-hearted. Sad at the possibility this show might end soon. I needed an episode that would brighten the mood. Sure, Shunned Trailer was funny. But this was pure silly fun funny that had me giggling. Hee hee, bet Kirk never bedded a cloud alien...

Ok, that's all I got. Hee hee hee.

[Devoted135]

This was so cute and funny! I agree, it hit the perfect light-hearted tone needed to really pull this off. And of course Alasdair worked his magic and brought it to life. Have Fun, indeed

Was entertained.  Had plausibility issues, but unimportant because funny.  Alasdair perfect read.

This.   

Yes!

[evrgrn_monster]

This was just plain cute. I didn't think it was particularly creative or deep, but I also don't think that was the point of this story. I agree with others that this story isn't one that I will immediately recommend to people, but it reminded me a lot of those B-grade horror movies you find in the dregs of Netflix; doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you think about it too hard, flat characters, and odd execution, but it doesn't really matter because at the end of the day you had fun.

[Jen]

This was brilliant, I laughed all the way to work. I'd date him after reading his diary! Actually, I read this "diary" as more of a blog, and it's exactly the kind of blog I'd enjoy if it was real, so I'm not surprised I loved the story. It doesn't happen often, but this is one of those texts that I'd enjoy even without the SF stuff.

The linguistic discussion in the thread is very cool too, especially for someone with a native language that's quite different from English. To me, the lack of subject in "Still the laughing stock of the ship" is not the problem - "laughing stock" is. I *know* what it means, but I got the meaning through context, from 15 years of reading/listening to English, but what is this stock and why are we laughing about it? Is it a good or a bad thing? How would the poor aliens guess that?

(That said, in Romanian the subject is very often implied and the verb conjugation indicates the person of the subject - just like in the other Romance languages like Spanish or French. To me, this is natural, and it felt really weird when my first English teacher told me that you can't do it in English. Now I'm learning German and that is messing with my head in new ways! *happy being a language geek*)

[Dem]

The linguistic discussion in the thread is very cool too, especially for someone with a native language that's quite different from English. To me, the lack of subject in "Still the laughing stock of the ship" is not the problem - "laughing stock" is. I *know* what it means, but I got the meaning through context, from 15 years of reading/listening to English, but what is this stock and why are we laughing about it? Is it a good or a bad thing? How would the poor aliens guess that?

Loved this analysis, Jen, and you prompted me to find the origins of 'laughing stock'. I'd always understood how to construe it but not what it actually meant. Like many, I'd had the vague notion it might be related to putting people in the stocks for punishment, but this may be an acquired interpretation with the real origin more to do with the 'stock' or solid post to which things could be fixed. Presumably, the act of laughing could be 'fixed' to some unfortunates on the basis of their actions. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/laughing-stock.html The aliens would have had to work this out from context though, like most of us seem to have done, without reference to a disputed origin.

[Varda]

The linguistic discussion in the thread is very cool too, especially for someone with a native language that's quite different from English. To me, the lack of subject in "Still the laughing stock of the ship" is not the problem - "laughing stock" is. I *know* what it means, but I got the meaning through context, from 15 years of reading/listening to English, but what is this stock and why are we laughing about it? Is it a good or a bad thing? How would the poor aliens guess that?

This is a really good point. Figures of speech are extremely hard to understand for anyone learning a language. Heck, even native speakers don't get them right all the time. My two favorite examples of English sayings gone wrong are:

- "For all intensive purposes..." (instead of "For all intents and purposes")
- "Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn." (Instead of "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," which is pretty much the opposite!)

[matweller]

- "For all intensive purposes..." (instead of "For all intents and purposes")
- "Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn." (Instead of "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," which is pretty much the opposite!)

Yes, but to be fair "For all intensive purposes..." has a more accurate meaning than the lamely redundant "For all intents and purposes" so you can forgive people for making that error. And "Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn" is deliciously, simultaneously opposite and synonymous, since the implication of "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," is that said scorn would lead the woman to exhibit rage [scorn of her own] unmatchable by Satan himself.

And, mistakes like these are natural progressions in a culture where language is so easily manipulated by public figures and spread to the masses with mass communication. Some comedian rips out a one liner that contains the intentionally ironic "For all intensive purposes…" in a routine that appears on Comedy Central's Stand Up, Stand up! in 1991 and not only do 30 people at the show walk away using it because they think repeated wit is the same as original wit, but now 2 million folks that saw it on TV do the same and they infect another 2 million who don't know the source or the irony but want to please the person they heard it from and assume they had been saying it wrong all their lives, and so on and so on. Now it's the new standard. It happens all the time with words like "cool" and "gay" and "Socialism," and it's only going to happen more and faster in a twitter world. Look at "irregardless" -- it's a self-negating word that's now in the dictionary because so many people use it. Or "impactful". Not a word, but now acceptable.

I love derivation discussions. I want to host a 5 minute podcast with Dem where all we do is catalog derivations of words and phrases.

[Varda]

Yes, but to be fair "For all intensive purposes..." has a more accurate meaning than the lamely redundant "For all intents and purposes" so you can forgive people for making that error. And "Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn" is deliciously, simultaneously opposite and synonymous, since the implication of "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," is that said scorn would lead the woman to exhibit rage [scorn of her own] unmatchable by Satan himself.

Butbutubut.... they make me twitchy! 

Really, though, #2 makes me twitchy for different reasons (e.g. it's pretty damn misogynist, whichever way you say it).

[matweller]

Yes, but to be fair "For all intensive purposes..." has a more accurate meaning than the lamely redundant "For all intents and purposes" so you can forgive people for making that error. And "Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn" is deliciously, simultaneously opposite and synonymous, since the implication of "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," is that said scorn would lead the woman to exhibit rage [scorn of her own] unmatchable by Satan himself.

Butbutubut.... they make me twitchy! 

Really, though, #2 makes me twitchy for different reasons (e.g. it's pretty damn misogynist, whichever way you say it).

I'm just trying to defend the fact that I used #1 for 30 years before I heard it correctly.

[Sgarre1]

The derivation of "Normalcy" instead of "Normality" is historically interesting.

[matweller]

For those interested: http://grammarist.com/usage/normalcy-normality/

[matweller]

Ugh, I just heard another one that I hate and I hear it so wrong that I'm not even sure which is correct.

"seat change" - as in "there's a new pilot in the captain's seat, so now we're headed where he leads." This is the one that makes the most sense to me and the one I have used in the (maybe) 2 occasions in my life when I would have used the phrase at all.

vs.

"sea change" - as in "the tide has turned, now there's a new direction"

vs.

"seed change" - this one I understand least, but I would guess people who use it think it means something related to "seed of doubt" and that somehow changing the seed can change the course of something

[Cutter McKay]

The one that kills me is "I could care less" vs "I couldn't care less". Every time someone says to me, "I could care less." I want to say, "Oh, so it really doesn't bother you that much?"

We're all victims of misunderstood and misquoted idioms in some way or another. I just learned (like, in the last month) that the phrase is NOT "If worse comes to worse." I recently read something that said, "If worse comes to worst..." and my first thought was, Idiots, they said that wrong... wait, that actually makes a lot more sense. Crap, have I been saying wrong all these years?

Of course, just before writing this post I looked the idiom up to see which was actually right, and found that the phrase might actually be "If worst comes to worst." So now I don't know what to believe anymore. Someone tell me how to talk good English. 

[Unblinking]

"head over heels" the usage of this one has always bothered me, so I never ever use it.  Maybe I'm not living my life in the correct orientation, but my head is ordinarily over my heels as a matter of course--the opposite would be the unusual case.  I prefer "ass over teakettle" in any case.

"Could care less", I agree with that one.  Likewise, I never use it that way.  I don't actually stop the conversation to point out when other people use it, but it makes me twitch.

"Regime" vs. "Regimen" vs "Regiment"
Regime--a government in power
Regimen--a strict course of diet or other manner of living
Regiment--a military group

[Varda]

"Normalcy" vs. "normality - that was a fascinating read. Thanks for sharing, guys!

I've been guilty of "I could care less". It always makes sense why I'm wrong to say it when I think of it out of context, and then it just comes tripping off my tongue again the next time I use it. 

Another pet peeve: misuse of "begging the question"/"begs the question", which by definition, relates to circular reasoning. But most people use it as a synonym for "raises the question". I have a feeling the language is just changing on this one, and that possibly within my lifetime, it'll officially take on the new meaning. *twitch*

I know this article's been making its rounds, but did you guys read about the new official usage of "because"? It's now a preposition, because internet.

[Unblinking]

I know this article's been making its rounds, but did you guys read about the new official usage of "because"? It's now a preposition, because internet.

Neat, because bacon.  Always because bacon.  Sometimes also because bonnacon.

[PotatoKnight]

I think of it as "I could care less, (but it's hard to imagine how.)"  Or perhaps better yet, "I could care less, (but that would take effort)." 

[Dem]

I know this article's been making its rounds, but did you guys read about the new official usage of "because"? It's now a preposition, because internet.

Neat, because bacon.  Always because bacon.  Sometimes also because bonnacon.

Part of me is curling up and dying at this, another part is saying 'because why?'