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First draft... complete!
Dec. 19th, 2015 07:20 pmThat Whoop! you heard a few minutes ago from wa-a-a-y over there was probably me, as I finished the last 3700 source words of the first draft of the RRBJ™ job due Monday.
My preliminary target word count is well over 50K, and will likely increase, because the client likes certain things a certain way (e.g., some text in the translation remains in Russian, but English is to appear alongside, which will be done during despeckling).
While there is cause for happiness, there is no case for unbridled celebration, as I still have to do quite a bit of work.
But less work than if I still had words to translate!
Enough of that for now...
* * * Mike Rowe (probably best known for hosting Dirty Jobs on television) posted an incredibly—well, it depends on your taste in humor, but I'll confess to using the word "funny" (YMMV)—Open Letter to Orijen Pet Food on his blog.
When I read it, I must admit I found it funny, to the point of tears.
Today, while running around with Galina in the car, I got to thinking about a fellow by the name of Norman Cousins, who had a great deal of things to say about the benefits of laughter in overcoming disease, and I got to wondering why laughter might be so effective.
And then—boom—it hit me...
You can't think of anything else when you're laughing, except for the picture in your mind that's making you laugh.
Let's do a thought experiment.
Think of an elephant.
Now don't think of an elephant.
Most people will find that difficult to do. It's almost impossible to "put things out of your mind," because the only real way you accomplish that is to "put something else in your mind."
But if you try to do that and try hard, you'll only succeed in having your attention move back and forth, from that farblegargling elephant to whatever it is you're trying to use to replace the elephant. At least, that's been my experience.
But if you're laughing at something, well, things are completely different, and I think it's because laughing is (pretty obviously) fun, which (a) has a tendency to relax you by itself and (b) has a tendency to make you reluctant go do something else (like think of that elephant again).
So based on this armchair freewheel, I would tentatively assert that laughter appears to be a good way to put the worries of the day out of your mind.
But we all knew that already, didn't we?
Cheers...
My preliminary target word count is well over 50K, and will likely increase, because the client likes certain things a certain way (e.g., some text in the translation remains in Russian, but English is to appear alongside, which will be done during despeckling).
While there is cause for happiness, there is no case for unbridled celebration, as I still have to do quite a bit of work.
But less work than if I still had words to translate!
Enough of that for now...
When I read it, I must admit I found it funny, to the point of tears.
Today, while running around with Galina in the car, I got to thinking about a fellow by the name of Norman Cousins, who had a great deal of things to say about the benefits of laughter in overcoming disease, and I got to wondering why laughter might be so effective.
And then—boom—it hit me...
You can't think of anything else when you're laughing, except for the picture in your mind that's making you laugh.
Let's do a thought experiment.
Think of an elephant.
Now don't think of an elephant.
Most people will find that difficult to do. It's almost impossible to "put things out of your mind," because the only real way you accomplish that is to "put something else in your mind."
But if you try to do that and try hard, you'll only succeed in having your attention move back and forth, from that farblegargling elephant to whatever it is you're trying to use to replace the elephant. At least, that's been my experience.
But if you're laughing at something, well, things are completely different, and I think it's because laughing is (pretty obviously) fun, which (a) has a tendency to relax you by itself and (b) has a tendency to make you reluctant go do something else (like think of that elephant again).
So based on this armchair freewheel, I would tentatively assert that laughter appears to be a good way to put the worries of the day out of your mind.
But we all knew that already, didn't we?
Cheers...
