Category: Farnham

Because I Have So Much Free Time

Wait, I don’t.
Anyway, I’m taking the challenge, finally, of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Write 50, 000 words in one month! I need some buddies to do this, anyone game?

I’m also climbing back on the horse of perpetual preparation for Clarion Writer’s Workshop 2010, and I feel especially motivated by the news that the admission window has been moved back to December 1st.

Life simply isn’t busy enough right now, between gardening, homeschooling, UU-ing, teaching and academic publishing/freelancing (and pretty much in that order of priority). It feels oddly secondary to mention that my proposal for the Virginia Tech “Gender, Bodies and Technology” conference was recently accepted –I’d actually forgotten about that news until just now.

Let me know, gotta go! It’s Farnham, ya’ll!

Why I Miss Douglas Adams

Some time ago, Douglas Adams, of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame, wrote a silly little book entitled The Meaning of Liff. This is a dictionary of words for concepts everyone recognizes but has no words for, such as “the vaguely uncomfortable feeling you got from sitting on a seat which is warm from somebody else’s bottom.” Thanks to Adams and co-writer John Lloyd, this can now be expressed as “shoeburyness.” Apparently, Adams, Lloyd and others came upon the idea as the result of a drinking game, in which a player stated the name of a town, and another player had to assign it a meaning. They quickly realized that there are quite a number of things that are universally known but for which there are no words. Hence, shoeburyness. It helps that English towns often have ridiculous names.

I mention this not because I am a fan of Adams’ work (although I am), but because one of the words from The Meaning of Liff gave me insight into The Main Point of this blog (see previous post).

The word is “farnham.” I experience farnham on an almost daily basis, and it’s somewhat depressing. Farnham is the feeling you get at four in the afternoon when you haven’t got enough done.

That’s me. I miss Douglas Adams.