Extremities and Extremism

I think people have underestimated their extremities.  I know, I know, that's an odd thought to have, but think about it.  Everything seems more extreme at your extremities.  Whenever I'm cold, my toes are always the coldest.  Double layers of gloves and socks barely keep up in a freezing NYC winter.  Conversely, on a sweltering, Alabama summer day, while the rest of my body struggles on with the heat, my toes get hot and claustrophobic in shoes.  They demand sandals so that they can breathe.

I know that not everyone shares my opinion on toe shoes, but toe socks and toe shoes are the absolute worst.  It's not just the fact that they create tiny prisons for your toes that bothers me.  No, what bothers me is that they are imprisoning your toes in tiny isolation cells.  They were born together; they've never been apart.  They aren't used to isolation.  Some people might even call it cruel and unusual punishment.  And one should not be cruel to one's toes.  They are sort of the foundation of a person, you know?

So, really, I think people are underestimating their extremities.  By this, I don't just mean that people are not looking out for their extremities when they cram them into high heels and pointy shoes that don't always fit.  I mean, that people don't appreciate how much extremities really feel.  Feeling extremes in heat and cold is just the beginning.

I believe that extremities and extremism go hand in hand.  Popular expressions would support this notion.  When you love a song the first thing that happens is toe tapping.  Your toes either appreciate the music more or first.  They start dancing before you do and then convince the rest of you to follow along.  When you fall for a stranger's charm it is called being "swept off your feet."

The ultimate expression of relaxation is putting one's feet up.  The opposite is also true.  When someone is tired the highest expression for exhaustion is "dead on your feet."  Because feet are the first to relax and the first to tire.

If you're extremely obstinate you "dig in your heels."  The opposite is also true here.  When someone is over eager you can tell them "cool your heels."  There are numerous expressions that express feelings by equating them with extremities.  If you worked hard all day you could say that you ache from "head to toe."  If you feel like you are in a changeable or fast-paced environment you might say that it "keeps you on your toes."  This evokes a feeling of change and surprise all at once.  Rarely would someone try to express this feeling by referring to a body part in the mid-section.

And that's all just feet.

Your fingers can be lazy "not lifting a finger" or take the brunt of all your hard work when you have "worked your fingers to the bone."  You can give people and things you approve of a thumbs up.  People who are clumsy are referred to as "being all thumbs."  And when you feel like you're being oppressed you could call it "being under someone's thumb."

Your heart may just be the center of your emotions but your extremities may experience them in the most extreme manner.  Seeing as I'm in a frivolous mood I'm just going to go out on a limb here (a limb being an extremity as well), and say that my emotions are magnified at my extremities. My fingers are extremely important and my toes are extremists.

Broccoli is proven to be creepy

I accidentally stumbled across this post about broccoli on somebody else's blog the other day.  In light of my last post about broccoli I thought this was oddly appropriate.  If my strange pictures were not enough to scare you I imagine that this will be.  Just look closely at these pictures.  Creepy.

A blog by any other name... would be as bloggy?

I really don't like the word blog.  I never have, but my aversion seems to be growing for some reason.  Maybe it's because I have to accept the fact that the term blogger now applies to me because I have a blog.  It's just such a dumb word.  Wait, you may think, there is a method to its madness.  Yes, yes, I know.  Blog comes from web log.  Which sounds like blog if you say it together.  But really.  Who keeps logs?

Ships have logs.  And tress turn into logs.  But when people sit down and write it isn't really in a log.  If you asked someone if they kept a log they would probably stare at you with that look.  You know the one I'm talking about.  The look that says I haven't decided yet whether you are drunk, stupid, or simply an alien.  If you were to ask someone if they kept a journal or a diary on the other hand they would know what you were talking about and probably reply civilly, without any trace of that look.  You may sit down to journal but you would never sit down to log.  You aren't logging down the events of your life in some sort of formal scientific process.  Maybe it's just me, but the average web log is hardly scientific.

Let's say for argument that you woke up one day and decided not to keep a journal, but rather the things you intended to scribble down, and the manner in which you intended to keep them, were really best classified as a log.  Ok, fine, you have a log.  Are you now a logger?  No, those are the people who cut down trees thus turning them into logs.  By scribbling things down you are either a writer of some sort (and for the sake of this argument we'll include lyricists and poets etc.), some sort of scientist, if you decide to be so formal about it, or a businessman required to keep precise but short notes about your dealings.  Although you can't really claim that your "log" is scientific simply because it involves a precise process, as a hypothesis and conclusion would really be required, I won't argue the point with you.  I'll allow that you are a scientist before I allow that you are a logger.  However, unless it is a professional record you're keeping you really ought to simply call yourself a writer.  But I digress.  Let's go back to the word blog.

I think what really bothers me is the fact that the word blog sounds like so many mucky things.  Blog sounds a lot like bog, a marshy, muddy, potentially alligator infested place that smells of decay.  Or maybe blog sounds more like blob and I don't even want to contemplate the substances this could be or the foul places you might find it.  Now, you don't need to agree with me.  Maybe you have a strange nostalgic soft spot in your heart for marshy peat bogs.  Or a love of clogs, those charming wooden shoes, which the word blog always reminds you of.  Or the word blob is funny to you and conjures up images of cute pudgy animals.  Who am I to judge?  Just so long as you know that not everyone shares your views of these words.  In fact, there was even a horror movie about a blob, complete with the blob song.  You think I jest?  Go ahead and look it up.  It's on IMDb.

"Beware of the blob, it creeps, and leaps, and slides, and glides, across the floor, the door, and over round the house, a splotch, a blotch, and then the blob so beware!" - My Dad's version of the Blob song

I remember my Dad singing it to my brother and I while we were camping.  He used to dance gleefully around the campfire chanting the blob song to us while the firelight made his eyes glint crazily as he crept ever closer to tickle us.  Don't think this allows you to dismiss the inherent ickiness of the word blob.  This is not simply the rant of someone traumatized in childhood.  If anything this memory makes me think of the word blob more fondly and I still think it is a strange word evocative of disgusting things.

And blog... well, it is evocative of all of those marshy, mucky, horrible things.  Plus it opens the world up to more terrible words like plog, which nobody even seems capable of defining properly or consistently, or vlog.  Both stupid words. 

I'm not saying we shouldn't use the word blog.  It is a well accepted term and it is much too late to change it now.  I'm just saying that it's a dumb word and that it should have been called something different from the very start.  Something less primordial sounding.  Just a thought.