Friday 27 February 2015

Acceptable Vagueness

Gibber gibber. What's going on? Where are we? Where is Superman when you need him? Once again, the block has struck, and this could be a very tortured read. It is a truth that spending too long in isolation does tend to degrade your social skills, the mental muscle wasting away from lack of practice.

So, what can you do to keep up communication skills? What are the options available? Is this going to be serious or a merry pile of waffle? Only I might know, if it's not being locked up behind the barrier of my unconscious. My favourite technique is randomly talking to myself in the hopes of being put somewhere full of people, hazardous though that might be. You could also get a language pal, which is great for practicing extra languages, but not for casual conversation.

<pause for thought>

No, it's impossible to write a lighthearted Quirky Muffin today, as the legendary Leonard Nimoy's death was announced in the last few hours. As someone whose development was tied to 'Star Trek' in several of its incarnations this news is much like one of the pillars of the world vanishing in an instant, and leaving nothing in its place. It truly is the end of a legend, a man who embodied an archetype in the character of Spock so completely and thoroughly that any successor is rendered utterly redundant.

Those guys from the first few decades of television are truly irreplaceable. They just aren't making people like that any more, forged as they were in war-times galore, the McCarthy era, the death of JFK and so many other things including long apprenticeships on the stage and screen before getting their breaks. The apprenticeships alone gave them stature that modern performers just don't acquire. You can't replace Nimoy, Shatner, Robert Vaughn of 'The Man From UNCLE', or John Astin and the glorious Carolyn Jones from 'The Addams Family', or so many other. They were one-offs.

It's a sad day.

O.



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