Letters To An
Overseas Friend.

This is not in praise of English. I mean English is amazing like Rod Stewart is amazing; meaning how do you two get away with being the way you are? A case:

Comprehend is a word. Comprehendable (or comprehendible) is not a word. Comprehensible means what you might think comprehendable would have meant. Comprehensible and comprehensive as words are not related at all.

Enough people have told me it’s nucular  rather than nuclear  that I sometimes start to believe it. This is not a problem. Inflammable means flammable? This is a problem. Will enflammable be an acceptable word over time?


ADDED WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2014:
Did comprehendable become comprehensible? Will nuclear become nucular?


ADDED WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2014, but later in the day:
Is comprehend to comprehense what nucular is to nuclear?

ie:
ancient comprehense ⇉ modern comprehend
modern nuclear ⇉ future nucular

After looking up the etymologies of comprehend, comprehensive, and comprehensible, I’d say no, but it’s a little hard to tell how definitive it is, given this is the internet age. There seems to be a common root in the latin word comprehendere or comprehensvius. But by now and in English, I can’t make sense of it and it’s a little hard to to remember that comprehendable is not a word but comprehensible is.

I understand why you wouldn’t enjoy watching The Ten Commandments. I can respect that. I was once the same way. I couldn’t enjoy a single Rod Stewart song because of the atrocities he had committed. But Never a Dull Moment and Every Picture Tells a Story I can’t get enough of these days.

Clearly, when he left his various bands, he was not the most talented one. Rod Stewart can look back at his life and he’ll only see one set of footprints. But that’s because before he became ROD STEWART, The Faces carried him.

After all, this is a guy who subliminally plagiarized a Bob Dylan song. Yet, he showed enough humility and foresight to beg forgiveness before it became a problem. That was quite un-papal of him, IMHO. He did, however, have this big hit which he titled “Forever Young” (the least he could have done is change the name) a scant four years after Alphaville (in this context the little band that kind of did) had their less spectacular hit of the same name. I’m sure that was unintentional too. And probably harmless. It’s all good now though. How many times has the Alphaville version been covered and sampled? And Rod Stewart’s? Exactly. Having said all this, his version of “Mama You’ve Been On Mind” might be my favourite. For today at least.

Just saw The Ten Commandments Cecil B. DeMille 1956 version. I enjoyed it very much.

I can’t take Chuck Heston seriously no matter what he says or does, mostly because all I can hear is him telling Mister Burns, “You truly are the king of kings.” Luckily, this only enhances the entertainment value of the movie.

While probably maudlin and by modern comparisons possibly banal, I find Moses’ treatment of various individuals from his past touching and maybe even moving. Maybe even instructive.

The character of Nathan comes too close to succumbing to the Iron Giant Effect at times. But as the representation of a kind of self-preservation and what-have-you-done-for-me-lately logic, he seems rational enough and quite necessary to explore the higher ideas of the movie, ie. evidence and faith.

The movie has some very inspirational special effects. And some corny ones which I still enjoyed. This could simply be because the visual effects are hand made, or, if you like, artisanal. This should be a term: Artisanal FX. I only just noticed that you can’t have artisanal without anal.

Yul Brynner’s Pharaoh offers disprovable scientific conjectures to disregard The Plagues Of Egypt. To paraphrase: The river turns red via leaching of iron oxides in the mountains which causes the frogs to flee into the fields and into human populations. This tainted water fatally poisons cattle which triggers an explosion in the pest population and an increase in the spread of disease, etc… Later, Pharaoh pays hard for his Occams Razor type rationalization.

He also has a pretty convincing speech on the self-serving impetuses of various religions, including his own. Turns out, Pharaoh’s thesis is incorrect, at least when it comes to one of said religions in light of how poorly numerous supernatural events turn out for him.

I never would have sought to see the movie. I watched it almost by accident through the magic of basic cable. I saw a movie in a theatre about the Sagrada Familia today that I’ve had circled on my calendar. Did not enjoy it. I am thoroughly in the camp that believes that the un-curated TV experience carried over from our past allows for a valuable type of media consumption.


Also, during the movie, on a major US network, I saw an ad for Farm Heroes Saga on mobile. I didn’t know they did that.