Tags
civil war, drunkalog, gun porn, intellectual property, new world, timeline, timelines, wargames, wordpress
Years and years ago I went out with a girl who explained to me how her father was an alcoholic. It was offered as detail behind some of the issues that had become apparent in our relationship, such as it was. Said declaration was accompanied with the further elaboration that it had been decades since the man had quit drinking altogether.
She made two statements about this situation that have stuck with me ever since. The first was the assertion, a core tenet of the Alcoholics Anonymous program, that a drunk is never “cured;” he is only and always recovering. That is to say, no matter how long you have gone since your last drink, you remain (even sober) an alcoholic. The second was her observation that some of the key negative personality manifestations of alcoholism remain even after you’ve gone sober. In this case, it was anger management -related issues that were a) part of the reason her father sought treatment in the first place and b) remained a dominant and (for her) difficult part of his personality ever after.
This once-a-drunk-always-a-drunk oversimplification came to mind the other day.
A distant associate – shall we say “friend of a friend” – recently gave up drinking altogether. She is justifiably proud of her accomplishment and it has objectively improved the quality of her life across the board. She also took the occasion to make it a feature of her blog.
In my own experience, people who like to drink and do so excessively also like to tell their war stories. “There was this one night when I got so drunk that…,” they’ll begin. Sometimes those tales are triumphant, sometimes they are self-deprecating, and sometimes they are part of a I-really-gotta-give-this-up line of reasoning. Among fellow soldiers, all three can be appreciated – we’ve all been there and done that. They’re probably even more enjoyable once both narrator and audience has tied another one on. To the non-addicted bystander, I’m sure they are generally pointless, tedious, or outright revolting.
My encounters with AA and the recovery process are few… although not all are quite as scant as that second-hand relationship with an ex-girlfriend’s father. I come away with an impression that recovering alcoholics (maybe especially newly-recovering alcoholics) relish their war stories as passionately as those who are still drinking. In these former cases, the focus less on the “it was the best night of my life – if I could only remember it” triumphant tales and more on the “it was really bad, but I still had to hit rock bottom” version. The intent, at least consciously, is to explain how the drink was destroying one’s life and how the particular details relayed led to the eventual path of sobriety. How often, though, is it just that same story from back in your drinking days, told with the same old gusto?
One difference now is that you’ve further shrunk your audience. The former fellow drinkers are not going to want to listen to the preachy edge to your story. Even if it really is just the same old story, the “moral” is now “I gave up drinking and YOU SHOULD TOO!” Likewise, I can’t imagine that people who’ve benefited from a lifetime of self-control really enjoy the “… and then I woke up in a pool of my own filth” -stylings. Pointless, tedious, outright-revolting, am I right?
As much as I support and agree with the decision of my friend-of-a-friend to better herself, reading about it quickly gets tiresome. Worst of all, I see that tiresome tendency reflected in my own remembering, reminiscing, and writing it all down. Am I bothered by what she’s doing or am I bothered that I see in her virtual face my own reflection?
I nonetheless stroll down that well-worn path of old memories again in this post because of another thing that happened, this one having to do with WordPress tags.
Some of my tags are fairly straight forward. Posts tagged Donald Trump are about our former president. Posts tagged England are about England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, whether past, present or future. The designed purpose of the tag system would seem to be to make posts more searchable, although how (and even whether) that actually works in a personal-blog context, I’m not sure. Certainly when the tags are based upon common sense, they serve that function.
For me, coming up with the right tags can feel like a creative exercise in-and-of itself. When at my most fanciful, I chose tags to be obscure references or subtle word-plays, possibly with meaning only to me. It inevitably happens that I then have trouble remembering what I meant by a tag and have to try to figure myself out from the context of a years-old post. Other times I realize that I came up with what I thought was a particularly clever tag, only to forget that I had done so – leaving it abandoned as a single reference on a 4-year-old post. I’ve also avoided creating an obvious tag because it would clash with some theme I was onto at the time.
A specific? Earlier this month I, for the umpteenth time, found myself looking up the difference between “timeline” and “timelines.” I figured its high time I make a record of what I mean. To that end, I’ll use this post explain it for my future self.
With that overwhelmingly-wordy introduction behind me, here are a few notable tags, laid out in the style of my previous posts about tag usage and Word Clouds.
drunkalog
I don’t know where I came across the term originally but it wasn’t me that invented this term for drunk-blogging. Whatever its origin, and whatever the scope of its original meaning, the term seems have tapered off in use around the time I first used it in a mostly-autobiographic review of music and lyrics about drinking. WordPress references turn up nothing newer than 2013.
Open internet searching points to AA-related websites themselves. The term “drunkalog” came well before the “weblog” terminology and is, in that context, mostly used to refer to the stories-from-recovering addicts to which I refer to above. Such google-fu produces one result that seems to have, almost half-a-century ago, noticed that telling drunken war stories for the sake of the telling is not necessarily helpful to the recovery process. If I may editorialize, it comes off as narcissistic. Perhaps, as my gal explained to me way back then, narcissism is one of those traits that drove you to addiction in the first place now manifesting itself in the sober you, even if in a (mercifully) less destructive way.
My tag, then, is used to refer to anything that accurately portrays the experience of addiction, a not-uncommon theme in film and literature. Note the contrast to the tag alcohol, which would indicate something about the drink itself rather than about the drunk. Like a heavy drinker’s memories, the distinction may be a bit fuzzy.
I notice that, in addition to people my age giving up their youthful bad habits (about time, you might add), I saw recently that Generation Zed is decidedly-less likely to become involved with alcohol, drugs, and other sins that plagued previous generations of youth. They’ve got more than their share of their own problems, to be sure, but drinking too much may not be one of them.
timeline/timelines
My first use of these two tags, used simultaneously, was when I shared visual timelines I created from another blogger’s work. Whether I knew it at the time, the difference between the two is that timeline refers to the creation and display of a sequence of events, whether simply graphical or interactive. This is further muddled by my using it, also, to refer to the written work by Michael Crichton and the movie adaptation thereof.
In the plural, timelines is intended to refer to articles about sequential events themselves. In some cases I use it to highlight where I found the coincidence of events to be remarkable. It is also used to tag my ever-growing list of posts about time-travel related science fiction. In other cases, I just remain confused.
Surprisingly enough, a quick scan of WordPress Reader’s top articles suggests that my interpretation is shared. The “timeline” link produces articles like this one, laying out an order of events for a complex situation, even if it is not in the graphical sense to which I personally am drawn. The “timelines” link is more apt to be a discussion of the nature of time; more that of cultural conceptualization than bullet list.
wargames
This one has topped the list of my “most frequent” tags several times in a row. Eyeballing it, I’d say this is my fifth most frequent tag; eighth if you combine both tags and categories. Such shouldn’t be surprising given what I like to write about.
In part, I use wargames to tag posts where I discuss the design philosophy behind the making of wargames. That is to draw a contrast from simply tagging my posts which are on the subject historical war gaming.
I grumbled quite a bit when observing that Wargamer.com gave itself over to Warhammer, D&D, and Magic the Gathering posts. I detect a similar pattern in the use of the wargames tag across WordPress as a whole. The top reference, as I write, links to a discussion of BattleTech miniatures. SciFi and Fantasy (and SciFi-Fantasy) minis are the bulk of what “wargames” are, apparently, all about these days.
In future I might also find it useful employ the tag when discussing large-scale military exercises that periodically occur. I don’t think I’ve done so yet.
civil war
Another common tag from me is civil war. I use it with two different meanings, with neither being the most obvious one. I do NOT mean the American Civil War (which has its own tag) and so “civil war” generally does not accompany posts on that subject (although it might). It is meant to refer to the concept of a intranational war, perhaps distinct from a revolution or even a separatist rebellion. As such, it can be used in its historical sense, of course, but it can also be used in a current events sense.
For the latter, it often accompanies posts which discuss other articles or blogs predicting a new civil war within the United States. I’ve commented upon how there is a big difference between civil discord, civil unrest, civil breakdown, and actual civil war. My tag is often used to cover the gamut, in line with the way the news media has sensationalized the term.
On WordPress Reader, the tag is mostly used for American Civil War -related writings and, to a lesser extent, historic civil wars in other nations. All in all, the tag is used far more seriously and somberly than I tend to employ it.
gun porn
For those not familiar with the subculture, the term has been used in the shooter/gun-owner related blogosphere to refer to posts peppered with high-quality imagery of desirable firearms. A now three-year-old example via WordPress Reader not only exemplifies the style but uses that tag to describe the post. It’s one of a series of post about “Russian Hunting Shotguns” that has been put on hold in reaction to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The horror of war writ small.
I sometimes like to use this term in a way that does not comport with its well-accepted meaning. First off, I like use it to tag any media which heavily emphasizes guns in a way that might appeal to the gun enthusiast, visual or otherwise. I go further. In the same way that pornography might offend lovers of genuine (if perhaps erotic) art, I sometimes use it satirically tag Hollywood’s use of guns where the emphasis is on many, big, or simply the ridiculous. In other words, it might be an indication of content that might specifically offend gun owners and enthusiasts rather than titillate them.
Finally, I (personally – I don’t think I’ve done it in a blog post yet) like to ironically use the term to refer to films that combine skin, sex, and ridiculous gun-play in an exploitative or fetishistic way. In other words, the term “gun porn” was meant to be a term that didn’t mean what it sounds like it means. My joke is I mean it exactly what as it sounds. Ha ha?
intellectual property
Much like my frequently-used tag netflix, which more often than not refers to my disatisfaction with the company and its practices, my use of the tag intellectual property is as often than not a criticism of the way the law is designed to protect such. Over the years I’ve come to believe that, whatever benefits it may provide, we would be better off if the entire corpus of intellectual property law were to be done away with.
As with “netflix,” this isn’t going to be the typical usage of this tag in most blogs from other writers. The bulk of the content of it would seem to be discussion of this category of law practice or, maybe, advice to those looking to engage IP lawyers. Happily, one post (while still fitting that general description) aligns very well with the subjects within my blog. Including the disparaging tone.
new world
My last (and probably least) in my list of “what it means to me” tags is new world. While this could have any number of different meanings, for my purposes it refers to the discovery, exploration, and colonization of the Americas by Europeans. I.e. that time when the Americas were “new to them.”
In this case, I find an unexpected tie back to both my meaning and the game-focus of this website when I peruse the world of WordPress. As of a little over a year ago, this is now the title of a popular MMORPG New World. While the game has fantasy elements and is located on an “island,” it apparently ties in historically with the same factors to which I am exploring. If I ever play New World and write posts about it, they will no doubt bet tagged as such.
So there it is. If you didn’t enjoy this post, take comfort from the fact that I, myself, will find it useful when I need to refer back to it to remember the difference between “timeline” and “timelines.”