Worlds Apart

I am still in Steampunk mode, with all the requisite niceties of language and thoughtful turns of phrase and polite conversation. It's fun, but I can already tell it's not my native tongue, so to speak. Sometimes you have to step out of what you typically do and try something different, and that's what I'm doing right now. But the minute I get done with this I think I'm heading back to the Wild West. Don't tell no one.

Funny how the two actually exist in the exact same time period, with the same technologies (real or imagined), but are--as they say--worlds apart. The West isn't known for its polite conversation and niceness. I suppose there's a part of me that enjoys, after being a grammar cop about everything I read, to write stories where the voice is avowedly NOT grammatical, no way nohow. Some part of me rubs its hands with vindictive glee to write dialog like: "He must of run off but it ain't bothering me none."

I'm actually not deeply versed in the realities of the Wild West (any more than I am of, say, the medieval world) but this, too, don't bother me none. I'll read what I have to and hopefully not make tons of mistakes. Honestly, there's not too much more I can hope for.

At the same time I am considering what would happen if you got a cowboy and a Victorian gentleman in the same room. And what they'd talk about...

What I'm reading: Lots of cowboy movies going on here, or there will be in the near future. Otherwise, I just finished a good collection of short stories by Ursula K LeGuin called Changing Planes. I really enjoy anthropology, especially of the peculiar--luckily, when you make it up, it can be as peculiar as you want! I'm also reading a book of life-stories from old timers in Oregon (which is where I live). It says 'Old Timers' on the cover, so I'm not being offensive or anything. And it's also pretty entertaining to read ninety-year-olds explain how they had to walk to first grade with a rifle just in case cougars came after 'em. Yup. Just in case.