Post for July 18, 2003

Declining Standards

Well, the Latin language owns my soul. I took the third of five tests for my Latin correspondence course yesterday. I have a difficult time with foreign languages (there are some who might say I have difficulty with English, too, but I digress). I do think I've narrowed down my problem, though. See, Latin is one of those languages that relies on conjugation of verbs and declension of nouns/pronouns/adjectives to convey certain meaning. It also features gender. Woo. But instead of just having one set of endings for conjugating all verbs and one set of endings for declining all nouns/pronouns/adjectives, you end up with five different conjugations and four different declensions. And then you have different endings depending on the gender of the word. And then you have the different tenses for verbs. So far, I have present, imperfect (past), and future, but they're going to add two or three new tenses in the next few chapters. What all this means is that you have to memorize a lot of different endings for different words. I really think that this is just shoddy work. I mean, when they were designing Latin, why couldn't they have made it real simple. You only need three, maybe four tenses: present, past, future, and maybe future imperfect (like "he will have done this" or something like that. I'm not real clear on this sort of thing). Each verb should thus have three, possibly four potential conjugations. It wouldn't matter if the word was masculine, feminine, or neuter--same ending for all of them. One set of declension endings for allnouns, pronouns, and adjectives. It'd be simple. I tell ya, the ancients really just didn't have their act together when they set up their language.

Granted, English is ten times worse, but thankfully I speak that already and don't have to worry about trying to learn it as a second (or, as the case is for me with Latin, fifth) language.

G.L.O.C.H. (Gorgeous Ladies of Crooked Halo)

Today's comic again features the ladies Andrea and Tammy. Someday I hope to elaborate more on their characters. We'll just have to see what I can manage. They will play fairly prominent roles in the lives of Simon and Jerome, if only because we need ye ol' woman's touch to keep the comic and me honest.

They Say it's Your Birthday

Today marks the one month anniversary of the new Dim Bulb Comics site. Come celebrate with us by taking a trip through the archives or joining us in the forum. There's a nice forum thread about how underground and "indie" we are (which has diverged into a discussion of my inability to correctly-space the words "Dim" and "Bulb" when writing Dimbulb...or, as Adam insists it's supposed to be, Dim Bulb). Thanks for reading, and make sure to check out page three of Troubled Times tomorrow. I know I'm looking forward to it (because I haven't seen it yet, either).

Addendum

On a related note, I may not put a space between "Dim" and "Bulb" regularly, but at least I know how to spell "cabesa." I can also spell "ambidexterous," which has no actually bearing on the current debate, but I felt obligated to point out my versatility in matters concerning writing and...um...written stuff. Yeah. And I figured out that you have to have a space between "Bulb" and "Comics" because if you put it anywhere else, it chafes.