People are funny when it comes to colors. Not only is there a man/woman divide between what a color is, but different people perceive colors different ways, and most of them are as insistent about color as they are about religion and politics.
Men are pretty simple when it comes to color. Pick up a box of 16 colors, and that's about it. We break down colors into three shades: light, regular, and dark. So we have red, light red, and dark red. Not maroon; dark red. Not burgundy; dark red. Sometimes, we have a "deep" version of a color, but it's still based on the base color. If you've ever read 1984, it's rather like dealing with Newspeak. Newspeak has single words that are appended with un- for the negative plus- and doubleplus- for comparative and superlative. They don't have "no". They have unyes. It's not "the worst"; it's doubleplusungood. I do describe a favorite color of mine as midnight blue, but it's the same deal; a description of the base color. Or in a more geek-ish sense, we are a late 80's VGA monitor.
Women are different. Crayons don't begin to decribe their palette. They are the most modern computer with a palette of 256,000,000 colors, and they have a name for every single one of them; and God forbid you use the wrong color. Me: it's kind of a pinkish-orange. Her: It's Fucia (or however it's spelled). Me: It's off white. Her: it's eggshell.
Now to the point of the whole discussion. We bought a house a couple years ago with a very...unique...color scheme. It's inspired. I don't know what drug inspired it, but it's truly inspired. She claimed to be a horticulturalist, so I'm sure some herb was involved in the inspiration. The outside is this wicked, kind of earthy, orange color. But the inside...the carpet...is where the fun is.
When we toured the house, we looked at the carpet. It looked kind of pinkish, and in girl talk, the Queen said it was Salmon. Yeah, the color. Pink, salmon, whatever. Well, come time for the official walkthrough and inspection with the former owner, we comment on the pink / salmon carpet, and she flips out. "IT'S TERRACOTTA," she informs us indignantly. She searched everywhere for that specific color, and it's terracotta. The idea that she actually tried to find this color was nothing short of shocking, but to insist on the specific color was hilarious. That's like insisting that "My car isn't blue. It's metallic mountain forest pearl aquamarine!"
Then again, I'm not entirely guilt-free of doing something like this. I'm into movies and moviemaking, and at one job I had, the trainer asked (rhetorically) if a movie from the 70's could be presented in HD (you know, the newer 1080 line resolution) format. The class dutifully replied "no." The trainer, proudly, said, "That's right." I responded, "well, it's actually possible."
She turned and looked at me, and said it wasn't. I explained that those movies would have been filmed on 35mm film and a digital transfer of that original 35mm print can yield a perfect HD picture because the film would have no restriction to the resolution it was made in. I even cited Star Wars Episode I as an example of this as it was filmed on 35mm, and then digitally transferred before the final print. I was apparently the only one in that room who had a clue as to what I was talking about, and she just said "no, it can't" and moved on. (Queue nose-thumbing routine)
Of course, there are colors I figure I can recognize accurately and even name correctly. My car, for example, is brown. It has a nice gloss to it, and isn't ugly by any stretch, but it's brown. However, the title says it's gold. Gold is one of my 16 colors. I can recognize gold. My car is not gold (which is a bright metallic yellowish-brown).
But gold or brown means little to me. I'm just glad it's not red. I never want to own another red car as long as I live. My first car was this little 3-cylinder Subaru Justy. Yup, three cylinders. I got that puppy up to 105 mph once (going downhill), and it continued to purr. But it didn't purr like my next car, a red Camaro. Eight, sweet, gas-gussling cylinders under that hood with T-tops. It was very nice...until I hit a log in the middle of the road in the middle of the night. That sucked...hard. It was totaled, and replaced by a...wait for it...red...Ford Probe. The Probe was cool except that it's a domestic car made by a foreign car maker (Mazda), so none of the parts were cheap when (not if) it broke. There it is: ten years of cars for me. The Probe lasted the longest until its engine blew, throwing two rods and cracking the head; apparently, oil is a necessity in modern cars.
So this is random, and part of me wants to move on to current events, but how so I begin to transition into something else? I know. End this one and start a new one. Ah, electronic data transfer is a sweet, sweet thing. Queue technolust.
Monday, February 18, 2008
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1 comment:
The car is more of a milk chocolate brown. not poop brown...
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