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Thursday, November 29, 2012

vacua

Time for a confession:

I just had a conversation in which I uttered the word "cool" three times within fifteen seconds or so.

:(  I apologize for my sins against society...

But what's the big deal?  I repeated a word a little too much.  The problem is this:
cool is a vacuous word.
It's vacuous because it doesn't really mean that much.

For example:
Is this cool?
what about this?
literally cool, right?
cool!  awesome!  stuff!

What have we learned?  Nothing!  Sure, all of these pictures are at least mildly impressive, but otherwise they have little in common except that they could be dubbed "cool".
So what does "cool" mean?!
(There will be a contest in the comments for anyone who can give a satisfactory definition of the word "cool"...)

Cool is an awful word and it joins the ranks of other words including "awesome", "very", and "way".

Time for another experiment:
How much do these sentences (the control group) tell you:
"The room was decorated awesomely."
"The room was very decorated."
"The room was way decorated with stuff, and it was way awesome."

Those three sentences told you nothing about the room, aside from the fact that it had decorations that were at least mildly notable.  You have no idea why the room is decorated or what kind of decorations are adorning the room or how much time was put into decorating this room...

Now for some different sentences:
"The room was decorated sumptuously."
"The room was decorated haphazardly."
"The room was exceedingly decorated with bacon, and the smell was overwhelming."

Suddenly you are able to create a much more detailed mental image of the room, it's decorations, and you can even begin to assume some of the circumstances surrounding the decoration of this room.

This is why vacuous words aren't really that helpful, nor impressive, in communicating something well.  But they seem to be ingrained into our psyches or something, because we can't always help using them.  Even Mark Twain had problems with the word "very", and as the story goes, he overcame it by replacing it with another vacuous word, "D@#%", knowing that his editors would more easily remove the vacuous cursing.

It was a D@#% good idea.

Even so, sometimes the word "cool" works out in a song about semi-unrelated items, and it's enjoyable:

So yes, cool has its place, but if someone told me that they had just encountered microbial life on Mars, I doubt I would just say "cool".

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

metaphora

Metaphors can be as useful as a hole in the head.
They can also be as ambiguous as a hole in the head, because headholes could be bad (like  a mortal wounding) or good (like a mouth, into which bacon can be inserted).

Here are some examples, allegedly written by real life high school students.  So you know they're going to be good.

You can also tell that the individual who compiled these thought they were smarter than the high school students, when in reality, they called the following statements "analogies", which is not entirely untrue, but "metaphors" would have been a better choice.

It makes you wonder how much they paid attention in their high school English classes.


You are no doubt dumbstruck by the literary prowess of alleged high school students.  I find the ninth one there to be quite meaningful, for example.

(Actually, I love it.  It's hilariously demonstrative of her lack of vocabulary.  My love for number nine is not sarcastic.)

This reminds me of one of my favorite metaphors, from The Red Badge of Courage.  It goes something like this:
"The red sun was pasted like a wafer in the sky."

I'm going completely from memory there, so it might not be verbatim, but I find it hilarious.  HILARIOUS.

So I guess the lesson here is that metaphors are either effective, or hilarious.
And if you're Mark Twain, then perhaps your metaphors are both.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

compassione

And now, a word from our sponsors:

"Compassion"

'com-': with or together

'-passion': any compelling emotion

Compassion just became a lot more sympathetic than you used to think.   So much for being sorry for someone.  Now you're actually weeping with them, but also sharing their elation, their love, their dismay...anything they're passionate about, you're right there with them. 

And them with you.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

dixit

Once again, it's time to visit grade school English class and fix all the lies that you learned as a child.

Here is your teacher:
"Don't say 'said'."  

I was even provided with a list of other, much more exciting and descriptive words to use instead of the dreaded "said".  And perhaps while you're still learning to write and you're constructing paragraphs like a McDonald's employee, this is valuable advice because it forces you to actually think about what you're writing and to branch out into the realm of new words other than your limited colloquial vocabulary.

But, as any English-speaker knows, rules are made to be broken.

The problem with avoiding the word "said" just because you were told to do so once many years ago is that "said" is actually a very nice word.  

Here, let's do an experiment:  say your name.

"your name".

Very nice.  Now, tell me how you just did that.  Did you proclaim it?  Did you shout? Did you whisper? Did you command?
If you want, you can do further experimentation and say your name under those conditions.  Scream it.  Ask it.  Declare it.
Do you feel silly?
Now just say it again.  You still might feel a little silly, sitting in front of the computer, repeating your name aloud over and over...but certainly just saying your name is much less ridiculous than anything else.

See, given the situation, "said" is the best word.

"Said" is a nice little tool to use because it doesn't distract from what is sometimes more important.  Half the battle of creating anything that speaks to our insides (emotions, intelligence, soul, whatever it is you have in there...) is creating something that will resonate there, and the other half is to not distract from that resonance.
In music, this means staying in tune.
In art, this means coloring inside the lines.  (unless you're going for something more abstract...)
In dance, this means keeping your movements strong and fluid.
And in writing, it means letting those words (that you've chosen so carefully to carry the power that they have) stand alone.  Don't try to augment them with other words...let the best words and phrases steal the show, and don't be afraid to have words like 'said' in the chorus, where they can't upstage the important stuff.

That being said, just don't be lazy and put "said" for everything.  Use "said" just as carefully as you use everything else.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

excellentia

Once upon a time, I wrote an essay for an English class.  I was a sophomore in high school, but I had taken sophomore English the year previous with a bunch of other freshmen, and as such I was in put in a class full of juniors when I changed schools.  This wasn't a huge deal (although in high school, it can't just be ignored, so all the juniors were well aware of the five or so sophomores in that class) but it was interesting.

This is how my essay writing attack plan went during that year of high school:

1) Read (most of) the book
2) Participate in class discussion of the book
3) Think about the book and my essay
4) The day the rough draft is due, show up about ten minutes early to class and write down some stuff about the book and what it means.  Usually this overlapped into the starter that we wrote every day, so I'd write the rough draft instead and write the starter later, since the rough draft was due more immediately.
5) Trade rough drafts with another student and edit theirs while they edit mine
6) Go home and forget about the book
7) The day the essay is due, wake up early in the morning
8) Completely disregard anything written in the rough draft and any of the peer feedback written on it.
9) Write the entire essay in one actual draft, one sitting, just over one hour.
10) Success!

I followed this plan of attack quite closely.  I went to school that day, armed with my last-minute essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter entitled "Hester Prynne as a Protein Shake".  I was quite fond of it.

When the essays were handed back, I received mine and began flipping through it, reading the comments written in.  I got to the end and flipped it over to see my score.  Next to my "A" was a note that read something along the lines of, "This is quite possibly one of the best essays written by a high schooler that I have ever read".  This was high praise indeed, and I was pleased.  Some of the juniors were slightly less pleased, however, when they heard that a sophomore had written the best essay in the class.

Well, the semester continued and it came time to write another essay, this time on The Great Gatsby, one of my favorite literature classics.  But when it came time to write the essay, I was unusually nervous.  It's very unlikely that I would write another essay that was just as good if not better than one entitled "Hester Prynne as a Protein Shake".  You can't compare everyone to protein shakes, after all.  I was afraid that my Gatsby essay would be compared to the Hester essay and would be a disappointment.  My essays were always good, but it's intimidating when you have a standard to live up to...

I followed my usual attack plan and wrote the essay and turned it in.  I received high marks and everything was fine.

I still get intimidated by my writing, though.  Sometimes, I write something fantastic, and people love it, and happiness reigns.  And every time I write something after that, I'm afraid that people won't like it as much as the fantastic one.  It's like I'm Daisy Buchanan, and whoever reads my writing is Jay Gatsby, and yes, sometimes Daisy is fantastic and beautiful and just like Gatsby remembers/imagines her, but more often, Daisy can't possibly live up to that unrealistic expectation that Gatsby has envisioned and hoped for, and so she becomes disenchanting despite the fact that she's a remarkable person.

The only solution to this is for Gatsby to die.
Which means you, dear readers.

...I would actually prefer that you not die, though.  I have come to enjoy having people read the things that I put on the internet, and if you die, that might become more difficult for you to do.

Really, the best solution I can think of is for me to continue writing, and you to continue reading, and sometimes things will be fantastic (which I attribute chiefly to the topic of the writing...some things are easier to be fantastic with) and happiness will reign,  and the rest of the time, I'll be practicing writing (and you can be practicing reading!) and ideally getting better, to the point where fantastic stuff is produced more regularly. :)

Friday, November 16, 2012

leo

I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine:


You may recognize him from C. S. Lewis' most popular books.  But if you still don't recognize him, I'll introduce you:

His name is Lion.

Now, my very large following in Azerbaijan will know what is going on.  No doubt they have known this for quite some time, that our friend Mr. Lewis named his lion Lion.

As for the rest of you (read: basically anyone who reads my blog...I have yet to get readers from Azerbaijan), you may wonder what is going on, and why people in Azerbaijan of all places are suddenly in the know, and you are not.

Allow me to fill you in on something:

The Azerbaijani word for "lion" is "aslan".

It's also the same in the Turkish language.  There's a little Turkish Delight for you. :)

Anyway.  I'm sure we all know of several instances where authors use fancy words for the names of places or characters.  Why is this?  Because it's so much easier to take something fitting that's already in existence than it is to create it anew.  Lazy authors.  

It's also just plain cool.  Knowing that "Aslan" means "Lion" hasn't really changed anyone's perspective on the book or what they got out of it or who their favorite character is.  It's just plain neat.  It makes you feel fancy momentarily for knowing such a trivia fact, and then it makes you think that C. S. Lewis is that much cooler.

I'm certain that's what C. S. Lewis thought as he wrote his books.  "I'm going to name this lion "Lion" and then people will think I'm cool!"
...Because that's the biggest motivation in writing: looking cool.  After all, when you think of the coolest people you've heard of, they're all well-published authors, right?

Here's the key to looking cool while writing: brush up on your Azerbaijani.  Or really anything that's little-known.  It has to be little-known enough that you aren't committing a cliche.  Because then you've failed at author coolness.
It's a difficult balance, finding something that's known enough to be cool but unknown enough to be novel.

But definitely worth finding.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

suspiria

It has just come to my knowledge that there exists a bridge in Venice called "The Bridge of Sighs".
This is rather enchanting to me.  A bridge of sighs.

Here is a photograph:

It's made of white limestone.  How perfect is that?  It's an enclosed bridge, and it has windows, but those windows have bars on them.
The bridge connects the state interrogation rooms to the prison, and this is why Lord Byron gave it its name, because it was supposedly the last light of day that convicted prisoners would see for quite some time, if not forever.

Unfortunately, by the time the bridge was built in 1602, the days of interrogations and swift executions were past, and really most of the prisoners who traversed the bridge were being held for petty crimes.  But still, the bridge's name had been something ordinary for nearly two centuries before Lord Byron came around and upgraded it.  What a kind poet.

Here is the view of Venice from inside the bridge:



As you can see, the "last view" of Venice really isn't that visible...I doubt many convicts really had time to peek through the holes while they were being escorted to their fates.

So really, the magnanimously named Bridge of Sighs is a disappointment, because the crossing of it is less dramatic than we wanted, and the view is less present than we imagined, so it's actually a bridge of sighs because it's not what we hoped Lord Byron meant.

That dastardly poet.  Leading us on like that.

But that's what poets are here for.  They make ordinary things seem terribly romantic.  We fall in love with the idea of a Bridge of Sighs, only to be devastated when it's just a normal bridge that you can't even see out of, stretching between two civic buildings.  So if we just ignore reality and stick to poetry, then things are magnificent again.  Or at least...not ordinary.  Which is what we want, in a silly way.  We want meaning to be assigned to arbitrary things so that we feel a little more special, perhaps a little more human.  So we have poets to assign those meanings, and we revel in them because of their break from reality.

"Poet" is such a title, don't you think?

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

agnominatio

I have tests this week.  Lovely.
But instead of studying for them, I'd rather write things on the internet. :)

And because this is a blog about writing, it's time I mention one of the important rules of writing:

Always avoid annoying alliteration.

Really.  Writers don't realize just how wrong it is to write and rewrite the same sounds so sadistically.  It's lame, and you look like a loser when it's overly obvious how much you love one little letter.  Is it a difficult decision to diversify?  Do us a favor and forget your feelings for that favorite letter, let it have a holiday.  Coax the other consonants out of your vast vocabulary, and allow all the alphabet admission.

Just a word to the wise.

Anyway, time to try to study...tons of tests...
I have physics on Phriday, and math on Monday!

Monday, November 12, 2012

lardo

Hey, remember that paragraph analogy from fifth grade, about how good paragraphs resemble hamburgers?  Because...there's a bun, and it's like the first sentence...and then some tomatoes...and onions and pickles to make it good, and the meat of the paragraph is the actual claim you're making...and then there's another bun, and some sesame seeds...

yeah.  you can tell that I remember it perfectly.

Well, first of all this paragraph analogy is flawed.  Nobody is going to remember it post-puberty because we'll all get distracted, imagining creating the perfect burger, and how many pickles it should have, and how juicy the meat will be, and how the mustard and the ketchup will blend beautifully and act as an adhesive to hold the burger together, since you overloaded it a bit with onions and tomatoes, because you can never have too many tomatoes...

Secondly, the hamburger is flawed because it lacks bacon.

Third, every analogy is flawed, because it is not bacon.

Forget the hamburger analogy, especially if it makes you think of clowns.  Hamburger paragraphs can't make a paper strong.  

Here is how a paragraph should be written, in a fashion resembling bacon:
  • Paragraphs should be pleasant to listen to.  They must sizzle.
  • Paragraphs should be crispy.  Not too much extra stuff because bacon needs no augmentation, but should be dripping in a little extra fat to make it extra good.
  • Paragraphs should be an indulgence.  Readers should thoroughly enjoy the paragraph, and once they finish one paragraph, they must desire another.
  • Paragraphs should have a nice oscillatory shape.  Sentences should flow with some short ones and some long ones.  
  • If it's flat, it's not done.
  • Paragraphs should be used with everything.  Writing about maple doughnuts? Use bacon. Salad? Use bacon. Animal rights? Use bacon.
  • Sharing paragraphs should make you more popular and win you love.
  • Just smelling the paragraph should make consuming it compulsory.
If your paragraph does not have these characteristics, you have some revision to do.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

iocus

Time for a Shakespeare joke:

What did Lady Macbeth say when her dog peed on the carpet?


"Out, out, damn Spot!"



...It's a funny joke. :3

Friday, November 9, 2012

brevis

It is so difficult to write a short post.
As in...a post that you don't have to scroll in order to read it in its entirety.  Which...of course depends on the size of your screen. 

Perhaps I just feel like many of my posts are long.  Probably because the attention span of the internet is often no more than 140 characters.  Oh, internets...

Anyway.  In my AP Human Geography class, we wrote essays fairly often (about one every two weeks or so).  This may have been an awful experience, except that our teacher didn't give us a length requirement.  In fact, he hated it when we asked length questions. Here is a brief dialogue:

student: "How long should this essay be?"
Stucki: (gives them his signature "you continually surprise me at your capacity to be an idiot" look) "Did you really just ask a length question?
student: "ummm..."

He always told us (or had someone whom he thought to be less idiotic tell those deemed to be more idiotic) to let the length take care of itself.

So I had a friend who made it her personal goal to write every essay as concisely as possible in only about twelve sentences or so.  It was pretty great, really...everyone wrote pages.  Except her.

Anyway.  This post is now somewhat long, and it's about being short. :P  I suppose there's just so much to say and to explain and to explore (because really this process is just as much exploring for me as it is for you...perhaps even more) through writing, that I find it very difficult to focus things down to one concise, twelve-sentence post.  Which is not inherently bad...

Monday, November 5, 2012

colegio

I was told on more than one occasion that success in college is really based only on how well you read, and how well you write.

Percentage of reading/writing/'rithmetic I have done in my classes this semester:
(formatted in a table for ease of understanding)



ClassReadingWriting‘Rithmetic
Conditioning000
Chemistry5194
Chemistry Lab*12427
Calculus10-10100
Physics00100
English35650
Weights000
World Religions (institute) **2607
*The other 57% of the time is spent waiting for reactions or doing dishes.
** the remaining 67% of the time is spent praying, singing, or waiting for Brother Bateman to find the remote (in his pocket), his notes, or the word he's looking for.

As you can see, almost no time is actually spent reading.  And even less is spent writing.  High school was a lie.
Or engineering is just...not college?

Hm...time to approach this logically :D

College = reading and writing (according to high school claims)
reading and writing DNE engineering (DNE is math notation for "DOES NOT EQUAL)
therefore...
College DNE engineering!  
and we can assume that the converse is true, that engineering DNE college.

...how do I explain to my parents that I've been up here for nearly ten weeks now and haven't done much college at all?

Sunday, November 4, 2012

mensis

It is November now, and November is a very nice month.  It's No-Shave November (where we, like other mammals, bulk up our winter coats). No-Shave has kindof been transmogrified into Movember (a classy celebration of moustaces) and also NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

I've always kindof rolled my eyes at NaNoWriMo, because certainly all these aspiring writers are just wasting their month going crazy, not sleeping, not eating, not going outside...et cetera.  At the end of it all, they're not published, they're failing classes, they're going to sleep for about a week straight, their friends are wondering whether they're still alive...

But I suppose it has some benefits to it:

1) If you're going to be a writer, you have to practice.  It's definitely practice.
2) It keeps all the weird people busy for a whole month! ;)

So...if you're up to the task of writing 50,000 words (which is apparently the definition of a novel) in 30 days (hey, at least they didn't pick February), you still have time to start!  Go, spend 20 hours a day with your computer!  If you're classy, you have a typewriter!

And kudos to you if after NaNoWriMo, you actually continue your novel past the first draft.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

census

Time for a quote:

"I don't know whether there is anything particularly exciting about the air in this particular part of Hertfordshire, but the number of engagements that go on seem to me to be considerably above the proper average that statistics have laid down for our guidance."

This is probably my favorite quote from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which is a wonderful piece of literature.  I wish I had written my AP essay on it, rather than Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, in which readers are thoroughly beaten by phrases including "heart", "darkness", and "heart of darkness".  But alas, I chose the latter.  It's okay, though, because I got a 5 on the test...

Back to statistics.
Statistics are fascinating "guidelines", as Lady Bracknell calls them, and I was just musing over how nifty it would be to have statistics on my blog here.  To see how many times I write the word "ten", for example.  Or the average number of links included in posts...

Of course, I'm able to see statistics about people viewing my blog, including where they're from and what browser they use.  I have a surprisingly large following from Brazil and Russia, for example.  And these statistics are intriguing...

Baugh.  Perhaps I should switch my major to Statistics.
Or, better yet, attend Brown University, meet Emma Watson, and take whatever classes I want, because Brown doesn't have a core curriculum, and if you don't know of a major you like, you can invent your own.
:D

Anyway.  I think I'm going to head off to the library and check out some Oscar Wilde books or something.
Statistics books, maybe.
. 

Friday, November 2, 2012

occulto

Writing is nice because you can hide behind it.

Nobody knows if I am actually the one writing this right now.  Or if someone else is doing so under my name.

S.E. Hinton can write books and people will read them, thinking that the author is a man and knows what's going on with gangs and brothers.  George Eliot can actually get books published, because people won't guess that the fine literature they're reading was actually written by (heaven forbid) a woman.

Really, the only people who are almost expected to have an alias are superheroes and authors:

Mark Twain.
Lemony Snicket.
Bruce Wayne.
Lewis Carroll.
Dr. Seuss.
George Orwell.
Voltaire.

Do writers have something to hide?  Must they create a chasm between themselves and their writing?

It's a very nice thing, hiding.