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Saturday, March 24th, 2007
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I like fragment sentences. Not across the board. Some are bad. But many are good. Their use often helps break up ideas more effectively than their grammatically "correct" alternatives. For example, you can break things up with colons, semi-colons, commas, and dashes. But sometimes the deployment of these devices drags a sentence out.
As a reader, I want a sentence to end quickly. My pea-brain can only remember so many things at once. From the time a sentence starts to the time it ends, you’re supposed to hold everything in that sentence in your mind at once. This is much easier to do with short sentences. Short sentences are sometimes more easily achieved when phrases are divided by periods into fragment sentences. This is often more effective than using “grammatically correct” punctuation like colons, semi-colons, commas, and dashes to break up a sentence into an elaborate maze of subsections.
Generally, I think the rules of English grammar should be amended to allow sentence fragments for two reasons. One, they don't necessarily impede communication. Two, they often enhance it. Despite these pros, the con is that fragments can be misused. Their misuse impedes clear, coherent communication. That’s why sentence fragments are a no-no. But I don’t think the universality of that no-no is justified.
The issue shouldn’t be whether or not sentence fragments can impede communication. Sentence fragments, like nuclear energy and genetic engineering, can wreak havoc if misued. But like nuclear energy and genetic engineering, sentence fragments can do great good. That the use of such an effective communication device is considered against the rules of our language is kinda pointless, in my humble opinion. I don’t enjoy following rules just for the sake of following rules. Rules have their use. But I enjoy breaking with impunity rules that I consider dumb. Especially grammatical ones.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, March 1st, 2007
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Today on Yahoo! I see the headline:
Billionaire “rock” star
Why is unknown Dodgers pitcher Matt White about to become the next billionaire?
I usually gloss over sports headlines. But this one didn’t even tell me what the news was. I wonder what the story is about. Has a minor league pitching talent skyrocketed into the majors with the most preposterous contract sum ever? How good could this guy be? Is he that talented? Is he the undiscovered Mozart of pitching? Do fans love him? Has he achieved fame or celebrity outside sports? Does he have a music career? What’s the “billionaire” about? What merits calling him a rockstar? I don’t follow sports but had to click the link and read on.
VERO BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Matt White, a journeyman pitcher trying to make the Los Angeles Dodgers, could become baseball's first billionaire player.
It has nothing to do with his arm. He owns a rock quarry in western Massachusetts.
White, who has appeared in seven big league games in nine professional seasons, paid $50,000 three years ago to buy 50 acres of land from an elderly aunt who needed the money to pay for a nursing home.
While clearing out a couple acres to build a home, he discovered stone ledges in the ground, prompting him to have the property surveyed.
A geologist estimated there were 24 million tons of the stone on his land. The stone is being sold for upward of $100 per ton, meaning there's well over $2 billion worth of material used for sidewalks, patios and the like.
It’s not the cheap pun in the headline that’s funny. It’s the improbable serendipity of events that had to trasnpire so that cheap pun could be used. Oh, god. It’s so awesome.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
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The Oscars are over. I didn’t watch them. I caught a portion while my parents were watching. People have complained about how long they were. 4 hours. I agree. That’s long. Yet I saw winner after winner being shooed off the stage. You’d think that with all the rushing of acceptance speeches the Oscars would be shorter.
As Oscar-watchers know, the Oscars have a tactfully passive-aggressive way of cutting acceptance speeches short. They cue up music over your microphone’s audio. This either gives you the indirect message to wrap it up and get off stage, or if you can’t take the hint, make it plain impossible to hear you.
When this happens, you see winners, in their moment of greatest emotional vulnerability, trembling before the power of long denied but now granted public validation. They’re stuttering and sobbing their way through heartfelt thank you’s they’ve waited to give others throughout their long toil in anonymity.
Then the music cues up. They stop talking in mid-sob and scuttle off-stage. Without the Oscars’ director actually saying it, everyone understands. The director of the Oscars is saying “Time to shut the fuck up”. The audience knows this. The winner knows the audience knows this, both in the auditorium and across the nation. The winner has no clue if it’s just the director trying to move the show forward on time, or if they’ve unknowingly become that unknowing ass they used to watch on TV that needs to wrap up an acceptance speech.
Not wanting to sully their moment of triumph, they scuttle away from the mic, tail almost between their legs, slightly shamed before their peers, and at that same time clutching the highest gilded honor and stamp of peer recognition they may ever receive. It’s a strange sight. But it’s understandable that somehow the message must be sent. Seeing a few of these speeches can be deeply touching. But a whole night of them can get as boring as a night in your room reading the Acknowledgements sections at the front of all your books.
On balance, cuing up the Oscars music to end someone’s acceptance speech is the gentlest way to tell them to shut up. But in a way, it’s one of the worst. It’s a cousin of that insulting praise one gets from a teacher who says “Good job” after you do a bad job, and everyone knows you did a bad job. And you know everyone knows you did a bad job. And they know you know that they know. And you know they know you know they know. And it’s so embarrassing everyone has to save face, as much for themselves as you, by pretending you did a good job.
Being drowned out by the Oscars music during your acceptance speech is a relative of that. It’s the aural equivalent of the vaudeville cane than pokes out from behind stage left, hooks the performer’s waist, and yanks them offstage, juggling pins and shooting seltzer. Sometimes I think the cane would be kinder.
For, again, when the Oscars music is cued during your speech, it’s clear to you and everyone what the message is. “Time for you to shut the fuck up!” Except, instead of just saying it prosaically, they sing it in swelling music. Which make me thank my stars that *Oscar music swells* all the … *Oscar music swells* um *Oscar music swells* OK, thank *Oscar music swells* you…*curtains close*.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
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There was a time when my blogging was more than a repetition of posts about book goals and problems with blogging. Problems blogging and book goals are all I blog about these days. It's a phase. It's all about book plans because right now I don't know if those plans will happen. My mind is always on making them happen. It's all about problems blogging because the my attitude to casual blogging is changing as a result of book writing. Like book writing, blogging drains time and effort. Yet, blogging, like book writing, is worth some time and effort. But what time? What effort?
It's a fact that any effort and time put into blogging detracts from the reserves of effort and time available for realizing the book plan. Though I'm not writing the book full time now, I'm seeking work so I can save enough to write full time. I delay and jeopardize full time writing by delaying the process of job hunting and finishing my other obligations. Those, in turn, are delayed by blogging. There's a temptation to stop blogging altogether and work constantly. On the other hand, blogging is rewarding and useful. Rambling here clarifies some of my thoughts. Clear thoughts enable clear and efficient action in daily affairs. More to the point, blogging constitutes a satisfying de-centralized social life.
I like participating in this process of writing things, reading others' writings, commenting on their writings, getting comments on mine, replying to their comments, getting their replies to mine. I enjoy sharing. The social exchange. For me, Livejournal is only secondarily a writing event facilitated by a social network. It is primarily a social event facilitated by writing.
If on Livejournal the socializing has priority to writing, and the writing is the greatest drain on my inexpendable effort and time, maybe time and effort expenditures on writing can diminish without diminishing Livejournal's central aspect: the socializing. This reasoning helps solve the problem of balancing Livejournal with Serious Writingtm. Serious Writingtm remains serious, painstaking and slow. Blogging must be casual and relatively quick. In short, I must commit myself to a policy of written mediocrity on Livejournal. I think that's the best way to increase my presence here, without sabotaging efforts to thrive in real life.
This compromise I hope will allow a shift away from the constant self-absorption in book plans and blogging problems that’s come to dominate this journal. It'd be nice to return to blogging about other things again. To finish a post whose central thesis is mediocrity, it’s only appropriate to end by confessing an act of plagiarism. My inspiration for adopting lower standards is pretty much lifted from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) catachrestic.
He seems to have initiated the Write Crap Boldly Movement on my friends list. I can't find the exact posts to corroborate this. But before posting this, I think I saw at least hohum, elris, and prema reference catachrestic's post on writing crappily. Each, I think, at some point declared their intentions to answer some part of catachrestic's call to embrace crappier writing. So by this act of plaigarism I’m proud to join this elite bandwagon of friends answering catachrestic’s call to lower standards.
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Comments: Read 8 or Add Your Own.
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Present life isn’t terrible. Yet it has been and continues to be pervaded by a muted discontent. The discontent is caused by a desire to be ten years in the future. A desire to be at a time when I don’t need to worry about supporting myself. When there are no competing obligations. When all my time is devoted to experiencing this world and undertaking the projects of expressing the sentiments and ideas it inspires in me.
The dream doesn’t involve status, money, or power. The dream is freedom. Freedom to follow the natural impulse. I think it’s a pedestrian, down to earth dream. But it’s my dream. The path from dream to reality passes obstacles: competing commitments. My present tasks are directed at the slow, glacial demolition of competing commitments by undertaking committed actions and deferring satisfactions.
This calling is like a calling to the monastery. Except I’m not religious. Secular monkhood. In my convoluted memory of monk legends, the monks would train the children outside the monastery walls until they were deemed ready, by dint of passing tests, to enter and start their real training as monks. I feel that my life so far has been the walk of a boy from his village to the walls of the monastery. Now I stand outside its walls, my patience, devotion, and discipline tested. Here I will wait, expecting nothing for years. The wait itself is a test.
Then there are the tasks. Carrying water in buckets. Chopping wood. Standing on one leg. Tasks that seem totally irrelevant to monastic pursuits but which I’m required to obey without question. Otherwise I may leave. I stay. And wait. 10 years later, my boyhood will have passed without my noticing. I will be nearly a man. The guardian monk will open the gate. My eyes will be overwhelmed by the sight of what I forgot I was waiting to see. I will step into the courtyard. I will cross. There will be a long row of steps leading up to the monastery on the mountain. There the real years of training will begin.
This reverie ends. I am still outside the gate. There are the tasks. Carrying water in buckets. Chopping wood. Standing on one leg. There is the waiting. It is all a test. All required. No questions. My devotion holds me here. I flex patience and discipline. These muscles will fatigue slowly over days. But they will never rest. Everyday of this--the waiting, the job hunt, the placating of peers, of parents, the concessions, postponements, the continual re-planning in light of new information which feels like the sight of a rear-wheel angrily spinning and spitting up beach sand – it is all the daily tribute of incense I burn at the altar of these dreams deferred. This prolonged standstill is the movement forward.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, February 25th, 2007
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I need some practical advice for the near future. My goal is to finish a book I’ve been kicking around. There are two ways to get the time to do this. One, the current plan, is living with the parents, working for a year or two, saving everything, then taking two years off to write full time. I did something like this on a smaller scale last year. It worked incredibly well. If I could do the same for another year, with maybe another year of buffer time for the unexpected, I think I’d finish. Two, an alternate plan is to get some part-time job that just pays the bills, then to write in the non-work hours of my day. My first question is, which plan sounds best for achieving my book goal?
( Here's some of my reasoning on this question. )
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Comments: Read 11 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, December 31st, 2006
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This is my favorite holiday. Happy New Year's everyone! :)
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, November 16th, 2006
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Been doing that thing where I habitually refresh the friends page instead of working. After this post (post-post), I'll be LJ abstinent till the New Year. Can I coin a word? Al-Jamadan: the holy month of LJ fasting, or any long period of LJ restraint in general. Al-Jamadan doesn't follow the solar calendar but typically occurs around the first sighting of finals or other stressful times of responsibility.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 30th, 2006
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Thursday, October 19th, 2006
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I've been writing a book. The book started a year and a half ago. Since then an adventure story has built up around it. I won't go into it, but it's involved being broke, famous philosophers, a mad scientist, testing friendships, personal failure, dashed hopes, questioning, doubt, personal weakness, self-examination, persistence, self-discovery, self re-invention, a come back, renewal, friendships re-forged, an interlude, and now, waiting. It's involved taking huge crapshoots then winning, taking huge crapshoots then losing, thinking I'd lost then winning, thinking I'd won then losing, all of this inter-cutting or at other times diffused through the slog of daily mundanities.
Awhile ago, before this all started, I was living a pretty normal life doing pretty normal things. Then one day, a crazy idea crept into my thoughts. I don't remember when, but it happened: I was living my life and an idea came. I carried it around with me all day, turning it over this way, then that. Looking at it that way, then this. Saying "no", putting it away, then taking it back out. Then away. And out. At some point, a year and a half ago, I said "Yes". I was 21. Now I'm 23. That's the path I've been on ever since. Adventure isn’t intrinsically better than non-adventure but but the satisfactions and dissatisfactions are different. It’s an interesting path to be on, once you find yourself there.
It's weird to think that I'm on the once unknown end of a future that began then. Everything that was opaque is now transparent. As today is transparent. But I don't know what's coming tomorrow. This book will be done when I'm 25 or 26. There's much more to be revealed. At that time, which is a ways away yet also in not-very-long, I'll be looking back on today's tomorrow and the day after; the course will be clear. All unknowns will be known. Every question mark will be an answer. Every canvas will be a picture. This entire future, past.
I know where I’m heading and the general country I’m moving through but I discover the path everyday. I’m not in 100% control of this. But it's unfolding through my choices. It's a quest of sorts. Though my sense of destination could be clearer, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel most lost than ever sometimes. Sometimes I find myself in the spiritual equivalent of Timbuktu when I was heading for Los Angeles from Moscow, and I need to find my way back. I've never been so sure where I'm heading yet have never felt so lost. I've never felt so lost, yet have never had more faith that I'll arrive if I keep going.
So that’s the spiritual tenor of my life right now. Everyday I wake up somewhere on the trail, my immediate surroundings sometimes desolate or boring, heading to a destination I don't see but know exists over the horizon. There's a desire to cross the distance. It's a distance I can't cross in a day. Homesickness for a place I’ve never been. Everyday the taking of a patient step, and that is all. The next day another. I'm never certain if the steps are on the right path. But I'm always faithful that I’ll arrive if I keep putting one foot in front of the other.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 9th, 2006
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I'm really proud of myself today. Today I resisted the urge to check the internet till I finished my main To Do list priorities. This is part of a new habit I'm trying to start: using the internet as a reward for achieving priorities. Recently, basically since I got back into blogging, my daily priorities stopped getting done. They didn't get done because either I didn't limit net access at all or I'd use the net as a reward/break between tasks. Having no access-limit meant I'd flat out neglect things. Limiting access as a between-task reward usually meant accomplishing one task but not the next. After accomplishing my first task I’d diddle on the net during my break and lose track of time.
So last night, after a few days of this, I resolved I'd stop letting myself open a web browser until all priority tasks were done. The result? I felt squeamish between tasks. But by refusing to let myself check the web, I had to find less distracting, less time-consuming rewards to fill the break e.g. eating a cookie. Then, when my cookie was done, I'd have to choose between doing nothing and doing something, but not internet. Without the highly entertaining internet as an option, the most prominent remaining options were (1) do nothing and feel like a loser (2) resolve to do the next task and feel good at day’s end.
So I resolved to do the next task, then the next, and the next. Eventually, when I finished everything, I felt a sense of accomplishment for doing all I envisioned for myself at the start of the day, and good about myself for holding out against temptation. With everything major done, I felt no end-of-day guilt, and it was a great reward to check all my usual round-up of sites: social networking sites, blogs, LJ, email, news, etc. I think I’ll keep doing this and see how it goes.
I like this better than my old “Check LJ only on Saturday” rule. While “Saturday only” did keep me away from a time consuming activity for much of the week, the emphasis was only on freeing up time to get things done, while putting me out of touch with people. The emphasis of “After priorities only” isn’t just on freeing up time for tasks, but on incentivizing tasks, all of this without putting me out of touch.
Anyways, writing this post is part of me rewarding myself to reinforce the good habit. I do feel like a lab mouse on a wheel whenever I manipulate myself this way. And when I feel good about my behavior and “holding out against temptation” I do feel a little bit like a priggish, Puritanical child. It’s funny, I know. But I like things that work.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 2nd, 2006
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I'm ambivalent about the friends-only thing. But that's how it is for now. If you wanna read, just tell me a little about yourself and how you wound up here.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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happy.