Swallowing small amounts of saliva

June 23, 2008


“The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.” – George Carlin

George CarlinSome comedians depend on physical humor. Some search for political twists or pop culture foibles. Some just try to be cute.

George Carlin was simply real.

He took the inconsistencies of language and turned them upside-down. He made logical and crucial observations on life in our country and made us realize that, at times, no jokes were needed – at times our country could be screwed up enough as it was.

He made words funny. Not jokes. But words. A linguist, a talker, a thinker. He was smart before it was cool, counter culture before it became a way of life. You could tell that he spent every minute of every day thinking. Thinking about life. Thinking about words. Thinking.

Imagine that – a comedian that made you think.

It was more than the seven that got him arrested. Every word was genius, every thought well-crafted. From tame to curmudgeon, he was the best voice on the comedy stage. And, in his own words, he lived by the creed that it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

I’d say we’d miss him. But his words and his personality transcend his death. His influence on million – including myself – lives on even in his absence. And best of all, he’s left us enough material to last us decades.

Goodbye, Rufus. Good luck crossing that final line.

“By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.” – George Carlin

Tags: Random, Words |

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ABC3D

March 28, 2008


ABCs. In 3D.

Via Projectionist.

Tags: Random YouTube, Words |

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Writing a blog

March 10, 2008


Hold on for a few seconds. I’m going to get curmudgeony.

You don’t write a blog. You don’t post a blog. You don’t tell people about the blog you just wrote, about how you’ll talk about it on a forthcoming blog.

Blog is short for weblog, the entire entity that contains your writing. The Web site itself. The series of writings arranged in a descending chronological order. That’s a blog. Not the individual piece.

You write posts. Or articles. Or synopses. Stories. Reviews. But not blogs.

You write ON a blog. You write FOR a blog. But you don’t write a blog. That is, unless you’re talking in the technical sense; writing the code that will form a blog could be considered “writing a blog.” It’s like writing an article for a publication and saying “I just wrote a magazine,” or “You can read about in my latest magazine.”

That’s all. Semantics, I know. But it’s just something I’m tired of reading.

Tags: Annoyances, Blogging, Words |

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Beating a dead joke

December 13, 2007


So Ike Turner died.

Leave it to the New York Post to come up with the most tasteless (but, admittedly, pretty funny) headline.

Ike “Beats” Tina to Death.

IKE ‘BEATS’ TINA TO DEATH
Reuters

December 13, 2007 — LOS ANGELES - Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Ike Turner, who rose to fame in the 1950s and became a star performing with his ex-wife, Tina Turner, has died at age 76, said an official with the performer’s management company.

(Thanks to Ed Champion)

Tags: Journalism, Words |

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ArtworkS?

November 29, 2007


This has been up all day as the main headline on ArgusLeader.com, according to Kerrie.

ArtworkS?
“Augie to get Andy Warhol artworks”

Artwork is a collective noun, meaning both a single piece of art or an entire group.

I tried to give The Argus Leader a break. I looked up “artworks” in three different dictionaries, both American and British. It’s not there. There’s an entry for “artwork,” but nothing for the plural.

Which makes sense. Since “artwork” means a collective group of pieces of art, an extra “s” is redundant.

I don’t try to pick on the Argus. It’s just that they always seem to do stuff like this. Either they made up a word, or it’s a pretty obvious and very embarrassing misspelling. Whoops.

—

If you’re actually curious about the article itself, here’s a snippet. According to the article:

Augustana College and its Eide-Dalrymple Gallery will receive a collection of about 150 original Polaroid photos and gelatin silver prints that Warhol created.

The gift, with an estimated value of $153,000, comes through the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program in connection with the Warhol Foundation’s 20th anniversary.

Tags: Journalism, Words |

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Paper or plastic?

November 19, 2007


A lot of stuff has been said recently about the Kindle, Amazon’s paperless literature machine. Is it worthwhile? Ed Champion has 10 reasons why it’s not. Is it practical? Condalmo says, at $400, not really - especially since the technology isn’t even complete. Is it even desirable? Not to Tim - he’s sticking with paper.

Here’s the common theme. While the Kindle, with a special paper-like screen and amazing capacity, may be a technological marvel, it’s still not a book. It’s just not the same. It just doesn’t have the same feel, the same interactivity, the same person-to-person connection - from one person’s printer to another.

It may be everything a book isn’t - space-taking, non-searchable, cumbersome - but that’s just it. It’s everything a book isn’t.

Reading on its own is a fully interactive experience. Interactive in the old way of thinking - in that you actually interact with the material. You touch it, you smell it, you carry it with you and it becomes a part of you. You take pride in holding it, knowing there’s a flood of words right there under your hand - real words, printed, with ink.

Maybe I run in a different circle of people, but nearly everyone I know is against reading for pleasure on a computer screen. Words are tend to be difficult to focus on. Computers need to render words and spaces and everything in between artificially, so the eye is unable to process it the same way as it does words on paper. Even with new paper-like technology, it still suffers from the same disconnect - those words aren’t printed on there, and you know it, and that makes it instantly erasable, temporary, not as important.

With the solid, wood pulp page, however, you’re getting something concrete, something with an infinite resolution, something that exists not just as code, but as cold, hard reality, as a manufactured bundle of matter, able to be held and transferred and stored and forever found exactly in its original form without fear of losing the content therein or finding it incompatible with the current program platform.

Ultimately, in things of aesthetic value, we go back to what we’re familiar with. We seek out things that are real. True. We want pure orange juice, real butter and pure maple syrup. We settle for the fake stuff, usually because it’s cheaper. But we’d rather have the full out real product. It’s perceived as better. It is better. Sure, imitation vanilla flavor is easier to make, cheaper, and more widely available. I’d still take the real stuff any day.

In other words, improved doesn’t always mean better.

Some people may want this. But I’m willing to guess that the people who are willing to shell out $400 to read books are going to be dedicated readers. I’m also willing to guess most dedicated readers are book lovers - people who covet the entire written package: dog ears, well designed covers, notations, bookmarks; the heft of the graspable, the mass of literature.

These people aren’t going to want to ditch their fixed batch of words, are they? They won’t move away from actually having the book in their hand, will they? They appreciate the solidity, the weight - as if each book was actually filled with potential, with promise, weighted down with thought and brilliance - and won’t settle for some 10 oz. glorified PDA.

Right?

The iPod succeeded because music is not visual. It’s auditory. We had suffered with portable, skipping CD players and warbling, low-quality tape players. It was ripe for improvement because the improvement was needed.

How can a book be improved? Books are already portable. They’ve been printed successfully for thousands of years. There is no need to carry 200 at a time - books aren’t like music - they aren’t infinitely shuffled, chosen for the exact mood, partaken of in groups. You can read one book at one moment in life - the one in your hand.

It’s as if we’ve all forgotten the roots of the written word. Written. Not typed, not beamed, not digitized. And while nearly all continue to write by typing, we are reminded of the tangibility of writing in each inked out word, by the words on the paper. If I could write this blog on paper and distribute it to everyone, I would. I think many of us would. The connection - while not as instantaneous - is more human.

It’s that connection that adds to the experience. The experience of reading someone else’s writing. And when presented with the option to rid myself of paper, to read my books on a screen, enhanced and notated and upgraded, I wonder what was wrong with my old dog-eared books in the first place. With everything that distracts us in life from the simple act of reading, why throw another filter in the way?

Tags: Books, Literature, Words, Writing |

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Alphabetically relearned

November 7, 2007


DictionaryWhen I started writing, it was with the purpose of clarifying my thoughts. I wasn’t picky. I just wanted to write - to put words on paper, or type words onto a screen, in order to form sentences, paragraphs, whatever it took to create a work worthy of being read.

It was all about effort. About style. About organization and context and reference.

I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know how to do it. Except to write. And write. And write some more.

When I moved into the copywriting field, I had to learn a new skill - brevity. I had to cut down my often rambling, multi-pronged attacks into manageable bite-sized nuggets of condensed goodness, like literary hashish or verbal truffle oil.

Over the past month, I realize my learning has moved ahead, yet again. No longer am I worried about what I say, or how long it takes to say it. Now, I’m searching for the perfect fit - the strongest verb or the least confusing adjective.

And with that, I’ve rediscovered the dictionary.

Sure, I’ve had a copy of Webster’s New World desktop dictionary for years. But to say it’s been used would be stretching the truth. It’s sat there, languishing, neglected as I’ve ignored it’s many uses, smashed together with some other forgotten references, like a too small atlas and a Spanish English dictionary I picked up for fifty cents simply becuase it cost fifty cents.

Instead, I’ve attempted to construct every blog post and brochure copy and short story with only the words in my head. Which is smart - why use words I wouldn’t use otherwise, right? - yet also quite stifling.

Thanks to a recent sudden reference kick, I’m moving forward. I’ve finally read Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style straight through. I’ve ordered a new thesaurus for work, and begun browsing through atlases, randomly glancing over South Africa’s river system or Amsterdam’s major thoroughfares. But nothing has resurfaced quite like the dictionary.

I asked for an Oxford English Reference Dictionary for my birthday and got it. You know - the one with the maps and the scientific theories and histories and all of that. (Not the 7500 volume mammoth, though - I’ll leave stuff like that for the Internet; I’ll read those words over at Other Men’s Flowers.) I ordered a new dictionary at work, and I spent about half an hour showing it to people.

“Look!” I said. “It’s got thesaurus entries right there, next to where the regular dictionary entries are!”

I was met with blank stares.

I didn’t care. I’d fallen in love again. And at just the right time.

I’ll admit - I’ve been lazy. I write quickly, and as a result my posts suffer from sometimes intolerable sentence structure, inappropriate adjectives and altogether frightening typographical errors. But I wasn’t interested in all of that at the time - I wanted to get it down and get it out, to put it behind me as published and look ahead to the future, ready to conquer another post or slam out another radio spot.

Now, I’m refining the art. I’m taking whatever talent I’ve scrounged up and I’m honing it - forging it into something worthwhile, like an artisan creating a usable tool out of a lump of dirty earth. I’m focusing on the details and falling in love with the individual words, the etymology and interplay. Each new entry I find is a rich world of usage, a set of letters that has been repeated millions of times before, filled with history and meaning. Each new word I discover has changed a life over the course of the English language, meaning something important to someone, somewhere, for some reason.

It’s unclear, but yet it’s incredibly sobering. The power a book of words can have is staggering when you think of everything that can be done with language. And to have some control over it makes it even more important - and even more necessary to study proper usage.

So while I’ve been lax in the past - and will stumble several times in the future, I’m sure - I’m excited to take the next step, to drill deeper into this act and learn to love every letter, every accent mark. Every word. Every page. Alphabetically or not.

Tags: Words, Writing |

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