Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Per Gretchen's Request...

My dear friend Gretchen, my island of inspiration in the sea of mundane, a river of intelligence in the vast deserts of stupidity, a wellspring of friendship who slakes the thirst of loneliness, has lately, and rightly, decried, bemoaned and berated my lack of consistent posting. I tend to do things in waves and am currently in a trough (I also tend to use a metaphor in a work and beat it to death [I would argue that it is getting the most “value” out of a metaphor {like stretching leftovers.}])
I am verbose, to the point of pedantic sometimes, but mostly so in my writing. I’ve lately taken to more careful editing of my writing before I post; never a bad thing. I love to rant on some pretty touchy subjects, so I am constantly doing a lot of research to back up my arguments, or, at the least, not look like a complete buffoon or like someone who enjoys the taste of shoe leather. So, as I produce a larger body of work viewable by the world at large (think about that bloggers, the entire planet has access to your work, the only barrier is language and that gets less important every day [speaking of language, here’s another parenthetical aside: America, stop worrying that English is going to suddenly disappear tomorrow. It’s not. It is THE second language nearly every person learns {albeit imperfectly, but I wouldn’t trade hilarious instructions and signage for anything and I hope people in other languages get the same tickle when English gets translated into other tongues ((though holy crap, look at how tongue is spelled versus how it’s pronounced! For Pete’s sake, the “u” is silent [[thus useless]], but the “o” sounds like a “u” and an utterly useless “e” at the end. English is a terrific language, flexible, adaptable and easily expanded, but it could sure use some clean up!))} and there is no danger, none at all, that it will lose it’s prominence anytime soon. Most immigrants to the U.S. learn it eventually as a second language as it’s the easiest and best way to assimilate and become successful and it’s guaranteed {another useless “U”!} their children will learn and speak English. Must we do this every time there’s a new immigrant population wave? Wanna help Spanish speakers learn English? Get off your xenophobic horse and learn Spanish, then you can teach it to them. Most people I’ve personally met who advocate “English only!” don’t really speak English all that well, with a command of their native tongue akin to someone with no insurance steering a car with one arm draped over the steering wheel, the other out the window making wavy motions with their hands, recklessly speeding in a rust-coated jalopy with a four cylinder engine and half a tank of gas thinking they're going to drive from New York to Los Angeles. Better to be silent and thought a fool, eh?]) I’m striving to present a more streamlined and articulate body, devoid of overused metaphor and unlikely simile, uncluttered by excessive tangential thoughts, cleaned of abundant (and perhaps unnecessary) parenthetical asides and edited of proliferate use of commas, as well as eliminating run on sentences, which, while they do mimic the way most of us speak, just might be confusing to a reader.
So, in short, I don’t want to rush any important posts that need to present a well-reasoned and well-researched point of view in an articulate manner, though I do understand Gretchen’s urging for more consistent posting, as my blog is intended to inform and entertain you, my loyal reader (Gretchen, that’s pretty much you and that French chick in Scotland) as much as satisfy me. So, that said, I thought I’d focus another article on one of my favorite subjects: Nutrition! Here it is:

Eat less. Exercise more.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You crack me up!

You are the MASTER of parenthetical asides.

Gretchen said...

I bow to your parenthetical-ness.
And hate you at the same time for beating me at my own friggin' parenthetical game. You have thrown the gauntlet, my friend. In the future, however, (should you decide to EVER post again [which is unlikely {considering you're a lazy sloth}]), I should like to see more bold, italic-ed, underlined words to further emphasized your run-on-ed-ness, which is both lame and awe-inspiring (which is amazing, by the way).
Ohhhh, noooo...she be mockin' my blog!

Jen said...

Add me to Gretchen and the French chick as one of your loyal readers. After all, you did install flooring in our post Katrina'd home.
And, btw, I love the word parenthetical. Love it.