From Toni Morrison's A Mercy Pt. II

"I stayed on my knees. In the dust where my heart will remain each night and every day until you understand what I know and long to tell you: to be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing."
This sentence could be an example of isocolon:
To be given dominion over another is a hard thing.
To wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing.
To give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.
The phrases aren't exactly the same length, but I think it's still a really good example.

Really Not That Different-Collin Raye

One of my friends posted these song lyrics on facebook and it stuck out to me because it is one of my favorite songs and I noticed some grammatical terminology in it:

I laugh, I love, I hope, I try,
I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry,
And I know you do the same things too,
So we're really not that different
Me and you.

These lyrics seem to have verb style since each phrase reflects an action. These lyrics are also parataxis. Each action is taking place but the order of actions is not in any specific or prioritized order. Lastly, these lyrics are an example of tacit persuasion in the fact that there is the constant "I". Therefore, as you climax in the lyrics you constantly see the pattern of "I" and then it switches to "and" and "so".

Prose Imitation:

I know you think we are different but I laugh, I love, I hope, I try, I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry just the same as you. Although we seem different, we're really not that different, me and you. 

Putting Together Pieces of Different Puzzles

Someone in class said something about Wu Tang Clan lyrics, then someone in class said something about isolcolon and some other terminological terminologies (hypotaxis and isocolon!) .  I then decided to make the two thoughts into one.  What better example of isocolon is there than rap lyrics? None.  Here's Inspectah Deck from the Wu song, "Do You Really (Thang Thang)":

"We thrive on street life
We strive to eat right
They blind and need sight
We tried to be nice
They talk the small talk
We walk the long walk
We lost, they all thought
They forced to fall short
We rock for hard rock
Rocked the hot blocks
Shop and cop rocks"

It is typical hip-hop braggadocios, thuggery, and crack-cocaine sale, but that is the best sustained isolcolon I have seen or heard since I listened to Eazy.  The imitation in prose:

We thrive on street life.  We strive to eat right.  Other people don't see things as they truly are.  We (the Clan of Wu Tang) tried to be nice to them, but they talk small-talk and we walk-the-talk so to speak.  They thought they had the better of us but were wrong and fell short of us.  We rock hard, rock places that are hard, and buy and sell crack-cocaine.

Ruined.

Week Feb. 21-28: A conversation starter

My brother's friends pulled a fake hijack prank on my brother at Dairy Queen, and here's how he opened up with the story:

"We went to Dairy Queen, got blizzards, went outside, talked about a sweet car that passed, walked to the car, got in, and that's when shit hit the fan."

It stood out to me because it built up anticipation if the person who was listening knew something big happened. Otherwise, it would just be ramblings and no one would pay attention. But because I knew there was a prank, I was listening with such intent and his opening sentence built up the suspense. I was wondering in that mess of random crap that didn't really matter to the story where the prank was going to come in. Usually, this would be a not so good technique, but I thought in this case it was actually a great way to build up that anticipation and then deliver the punch at the end. The summarization aspect of it, not using exposition, made the rhythm fast-paced, so it didn't seem like I was listening to a long line of crap. I believe this sentence is an example of where its not completely parataxis or hypotaxis. Grammatically, it would be complete after Dairy Queen, but the final point, the point that makes the sentence, isn't until the end, and the last phrase of the sentence is one that climaxes anticipation so the stuff before (eventhough semi-forgotten by the time the last phrase comes) is still relevant in order to build up that climatic ending phrase.

We came, we ate, we left, we got in the car, shit hit the fan.

In my imitation I tried to make it more fast-paced and anticipatory. I took out most of the prepositions and articles in order to do that. However, I don't think I accomplished making it more anticipatory. Instead, in my example, what happened is the phrases before "shit hit the fan" is skimmed and even if the reader knew something was coming, the phrases aren't sufficient enough to build that anticipation. In the original, the phrases vary in length. The first is longer than the next two, and the forth is the longest, kind of like taking a deep breath before spilling the news. The phrases after that forth one get smaller, gaining speed before the big kicker "and" signals something structurally different is coming, which means, in this case, a final blow before the finish. In mine, all that is taken out because the phrases are all the same length until the one before "shit hit the fan." It's longer so actually momentum is lost in this case. Which, would be okay if the writer was trying to bring the audience down. So, in my failure, I realized in greater depth why his opener worked so well, and why short and choppy doesn't always build a speed to anticipation, and how to bring the audience down from something that was fast-paced previously. YAY!

Week: Feb. 14-21: Shakespeare and Biblical Chiasmus

Shakespeare chiasmus from Othello, 3.3-- Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves.

("Dotes"=A, "doubts"=B... ..."suspects"=B, "strongly loves"=A)

I liked this chiasmus because the inverted meaning is what made it a chiasmus and it just happened to be the first example of inverted meaning chiasmus I came across, so it stood out. But, the rhythm is solid and dramatic (just like good ole Shakespeare to do). It also emphasizes a strong point: love and doubt can exist simultaneously. And, as Shakespeare points out, it's usually not a good thing; so I thought a chiasmus in this context was very appropriate and drove the irony home.

I didn't feel like doing an imitation on this one, so I will do the imitation in the biblical example below.

"Naked I rose from the Earth; to the grave I fall clothed."  Phillippians 1:15-17

("Naked"=A, "rose"=B, "Earth"=C... ..."grave"=C, "fall"=B, "clothed"=A)

I liked this one because it was a complex chiasmus, but simple at the same time. It's one of those that makes a person stop because they know there's something there, even if they don't know about chiasmus or if they weren't looking for chiasmus. If they do know about chiasmus, it's a simple enough example of one that the person will pick up on it if they analyze it. So, that's what I mean by it being simple. Again, like the Shakespeare example I gave, the chiasmus in this example emphasizes the irony of what's being said, gives it more kick and power. I also liked it because the irony of the sentence is brought out by the chiasmus mirroring the structure of the sentence, but by doing so--by puting them on the same level--the reader sees just how contrary the two ideas are (coming in to the world pure and leaving it with baggage). This stimulates deeper thought on the reader's end. So I think it's a unique juxtaposition that, in the end, can be a powerful rhetorical technique to get readers to see opposing in one sentence instead of five paragraphs, for example.

Let's see if I got this: parataxis, running sentence (grammatically complete after "rose"), verb style, and some isotope.

Imitation:

In my imitation I wanted to have fun with it and practice chiasmus, so I decided to make it perfect chiasmus througout.

From the Earth rose I, naked; clothed I fall to the grave.

Charles S. Johnson

This is from an essay to a symposium at Howard University in 1954 titled, "The Negro Renaissance and Its Significance."

"This period was the comet's tail of success of a great period of cultural ferment in the nation, the 'melting pot' era, a period of the ascendancy of unbridled free enterprise, of the open beginnings of class struggle and new and feeble mutterings of self-conscious labor; of muckrakers and social settlements, of the open and unabashed acceptance of 'inferior and superior races and civilization.'"

I like this sentence. It's long and unwieldy, but it works. I'm a prodigious highlighter, but I rarely underline such a large block of text. This, however, perfectly encapsulated a vast and complex viewpoint, and in doing so, was really quite succinct. I like the capitalization of "Its" in the title because even though it's not the contraction, my first instinct was to lowercase, when of course it shouldn't be.

I think the strong verb style is what stands out the most to me. Also some of the word choices are just so striking, "feeble mutterings of self-conscious labor", "comet's tail of success", "unbridled free enterprise", just fantastic examples of vivid, active writing. I think "unabashed acceptance", plays on some sort of buried alliteration that we've read about, but I don't quite grasp...

My imitation - This period was the summit of an arduous journey, a "coming together", a time of rampant capitalist swelling, and a collective awakening of the classes to the struggle, of establishing communities, and of questioning long-held beliefs on race. - Yeah, well, it's not my style.

The art of writing.

“Talent is a part of a writer’ success, but who you are as a human being, and what you believe in – those are just as important, perhaps more so.” Orson Scott Card

I love this way of looking at writing. It along with the things we are learning create a new way to look at any book you pick up and read. I wonder if this thought process could be added to the way we look at the texts we’re reading. In a way we already are. Alas onto more in depth analysis. This sentence like the rest of the blog is in verb style, he is very oriented towards the action side of language. He writes in a periodic way making sure you have to take in the entirety of his writing in order to obtain the meaning behind his sentences. This sentence is written in hypotaxis, where he clearly indicates which elements of writing he believes are more important.

Both Mr. Jacquel and Mr. Ibis had made a point...

"Both Mr. Jacquel and Mr. Ibis had made a point, individually, of explaining that, really, the hearse should only be used for funerals, and they had a van that they used to collect bodies, but the van was being repaired, had been for three weeks now, and could he be very careful with the hearse?"

-Neil Gaiman, American Gods

This seems a good example of a periodic sentence, especially considering it calls attention to the characters "making a point" only after a string of clauses. You don't know until completing the sentence that the point is asking the character (Shadow) to be careful taking the hearse out. The use of a periodic sentence here helps build characterization of Mr. Jacquel and Mr. Ibis; they can't simply ask Shadow to be careful taking the hearse out, no, they must also outline why this is a special circumstance and he therefore must be especially careful with it. The sentence also makes good use of hypotaxis. The hearse really only should be used for funerals (important), we have a van for collecting bodies (less important than the hearse), but the van is being repaired (more important point than just having the van), and it has been for three weeks (adding importance because it explains just how long they've already been dealing with this, longer than just a few days or one week, three weeks!), so could he be very careful with the hearse (most important idea of all, finally; it's the most important because it also carries the explanation that the only reason Shadow is taking the hearse is because they have no other choice).

I also really enjoy the nuances of speech Gaiman includes in this line without actually just writing the line as dialog. That both of them, individually, had explained this to Shadow, "...explaining that, really..." and the quantification of how long the van had been in for repairs.

In my imitation, I'm reflecting how very natural this type of exchange is (I think especially in household settings, in which kids are often told the same information more than once because their parents want to emphasize how important it is, and there's a great sense of that "parent talking to a child" tone in this line); it's the context in which the line is put (using a hearse and picking up dead bodies) that makes it really stand out.

Both mom and dad had made the point, individually, of explaining that, really, dad's computer should only be used by dad, and they had a family computer for the kids to do homework, but the family computer had been hit by a virus, and they hadn't been able to fix it yet, hadn't for three weeks now, and could he be very careful with dad's computer?

From Toni Morrison's A Mercy

"Despite the long sail in three vessels down three different bodies of water, and now the hard ride over the Lenape trail, he took delight in the journey. Breathing the air of a world so new, almost alarming in rawness and temptation, never failed to invigorate him."
Both of these sentences seem to be examples of periodic style. The first sentence also contains an element of hypotaxis, since the character mentions his hard ride over the Lenape trail after his travel by sea. It's difficult to know the point of either sentence until the end of each respective sentence.

On Periodic/Running Style

For those still confused with Periodic and Running style, I think this excerpt will help. From H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath:
 
“The way they leaned and bent, the manner in which they were clustered, and the fact that they had no windows at all, was very disturbing to the prisoner; and he bitterly mourned the folly which had made him sip the curious wine of that merchant with the humped turban.”
 
In this passage our hero, a Randolph Carter, a New Englander, has been kidnapped by evil Arabs under command of evil gods (classic Lovecraft) and has just arrived at their city on the dark side of the moon (also classic Lovecraft). But I believe this sentence demonstrates both periodic and running styles juxtaposed against one another.
 
The first half is an example of periodic style: it elaborates deeply on its subject and its circumstances before concluding the grammar with a subject compliment. The second half is an example of running style in which you receive grammatical gratification at “mourned” and the rest is added on to its end. As you can see, length isn't an issue, and neither are dependant clauses and phrases, but where these lie in the sentence.
 
Through this example, it seems that there is a polarity of speed in this as well as many of the other terms. The periodic is slower and spends all those words describing one object. The running style appears to be quicker, having mourning, wine-sipping and merchants with humped turbans all in the same amount of space.

Devious Encoder?

This quote comes from a TV show I like. It doesn't make too much sense written out of context, but I like the way multiple incomplete questions strung together can make a sentence sound dramatic, even mad.

"Although I admit this one item confounded me. Just another of your tools of spy-craft I imagine. A sinister communication device? Some kind of devious encoder?"

The item in question was a small metal cube. It turned out to be a box of mints.

The questions lend a paranoid tone to this, and the words aren't ones we would generally use every day. "Spy-craft" sounds like witchcraft. The words "sinister" and "devious" coupled with "encoders" and "communication devices" create images from Star Trek or some other science fiction. I'm not even sure what a devious encoder would look like, and clearly the speaker doesn't know either. He's essentially a mad scientist by the way. I like the way language can directly influence characterization.

Although this one item did give me pause. Just another implement of your witchcraft I expect. A corrosive flesh-eating poison? Some sort of devilish potion?

It's not much of an imitation, but you get the idea.

IPO

The following is not a sentence, it is three. I like that the three together complete an idea, that any one on its own does not provide enough context to make much sense (even the three leave much unknown), but that all three provide grammatical gratification  look at those short distances between subject and verb! (RUN STYLE RUN!)  I also like the sort of upward cascading parataxis, as we learn he made money, BECAUSE he lent a gut his car, but IF only he had done more he could have made more money. I also like the very personable voiced style.
     "I made $29,295. For lending a guy my Oldsmobile station wagon. If I had given him a Saab, I bet I could have retired that day."
     For a bit more context, Joel Stein received a letter in the 90s inviting him into the "friends and family" IPO deal for a company owned by a guy that he went to Stanford with. Stein invests, makes a good sum of moolah over the first few months, and then eventually the stock becomes so worthless that the brokerage told him to drop it or they'd have to charge him for holding an account with such a low balance (he ended up losing money). His conflict was that he felt obligated to hold the stock because of the gesture made by this friend, even though they fell out of touch. The lesson learned is that he should have sold as soon as it started dropping, and well before the bubble burst.  The learning of the lesson, is that he was stupid, and hopes that he made enough of an impression when visiting the offices of the Facebook, that someone will hook him up with an IPO deal, and this time he will sell, baby, sell.
     I purposefully mixed some prose styles above. For zero late tickets, can you identify the style of each sentence above? (!)
     ROFLMBFFAOMF!

"You can't go through life making only right turns."  Justin McCormack

The quote captivated me because it's simple and is another one of those inspirational phrases that helps people struggling with decision-making to view it another way. It's also another spin on that saying, "You gotta fall so you can get back up": you know, you gotta make wrong turns sometimes to figure out what's right. I just liked it's simplicity, and it's another one of those packs-a lot-of-punch, small sentences that I'm a sucker for.

Imitation:
No worries if you take a wrong turn: sometimes that's the best route to the right turn.

In my imitation, I stuck to keeping it short and sweet, but I decided to say what the overall meaning behind the original sentence was in my imitation.

One Sin: Khaled Hosseini

“There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

This sentence captivated because it's one of those that sums up so many controversial and burdoning conflicts we have with ourselves and others in just one sentence and one compressed ideology. For those who follow Catholic, Christian, Judaism, and other religions that live by trying to follow the Ten Commandments, this line from Khaled takes ten points and makes them one--and it works, it makes sense. And that's how he made it work: took all the mess and compressed it into one simple concept.

I admire writers that can explain so much is so little space. It is not one of my strong points so when I see an example well done, I can't help but hover over it for a while, admiring.

In the end, every sin out there boils done to one: Stealing. You kill a man, you steal his right to live. When you commit adultery, you steal your spouse's right to you.

In my imitation, I strove to keep it short and simple like Khaled in his original. I used his concept and applied to other sins not mentioned in his sentence to show, further, how the concept worked.

Write it to Understand it

"All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles."

From H.P. Lovecraft in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

You lose your breath reading it, don't you? This excerpt is somewhat unusual to Lovecraft's usual writing style. In other pieces, like "The Call of Cthulhu," Lovecraft enjoys giving the reader description that only hints to what he's depicting; one of the best terms from "Cthulhu" is "non-Euclidean," or in otherwords, un-geometric. But this--- wow.

This is the scene that Lovecraft's lead is captivated by in dreams. It's the third time he's seen it. Reading this quickly is impossible. It's labryrnthine in it's structure, only by writing it did I fully understand what Lovecraft was describing. In a quick read, you wouldn't notice at first that the first part of this sentence was list of just three: the marble of the city, its fountains, and streets; and that this is the immediate surroundings. After the semicolon, he presents the deep background, which the mind's eye paints hazily, using an obscure technique called "Atmospheric Perspective."

In doing this, Lovecraft forces the reader to step into this setting, to walk it a bit, and smell its air before continuing, thus creating a vivid model in the mind for the following story. But if you don't stop to explore what happens next, you'll find yourself confused, lost in the geography.

Horrified

"The first danger is an obvious one: the child opts out of the whole procedure and reads comics or nothing." - John Rowe Townsend in an essay entitled "Didacticism in Modern Dress"

This sentence is officially where I stopped paying attention to the essay. He's discussing the use of didactic writing in today's writing and in his own sentence calls comics, which he clearly dismisses as writing, as not reading. The style is oxymoron-ic and discredits his position. Although he does have good grammar and uses punctuation quite well I am astounded at his philosophy. I think there is value though because he states an opinion that is widely held by many adults and is rubbed off on many kids. It is succinct and makes the point but it is aimed at a particular readership and is rather close-minded. Since I could not finish the essay after this point I was clearly not the reader he was aiming for and he made sure to turn me away early on in the essay saving me countless minutes of frustrated reading because he was beating around the bush.

Poetry, but in the narrative of a story - so not poetry but poetic.

The following excerpt from "Sonny's Blues", by James Baldwin, is sublime for at least  three reasons. First, it sounds great; it is pure poetry but still makes sense. The boys (students in the narrators high school math class) are growing up fast and suddenly realizing that they will not get far from where they already are, literally, and especially figuratively. Second, the sentence is not poetry, but in a narrative short story, where poetry usually makes less sense than when it is alone, as in a poem. But here, here it is awesome. The final reason this sentence is good stuff, the least important reason, is that the sentence uses the serial comma, and the parenthetical comma, to make what could easily be two almost useless sentences into one that is worthy of quoting on this blog. "These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities."

A Handful of Words

"At that moment, you will be lying there (I rarely find people standing up). You will be caked in your own body. There might be a discovery; a scream will dribble down the air. The only sound I'll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps." -Markus Zusak

This is an excerpt from "The Book Thief", another favorite. Throughout the book Zusak makes every possible event or item an image. He gives a verb to every concept, personified or not, and the effect infuses life into his words. This book is as much a sensory experience as anything, and I think that's the way all art should be, especially literature. His narrator discusses words as though everyone of them is a living breathing organism. It's as if only the utmost care will suffice in handling them because with the right encouragement and in the proper order, words can change the world. And his style continually reinforces that argument throughout the text. 

Here, the author achieves his effect mainly through diction and punctuation. Punctuation gives the narrator his voice, and he wields it with just as much care and precision as the words. He puts commas in where they are not strictly needed, but they allow Death a lilting quality to his voice. Death deliberately describes the scene of a death. "...and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps." He's quiet and pensive. An entire character stems from that voice. And the diction gives his description life. "a scream will dribble down the air." We probably never thought of it in those terms, but isn't that exactly what a scream does? I also love the word "caked" in the second sentence. It's perfect.

Imitation: And I stand there, stuffed in felt and fleece and knitted itchy things hoping the train will come soon. A chill claws its way down my spine, chortling as it bends and breaks my posture. I shudder.

I Am Now a Cuckold.

The word "cuckold" is a word you hear a lot in Shakespeare. It's used to describe someone, usually a man, who has been cheated on by their partner. My example today comes from a song by an Australian comedy band called Tripod. The song was written due to a sense of disillusionment with modern pop music lyric writing. Why fall back on the old, standard rhymes when the English language is full of words with expressive potential?

"I am now a cuckold,
She cuckolded me.
When your love is loving someone else,
A cuckold will you be.
This cuckoldation, has cuckoldafied me,
And cuckoldentilly I'm cuckoldised by her cuckoldity.
Cuckoldish me, life has taken on a cuckoldastic twist,
I should have seen, when I looked at her,
She was a cuckoldist."

(To listen to the full song on YouTube, follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRUh7sb4c-M)

The reason I love this song is for its use of suffixes for comedic effect (they also have an excellent song on the phenomenon of prefixes that once removed, leave behind words that don't actually exist in the English language).

I challenge everyone to come up with alternate imitations, because it's hard! I've been thinking about this all week long, and I finally came up with this:

I am now an antick.
He antick-quated me.
When your King is raving in the rain,
An antick will you be.
This antickation, has antickified me,
And antickdentally, I'm antickised by his antickity.
Antickish me, life has taken on an antickastic twist,
I should have seen, when I looked at him,
He was an antickist.

antick (n): in Elizabethan England, a fool, clown, or buffoon.

The reference in the middle there is to the famous scene in Shakespeare's King Lear when the titular monarch is losing his mind, naked, outside in a storm, with his poor Fool trying to get him back inside.

"How do I know if I'm right if you don't tell me?"
*Shrug*
"Look at it a different way: how do you know that you're wrong?"

This was from the movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

The dialogue captivated me because of how much wisdom is passed from father to son in just a sentence. The father's response teaches the son about living on faith and to shows him there are different ways to look at everything, and just by looking at it differently it can change a path or make something insignificant significant.

You don't always need someone to tell you if you're headed in the right direction. That only takes the adventure out of it. The journey itself will tell you in the end if you were right or wrong.

My imitation mirrored the format of proverbs. If there are multiple sentences, the first one usually tells the person what they should or should not be doing, and then the sentences following give some insight into why they should or should not be doing the specific thing the first sentence stated; then, the last sentence gives some sort of matter-of-fact comforting message. So, that's what I tried for since it seemed the dad was trying to give his son some words of wisdom.

From The Slippery Realm Of Battle Rap Lyrics A.K.A. "Bars".....Ironic Enough for our blog title...

"He prolly faker than them shoes from the ockie. I'll pitch a puck to em' so fast that he'll loose a tooth like we playin' hockey. If he try me, push em' in front of the track (musical track/metaphoric allusion for a train track); make em' play tackle wit a trolley (lol)." -Pusha Feek (URL/Ultimate Rap League, Street Arena Battle League Rapper).


I was amazed by the inadvertent insult in the last line mainly, because it was suggesting to the gentleman's opponent who said the quote (Pusha Feek) that he should try and re-direct his anger towards something that he inevitably cannot withstand, nor ultimately conqueror. I thought of trolley as literally meaning a trolley train car which adds more weight to that line or "bar" as noted in the dynamics of battle rap lyricism. The rhetorical situation of battle rapping is the physical talking or "rapping" and rhyming of words to verbally injure your opponent all in the name of friendly competition. It can even be seen as debating yet, in a stylistic and orally rhymic fashion. The rap pseudonym or "tagged" names that rappers even give to themselves like "Pusha Feek" did is another example of how deeply immersed battle rappers are in their oratory craftsmanship; the mere construction of thier words holds interesting nuggets of allusionary and almost poetic metaphors that allow audiences to fully capture just how strongly he or she feels when expressing what is on their mind. Anything from violence, to comedy is used in battle rapping in a way that seeks to "lyrically overwhelm" his or her opponent to the degree that the adversary buckles under the pressure of trying to skillfully think of something witty and cool to say without stumbling over their words or freezing up entirely. As with Pusha Feek, the young man decided to name himself that assumingly from the street metaphor for working hard (pushing) and feek as a presumed shortening of his actual name which I have not been successful in locating at this current time. All in whole, this comment had a dramatic effect on me not only due to how the young man presented it and laughed at his own bars while causing his audience to laugh in admiration for how skilled he was with the delivery of it but, I also was captivated lastly by this since he gave such a thought-provoking insight into how he wanted his opponent to feel (to be immobilized lyrically similar to trying to attack someone repeatedly, getting teeth knocked out, fighting over something constantly with a stick as in hockey, coming out of it injured......being artifical as a street salesman wanting to alluring unsuspecting customers into a cheap deal (ockie), and to at last be defeated without any way to fight back fairly by getting hit with a trolley metaphorically speaking in all of this....

Stop Talking and Drink

Jerome Valcke, the FIFA Secretary General (whatever that means), tried to sway lawmakers to change an almost decade-old ban on selling alcohol in stadiums by saying, "We're not talking about alcohol, we're talking about beer." He said, I read, 'it isn't about getting drunk, it is about me getting a bonus from Budweiser, a massive World Cup sponsor, when I convince legislators to allow beer sale, i.e. Bud Light and Bud Light Lime sale. And if not some cash-monies from the Banquet Beer Corporation, from my bosses at FIFA then, since they undoubtedly will get massive quantities of dollar-sign and many zeroes indeed'. It amazes me the fallacious logic that people use to try and make an argument. Just listen as Valcke pitches his idea with a minute twist of semantics that makes beer actually sound harmless compared to booze. I am curious, who is we? Valcke, FIFA, Budweiser? I like the sentence because of its absurdity, its vagueness. I want to have a beer with Jerome, maybe in 2014, at the World Cup. We can responsibly enjoy a Bud Light or two, while we gaff at the barbarians that smuggled vodka into the event.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"I love Twinkies, and the reason I am saying that is because we are supposed to think of reasons to live." -Stephen Chbosky

I love this sentence mostly because it's funny, which of course is because of the way it's written. A reason to live would normally suggest a more emotional way of speaking. But it's a simple thought, and it's a fact, a real childish reaction to an adult's deep question. The way Stephen Chbosky writes in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" has the same basic simplicity to it which suggests that all the embellishments we like to put on things as adults are unnecessary. They distract from the real truth of who we are and what we're thinking, and that's exactly what they're supposed to do. An abundance of short simple sentences and dependent clauses might normally bother some of us as being childish, but that's what makes Chbosky a genius. Because his method is so simple, and the content is so true, we believe it. The text somehow becomes real. No one says stuff like this, but if we were honest with ourselves and said what we were thinking more often, we might, especially as teenagers. I like to be complex in my writing most of the time. I like the idea that a sentence can go on for half a page and still be grammatically correct. But I reference this book to remind myself that a little simplicity never hurt anyone.