An Agglomerate Of Middling Miscellany

I strolled up to the Customer Service area at Fry's Supermarket and placed my PowerBall lottery card and my usual one-dollar bill down onto the counter before my favorite clerk (the young, pretty, well- groomed one who always smiles at me) and was horrified to hear her say, "Sorry Sweetie but a chance on the PowerBall drawing just went up to two dollars."

I know my jaw must have dropped and my eyes probably bugged out some, because she said, "do you still want one?" I told her no, that I could not afford to lose two dollars twice a week on such a long, long shot. So I just bought a ticket on the twice weekly Arizona MegaMillions drawing, which is still only one dollar, and pays out a jackpot in the multii-millions.

PowerBall can go jump in the lake.

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I try to catch Greta Christina's blog each time she posts a new entry. Greta is an outspoken atheist. Greta is happily and proudly a free- thinking lesbian. Greta is an intelligent, skillful, and much published writer.

In The Ten Main Reasons I Don't Believe In God from the Archives, Greta wrote: ". . . I’ll assume that the mind-bogglingly consistent pattern of natural explanations replacing supernatural ones is almost certain to continue."

Now that, I thought, is a fine example of constructing (coining?) a new word -- "mind-bogglingly" -- and is a somewhat subtle slap in the face of all those how-to-write mavens whose first commandment is that writers should avoid using adverbs.

(A maven is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others.)

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Sometimes I read a passage and it stays with me. Such as this one by Gustave Flaubert:

"It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes."

The above was copied a while back from The Writer's Almanac

See more here here about Gustave Flaubert

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From Harry Crews came another memorable passage:

"There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with."

(One might ask TV's Doctor House for his thoughts about that particular observation)

I suppose the reason I so often copy into this website quotations and short pieces written by published authors and famous poets is because throughout the years I have failed to write memorable poems and stories myself. But I have read and enjoyed so many works of others, and I get a tremendous amount of pleasure from sharing with those who may not have read them.

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Tucson Weather Today

Whatever . . .

Whenever my attention to the task at hand--whether severely or ever so slightly--wavers and wanders then wanes, I turn for diversion to my Kindle PC and read a chapter or two from the novel 'Lord Jim.' Not to learn from its pages how to write literature. No, not to discern from the author's words the process of composing text for a modern novel that will be both understood and appreciated by today's readers. No. Joseph Conrad employed far too many adjectives and adverbs, and too many over-used figures of speech, too many abstruse similes and metaphors. (Or so I've been told)

As, (italics mine) for example, in:

She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over the plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.

It seems that the temper of the times determines the perceived quality of a published work.

Is a writer, aiming for publication, ever free to write whatever and however he or she wants to write? I think not.

Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad

A used hardcover copy for a penny.

. . .

Uh oh! -- I forgot; I was going to heed a famous author's advice to improve the quality of my blog by making each day's entry a miniature story, with beginning, middle, and end. Oh well, as with a weight loss diet, I can always start doing so tomorrow.

. . .

I read over at The Writer's Almanac that Andrew Bell illustrated 160 plates for the first edition of the Britannica, including illustrations of female pelvises and fetuses for the "Midwifery" entry, which shocked King George III so much that he demanded they be ripped out of every copy of the encyclopedia.

Now, I'd say that's a pretty good illustration of why an actively ruling Monarchy is not the most desirable as a form of government. In fact, life's experience shows the folly of allowing any form of government to grow unchecked. They all grow larger and larger, and grow more and more powerful, feeding mercilessly off the people, until the finally just get too big for their britches. And have to be taken down a notch or two.

And on and on groans and grumbles the crusty old curmudgeon.

. . .

The more I speak and hear spoken aloud the guttural word 'blog' the more I dislike it. Perhaps I should stop using the word and refer to it instead as my web journal... or something like that.

. . .

I finally got around to officially effecting the change of address for my Amateur Radio license from Jacksonville to Tucson. I'm not sure how soon the change will be made in the FCC database though. I'll keep checking until I see the correct address.

. . .

Even Mark Twain put to good use the practice of salting his writing with multiple grains of adjectives and adverbs, even the -ly ones. For instance, in his autobiography he wrote: "John Robards was eternally and indestructibly amiable. I may even say devilishly amiable; fiendishly amiable; exasperatingly amiable."

That's what can be accomplished by incorporating -ly adverbs into a statement the author sees as being enhanced by using those particular parts of speech.

So there . . .

. . .

New Word

pleonasm
redundancy;
The use of more words than necessary to express an idea

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Day 14 of NaNoWriMo

I have written 1,200 words for day 14 with a total of 17,180 words to date.

The day 14 segment is posted at:
http://www.genechambers.com/day-14.htm

. . .

Anu Garg over at A.Word.A.Day has had the temerity to viciously attack my beloved -ly adverbs. Well, not so much viciously as unnecessarily. In today's edition she wrote:

The adverb is a stepchild of the language. Usage pundits, grammar gurus, and language mavens have been denouncing it ad nauseam: Don't pay much attention to the adverb. It makes you (and your writing) look bad. Let it stay in the basement of the language. Why don't you talk with nouns and verbs instead?

Adverbs do have a job. Push them away and you're left wondering how to answer questions such as: How? In what manner? To what degree?

When people advise avoiding the adverb, they're referring to words ending in -ly: extremely, really, endlessly, etc. It may be OK to use such words sparingly, but your writing appears stilted if they are used often.

Many adverbs don't end in -ly. In fact, in the few sentences here, I used such adverbs aplenty (ad nauseam, often, aplenty). This week we have lined up five such adverbs. Try them on for size. And if an adverb fits, why not have a ball with it?

Jeez-oo! I suppose this means that now I am expected to revise all those useful and effective little 'ly' words I struggled so mightily to think up and insert into my sadly and scantly sparse NaNoWriMo novel.

Humph!

. . .

The Official Website of the U.S. Social Security Administration

The Social Security Administration has a brand new website and they have announced that the new site will make it easier for users to navigate around and through its formerly formidable labyrinth of bureaucratic bilge and blather to find some useful information. Having perused this new format, I must admit that it is a great improvement, and I hereby offer my sincere congratulations to the Administration.

. . .

The Arts and Entertainment Channel has a new show coming up:
Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal

Appended below is what PZ Myers esteemed professor of biology and noted proponent of atheism has to say about it:

Sounds awful already, doesn't it? But it's worse than you think: they're looking for disturbed kids who think they've got magic powers, and then they're flying in "professional psychics" to coach them in dealing with their awesome powers, i.e., indulge their delusions, get off on feeling superior to unhappy kids, and collect a paycheck for psychic child abuse.

They're putting kids in the hands of a creepy skeevo like Chip Coffey, all for your entertainment.

Call or write to the Arts and Entertainment channel and let them know that their schlock has reached a new and despicable low.

. . .

A while back I posted a photo of JoAnn's little potted plant from which had just spring a pretty pink flower from its single bud. Well... the plant has thrived under her caring and gentle ministrations, and below is the result of that care.

Shows what can be accomplished with work and dedication

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"Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences."
--Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Commaless Musings And 'ly' Adverbs

Sometimes (more-so now than in earlier years) the serendipitously implanted idea of my being a 'talented' writer appears to me to be nothing more than a persistent fantasy floating on the surface of my consciousness somewhere above that wholly submerged and temporarily preserved myriad of flotsam and jetsam that imaginatively claims to be my unified and biologically human... self.

It is true that I am able to select from an apparently disintegrating plethora of weakly remembered words and arrange them into cohesive sentences and insert these symbolic indicators into seemingly sensible paragraphs that eventually form themselves into a semblance of some sort of sequential and ostensibly substantial story. I have done so too many times within my overly extended span of wasted years.

And one long-harbored and significant suspicion has now become a solid and clear and definite fact.

To me.

I have nothing worthwhile to say.

So . . .

Each of my attempts to construct a substantial poem or a consequential short story is fated to be a futile (empty) effort.

And the dream of my writing an original full-length novel is ludicrous.

Without a valid talent personal failure is assured.


But yet I can still blog. And therein without the interference of editorial fiat I can without guilt eschew unnecessary commas and employ as many ly adverbs as I please.

Right?