50 Words Only, Ah?
I got the idea from here, which I got to in turn from here. The muse happened to be in for once, and I managed these whilst waiting for Mr Nads to pick me up from work, and then continued while he watched, of all things, 'Starship Troopers 2' (as if the first wasn't enough of a cinematic travesty!).
Granted, my muse mayn't be as good as some other people's, whose writings make me feel like hanging my keyboard at the sheer folly of me attempting to write, but at least I have one. And she visits. Occasionally.
1. He looked lovingly at the tiny ball of sunshine lying in his little brown paws. He caressed it gently, affection growing with each passing moment. Suddenly, it grew restless, and began to peck.
He panicked, and squeezed.
His first lesson in love: Don’t hold on too tightly, or too long.
2. She had laughed when this happened to others. She never imagined that her heart could be wrenched by something like this so easily, but the tear-drenched tissues lying forlornly on the table were proof of her vain hubris.
“Nevermore,” she thought, “never.”
“That’s the last time I watch a Hindi movie.”
3. Your eyes looked into mine, and I could see in their light brown pools our unborn children, the house in the suburbs, the MPV. I thought, “No, I don’t want this, I want to be free”.
Yet, “How do you feel?” I asked.
“Like I’m home.”
And so was I.
Will Someone Eat, Shoot And/Or Leave This Woman?
Punctuation has been defined many ways. Some grammarians use the analogy of stitching: punctuation as the basting that holds the fabric of language in shape. Another writer tells us that punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop. I have even seen a rather fanciful reference to the full stop and comma as “the invisible servants in fairy tales – the ones who bring glasses of water and pillows, not storms of weather or love”. But best of all, I think, is the simple advice given by the style book of a national newspaper: that punctuation is “a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling".
Excerpt from 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss
I dont care what The New Yorker* says, I'm getting myself a copy of 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves'. Why, despite the fact that I told myself I wouldn't buy anymore books unless I'd finished the five I'd bought months ago and still haven't touched? (Can I help it if I'm not quite in the mood for 'I Know This Much Is True'?) Because we pedants must stick together, natch. Plus, I need to know when to use a colon instead of a dash (this may not contribute to world peace, but it appeases my Inner Pedant and therefore helps maintain my sanity). And* more importantly, it will be a welcome antidote to the grammatical horrors I am exposed to everyday, courtesy of BOIW @ Drizzle Dementor. My ears have yet to stop berdesing-ing from the linguistic bombs she dropped during a meeting with members of another, er, 'firm' yesterday:-
- "We don't want it to be too volatility",
- She kept saying that certain companies can, as I heard it, export opportunities. It took some mental doing on my part to discern that she meant "exploit". And** I'm certainly not hard of hearing.
- What in bloody hell is "in additional"?
When she's capable of decimating the English language in this manner, is it any surprise then that she is completely baffled by the apostrophe, e.g., the glaring to us, but perhaps subtle to her, differences between "its" and "it's", "you're" and "your" and "jurisdictions", "jurisdiction's" and "jurisdictions'"? Perhaps I should be less of a 'stickler' when it comes to her, but I can't help it if my Mommy trained me to be a pedant and my eyes hurt each time I get an email from her, or worse, when she returns a review of a memo or paper I've done.
Can anyone spot the irony by the way? I'm supposed to re-review someone else's review of my work. I think a raise is definitely in order- not only for extra work, but for severe mental and emotional duress as well.
I wonder if there would be any point in anonymously bequeathing a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves to BOIW, along with a dictionary for her to look up big words like, say, "grammar".
* I think Americans desperately need to be educated in the concept of dry humour and being tongue-in-cheek. Why do they need to be so damned earnest all the time? Lighten up, people! And get yourself a President who doesn't resemble a chimp this time while you're at it.
** I also think it's perfectly acceptable to begin sentences with 'And' and even (gasp!) 'But'. For justification, refer to a scene in 'Finding Forrester' which I can't be bothered to reproduce here.
nads went at 23:18