Imagine if the other day, a 14-year-old cheerleader was killed at a middle school in South Texas.
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The best way to neutralize a threat is to not be one
Tag: odessa
A snowball’s chance is still a chance at least
The other day, the year began – anew! – and everything old and constraining dropped off with the falling Times Square Ball, leaving us feeling unshackled by history for at least a moment while we decided whether to chain ourselves to the past once more, or go on with something fresh and unspoiled.
We tell ourselves this, and resolve to do this and that, but rarely ever do turn over a new leaf when we turn the calendar’s page, or take if off the wall.
It snowed last ’round Christmas, long ago it seems, and since then there have been days brisk but also hot and beaming with sun.
Yet still there’s snow out! Or ice, rather, from when the snow hugged against itself tight and promised to endure against a snowball’s chance in West Texas. There isn’t much, but it’s still there – proof you can’t get rid of last year so easy, proof nature and time and causal relationships aren’t subject to the whims of our minds’ attempt to organize delineations in our trips about our axis or around the sun.
Things tend to revert to their former state; forces prevail upon us and blow us in their direction unless we work constantly otherwise. Call this “habit.” Call it “wont”; call it “rut.” The snow is stubborn but by week’s end it’ll be gone entirely everywhere, because that’s how things happen here.
There’s no reason to wait until the beginning of the year to change things, except that it’s harder to say, “Next year,” than, “Tomorrow.” How often does that really matter, though? Time spills continuously over days and months and seasons. People are and do and keep on, but rarely really pivot.
But snow can hang on for nine days in the desert, if it tries very very hard. If it doesn’t last forever, at least it can last a while, which is good enough.
Our resolutions for the new year, that we pretend is different and unblemished, have a snowball’s chance of success when they run contrary to everything we’ve done so far and really want to do, rather than would like to want to do.
But hey, sometimes it’s worth it to try and endure as long as you can before all your resolves melt away.
After a while, a novelty becomes part of the landscape
The other day, I lent a pair of books to a co-worker, continuing our interpersonal-library-loan system that has sprung up during the past couple of weeks.
(I haven’t figured out why, but you always seem more likely to read something has let you borrow than what you own already.)
Continue reading “After a while, a novelty becomes part of the landscape”
‘Change isn’t good or bad. It’s just change.’
The other day, Twitter did a complete overhaul of their website in terms of appearance and functionality.
It rolled out gradually but suddenly: not everybody got it at once, but once they did, it was immediately and completely different.
I hated it at first, but I’ve gotten used to it now. It was actually an improvement, rather than just a change, I will grudgingly admit.
Continue reading “‘Change isn’t good or bad. It’s just change.’”
Well, none of us are getting any younger
I often hear people, especially in their mid- and late-20s, say, “I’m getting old.” Well, on Friday, Japan’s oldest woman died at age 115.
Chiyono Hasegawa was born Nov. 20, 1896, in Japan, or 17 days after U.S. President William McKinley was elected to his first term.
However, I cannot use my knee to tell when it’s going to rain
The other day, I got a pain near my mid-lower back like some awful thing was trying to grab and pull off a handful of flesh, for what nefarious purpose I fear to speculate even within the realm of this simile.
Continue reading “However, I cannot use my knee to tell when it’s going to rain”
Good writing is the stuff that inspires instant jealousy
The other day, I was reading a book and had to, every few pages, set down the book and mutter a curse.
“No one should be able to write this well this easy,” goes the abridged version.
The most horrible thing about being a writer, or trying to be, is that in order to have any chance at being a good one, you’ve got to read lots of good books and other really well-written stuff. And to do so is a continual process of being smashed in the nose with the realization you’ll never produce anything half as good or enduring as what you’re flitting your eyes across at the moment.
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‘The Great Dictator’ can be found in whole via Google
The other day I overheard someone talking about the Charlie Chaplin film, “The Great Dictator,” or more specifically talking about his speech at the end, which is brilliant and moving and I can’t do it justice even to quote from it, so you’re best off watching it.
My eavesdropping turned to interruption, and finally became excited, almost manic jabbering about what is one of the most important and well-made movies of all time.
Like Nazi Germany moving into the Sudetenland, I am about to move into territory of our online columnist Matt Jones and spend most of this talking about film. (It’s OK. As with Czechoslovakia, he’ll get his space back at the end.)
So, the thing about the movie is that it’s incredibly well-made, and it’s both seriously, emotionally powerful while being funny as all hell. The guy talking about the speech hadn’t seen any of the preceding hour and a half, and that’s actually OK.
Chaplin’s first true “talkie” is not cohesive; it’s almost best to appreciate the “Jewish Barber’s Speech” as a speech, amputated. It was essentially Chaplin tacking it on at the last minute and speaking as himself, anyway.
Not that there aren’t other parts worth watching at least as much.
One is the Barbershop Scene, where Chaplin shaves a man to Brahms Hungarian No. 5, speeding and slowing along with the tempo. This would work well in any movie, but it’s Chaplin doing it, so it’s hilarious.
The second is the “globe ballet,” which doesn’t really work in anything but a parody of Hitler, who longingly, lovingly dances with a balloon of the world until it bursts in his face and makes him cry. Nothing hits both competing notes of humor and poignancy as simultaneously as that.
(If there’s a third great scene, it’s Chaplin’s German-gibberish propaganda speech early on that mocks Hitler the most directly, but it hits too close to reality.)
It’s all outrageously funny, most of all because Hitler was the one who aped Chaplin first. When Chaplin was the world’s most recognizable movie star with greasepaint facial hair, Hitler was crawling around obscure trenches with a Kaiser Wilhelm mustache.
When Hitler became famous, it was with Chaplin’s face. To mock Hitler, Chaplin just needed to be himself.
Anyway, the fellow I overheard was telling this girl about Chaplin’s ending speech, and going on about how fantastic it is, which is true. And he was saying that it’s even more relevant today than it was at the time, which is dubious.
Well, I will quote from it:
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
And it’s true, there’s always something miserable going on, but there’s good things, too. National hypocrisy exists, but that’s better than the bald-faced brutality that once threatened the world whole, and there’s much to be said for that.
The film ends on a hopeful note, that the worst will pass. So far the worst has. What’s bad and undesirable remains, but the Tramp’s world triumphed over the Fuhrer’s.
After all, we can still watch a movie about a funny-looking guy mock a dictator and not consider it subversive.
As Billy said, ‘Brevity is … wit.’
The other day, Ralph Fiennes, the famous British film actor who also loves stage acting, said he does not so much love the current direction of language.
“We’re in a world of truncated sentences, soundbites and Twitter,’ Fiennes said, being quoted for a soundbite. “(Language) is being eroded — it’s changing. Our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us.”
And he’s worried about the relevancy of Shakespeare going forward now that he says he sees young drama students are having more trouble with the Bard than those a few generations ago would have (one wonders if Fiennes really remembers how well those young students did generations ago). He’s worried about how you perform plays with a lot of words with multiple syllables when the direction of language is more Hemingway than Faulkner, read, spoken and understood.
I used to be with Mr. Fiennes on this, and in college, was really worried that that kind of written language would be the equivalent of Newspeak from George Orwell’s 1984. For example, the text, “I love you,” is soul-baring, while “luv u ;)” is common, casual, and expresses nothing. It’s not even “double-plus ungood,” as a character from Orwell’s novel would be expected to say, it’s “++ungud.”
It’s not that you’d have to censor people anymore; they wouldn’t be able to articulate anything meaningful, let alone seditious. (That was my thinking.)
But, that’s a very college sort of thought to have. And you see writers who have just graduated, even journalists supposedly trained to be concise, want to write using the biggest word that comes to mind, maybe even because it’s the first. School trains you to prove that you’re intelligent and educated more than that you’re actually a good writer or know what you’re talking about. “First thought, best thought,” — but only if your first thought is actually good at communicating.
Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said, “Never make use of a sesquipedalian word when a diminutive one will suffice”?
Or was he the one who said, “Brevity is the soul of wit”?
There’s certainly nothing wrong with great-big words, and they are often good to know, especially when not to use them. Twitter, in common usage, may be a gift for people to concisely say stupid and empty things. But that’s what most people say anyway. The longshoreman philosopher of the mid-20th century, Eric Hoffer, said there wasn’t an idea that could be expressed in 200 words.
“But the writer must know precisely what he wants to say,” Hoffer cautioned. “If you have nothing to say and want badly to say it, then all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice.”
You may need more than one tweet of 140 characters to get the full thing across, but you’re also going to make every letter count. You’re going to spill over the limit and go back and look at what you’ve written. Have I expressed this in the most effective way possible? Why am I wasting space on adjectives when I could use a more inherently evocative word (“walked without hurry” vs. “sauntered”). If someone reads only this message, how can I make this memorable and impactful on its own?
Writing has always been easy; so too chatting and tweeting. But good writing is always heavy labor, it’s just the form has changed now.
The future belongs to the aphorist. And I’m OK with that.
The art of communication is an imperfect science
The other day, I was talking to a friend and we were arguing a bit about communication.
Now (and you may already know this), professional communicators have a tendency to do a very poor job communicating in their personal lives.
But we were doing pretty well, he and I, or at least I thought so, and the gist of what he was saying was this:
“Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had inherent telepathy – not reading minds, but, like, being able to send a thought completely and be understood completely,” he said.
Continue reading “The art of communication is an imperfect science”
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