The Daily News

1  On bathrooms and WC's: I promise no potty humor.

2  Let me begin with bathrooms. We've a two-bathroom house, my first ever. 

3  The guest bathroom has one sink and a shower/bath. Nothing fancy.

4  The master bedroom has what is hailed as an en-suite bathroom, meaning that there is a bathroom right in the room, so you don't have to jump across a hallway to get to one. 

5  It has two sinks and a shower/bath, which sounds as though you are staying at the Sheraton. 

6  When I first saw it, I thought, "Oh. Cool."

7  A second glance revealed a door right next to the shower/bath. I opened the door and there sat what could only be described as a lonesome toilet. The area around it looked like a Catholic confessional, save for a small window, high up.

8  When Jeff came to lay the floor, we jokingly referred to it as the Water Closet, or the WC.

9  We even found a small sign at a consignment store that read, "Water Closet." It is screwed in just above the toilet proper. 

10  I've never successfully gotten used to it because I get claustrophobic whenever I go in there. The walls close in on me. At times I think of all the sinful things I've done for the past two months. 

11  This results in my self-inflicted penance. This consists of my recitation of roughly seventeen Our Fathers and thirty-six Hail Mary's. 

12

13  Okay.

14  I exaggerate. 

15  Not gonna lie.

16  Not EVEN gonna lie.

17  Sometimes though, the new place feels as though it has life.

18  Yesterday, for example, I was in the WC when a cloud turned it dark. I looked around, and just as fast the floor lit up like Heaven. 

19  I worked my way out to my comfy chair, Le Luge, and settled in. I sat, put my feet up, and began tacking away at this stuff. 

20  After a bit, I went out back to remind myself of what the morning winds did yesterday.

21  I had barely awakened, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and pulled the blinds to the sliding door. This was yesterday morning, mind you. 

22  Facing me like a torpedo was a nine-foot lawn umbrella. The wind whisked things around and aimed it right at me. One gust of wind could have shot through the window, tossing me against the sink, with shattered glass strewn everywhere. 

23  That didn't happen, but I felt paranoid enough that it might. 

24  And I was alone.

25  Dun, dun, DUNNNNNNN!!!!!!!

26  Pretty strange. (Even stranger: last night I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls. It had subtitles, and at one point, Lorelai said, "Dun, dun, DUNNNNNNN!!!!!!!" But I had already written item 25 prior to. Coincidence, or conspiracy? You be the judge. Oh, and don't tell anyone).

27  I slid the door open, popped into the yard, and took down four market umbrellas. They provide the shade when it is hot. Each could potentially blow over the top of the house. 

28  It takes some getting used to, being in a new place, I tell you.

29  It is now yesterday afternoon. I find myself sitting again in Le Luge, and writing away. 

30  I also grabbed Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. The wind still howled around, making thumping noises now and again.

31  Yesterday's DN contained a passage from Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools. In that passage, Clark praised the use of simple words, and gave Amy Tan huge props for her use of one-syllable words to make a point. 

32  For whatever reason, many people who write ignore this advice. 

33  Shall we hear from Stephen King, a good friend of Amy Tan?

35  This comes from On Writing. King begins this section with the following quote from John Steinbeck:

  Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them wee cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.

                                        ---John Steinbeck, The Grapes of  Wrath

  

  The Steinbeck sentence is especially interesting. It's fifty words long. Of those fifty words, thirty-nine have but one syllable. That leaves eleven, but even that number is deceptive; Steinbeck uses because three times, owner twice, and hated twice. There is no word longer than two syllables in the entire sentence. The structure is complex; the vocabulary is not far removed from the old Dick and Jane primers. 

36  That's a tough argument. To King's credit, he doesn't berate nor even put down writer's who go polysyllabic; he chooses to keep things short and clear. 

37  Two days in a row, two identical writing tips about keeping things simple. 

38  Learn. I swear. It is much simpler than you think. Just be clear when you write. I learned, but it took me a lifetime. Save time. Go the one-syllable route. It's fun!

39  End of lesson.

40  Anybody lookin'?

41  Well, yes.

42  Moving On, Part One: I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't mention Halloween. 

43  Have their been coincidences? 

44  Well, yes. Tons. 

43  Have electrical things gone haywire?

44  Well, yes. 

45  Have I heard creaks and clicks?

46  Uh, yup.

47  More than ever.

48  This morning I went to check my email. I opened one from my friend John. It wouldn't open, and it had what looked like a bunch of attachments. I opened them up and they downloaded, but said nothing. 

49  I opened a second one from my goodly friend in retirement Rosi Hollinbeck. It was a joke, but it did the same thing: it downloaded what looked like some attachments, but each became a series of numbers and letters.

50 I had allowed my laptop to "update" earlier on. 

51  Don't try this at home. 

52  Especially the day before Halloween!

53  I assume it will right itself before sunset.

54  Always does.

55  Oh, I just remembered: while watching another episode of Gilmore Girls (Don't tell anyone, Dammit!) there was a scene that resembled the infamous ghost scene in Three Men and a Baby. It flashed by, but it staged so similarly to the classic ghost scene that I blinked, and it was gone. I thought I saw the little boy standing in the window, I swear to you. We were over at Caitlin's, so I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the show with company and all, but yeesh! Here is the shot:

Is the ghost of a little boy staring at us from the curtains?

Is this the Three Men and a Baby ghost?

56  The first time I really saw this, a group of us was in the Band Room at Y.B. It was dark, but we turned all the lights out in the room just to enhance the scariness. It was around 8:30 at night. 

57  Old teevee, VHS, and I can't even remember who was there. Someone stopped the film and pointed, and I about had a heart attack! They naturally went second-by-second, so when we saw the left arm come onto the screen, we again screamed. This was just before Halloween, amid all the ghost stories and Heidi trips.

58  I did this with classes for years. 

59  The thing is, I had researched the story behind the ghost. Of course rumors flew all over the place that it was the ghost of a kid who was killed on the set.

60  Don't read further if you want to know the truth about the Three Men and a Baby ghost.

61  If you are ready to find out, read on. 

62  The truth is, it is not a little boy, nor is it a ghost. It is a stand-up cutout of Ted Danson in a tux. Here you go:

Ha! Ghost, schmost!

63  Fun stuff. The Heidi Chronz, a lot more scary. I hope to get to them soon. 

64  I might not, no promises.

65  Meanwhile, have a GREAT Halloween!!!!!!!

66  And I would like once again to wish a Happy Birthday to Helene!!!!!!! Hope you have the best day ever!!!!!!!  = )

Happy Booooooothday, Helene!!!!!!!

67  See you again.

68  Peace.

~H~

fin.

                                                            

  

The Daily News

1  And...here we are.

2  My laptop buffered so much yesterday that I grew a beard waiting. 

3  And then it went grey.

4   It's not a new laptop, and I got it re-built.

5   You know computers. They can be little brats one minute, and little angels the next.

6  This sucker hovered and heaved all morning.

7   I finally Googled for repair tips.

8   I instantly got a pop-up from someone trying to sell me something that would make the thing quicker.

9  What a racket.

10 Right this minute it's doing fine.

11  Now that things have settled, and all is peaceful, I have  one annoying fly landing on everything near me, including me.

12  The swatter is under the sink. I bought it because these guys have taunted me all week.

13  I usually keep the place clean, open and close doors quickly, and take out the garbage on a regular basis.

14  I often freeze the trash 'til garbage day. That worked great all summer, especially in a town that could climb upwards of 110 degrees. 

15  I wish it were 110 degrees of fly separation.

16  What's odd is that this particular swatter has a holster. And it cost only $2.44 for the entire kit. Quite a bargain.

17   It's nice. I can wash it, wash the holster, put it under the sink and it won't even touch the ground.

18  They might not yet have invented a better mouse trap, but somebody around here succeeded in building a better swatter. Color me impressed.

19  I never realized the variety of swatter designs that are out there.

20  For your viewing pleasure, I bring you the following pics:

21  

22 DISCLAIMER: The frightened lady at the top is not a swatter. She was used for effect. Nor are Astaire and Rogers. I put them up for artistic purposes.

23  I can't speak for any of you, but I walked away from this entire display enchanted.

24  The killing of flies should make us shudder. But these little beauties come off as children's toys.

25  I admire the comic whimsy of the Pow! Splat! and of the Splat! Pow!

26  Such loftiness on a Thursday!

27  Moving On, Part One: A quick update on the Heidi stories: I may need to postpone those 'til at least Thanksgiving. 

28  October has been an amazingly busy month, and the party last Saturday took it to a new level.

29  Also I've had a few creaks and clicks that have happened late at night, and frankly, I find myself a little jumpy. 

30  I've had a few good coincidences this year as well, but they happen all the time, nothing new.

31  I keep hoping the original stories will come from cyber space and tell themselves, getting me off the hook. 

32  I haven't been home enough to get going on it.

33  Just thought it might be nice to let people know.

34  Moving On, Part Two: I had fun offering Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools out there yesterday. If you missed it, scroll down and it should pop up. Some really fun stuff, especially the entire concept of people disagreeing on writing methods. 

35  In the long run, use things that work. And know they work.

36  Today I follow that with Clark's lesson on simplifying. I argued with a few science and math teachers on this one. They feel students need to know how to read technical pieces, even if they are written by extremely boring writers.

37  Makes sense. 

38  I prefer simplicity. Makes more sense.

39  Personal opinion.

40  Here's Clark's view. This comes to you from Writing Tools:

  This tool celebrates simplicity, but a clever writer can make the simple complex---and to good effect. This requires a literary technique called defamiliarization, a hopeless word that describes the process by which an author takes the familiar and makes it strange. Film directors create this effect with super close-ups and with shots from severe or distorting angles. More difficult to achieve on the page, this effect can dazzle the reader as does E.B. White's description of a humid day in Florida:

  On many days, the dampness of the air pervades all life, all living. Matches refuse to strike. The towel, hung to dry, grows wetter by the hour. The newspaper, with its headlines about integration, wilts in your hand and falls limply into the coffee and the egg. Envelopes seal themselves. Postage stamps mate with one another as shamelessly as grasshoppers. (from "The Ring of Time)

  What could be more familiar than a mustache on a teacher's face, but not this mustache, as described by Roald Dahl in his childhood memoir, Boy:

  A truly terrifying sight, a thick orange hedge that sprouted and flourished between his nose and upper lip and ran clear across his face from the middle of one cheek to the middle of the other. 

  ...[It] was curled most splendidly upwards all the way along as though it had a permanent wave put into it or possibly curling tongs heated in the mornings over a tiny flame...The only other way he could have achieved this curling effect, we boys decided, was by prolonged upward brushing with a hard toothbrush in front of the looking-glass every morning.

  Both White and Dahl take the common---the humid day and the mustache---and, through the filter of their prose styles, force us to see it in a new way.

  More often, the writer must find a way to simplify prose in service to the reader. For balance, call the strategy familiarization, taking the strange or opaque or complex and, through the power of explanation, making it comprehensible, even familiar. 

  Too often, writers render complicated ideas with complicated prose, producing sentences such as this one, from an editorial about state government:

  To avert the all too common enactment of requirements without regard for their local cost and tax impact, however, the commission recommends that statewide interest should be clearly identified on any proposed mandates, and that the state should partially reimburse local government for some state imposed mandates and fully for those involving employee compensation, working conditions and pensions. 

  The density of this passage has two possible explanations: The writer is writing, not for a general audience, but for a specialized one, legal experts already familiar with the issues. Or, the writer thinks that form should follow function, that complicated ideas should be communicated in complicated prose.

  He needs the advice of writing coach Donald Murray, who argues that the reader benefits from shorter words and phrases, and simpler sentences, at the points of greatest complexity. What would happen if readers encountered this translation of the editorial?

  The state of New York often passes laws telling local governments what to do. These laws have a name. They are called "state mandates." On many occasions, these laws improve life for everyone in the state. But they come with a cost. Too often, the state doesn't consider the cost to local government, or how much money taxpayers will have to shell out. So we have an idea. The state should pay back local governments for some of these so-called mandates.

  The differences in these passages are worth measuring. The first one takes six and a half lines of text. The revision requires an additional half line. But consider this: The original writer has room for fifty-eight words in six and a half lines, while I get eighty-one words in seven lines, including fifty-nine one-syllable words. His six and a half lines give him room for only one sentence. I fit eight sentences into seven lines. My words and sentences are shorter. The passage is clearer. I use this strategy to fulfill a mission: to make the strange workings of government transparent to the average citizen, to make the strange familiar. 

  George Orwell reminds us to avoid long words where short ones "will do," a preference that exalts short Saxon words over lone ones of Greek and Latin origin, words that entered the language after the Norman Conquest of 1066. According to such a standard, box beats out container, chew trumps masticate; and ragtop outcools convertible. 

  I am often stunned by the power that authors generate with words of a single syllable, as in this passage from Amy Tan:

  The mother accepted this and closed her eyes. The sword came down and sliced back and forth, up and down, whish! whish! whish! And the mother screamed and shouted, cried out in terror and pain. But when she opened her eyes, she saw no blood, no shredded flesh.

  The girl said, "Do you see now?" (from The Joy Luck Club)

  Fifty-five words in all, forty-eight of one syllable. Only one word, ("accepted") of three syllables. Even the book title works this way.

  Simple language can make hard facts easy reading. Consider the first paragraph of Dava Sobel's Longitude:

  Once on a Wednesday excursion when I was a little girl, my father bought me a beaded wire ball that I loved. At a touch, I could collapse the toy into a flat coil between my palms, or pop it open to make a hollow sphere. Rounded out, it resembled a tiny Earth, because its hinged wires traced the same pattern of intersecting circles that I had seen on the globe in my classroom---the thin black lines of latitude and longitude. The few colored beads slid along the wire paths haphazardly, like ships on the high seas.

  Simplicity is not handed to the writer. It is the product of imagination and craft, a created effect.

  Remember that clear prose is not just a product of sentence length and word choice. It derives first from a sense of purpose---a determination to inform. What comes next is the hard work of reporting, research, and critical thinking. The writer cannot make something clear until the difficult subject is clear in the writer's head. Then, and only then, does she reach into the writer's toolbox, ready to explain to readers, "Here's how it works."

41  I can't do better than that. Such a well-written and concise chapter.

42  White, Dahl, Tan...these names keep surfacing. May I throw in another one-syllable name? How 'bout Clark?

43  Great lesson.

44  I'll test my skills at single syllables all day. Fun thing to do.

45  Gottago.

46  See you again.

47  Have a GREAT day.

48  Peace.

~H~

fin.

The Daily News

1  Dear Coley: Happy Birthday!!!!!!!

2  Did you ever think it would get here?

3  For a second last night I thought I heard Mom say you were headed for Sac today.

4  I even asked her if she said that.

5  I know you've been WAY busy, but it woulda been awesome.

6  Yeesh.

7   I got you a present for your birthday.

8   

9  Here go, Sweetie:

10

11  You can't blow out that candle!

12  For the record, I'm digging through the fridge to see if I have any sort of cake and ice cream.

13  Does a cupcake count?

14  Okay.

15  Not gonna lie.

16  I was too darned lazy to go to the freezer and hunt down ice cream.

17  As you know, I house-hop on a daily basis, so I'm never quite sure what is in whose freezer.

18  I do know where the cupcakes are located.

19  For the record (and yes, I declare this a disclaimer): If I have a cupcake, it'll go straight to my hips.

20  <eyes darting around> Where the hell are the cupcakes?

21  That requires my standing up and looking. Meantime, Happy Birthday Coley!!!!!!!

22   Moving On, Part One: For the record, I found the cupcakes.

23  Anybody lookin'?

24  Pretty sure that somewhere hidden in here resides the law of diminishing returns.

25  And no, I didn't attempt to light a candle.

26  Any time someone hands me a lighter, I envision all sorts of calamities.

27  Especially if there is a candle written into the mix.

28  So...the returns diminish, if that makes any sense.

29   aklafdfkdjfdkljfds

30  Moving On, Part Two: I learned long ago that item twenty-nine is what people do on computer keyboards when they become stuck for an idea.

31  My solution?

32  Watch some pretentious film on teevee.

33  In order to accomplish this, it becomes essential that you watch some old, outdated AND enigmatic film.

34  I'm not going to apologize that I am doing so as I hunt-and-peck this nonsense.

35  Moving On, Part the Thoid: I just now almost erased this entire piece because of a lazy pinky.

36  As in the final finger on a hand.

37  Good God.

38  I now thank goodness that everything saved.

39  

40  What, ya think this is easy?

41  Well, no.

42  It's more along the lines of brewing a soup from scratch, and then adding ingredients that will come together in a roaring boil.

43  

44  Admit that you've been there.

45  

46  <crickets>

47  Ah, I'm hearing it's time to put this one to bed.

48  But not without a writing lesson.

49  Anyone who knows me knows I house hop, time hop, and book hop.

50  Today I'm going to bring back author Roy Peter Clark. He's the guy who brought you a fun book called Writing Tools.

51  He's the fellow who likened good writing to driving around in your neighborhood. The period, recall became a stop sign, the comma a speed bump, the semi-colon a "rolling stop," the parenthetical moment a detour, the colon a flashing yellow light warning there is something happening ahead, and a dash "...a tree branch in the road."

52  He had a bit of disdain for the dash---which I actually like, if you'll excuse my use of an adverb---because Stephen King makes tremendous use of the dash, and he is/was a bazillionaire.

53  Anyway, I thought I would bring some more stuff from Writing Tools. This guy has been published. I haven't the will to even try doing that.

54  So let us continue with a guy who took the traffic analogy home. Here are some more from that wonderful book. Here is where we left off:

  A writer once told me that he knew it was time to hand in a story when he had reached this stage: "I would take out all the commas. Then I would put them all back." The comma may be the most versatile of all marks and the one most associated with the writer's voice. A well-placed comma points to where the writer would pause if he read the passage aloud. "He may have been a genius, as mutations sometimes are." The author of that line is Kurt Vonnegut. I have heard him speak, and that central comma is his voice.

  More muscular than the comma, the semi-colon is most useful for dividing and organizing big chunks of information. In his essay "The Lantern Bearers," Robert Louis Stevenson describes an adventure game in which boys wore cheap tin lanterns---called bull's eyes---under their coats:

   We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigour of the game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled noisomely of blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they would always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure of them merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's eye under his top-coat asked for nothing more.

  Parentheses introduce a play within a play. Like a detour sign in the middle of the street, they require the driver to maneuver around to regain original direction. Parenthetical expressions are best kept short and (Pray for us, Saint Nora of Ephron) witty.

  My friend Don Fry has undertaken a quixotic quest to eliminate that tree branch in the road---the dash. "Avoid the dash," he insists as often as William Strunk begged his students to "omit needless words." Don's crusade was inspired by his observation---with which I agree---that the dash has become the default mark for writers who never mastered the formal rules. But the dash has two brilliant uses: a pair of dashes can set off an idea contained within a sentence, and a dash near the end can deliver a punch line.

55  Clark goes on to demonstrate how the dash can be used for "political persuasion" referencing a passage from Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and a major proponent of benign propaganda. I'll spare you most of the details except to say that Bernays believed human beings needed to be taught manners through propaganda, or, if left to their own devices, they would annihilate one another.

56  I'll float that one. 

57  Let's go back to Writing Tools:

  That leaves the colon, and here's what it does: it announces a word, phrase, or clause the way a trumpet flourish in a Shakespeare play sounds the arrival of the royal pro-cession. More from Vonnegut:
   
   I am often asked to give advice to young writers who wish to be famous and fabulously well-to-do. This is the best I have to offer: While looking as much like a bloodhound as possible, announce that you are working twelve hours a day on a masterpiece. Warning: All is lost if you crack a smile. (from Palm Sunday).

58  So there you have it. As you can see, different writers disagree with how to use punctuation. It controls pace, that's for sure. It also establishes rhythm and speed.

59  If you play jazz, you might get all this. Ponch was once criticized by some schlep that his band didn't play "real jazz." Can you even begin to imagine?

60  I'm going to include Clark's chapter-ending paragraph because I disagree with most of what he says. Have a look:

  When it comes to punctuation, all writers develop habits that buttress their styles. Mine include wearing out the comma and using more periods than average. I abhor unsightly blemishes, so I shun semicolons and parentheses. I overuse the colon. I write an exclamation with enough force to avoid the weedy appendage of an exclamation point. I prefer the comma to the dash but sometimes use one---if only to pluck Don Fry's beard.

 61 Where do I disagree? I use unsightly semicolons and parentheses all the time. I tend to avoid exclamation points unless there are seven, one for each day of the week.

62  Whenever I read a book about writing, I become amused at the inconsistencies of the writer teaching writing. Having taught using Warriner's English Grammar and Comp, I would see that the examples would often change out bold type with italics, or switch out terms such as NON-STANDARD with the word "incorrect." Little things, but things a person using the text year in and year out would notice.

63  Learning to write well can be demanding. Knowing grammar is important. Knowing about active voice is important. Anyone venturing into these woods needs to practice using writing tips and tools. 

64  What I did today was try to let you see that writers, especially teachers of writers might disagree on how to use punctuation. 

65  Are semicolons and dashes villains?

66  No. It's about choice. Use what works best for you. Period.

67  I gottago.

68  I once again wish to give a huge shout out to my daughter Nicole, and I hope you have the best Wednesday birthday <a-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!!!!!!!> ever.

69  See you again.

70  Peace.

~H~

  

fin.