Monday, August 30, 2004

Since I'm trying to increase my randomness

After taking the test to see how random I was, I determined myself to expressing myself in a more random way. In the past, I've discussed with my former roommate about how things I say can sometimes sound random, it's just that there is an entire train of thought reaching up to this. Like last night. I had a conversation with Michael at karaoke about that signifies my seemingly random thoughts, that aren't random at all. Here is that conversation:

M: You like this song.
B: Yeah, Dean's great. (Wow, I'm quite the conversationalist! Yeah, right. Dean was rapping Ice, Ice Baby. I don't like rap, but Dean is an amazing person and fun to listen to.)
There is a pause in the conversation.
B: Bryan did a terrific job at Getting Jiggy Wit It. He made it his own song.

Michael stares at me blankly. Yes, we had been talking about rap, but not Bryan, or that specific song. And the comment I made was to justify people trying rap songs at karaoke.

I look at Michael and explain.
B: I just left out something. What I meant to say before that was, 'I have trouble enjoying rap. Dean is the only person I can listen to at karaoke because he adds his own words to the songs during the musical breaks and he can speed up the songs and still sound clear. I don't like to listen to anyone else. Except Bryan. [Insert what I actually said here.] He sang it like Frank Sinatra would and added class.'

No wonder Michael looked so confused. It seemed random, but I did not randomly make it to that thought.

In other words, I'm trying to either improve what I explain or try to be truly random. Like Dana. Dana is a random person. Or seemingly random. What scares us is when I can understand her train of thought and associations bringing her to the words she just said. (Oh, I like Paul Simon, who's that guy I don't like?)

What brought me to discussing my randomness (or lack thereof)? I was blog surfing again. I love this Next Blog link at the top. It's so much better than having advertisements for pens at the top of my blog. (Matt gave me new pens! Hurrah!)

I find many blogs I have no interest in reading. It's usually because I don't have the skills in certain foreign languages to read them. There are some that bother me grammatically. Here's my vant about the grammar.

The word 'peoples'. As in "Hey peoples!" This just irks me. If you're going to be seriously writing, be serious about what image you are portraying through your words. When someone is reading your works, they are getting a picture of who you are. Presenting yourself as an uneducated individual does not make others want to read your expressions.

Using the font/program (I don't know how people do this) that capitalizes every other letter. Such as, "wE wEnT tO tHe StOrE." Again, this shows no grasp on the English language. I can handle some grammar issues. Just not blatant disregard for the language.

My last vant about grammar. If you are going to bother with punctuation, bother to capitalize I. Examples are: "i went to the store. i stayed home. i went to work." All this does is show how lazy someone is. Pressing the shift key is not difficult people. Unless you only have one digit total on both hands, there is no excuse for this. Our language has capital letters and punctuation for a reason. It helps designate importance, breaks in trains of thought, context, etc. Grammar includes the tools we use to communicate. If I said to you, "sToRe went me," you may understand that I went to the store, but you're going to think less of me. Grammar makes it easy for others to understand you. Please use it!

Okay, back to my normal state of bliss. I'm not just trying to express my displeasure in the writing skills of the general public. I found a site today which I loved. It may be one of the best written sites I've had the pleasure of finding. This man is well-written, he is descriptive and still grasps the concept of expressing action. His posts are interesting, creating a picture in my mind. The technique does not hinder the story he is weaving. The site is The Cyberdeck Dialogue. If you are interested in good writing, check it out. I recommend it highly.

I guess I'm not that random, am I?

To be completely random:

An update to my undying desire to possess the next Dark Tower book by Stephen King. The dreams have started up since the release date (and my next day off of work - I can't believe I took a day of vacation to read a book) is only 23 days away.

I had a dream last night where I held the new book in my hands. It was the day it came out. The book was thick, as I wish it will be. It boasted over 900 pages. The epic adventure concluded with an epic itself. I check the back page to see the actual page content (not to read the last sentence). I notice it looks like an index. This seems odd for fiction. Puzzled, I ponder why an index would be in a fictional story. Thinking it may be the concordance for the stories (which the second concordance of the Dark Tower series, assembled by Robin Furth, covering the last three books, will also be released with the final book), I try to determine how many of the pages this index covers. This is where the dream becomes a nightmare. I see that the index covers over 680 pages! Ahhhh! The story itself only covers 219 pages. (Yes, the number 19. My desire to see the significance of this is growing.) I am so disturbed by the lack of story, I wake up.

I am officially a tower junkie.

1 Comments:

At 9:02 AM, CarpeDM said...

I am so confused. I try to follow what you are saying but your use of logic to explain randomness makes my head hurt. Ow.

Okay, actually, I took my break early because I had a headache already.

You scare me with this whole tower thing. I don't get the 19 reference. Tell me what it means! Tell me! Okay, head hurts more because of furrowing of brow.