A Neologism (and a half), After Much Rambling Buildup

Surely there are people who spend their time trying to devise neologisms (new words or expressions). I suspect that there is a whole subculture of these linguistic hobbyists. I think it's fair to say that the most blatant (and for a time, the most famous (and possibly the most prolific)) of these neologists in recent memory was Rich Hall. His "sniglets" (words that don't appear in the dictionary but should) were featured for a time on Saturday Night Live and he published a few volumes of them, which I believe were bestsellers.

[Note: Hall was a cast member of Saturday Night Live during at least one of what I think of as "The Forgotten Years". In recent years, when I have sporadically caught reruns of SNL on E!, I don't believe I have ever seen one of the episodes from this era rerun. These were actually my favorite SNL years (probably more than for any other reason because they're the years when I started watching, and they therefore have a real nostalgic value for me). Besides Rich Hall, the cast of this era included Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Hall, Eddie Murphy (although I don't think Hall and Murphy actually shared a season), Tim Kazurinsky, Gary Kroeger, Mary Gross, Martin Short, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Billy Crystal. Some of these people went on to stellar careers, some faded from the public eye. All were great in their own way, and it's a shame that those SNL episodes don't seem to be in syndication.]

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I've been trying to think on a 10,000 year scale instead of thinking in terms of decades or centuries. This is daunting. Especially if you also think in terms of trying to leave some sort of literary legacy. Which I do. ("Odd," you might say, given that I have never published a novel nor is there any real reason to believe that I will ever manage to do so. I won't dispute that it's odd. I also will freely admit that I have no such grandiose aspirations for what I post on my blog. It's easy to spew out lots of words if you are not trying to write for the ages.)

When I took my first real stab at writing a novel, I was not seriously thinking in 10,000 year terms. But I was thinking much more vaguely in terms of literary "immortality". And to some degree, this really acted as a hindrance to me, though perhaps not in the sense that you would expect. I wasn't frozen with fear at the prospect of trying to write something great. Instead, I was stymied by the certainty (certainty!) that much of what we deal with in our daily lives is (in the longish term) mere ephemera.

What will last?

"Telephone" will be an obsolete term soon. "Internet" will probably be obsolete even sooner. Already there's a generation of people for whom "Walkman" is meaningless, I'm sure. It's been superseded by "iPod" or "MP3 player", both of which will be virtually forgotten within 50 years. I'm pretty confident in saying that. Heck, even "computer" may fairly quickly become an archaic term, as what we think of as a computer becomes obsolete, replaced by some sort of I-don't-know-what. When faced with this knowledge, and motivated by the desire to write something timeless, what's an author to do?

In my case, the answer is challenging, and limiting: try your best to avoid including references to those things that you're sure will soon be memories, soon thereafter be quaint curiosities, and soon thereafter be lost to the realm of human experience. Limiting, indeed! If the phone is off limits, surely e-mail is too. IM and text messaging -- meaningless and (to me in my novelistic aspirational mindset) useless! What's an LP? What's an album? What in the world does vinyl have to do with music?

Anyway, the more I try to think on a 10,000 year scale, the more convinced I become that the idea of literary immortality is an unattainable goal. Here's what else I've concluded about the exercise: 1) Your best shot at literary longevity is inextricably linked with accepting anonymity. 2) The shorter your contribution (assuming it's really good), the longer it is likely to last.

So, if you want to leave a lasting literary legacy, your best bet is to accept that it will not be associated with your name for very long, and to make it as snappy as possible. Aphorisms, proverbs, and neologisms are really the way to go, if "immortality" is your goal.

Neologisms are actually probably the worst of these three forms, for the simple reason that the others can be translated to other languages with ease and (assuming they're really effective) they won't lose any value in the translation.

So, after there's no longer any such thing as a "penny" and after Ben Franklin is completely forgotten, "a penny saved is a penny earned" can still have meaning to any culture (and in any language) that has grasped the concept and adapted the saying to its particular vernacular. "Penny" is just a variable, easily replaced by "dollar" "yen", "peso", or "yumyum". "Save" and "earn" are simple concepts, easily translatable into almost any language. Assuming it still has cultural value, "a penny saved is a penny earned" can easily be imagined as having the potential to outlast the English language.

Neologisms are a trickier business. A neologism is only a neologism for a short time. If it catches on (a big if, always), it soon ceases to be a neologism and instead simply becomes a word. Words are really tied to the language in which they originate, with rare exceptions. ("OK" has somehow become fairly universal.) Generally speaking, if the language dies, so does the word. This doesn't even take into account the natural evolution of language that dictates the constant, gradual alteration in meaning that occurs to many (if not most or all) words. If you originate a new word with a particular meaning today and in 50 years the word is still used, but with a somewhat different connotation (or worse, a somewhat different denotation), can you still take credit for it? How about in 300 years, when your original definition is so far removed from the current one that there isn't even any readily obvious connection between what it was and what it has become?

I mentioned Rich Hall earlier. Turns out he was apparently Matt Groening's inspiration for the character of Moe Szyslak. Mentioning Matt Groening is a handy tool for tying neologisms to literary legacies. (I am, of course, using a very broad definition of "literary", here.) If we were placing bets, my money would be on "d'oh" as Groening's lasting literary legacy. I'm guessing that people will widely respect and appreciate (perhaps revere) The Simpsons (and, I hope, Futurama) for a few decades to come. I suspect that in 100 years, those shows will be as well known and loved as are the films of Harold Lloyd today. Which is to say that there will be a small group of devotees who fight hard to keep the legacy alive, while the vast majority of the population will suddenly be overcome by a blank stare (at best) when presented with a reference to them. By contrast, I'm guessing that "d'oh" stands a very good chance of lasting and being widely used as an expression of anger or frustration or revealed stupidity for at least a couple of hundred years. If I had to put my money on how long "d'oh" will be in common parlance, I'd bet somewhere between 300 and 600 years. (That's me being extremely optimistic, which is rare.)

Assuming "d'oh" lasts that long, will Groening's name be associated with it in any way? Not a chance! But it will still be his legacy, and I'm pretty sure that if it does last that long, it'll likely be his only (directly attributable) contribution to whatever has become of society.

Which is great!

I don't think Jose Saramago or Toni Morrison or Kenzaburo Oe or V.S. Naipaul or Orhan Pamuk is likely to have inserted anything so powerful as that one word quite so far into the future. This is not a commentary on their literary genius. Merely a thought about what likely lasts and what likely doesn't through the coming centuries.

It's fair to say that I am not one of those neologism hobbyists I mentioned at the start of this entry. It's also fair to say that I do not have any expectation that my offerings in this field will catch on, let alone last. However, having stated as much, I figure I might as well throw a neologism or two out there into the internet as see if I get any traction at all.

So, without further ado, one and a half neologisms for your consideration:

intrarogative - adj. Characterized by self doubt. n. One who is characterized by self doubt.
intrarogative question - n. A question, typically rhetorical and usually pessimistic, about one's own place in the universe.

I am an intrarogative (I think), always questioning my own choices in life, rarely certain that I have acted as wisely as I should have done.

"Why me?" is the mother of all intrarogative questions. Others include: "How did I get here?", "Why did this happen to me?", and even vaguer questions like "What else can go wrong?".

The Bell Ringer Joke Revisited

or:

If I'm Destined to Get a Pulitzer Prize for 02008, This is the Line of Thought That Will Earn It For Me

I'm pretty sure that it's been at least two decades since the idea of The Bell Ringer Joke started knocking around in my head. (I've mentioned the joke in a previous blog post.) There has been hope and despair, laughter and great disappointment, spread out over more than half my lifetime!

On Thursday morning, out of the blue, I had a few epiphanies regarding the joke for all of these years.

Epiphany #1: The first and second parts of the joke are spectacular, and if I had not been told at the time that I first heard them that there was a mysterious third part floating about in the ether, those two known parts would have been deeply satisfying. There would have been no disappointment associated with The Bell Ringer Joke whatsoever. The two parts stand together as a complete and brilliant story, riotously funny. Which is to say that the third part is only relevant if you know it exists. It is profoundly unnecessary to the success of the other two parts.

Having tracked down the missing third part, (since the internet made all such information readily available to all who seek it), I was precisely as disappointed by the third part as I had been warned I would be. For so many years, the rumor was not merely that there was a third part. Instead the rumor was that there was a third part and that it was a terrible disappointment to everyone who heard it. ("How bad could it be?", thought I, naively. The answer: Every bit as bad as everyone said it was.

This is why it took so many years to get to the third part: It was so bad that nobody who had heard it was willing to repeat it. In fact, there were claims of its being so bad that people completely excised it from their memories.)

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Epiphany #2: There is a reason why the third part is so horribly disappointing. And it's not really an intangible -- "you know it when you hear it" -- reason. On Thursday morning, I determined exactly why the third part is so disappointing. And I can articulate it simply. But first, as I tend to do so very frequently in this life, I feel the need to preface what I'm about to say.

Preface: I've never written a thesis on humor. I'm not very interested in doing so -- although I suppose if someone were to offer me a doctorate for doing so, I think there are certainly less appealing thesis topics to try to tackle.

I'm sure that many theses have been written on the topic of humor. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that The Bell Ringer Joke plays a fairly central role in at least a few of them. To be honest, I'm not terribly interested in reading any such theses. Although again, I suspect these would hardly be the most unpleasant theses to have to wade through.

It may well be the case that the more you try to figure out what makes something funny, the less funny it becomes. (This is the "dissecting a butterfly" argument, which applies also to poetry and beauty (and probably lots of other things).) That's not my point here. I'm not trying to provide a template that can be used to devise new jokes. Nor am I saying "if a joke doesn't fit this criterion, it's not funny". Rather, I'm pointing out where the disjoint is between the two successful parts of the joke and the unsuccessful third part.

So, here it is: The structure of the punch line in each of the two successful parts of the joke plays with the congruence of the literal and the figurative meanings of the idioms used. (In the first part, "I don't know, but his face rings a bell". In the second part, "I don't know, but he's a dead ringer for that other guy".)

This is not the same structure as the third part. The third part has nothing to do with bridging the literal/figurative gap. And for that matter, it has nothing to do with idiom. Frankly, I don't remember the third punch line, and I was so disgusted by it that I'm unwilling to look it up right now. But here's what I remember of it:

It was a pun.

Now, I've written before of my general distaste for the pun. I think it's a pathetic approach to humor. Rarely is it clever and almost never is it genuinely funny. That's my own bias, and I'll freely admit to that. However, that's not where my case against the third part rests.

Nor does it rest in my assertion that it is a horribly convoluted and horribly contrived pun. (Which it is!)

My case against the third punch line rests merely in its not being of the same type as the first two punch lines.

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If we can agree that the horrible third part should be thrown on the scrap heap [and I think all reasonable people can agree on this], we're left with the question of whether there should be a better third part that's properly designed and better fits with the other two parts. I am of the opinion that this is the case. Perhaps it's just based on years of frustration and pent up longing, but I really do believe that there should be a third part of the joke. That would provide closure, assuming that it's worthy of being matched with the others.

Epiphany #3: (This is the real shocker of the bunch.) I've been looking in the wrong place for the missing part. What's missing is not, in fact, the third part. What's missing is the first part! Logically, this makes sense.

The "second" guy is a dead ringer for the other guy. That's established by the fraternal relationship. The "first" guy's face rings a bell. Why? That deserves a set-up. Obviously, it's all in the telling, and it's easy enough to start out by establishing merely as a part of the narrative that the guy whose face rings a bell was taking over for a brother who died or retired or went missing. But I've come to understand that that's a cop out! "Easy enough" isn't necessarily right. Wouldn't it be better if there were a funny story to establish what happened to the first brother?

Of course it would!

So, now the task is not to establish not a new third part, but rather to establish a new first part, which would bump the other parts into the second and third slots. The end result is that you end up with a three-part joke (which, in my view, it deserves to be). And if it's built correctly, it will actually feel related to the other two parts, which is really what all of this longing and disappointment have been about.

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When I was in high school, I took a career assessment. The idea was that by asking a series of questions about a person's interests and personality tendencies, it was possible to make reasonable recommendations bout what line of work that person might be best suited for. Much to my surprise, I was judged most suited to being a stand-up comedian.

Funny, that.

I think I could probably come up with a funny routine and get some laughs if I were to put some real effort into it. Doing an open mic night is something that I've long contemplated but never bothered to look into. Maybe I'll get to that before I die. Maybe not.

I don't think anyone who knows me actually thinks of me as being "Mr. Funny". I'm not a cut-up and I've never really put much effort into my joke-telling skills. I hardly ever actually tell a joke, and when I do, it tends to be a very simple joke--largely because I have such a terrible memory, it's just so difficult for me to remember any very complicated story jokes. I'm not terribly comfortable in front of crowds -- I get nervous. And I am naturally a very reserved person, largely keeping quiet and not saying a lot. I am not what you would call a raconteur. (I write at length, but I really don't talk a whole lot at all.)

All of this suggests that if you want me to provide you with a new joke, you're probably looking in the wrong place. However, that's just what I'm about to do.

Again, this must come with some warnings.

1) I'm actually just going to provide you with an outline of a joke -- a skeleton, if you will. In order to become a genuinely good joke, it would need some flesh on its bones. Part of that is simply having a joke teller who knows how to "sell" the story. But part of it is in the actual wording, and (at the moment) I'm just not ready to invest the effort in trying to perfectly craft it.

2) Part of what makes The Bell Ringer Joke so special is that it isn't in the least bit blue. That is, there's no bawdiness in it at all. Now, if you know me, you probably know that I rarely ever cuss. Frankly, I came to realise a lot of years ago that cussing is just a lazy habit. It's easy to do, hard to avoid once you establish the habit, and really doesn't accomplish much. So a long while ago, I decided to make an effort to get out of the habit. In realizing just how lazy a habit it is, I think I came to really appreciate people who don't use it as a crutch for expressing themselves. This has extended to an overall appreciation for civility and a bit of disdain for crassness. You may call me old-fashioned, or call me a prude, or accuse me of being against free speech. That's your right. But the truth is that I think people can do better and I believe that the Jerry Springerification of America is one of the worst things that has happened in our society during my lifetime. I'm not as old as some, but I'm old enough to remember when adults were generally responsible enough to not expose children (in public, anyway) to foul language. I think that was a better time.

This is not to say that I can't appreciate a well-placed cuss word. One of my favorite movie quotes of all time comes from Friday, when Smokey says, "You got knocked the f*** out!" That's a hilarious line! Part of it is Chris Tucker's delivery. But delivery alone does not make the line. If you take the F-bomb out, it just isn't funny, no matter how well delivered it is. I understand this, and I appreciate it. I'm not "above" foul language, I just think it's altogether too overused in today's society. The unfortunate downside of this is that it loses its power and just becomes so much noise instead of providing any real emphasis.

The reason why I mention this is that my joke, while quite tame by today's standards, is still considerably bluer than is appropriate to be a truly good match for the other two parts of The Bell Ringer Joke. This is part of its downfall. I'm putting this out there right up front because I want it to be absolutely clear that this is a flawed "attempt". There should be no confusion about this point. I am not providing this outline of a joke as a proposed addition to The Bell Ringer Joke. Rather, I'm putting this out there as a bad example of how easy it is to do better than what's currently out there, and as a provocation in hopes that somebody out there will take up the challenge of doing even better than this.

3) My outline does take the approach of using the literal/figurative interpretation of an idiom as the basis for its structure. So here are a couple of other parts of its downfall: (a) The literal interpretation isn't literal enough. (b) The idiom I have gone with is too obscure and outdated.

For the existing two successful parts of the joke, the literal interpretations of those punch lines are absolutely literal. My punch line is not truly literal. It's close, in its own way. But it's not quite there.

As for the idiom, I think "his face rings a bell" is very widely understood. I suspect the phrase "dead ringer" is probably a bit less widely understood (and probably becoming ever less widely understood with each passing year). But for now, I think it's probably in common enough parlance to count as being part of the general American vernacular, and will probably remain such for quite a long while. My idiom was probably pretty widely understood 30-50 years ago, but I think it has pretty rapidly dropped out of common usage, and I suspect that in 50 years, it will be considered archaic usage. If I am right about these things, my joke simply does not have the appropriately broad appeal that The Bell Ringer Joke deserves for all of its parts to have.

So, here's my sketch:

Just after the start of the year, the bishop was at the cathedral to interview candidates for the position of bell ringer. The ancient bell ringer had decided to finally take his pension. He had served for quite a lot of years. His back could no longer handle the constant pulling of the ropes and his legs could no longer handle the constant climbing of the stairs that were requisites of the job.

One candidate stood out among the rest. He was young, but had an impeccable résumé, great references, and was a member of the most well-respected family of bell ringers in all the land. His father, grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather, as well as countless uncles, were all widely known to have served the church with distinction over many years. The man was hired, without audition, and the bishop left the cathedral with confidence in his choice.

The next day, as scheduled, the new bell ringer did his duty, ringing the bells exactly at the turn of the hour, every hour. Over the next months, he never missed a chime, never struck a wrong note, performed spectacularly for every mass, at every holiday. He was widely regarded as the best bell ringer in anyone's memory.

About ten months after the new bell ringer arrived, the church's old housekeeper retired and was replaced by a pretty young lady, who again had a wonderful résumé and unimpeachable references. The new housekeeper was diligent in doing her duty, and the church had never before been cleaner. Everything was spotless and sparkling. When the bishop came through on his annual visit, he was extremely impressed by what he saw and heard. He was even notified that church attendance had been steadily increasing in recent months, and was pleased.

But then one spring day, things started to go a little funny. In mid-afternoon, there was a surprise ringing of the bells. The priests had such faith in the bell ringer that they took this as a call to prayer, perhaps a special mass that they didn't realise was on the calendar. The quickly scrambled to prayer and did their duty.

A week later, there was another "special mass" at the same time of day.

And then the next week.

After that, the special masses started to occur still more frequently. It got to where there was a special mass every day, and their times started to vary.

One day, there were two special masses, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

One of the younger priests couldn't take it any longer. He had consulted every calendar he could find and was convinced there was no justification for these unscheduled bell ringing sessions. "Glory be to God, and the more prayer the better. Nonetheless, we have a schedule for a reason", he told the head priest. So the next day, with the head priest's blessing, he snuck up the bell tower and hid in a little closet one floor below the bells. He showed up early, before the bell ringer arrived for the day. And he waited.

He heard the bell ringer arrive right on time. Every hour, on the hour, the bells were rung, just as scheduled. The priest said his prayers as scheduled, there in the closet. Then at about 3.30 he heard some light footsteps outside the door, heading up the stairs. "Who could that be?" he wondered. And he peeked out, too late to observe the visitor. But he did notice that the banister seemed slightly shinier than it had been earlier in the day.

A couple of minutes later, the priest started to hear some whispering voices, one female and one male. He heard some giggling, which gave way to muffled grunting. The grunts intermingled with squeaks and then moans, getting slightly louder as the minutes passed. Just as they were reaching their crescendo, the bell rang, almost completely drowning out a scream in praise of the glory of God, still 12 minutes before the hour!

The priest cracked open the door to the closet yet again and peered out, waiting for the visitor. When she did pass by, he saw that it was the pretty young housekeeper. She was tidying her hair and straightening her skirt as she headed downstairs. When the hour came, the bells rang on schedule, flawlessly. By this time, the snooping spy had already arrived at the office of the head priest to make a report on what he had seen.

Early the next day, a local man was surprised to see the head priest wandering through the city posting signs in shopkeepers' windows announcing that a new bell ringer was needed for the church, and applicants should come to the bell tower the following Thursday.

The man walked into one of the shops and asked the shopkeeper if she had spoken with the priest. She confirmed that she had.

"So what's the story?", he asked. "The bell ringer we had was so good! Everyone agreed he was the best in our city's history. And especially in recent days, he has had such a big smile on his face when I have seen him going to work. Always so cheery, like he really loved his job."

"Well," said the shopkeeper, "it seems they had to fire him for making time with the housekeeper."

This, of course, leads pretty naturally to the next part of the joke, with some slight adjustments for a proper segue:

The following Thursday, the bishop arrived at the base of the bell tower to perform the interviews, hoping to redeem himself for his previous lapse in judgment. When he got there, he was surprised to see only one applicant. "You look very familiar", said the bishop.

"The last bell ringer was my kid brother" responded the applicant.

"Ah, I see. I must say, I do have some reservations about hiring you", said the bishop.

"Please", said the applicant. "I must restore my family's honor. My brother was a bit of a black sheep, who had strayed from the flock. He was always a bit of a rebel, which is why he was home schooled. Unfortunately, he never really got proper exposure to society before he came here. As you can see, I graduated with honors from bell ringing college. I had perfect marks in all my classes, and my Theory professor has provided you with a letter of recommendation testifying that I was the best student he has had in forty years of teaching. Plus, unlike my brother, I am happily married and would never cheat on my wife. I am a good Catholic, and I want to serve God. Ringing bells is my way of doing this. Please give me the opportunity to restore my family's honor."

"You make a convincing argument," said the bishop, "but I cant help but notice that you have no arms. Won't that be a problem?"

"It's never been a problem before", responded the applicant. If you won't take my word for it, perhaps we can climb the tower and I can audition for you. It's almost time for the hour to turn, anyway."

[. . . .]

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As I said, my own contribution above is meant at least in part as a provocation. I'm sure it's not a great joke, and I'm sure someone out there can do better. I advise you to keep in mind the guidance I have provided in terms of what makes the existing third part such a failure, and in terms of the failure points that I have already identified in my own joke. And so, with that, I invite (I implore) you to put on your thinking cap and please try to outdo me. Please contribute your own "missing first part" of The Bell Ringer Joke. I'm sure someone out there can do a bang up job! And I am desperate to read your offerings. So please post them here as comments to my blog. I look forward to reading what you have to offer. I can't promise fame or fortune. But if you do really well, I can promise you undying gratitude!

Things Worth Sharing

There are a few things I would like to share with my readers today:

For the last couple of years, I have been enjoying listening to the tail end of the Vinyl Cafe on CBC Radio, when I get out of the book store on Sunday afternoons. I don't think I've ever caught an entire episode, which is a shame. I was thrilled to hear a couple of months ago that they are making weekly Vinyl Cafe podcasts. It's a free subscription, so of course I subscribed as soon as I learned that the podcasts were happening. I'm a bit disappointed that the podcasts are not the entire shows. However, they're absolutely worth listening to. If you've never listened to the Vinyl Cafe, you really should give it a try! And with podcasts, it's easy to fit the listening into your schedule, rather than trying to fit your schedule around listening. This Stuart McLean fellow is a truly amazing storyteller. Really, a Canadian national treasure, in my opinion.

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If you've spent years using one of these:


. . . (especially if you have found the experience rather unsatisfying, as have I), you really should make an effort to track down one of these:


I don't know where we got ours, nor can I tell you who the manufacturer is, as it has no identifying marks on it that I can find. But here's the thing:

I don't really consider myself to be an Anglophile. Sure, I tend to use -ise instead of -ize. But that's simply a matter of finding it to be a much more elegant solution. And while I think it's wiser to use "zed" than "zee", I really only do so when it comes up in conversation with a Brit (which is extremely rarely). I have absolutely not adopted the British habit of (what in my opinion is) overuse of the word "brilliant". Instead, I have fallen into the dopey American habit of overusing "cool". However, in this one case, I have no better word to use than "brilliant". The orange-handled peeler pictured above is absolutely brilliant! It is somehow so vastly superior to the other style, that it seems somehow insulting to claim that they're really the same utensil. After years of hearing people say that there's a real difference between using a genuinely good tool and using a readily available tool, it's strange that this is the best example I have of experiencing the phenomenon for myself. Well, maybe the second best. Using the one instead of the other is akin to using a good dictionary instead of using a bad dictionary. And frankly, the difference is much starker than the superiority of the Mac over the PC. Gosh, that's weird to say! Anyway, bottom line: When I use the orange handled peeler, I end up wishing I had need to peel more! When I use the other style, I can hardly wait for the experience to be over. The orange handled peeler is an absolute joy to use! It is brilliant on potatoes and brilliant on carrots. If I objected to eating apple skins, I expect I would find it to be brilliant on apples too.

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We have two friends who recently gave birth, which means that they and their husbands recently went through the process of deciding what to name a child. Surely a daunting task. I neglected to mention to them the Name Voyager. Shame on me!!! The Name Voyager may or may not be helpful in choosing a child's name. I have found it useful in coming up with character names for writing fiction, at least. Whether you have need for it or not, I find it difficult to believe that you wouldn't appreciate its sheer beauty and elegance. It is a magnificent example of how it's possible to display complex data sets in our new digital world. In that respect, so far I have found its only rival to be Thinkmap's Visual Thesaurus.

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There was one more web site that I was eager to share with you, but it seems to have disappeared. So sad. Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I have shared today. Have a wonderful week!

A Rant on Romney and Religious Fundamentalism

I was listening to NPR's "All Things Considered" the other day when they aired part of an interview with presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The interviewer (Robert Siegel) asked about Romney's belief in the literal truth of the Bible, and Romney very slickly evaded the question while trying to make Siegel feel somehow dirty for asking the question. What follows is the feedback I provided to NPR:

Shame on Mitt Romney for trying to make Robert Siegel feel ashamed for asking a legitimate question and, by extension, trying to make NPR listeners feel ashamed for caring about the answer.

Does it matter to me which specific book(s) of the Bible a candidate takes more literally than others? Nope. But does it matter to me whether my vote supports someone who believes in superstitious hokum, to the exclusion of reason, logic, science, sense, and critical thought? You bet!

It's terrifying to me that Romney can, in one sentence, decry the "global jihad" that's threatening our way of life and in the next sentence say "My point is the Bible is the word of God". I hope I am not alone in seeing absurdity here.

Blind faith in religion is blind faith in religion, regardless of which particular religion is being used as justification. And it is dangerous.

Fundamentalists in the Middle East are out to destroy America. And fundamentalists in this country are out to win the White House. A fundamentalist led us into invading and occupying Iraq, destroying their infrastructure, and making our nation responsible (directly or indirectly) in the deaths of tens- or hundreds of thousands of innocent people there (depending on whose estimates you believe). That latter fundamentalist is also directly responsible for our country's loss of respectability in the eyes of much of the rest of the world.

It is absolutely legitimate for me, as a voter (and for Robert Siegel, as a reporter) to want to know just how trustworthy a candidate is in making important judgments of serious consequence.

Orwell's 1984 -- A Book Review

A few weeks ago, we were watching Jeopardy, and one of the questions was about George Orwell's 1984. I said, "I really should read that one of these days." A few days later, we were at a tag sale and Beth spotted a paperback of the book for a buck. So she bought it for me. Now I've read it, finally, quite a lot of years after I should have done. I had read Animal Farm a long time ago, but I had just never gotten around to reading 1984. Now I'm sad that I let it wait for so long.

So I provided one of my little capsule reviews to the book store on Wednesday. But since the blog allows me to spend as many words as I want, I'm going to publish a somewhat longer review here:

Stylistically and structurally, Orwell's 1984 is a masterpiece. In addition, it is a triumph of imagination. Orwell imagined a world so thoroughly as to make it seem less a fictional setting than an alternate reality. His book, while fairly short, is as complete as could be hoped for. The novel is brutal, unpleasant, and offers no hope of a happy ending. Despite these characteristics (or perhaps because of them) the book is utterly satisfying. It left me satisfied, perhaps, in a way that no other book I've ever read has done.

Entirely without suggestion, Orwell got me to wonder, at first idly, and then more and more desperately, what was really going on. The big question: What's going on outside Oceania? More pointedly, is there really a war happening at all? (Perhaps Oceania is really no larger than the island of Great Britain, and perhaps it is merely isolated from, rather than in conflict with, other nations.)

Just when I could barely stand the strain of this question, Orwell asked it. And then he answered it. Having done so, he then answered it yet again, only this time from what seemed a much more trustworthy source within his narrative. And then the twist: He systematically stripped away all of that source's legitimacy. And finally, the master stroke... Orwell did to me exactly what the Party does to its members: He left me with only one possible conclusion--a logical checkmate, in which I was absolutely forced to accept one harsh truth: If the Party says there is a war, then there is a war. Beyond that, there is nothing. Whatever the Party says is absolute truth.

The upshot: Orwell converted me from reader into participant.

Wow!

If you haven't read this book, I suggest you do. It's amazing!

You Can Say Anything With Words

Of all the pithy sayings I've ever devised, the following is surely among my favorites:

You can say anything with words.

If one keeps in mind what I wrote a few days ago about original ideas, one might wonder whether I was the first to formulate this sentence. I'm quite certain the answer is no. A quick Google search shows that whether I was the first or not, I'm surely not the only, although the sentence does appear surprisingly infrequently in the Google database.

I think the statement is true, although it may sometimes be difficult to find the appropriate words, and it may (on rare occasions) be necessary to invent new words to achieve the objective.

An interesting side-effect of this ability to say anything with words is that it's possible to say things that make no sense. Even more exciting: It's extraordinarily easy to say things that nobody has ever said before. This, despite many people's claims that "there's nothing new under the sun" or that "everything's already been said".

Take, for example, what was said by Miss Teen USA competitor, Lauren Caitlin Upton, during this year's pageant. If you haven't yet seen or heard the clip, click here.

Part of me thinks that her response is very sad (almost as sad as the statistic cited by the questioner). Part of me thinks it's extremely funny. And part of me is just astonished by the utter uniqueness of the response. While I'm sure Miss Upton's statement has been quoted many times since she made it, I'm every bit as certain that she was the first person in history to have ever assembled that combination of words in that order. There's not any chance at all that it had ever been done before.

Marvellous!

It's just more proof that plagiarism is an unnecessary art form. Why resort to plagiarism when the potential for original wording is so limitless?

Another Swig from the Linguistic Trough, and Another Poll

I also happened to invite the Linguistic Mystic to have a look at my July 31 post. He did so and was kind enough to give me a nice credit as the inspiration for his latest post, an interesting discussion of the mysteries of whether "tomorrow" begins at midnight or at wakey-time. Thanks, Linguistic Mystic.

Today's the third in my little series of linguistic discussions, again inspired by newscasters:

Why would you say "an historic event"?

I believe Peter Jennings used to do this. I always considered Peter Jennings to be the perfect exemplar of accent-free American English, despite his Canadian origins (Eh?). (Of course, it's all accents, really...and what I think of as "accent-free" is just as much an accent as is Apu-speak from The Simpsons. At the very least, however, Jennings didn't drop his R's or his H's and there was no chance of confusing the white race with the white rice.)

So why Jennings (and others who don't drop their H's) would use "an historic event" always seemed an inexplicable oddity to me. The best explanation I could come up with is a bizarre Anglophile motivation to try emulating The Queen's English by adding that "n".

Here's the rule I learned in school, which has always served me well:

Use "a" before any consonant sound or a long "u". Use "an" before any vowel sound except a long "u".

The a/an choice is based entirely upon pronunciation of the following word, not ever based on spelling.

So, for example, we get:

an egg -- vowel sound (short e)
a house -- consonant sound (h)
an umbrella -- vowel sound (short u)
a unique experience -- long u (the specified exception in the consonant sound versus vowel sound divide)
a potato -- consonant sound (p)
an honest man -- vowel sound, as the "h" is silent.

So to me, "an historic event" sounds just as wrong as "an potato", unless it's coming from someone with a British accent (for example), where historic is pronounced 'istoric.

If you don't drop your H's, then why would you use "an historic event"? Would you also use "an house"? How about "an halfhearted attempt"?

Note: The use of "an historic event" is certainly not isolated to Peter Jennings. And it's not isolated to spoken usage. I've noticed it in writing as well. And it always puzzles me, especially when I know the author is American.

Comments are invited. If you say "an historic event" and you pronounce the "H", what's your justification? If you know of other examples of people making different exceptions to the rule, please share. If you learned a different rule, what is it?

Here's my second poll:

Linguistic Discussions

This morning, I invited most of the authors of the Language Log blog to take a look at my last blog entry. (Most, not all, only because there were a few whose e-mail addresses I was unable to locate.) Anyway, what has ensued is a fairly fascinating discussion that's been carried on via an e-mail thread rather than as comments to my blog. Oh well. At least they all included me in the e-mails, which have been most edifying. (They're a bunch of professional linguists, and I certainly am not.)

So here's the gist of what seems to be the consensus:

• Both usages are in common parlance.
• This does cause confusion when people of one camp converse with people of the other camp (especially when scheduling, as the "next Wednesday" issue is just as much a problem as is the "last Wednesday" issue).
• The rift does not seem to be a recent development.
• This has been previously studied from a linguistic perspective.
• Such divergent dialectical usages are probably more common than most of us think.

In addition, I've gotten to learn two nifty words today: ideolect and ecolect. (Interestingly enough, both trigger the Blogger spell-check alarm.)

Amateur though I may be, I am much amused by linguistic topics. So today I will add yet another linguistic topic to my blog:

What I've learned from working in bookstores for so many years is that sometimes book covers have proofreading errors. Sometimes, these are especially interesting, including misprints of book titles on the spine. A few years ago, for example, I noticed the spine of a paperback edition of William Gaddis' novel, entitled A Frolic of His Own. The title on the spine read as follows (in two lines):

A FROLIC OF HIS
OF HIS OWN

This is especially interesting because sometimes the mind lets us see not what's actually there, but rather what it seems should be there. Most people, seeing that spine, would read the title the way it should have been printed rather than the way it was printed.

I'm sure the linguists have a scientific name for this phenomenon.

Anyway, on to tonight's discovery:

I found a Phonics book in the Spectrum series from McGraw-Hill. It's for Grade 3. The spine reads:

PHONCIS Grade 3

So I asked a coworker, "What does that say?"

His response: "Phonics, grade three"

So I asked again, "What does it really say?"

Same response.

Now, of course, this reading error is not any indication of stupidity. My coworker is quite literate and quite intelligent, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise. The point is that the mind plays tricks on us, and it's purely by chance that I happened to notice the printing error. Nine times out of ten, I might've read it incorrectly just as he did.

I bring this up, however, specifically because I find this to be an especially funny printing error. After all, it's a book about phonics!

My favorite t-shirt of all time had the following text:

Hukt on foniks wurkt fur me!

(If you're too young to get the reference, ask your mother!)

So, for the kids who have to spend their time plowing through this particular book, I think the final payoff is that they can claim, "I lurnt my fonciss!"

Our Evolving Language?

Last week (a phrase that I believe pretty much always means "the week before this one"), I was listening to the radio, as I do regularly while at work. The day was Wednesday, July 25, and I was reminded of something that's been bothering me (mildly) for quite a while now.

The radio announcer mentioned the YouTube Debate that happened "last Monday". That debate had happened on Monday, July 23. That's a mere two days before the report I was listening to.

When I'm speaking, if it's a Wednesday, and I say "last Monday", what I mean is "the Monday of the previous week". That is, "9 days ago".

This is the idiomatic usage that I grew up with, and I believed that within the English speaking world, it was pretty much universal usage.

On a Wednesday, if I want to speak about something that happened two days earlier, I am happy to say "two days ago" or "on Monday". (Using a past tense verb in conjunction with this phrase clarifies that I'm speaking about the most recent Monday, rather than the upcoming Monday). I might even say "Monday", without using any sort of qualifier. But you won't catch me saying "last Monday" unless I'm mistaken about just how long ago the event happened.

Later the same day, again on the radio, I heard two mentions of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal that occurred in March 02007. Remember, I was listening to this report in July 02007. And twice in this one report, the scandal was mentioned as having broken "last March".

If it's July, and I say "last March", I do not mean "the most recent March". Instead, I mean "March of last year". If I mean to indicate "the most recent March", I will likely say "this March" or "in March", or "this past March". But I certainly would not say "last March". To me, "last March" means specifically not the March that occurred during this calendar year.

I started noticing people (mostly newscasters on both television and radio) using this (to me, bizarre) phraseology several years ago. More than about 15 years ago, I'm pretty sure I had never thought that saying "last Monday" or "last March" was an ambiguous usage. And now I'm pretty convinced that it's entirely ambiguous.

So my question to you, dear reader, is this:

Am I mistaken in believing that the usage and meaning of "last" has been undergoing an unnecessary and confusing transformation in recent years?

And here's The Repeal Of Gravity Blog's first poll ever:

My First Mention in the Mainstream Press

After Richardson was finished at yesterday's event, as we were filing out of the restaurant, I was stopped by a reporter for the Eagle Times, a fairly local daily newspaper. He asked what I thought and so I gave him some opinions. When he asked for my name, I handed him one of my business cards, mentioned that I'm running for president, and encouraged him to check out my web site. He expressed some interest and asked a couple of follow up questions. Well, in today's edition of the Eagle Times, the top story is about the Richardson event in Claremont yesterday. And guess who got mentioned at the end of the article. That's right...little old me.

The following snippet is, of course, copyrighted material...and I encourage everyone to try to track down their own copy of the paper to read the full article. (Sadly, the Eagle Times' web site only includes the start of the article rather than the whole thing.) So here's the closing snippet, which amounts to my first mention in the mainstream press:

And even some opponents were happy with what Richardson had to say.

Louis J. Cassorla said he was "pleased" at what Richardson had to say and would be happy if he ended up as the president.

Cassorla is running for president in the primary, though he said he is running only to raise issues.

"I probably won't get any votes," he admitted. "But I'm against the two party system."

A bit of an error, as I'm not running in the primary, but rather in the general election. But that's fine. Any press is good press, right?

The byline on the article is By JOHN KELLEHER, Managing Editor, and I assume that's who I spoke with. He said they'd be in touch in the future, and I certainly hope that turns out to be the case. A little coverage of the "also rans" might be nice.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I might as well mention that as he was shaking hands on the way out, I shook Bill Richardson's hand, gave him one of my business cards, told him that I am also running, told him not to worry--that I don't expect or want to take any votes from him--and told him that I would write something about him in my blog, and that it would be positive. I think I managed that in yesterday's post, right? I certainly hope it came across as a positive assessment. I think Richardson deserves it. He impressed me quite a lot. If he means what he says, I can easily see him as a very good choice indeed.

Back for more, finally

Okay. So it's been well over a month since I've posted anything here. Very sad. Here's my list of excuses:

1) I was saddened to see the drastic drop-off of traffic to the site, once Google did whatever it was that resulted in the majority of my photographs no longer bringing search engine users here. I still have no idea what happened or why. I know that several people on the web have placed links to my bleeding heart flower photograph elsewhere. But given that they've not copied the photograph to other locations, and instead just left the photo on my server and used a link to display it elsewhere, I'm baffled as to why Google would treat those sites as the home of the image, rather than treating this site as the home of the image.

I suppose I could stamp my URL across all of my photographs, but frankly I don't like that sort of thing.

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UPDATE (July 17, 02008): Well, it happened again a couple of days ago: a sudden drop-off in traffic to my blog as a result of Google's sending traffic to another site that's using my bleeding heart flower photo. I sent an e-mail to the administrator of the other site. In the e-mail, I requested some simple courtesies (being given credit for the photo, for one), given that I am the copyright holder. In the meantime, Google seems to have done something to adjust itself. However, at the moment, it's sending people to a subpage of my blog where the image in question isn't actually visible. Odd! Anyway, if you appreciate this photograph, you might be interested in knowing that I've made it available on my newly re-launched online store both on a t-shirt and on a mouse pad (with somewhat different crops).

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2) Also related to that, I've been less interested in posting my photography here since all those photographs disappeared from Google. Maybe they're still searchable, but I just don't know what search terms to use to find them. Frankly, I'm really disappointed in Google, and I'm wondering why they can't get their image search to be anywhere near as useful as their text search. And I'm pretty disgusted about the way they've chosen to make it impossible to provide feedback to them or to get meaningful information from them about how to get their image search to behave as one would hope.

3) I've been thinking a lot about political issues recently. I've been trying to avoid letting this become a political blog. Or, more accurately, I had been trying to avoid letting this become a political blog. After wrestling with this issue, I've finally come to the conclusion that I should no longer make an effort in that direction. So as of today, I've come to accept the premise that if political thought is what's occupying my mind, then I might as well allow political thought to be what occupies my blog.

4) Time seems to have escaped me. More accurately, I've found more compelling ways to occupy my time than by sitting at a computer and typing. I got to do the photography for some friends' wedding. (Congratulations, Christina and Jimmy!) Beth started a new job that allowed her to be home during the evenings rather than working during the evenings. So we've been able to spend more time together, which has been really nice. She just left that new job yesterday. (It wasn't the right fit.) She'll be going back to work where she had been working (where she enjoyed the job, but was dissatisfied with the schedule), but it looks very much like her schedule there will be better, and so we'll still be able to spend our evenings together. Hooray! One door opened up and then another door opened up. This is better than that business about closing a door and opening a window.

Anyway, I'm back, and again I hope to post something new on a fairly regular basis.

Elevating the Pun to an Art Form

According to Samuel Johnson, the pun is "the lowest form of humour". I've always been inclined to agree.

To me, the pun has always seemed like a character type.

A Lyle Lovett lyric goes like this:

You are a lonely, weak, pathetic man.*

My favorite lyric from any Smiths song goes like this:

So you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home and you cry and you want to die.**

If puns were people, these are the kind of passages that would seem entirely appropriate for describing them.

I have no real pity for the pun, no matter how much disrespect is thrown at it. The pun seems desperate, but not especially pitiable. I'm not saying that there aren't clever puns out there. Surely, there must be. But on the whole, as a class, puns are insipid. Is there a better word to describe them? I doubt it.

However, there is one area of human endeavor where I truly believe the pun has been raised to an art form: The mystery novel title.

There seems to be an entire subgenre of mystery novel that has sprung up around the punny title. Consider the following:

Diane Mott Davidson

• Sticks & Scones
• The Cereal Murders
• Chopping Spree
• The Main Corpse

Nancy Fairbanks

• Crime Brulee
• Truffled Feathers
• Chocolate Quake

Laura Durham

• Better Off Wed
• For Better or Hearse
• Bride and Doom
• Acts of Violets

Charlaine Harris

• Grave Sight
• Dead Over Heels
• Club Dead
• Last Scene Alive

Maddy Hunter

• Norway to Hide
• Top O' the Mournin'
• Alpine for You
• Pasta Imperfect

Gillian Roberts

• A Hole in Juan
• Till the End of Tom
• Adam and Evil
• Claire and Present Danger
• Helen Hath No Fury

...and the queen of the subgenre (in my opinion), Mary Daheim

• Saks and Violins
• Dead Man Docking
• Fowl Prey
• September Mourn
• A Streetcar Named Expire
• Legs Benedict
• Dune to Death
• Wed and Buried
• Suture Self
• Creeps Suzette
• Silver Scream
• Murder, My Suite

It's not that the puns in these titles are especially rich. (Mostly they aren't.) Rather, it's just the hokiness of the whole thing. A punny book title like these is almost guaranteed to belong to a mystery novel. Seeing all of these titles makes me seriously wonder what's going on.

• Which comes first? The title or the book idea?
• Do the authors maintain title lists for years, just waiting for the opportunity to cross the items off their lists?
• Are the titles really tied to the stories? (I'm almost tempted to grab a few of these books and read them just to check on this one.)
• Do publishers or agents provide the titles as writing prompts?
• Do publishers salivate at the prospect of a new punny-title mystery series? Or do they all groan at the idea of yet another punny-title mystery series?
• Are there punny titles that are rejected?

* Her First Mistake
** How Soon is Now

Capsule Review: The Ice Storm

Here's another of those little "Staff Recommendation" reviews that I write for the book store:

The Ice Storm, directed by Ang Lee.
Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Tobey Maguire, Joan Allen, Katie Holmes. If you're a movie fan, these names should mean something to you. This low-key gem may actually be the best piece of work any of them has ever been associated with. We named our first dog after the Katie Holmes character. "Libbets? What kind of a name is Libbets?!?" The movie is centered around a couple of families during a strange and tragic Thanksgiving weekend in the 1970s. It probably won't make you cry, it may not make you laugh, but it might just leave you in awe.

New Blogging Strategy, Newton Baby Picture, Two Reviews

I know that I haven't been the most regular blogger. I would like to do something about that. I doubt that I'll get to the point where I'm posting something new on a daily basis. But I would like to post something new at least a few times a week. So, I've devised a new strategy.

While I certainly don't want to turn this into a photo blog, I have come to realise that my photography is what's getting me more hits than anything else. (Why doesn't my dictionary project seem to capture anyone's attention? I don't know. I've found it absolutely fascinating!)

So what I'm going to start doing is posting photographs more regularly, particularly when I don't have anything else to contribute for a few days. Some of these will be old photos that I haven't previously posted, but that I happen to like a lot. Some will be new photos. For today, an old picture of Newton, from when he was still a little baby, 4 1/3 years ago.

Strategy shift number 2:

For the book store, I sometimes make staff recommendations. Instead of just telling our merchandising supervisor, "I like this", I generally provide a brief review. It's almost certain to be a positive review. (Why recommend something I don't like?) But it's a review nonetheless. I figure I might as well make dual-use of these reviews. So I think that in addition to posting more photographs, I'll also start occasionally posting these reviews. Surely I won't always post both on the same day, but as today is the launch of my new blogging strategy, I figure I'll make it a super-bonus day. In fact, I'm going to give you two reviews today!

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The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. Having loved the movie for over a decade and a half, I finally got around to reading the book and was surprised to find that I loved it just as much. The two are different, but they very much share the same spirit and I find that they can happily coexist in my mind as two parts of the same beautiful dream.

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The Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner. So far, the only thing that dates this movie is the antiquated video game played by Fred Savage in the framing story. Eventually, the line "When I was your age, television was called books" will date it as well (as the word "television" drops out of common parlance). Beyond that, this is one for the ages…a timeless classic. This is undoubtedly of the most quotable movies ever made. I'm convinced it's also one of the most flawless. And it's suitable for the entire family.

Blithering

1) I discovered the other day that the car dictionary does not include another of my favorite words: Luddite. Beth was unfamiliar with this word. (She claimed it was a fake word, just as I claimed that bumf was a fake word when she first introduced me to it. I have since come to greatly appreciate it.)

2) Part of me wonders whether I should provide definitions for the words in question here in my blog. More of me thinks: (a) You're reading this blog on the internet, where information is always available to you. You can find it yourself with a few mouse clicks and keystrokes. (b) Maybe if you don't know any of my test words, you'll check your own dictionary (or dictionaries, if you have multiple). Maybe you'll get your own ire up if you discover that the dictionary you've trusted for years is really quite inadequate. I'll admit that there may be nothing terribly outrageous about a dictionary's editors choosing to omit anhedonia. On the other hand, I can't bring myself to justify the omission of pariah from any dictionary that doesn't have "Children's" or "First" in its title.

3) Nobody's commented about the new look of my blog. I changed the background color and the header graphic so that The Repeal of Gravity Blog no longer looks like the thousands of other blogs that started with the same Blogger template as I chose. I wonder what you think of the new look. Please comment. In fact, I like getting comments about anything I post. So please comment.

4) Part of the reason why I started this blog is just for personal amusement. Part of it, however, was to try to increase the number of hits to my Official Campaign Web Site. Frankly, regardless of how that site's hit counts are doing, I'd really like to see the hit counts increase on the blog. I try to make it interesting. I try to write well and to spell correctly. I try to provide interesting photographs. What am I doing wrong? How can I find a larger (interested) audience (given that I have no budget with which to pay for advertising)? I know I tend to get wordy when I get rolling, but I would think that would be counterbalanced by the infrequency of my posts. Advice, anyone? Maybe the way to go is to put out a call to other bloggers: Link to my blog and send me an e-mail saying that you've done so, and I will add a link back to your blog. Could I do this in good conscience? I suppose it would require some sort of disclaimer: This offer only good if I'm not in some way opposed to or inappropriately disturbed by your blog. Oh, what the heck? Why not? The offer (with disclaimer) is hereby made!

5) As mentioned earlier, it seems that many of my recent visitors have been coming from Google's image search showing my bleeding heart photo. The photos I posted on November 23, however, still don't show up in Google's image search. They all have alt text behind the scenes. (For example, the first , third and fourth all have "Zion formation" as their alt text. but searching Google's image search for that phrase (using quotation marks) only results in one hit. And it's someone else's photo.) Does anybody have any good advice as to how to get those images into Google's image search database? I happen to think that all of those pictures are of an equally good quality as my bleeding heart photo. Perhaps getting them into Google would serve to bring in more gawkers. Gawkers are good! Welcome gawkers!

6) I didn't have my word list with me last Sunday, but I flipped through another dictionary on my lunch break. I have high hopes for this one: The New Oxford American Dictionary. In fact, I also plan to check it out tomorrow to start on a new secret project, inspired by my current research project. (One of the perks, which I rarely use, of working for a book store is that I'm allowed to use it as a lending library for any hardback or trade paperback that we have multiple copies of in stock. I should really take better advantage of this perk, but I have tons of books I already own that I just don't have time to read. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's literally tons. Very sad!)

NaNoWriMo is Coming Again

Last year, probably around this time, a couple of sentences popped into my head, and I knew that these would form the opening lines of my first attempt at National Novel Writing Month. The sentences were as follows:

Angelique was thin in a way that resembled tall. Her husband, Laszlo, was short in a way that resembled broad.

I had no title in mind, nor did I have a premise. All I had was two sentences. I was confident that they constituted a fine start. True to the spirit of the exercise, I did not commit those sentences to paper (nor did I type them into a computer, nor did I utter them aloud) until November 1. And that's where my journey began.

I am plagued by a terrible memory, and so I knew that there was a high likelihood that by the time November 1 rolled around, I might well forget those sentences. They might be superseded by something better (or by something worse). Or I might just start NaNoWriMo with a blank mind, having to manufacture a whole new start when November began.

But whatever was to become of those sentences, I was quite sure that I was going to try to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November, 02005.

When November started, I came up with a working title. As the month wore on, I scrapped that title in favor of another and then scrapped that replacement title for yet another. I ran out of steam a couple of times and had to dig deep to figure out how to keep going (in terms of narrative direction, more than in terms of inspiration or will to continue).

As it happened, those opening two sentences remained intact in my mind until November 1. They were the first sentences I typed in my attempt, and they still stand as the first sentences on what is now a mere first draft. I did not reach my goal of 50,000 words. Instead I managed just over 40,000. I still think those sentences are strong. And I managed to come up with many other passages of which I am proud. In fact, overall, I'm pretty proud of what I did manage to accomplish. While I fell short of the 50,000 word goal, I think I did manage to compose a cohesive work of fiction. "Cohesive" is apparently something that escapes the grasp of many NaNoWriMo winners.

I haven't yet gotten all the way through on my first pass at proofreading. That will come with time. I'm sure of it.

The feedback I've gotten from the few people who have provided such has largely been encouraging, and I'm pretty sure a small gem can be pulled from that first draft. But now, as the summer is winding down, I find myself not so interested in revisiting that first attempt. Instead, I am looking forward to NaNoWriMo 02006.

I have not fixed on an opening yet. I have had some ideas bouncing around in my skull. But none has jumped out as an imperative. At the moment, I can't recall a single one. But I'm confident that in the next few months, something will begin to congeal--or at least some idea will make itself persistent. And when November starts, I will be ready to go once again into the vast expanse of literary wilderness that is NaNoWriMo.

And you're all invited to play along! If you're interested, visit www.nanowrimo.org and sign up.