Okay, so I’ve been reading an extremely popular series of books. Young Adult books (YAs for short) that have replaced the Harry Potter series in the hearts, minds and libraries of tweens to forty-somethings. I couldn’t help it, there was such a buzz about the book(s) and the movie so I had to find out what the big damned deal was. So I bought the first one. I literally devoured it as quickly as I could. I must admit she’s got a good story. Her writing, however, sucks with a capital suck.
So I cut some slack on the first one. I mean, who knew it would be such a huge best seller? Then I read the second one (I had to find out what happened. Hey, I’m not made of wood, people. It was a cliff-hanger. Prom night and all that. Jeez.).
There was an exchange of information between the two main characters. Let’s call them Romeo and Juliet. Except that Romeo sparkles ferchrissake. Anyhoo. So this exchange of information was not clear and they each had a different interpretation of the meaning of what had been said. This bajillion dollar-earning author calls this a “misapprehension”. I kid you not. Now this book is put out by a very large publishing house and I’m sure that house is lousy with editors and yet no one fixed this error (that’s not the only error, grammatical or otherwise, just one that really pissed me off).
So I sat down in front of my laptop, filled with apprehension (real) and just started to write. I knew it couldn’t be worse than what I’d just read. I wrote and wrote. My short story came in at 23,000 words (after the initial edit) and I knew I was nowhere near finished. I’d only written the bare skeleton of the story. So it’s now a novel. Something I may never finish, but that doesn’t really matter. I know that if an editor ever sees it, he/she/it will not have basic word usage to correct. So I’ve got that going for me. It may suck, but at least it isn’t wrong. That made it a-okay with me.
After I read the second book, I had an idea for a real short story. I jotted down the basics - this really will be a short story - and the rest is simmering in the plot pot to be stirred and served later.
So far, two for two.
Today I bought the two remaining books in the series. Paid extra for the hard cover versions as I don’t think they’ve been released in paperback yet. I have faith that I’ll have two more decent projects of my own after reading them. If I could earn 1/10 of what she made, I’d be one happy writer.
Sometimes one’s misapprehension is one’s own worst enemy.
Oh yeah, that’s a spelling error that twinks my fillings with tin foil. So let’s see if we can clarify this a bit:
When you lose weight, your belt may become loose.
See? If you’ve dropped pounds you can drop an “o”. Does that help? I hope so because when you use them incorrectly, I can’t even concentrate on what you were losing or loosening. All I can think of is how your thought has now lost any coherency and that you’re an idiot. Especially if you’re arguing an important point of Innernet information.
So hang loose.
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So Satan is coming over for dinner today. We hope to distract his evilness with broken radios and soft kittens. Should that not work, we’ve installed instant hot water so he can make cocoa or something. If that doesn’t work, I’m sure there will be another post tomorrow with the Satanic Recap.
Devilishly delightful.
In this ever changing world we are constantly confronted with new technologies. Oh sure, they look good; all glossy and full of clicky buttons and tabs. But really, where do our affections really lie? With a 140 character blurb about driving to the grocery store to get cookies or with the unlimited character dump that is a blog?
We admit it. We’ve gone over to the dark side and have been using the time suck that is Facebook. Why? I dunno. Why not? Pithy posts with immediate comments from “friends”, many of whom we’ve never met. They are technically friends of friends and why am I trying to impress them? A thumbs-up can make your day. An inscrutable comment has you contacting a friend (sometimes an actual friend) via email to ensure everything is a-okay. Plus there are games. We don’t have games on our blog. And we can sit here for days, weeks, months and not get any comments, nor kill any pixelated bad guys.
So do we just abandon our beloved blog for the instant gratification? A fling? A tryst? No! No! I say. Vehemently, in case the exclamation points did not tip you off.
While commenting on a public forum like Facebook is fun, everyone knows it’s you. Much more difficult to be snarky and dare I say honest. So here’s to the anonymity that we have with Off Pudding. It’s who we are and who we will always be. Anonymous. At least until I post the link in Facebook.
And if you overuse the dreaded exclamation point, I can call you on it. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
So the dust settled… this sounds so familiar. This time Bezel and Clevis stand tall. Well, one of us stands tall and the other stands proud. The Tech Writing A-Team survives all attempts to crush and separate it. It is nice to know that all of that, as we have been assured, is behind us… for now, at least until it isn’t anymore.
Now if I can just remember what I was up to when all of this started in the first place…
While you can still see the finer particles of it drifting about causing people to sniff and sneeze, much of the dust has begun to settle. However, while things look a little clearer, they don’t look any better.
On the bright side, Bezel can tell Clevis to go screw himself since she no longer reports to him… oh, wait, that never really stopped her before.
Tags: Blather
So technically I guess the good guys won. They’ll split up the team (our team!) of super heroes to hopefully save the other communities. What they may not realize is what made us great was the team, together, not the super heroes. Won’t that be sad for all of us when that gets figured out?
Note to self: Do NOT drink and listen to John Denver ferchrissake.
Regardless of your political, ideological or religious leanings, you cannot help but look at a paper or the TV and go, “WTF!?!” Seriously, when you have people all over the world say, “Well, hell, if we are just going to make money up out of thin air to fix everything, then I say, ‘Go big or go home!’”, there is little you can do, except imagine things were better. If only we could get those people who imagine money out thin air to… I digress.
Anyway, it may just be me, declaring this to the wind, but I declare this the Age of Stunned Cynicism. A time when even the cynic is at a loss for words at the absurdity of the world around us. If Salvador Dali was alive today, I think he would be saying, “Holy shit, I can’t believe it, the world is just as I imagined it would be.”
But I think that part of the problem is that the language of the world of yesterday just doesn’t work in a world of stunned WTF-itude. So that is why Bezel and I have begun crafting a jargon for the age, a dictionary that Bitter Bierce would be proud of.
Ok, so maybe we just started making up good words and I am giving them purpose here (without even consulting Bezel). But we (the royal we) feel that it is necessary to help the world out during these troubled times. So here is what we have to start.
Inarrogant
Imdispensing
Mockstonishment
Underdispensible
We have had some help with some of these, though I offer no attribution at this point… nor definition. I think we may have to start a glossary to attach to offpudding, which could include silly things like definitions and usage. I think it would be an underdispensible addition to our blog, and I would be mockstonished if our readers didn’t feel the same.
Feel free to offer suggestions…
When we last saw our superheroes, they were fighting grammar crimes everywhere. Split infinitive? Solved! Cliches? Removed! POW! THAWP! KA-BLAM!
Then the evil overlords (Consortium of Unreasonable New Treatise Society) tried to take over the world. They attempted to thwart our heroes with threats and intimidation. They even threatened to steal the Cloaks of Invincibility (Clevis has a cloak with uber-fiberfill that gives him a muscly, nippley chest; mine does creative draping which hides the fact that the lycra suit is a bit too form-fitting to my non-fibrefill areas). We decided the best thing to do was to work even harder and then, when that didn’t work, hide. So we hid and hid hard.
We formulated a plan to thwart the thwarters. It is hard. But we persevere. We will emerge victorious, capes in tact. We really pretty sure of this. No, we’re confident! After all, we are the Tech Writing A-Team, we have to win, we’re the good guys! Besides we can’t let them win. That would suck. Majorily.
Misplaced (?) Sconnie and I had this wonderful idea. Let’s hike the Ice Age Trail. It is a planned trail of 1000 miles or more, though currently only about 600 miles exist. As they say, “A journey of a 1000 miles begins with a 4 mile jaunt.” So that was what we did, or rather, what we had planned to do. According to the map of Lapham Peak the section of the Ice Age Trail that winds through the park is 4.0 miles long. However, according to my GPS, the trail was actually 5.75 miles long. My body had been good for about 5 miles before body parts started failing. Four days later my body appears to back to normal, relatively speaking. And yes, I must admit that Misplaced (?) Sconnie out walked me on this leg, but we still have hundreds of miles to go. Anything can happen.
We thought a winter hike would be cool, and we were not disappointed. The snow was flying and it was beautiful.
So my excitement at our new Twitter technology fell with a giant thud today when Clevis asked me the $64,000 question: “What’s Twitter?” It took the wind out of my wireless sail. I sent him the Wikipedia link (no doubt 100% correct as it’s on the innernets) and a silent tear rolled down my cheek.
It’s not that we needed or even use Twitter (yet), but the Young People use it (and some other cool people - Stephen Fry I’m tweeting at you!) and we’re all about the Young People. We’re in touch. We speak their lingo. Right Daddio?
Our lack of coolness is now apparent. As if it wasn’t before.