eschew obfuscation
I recently stumbled upon this perplexing paragraph, donated to the public domain by one Mark Twain a number of years ago:
In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and veracious vivacity, without rhodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, purient pscosity, and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent.
Next time your English teacher accuses you of writing from a thesauras... just show him/her this lovely work of, well, polysyllabic profundity ;) And now, on to slightly less important, though vastly more interesting, updateage (bite me, so I started a sentence with a conjunction...)
I recently discovered a modern literary treasure: my brother's online journal. 'Tis quite a shame I never noticed it before, seeing as it's prominently displayed in his AIM profile. For those interested, the link is http://blogitall.com/blog.asp?un=jason. I think I'll devote the remainder of this paragraph to explaining my brother as best I see fit. He's certainly intelligent, though as academic as his own hamster. He has developed web sites (namely My Online Quiz) with millions of visitors, yet no real means to become profitable (aside from a few dollars from banner ads). Despite this, his coding style is sloppy and any sane CS professor would flunk him, yet his programs amazingly appear to work the majority of the time. Abstraction is his enemy, and kludge jobs his specialty. I somewhat fondly remember a challenge we once had: to develop competing Connect-4 programs, and see which won. He, ahem, "borrowed" his program from a code-distribution website, whilst I slaved for a day or so to perfect my AI. However, were it not for his liberal interpretation of the rules, I'd not have been pressured to keep working on my program until it was able to beat "his". I'm still waiting on my checkers challenge ;) He's one of the most generous fellows I know, yet most forms of bacteria have more culture than does he. While lacking in social skill, he more than makes up for it in tagging along with me :) Like me, the majority of his friends are older than himself, though particularly lacking in estrogen content. His entrepreneurial spirit will most likely lead to him either becoming extremely rich, or extremely poor... I find it simply impossible to envision him working some 9-5 job in a stuffy grey box for 40 years just to have the government tell him that his pension bought a few AAMRAM missiles for our war on the country-du-jour. Perhaps I speak too much of the young lad sleeping but a few feet above me now. Ah well, he'll be glad to be mentioned.
Earlier today (yesterday, technically), Natty pointed out an article claiming that the way the majority of high school students write could be best described as a "tangled mass of internet lingo". Do people really have such a difficult time distinguishing formal essays from informal IM conversations? Not that I'm a terribly huge fan of internet shorthand in general, but how hard is it to avoid use in formal papers? More importantly than that, however, is the lack of coherence... basic theses, outlines, and concise points. We discussed a few possible causes, from not readings much (presumably the fault of TV or the computer). As previously stated, I believe TV dinners are the root cause of the dumbing down of America ;)
Of course, the highlight of Friday was On The Bricks that night. Allow me to list the friends that accompanied me (along with probably 80,000 other people): Katie, Melanie, Christina, Danielle, Butch, Nikkie, Dustin, Clay, and Jason. I realized something tonight I've noticed a few times before, that I seem to be the common link between a lot of people I hang out with on a regular basis. It's almost as though I've formed my own social group, after giving up on everyone else's. For instance, Dustin knows me from Masters, an while he technically knew Jason, they'd never have become friends were it not for my originally befriending Dustin. Nikkie, of course, was a friend from Pleasantdale, and now is Dustin's girlfriend. They're all connected to the Mustard Seed social group through me (with whom we often eat out). Katie came to Mustard Seed through Natalie, a friend of mine... and now she's my girlfriend. Rachel and Christina are part of our social group through Katie, who came to be part of the group through me. Melanie, who also previously knew Jason and Dustin, has remained friends only with me and came tonight because of me. And then, how could we forget Georgia, who still seems to talk to many of my friends... obviously a connection through me. Other various people whom I don't see as much, for instance Chris or Rachel Sedlak, are also links into the social group through me... though I didn't count them in this exercise for the don't hang out with this group very often. Ah well, pardon my tangent... it's 5:01 ;)
As for the concert, it was fabulous. Melanie and I rode together, and somehow made it to the Varsity near our meeting time. From there, we went down to Centennial Park, although I believe Butch wasn't as familiar with downtown as I am :) Anyway... $3 admission... good stuff. Ingram Hill was the first major band to play, and I'd say they might have been the best band of the night, had I been familiar with their songs. There's something about familiarity that makes one enjoy a song more when it's performed. Lifehouse played next, and were, as you'd expect, very good. Katie and I embraced each other during "Everything", a nice sweet moment. Better Than Ezra was the closer, and was also very good. Clay, Jason, Dustin, and Nikkie left after Lifehouse finished, and then Butch, Christina, Katie, and Danielle left after a song or two by Better than Ezra, so Melanie and I found each other and listened to a few more songs together before departing. Anyway, it was a great night.
In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and veracious vivacity, without rhodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, purient pscosity, and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent.
Next time your English teacher accuses you of writing from a thesauras... just show him/her this lovely work of, well, polysyllabic profundity ;) And now, on to slightly less important, though vastly more interesting, updateage (bite me, so I started a sentence with a conjunction...)
I recently discovered a modern literary treasure: my brother's online journal. 'Tis quite a shame I never noticed it before, seeing as it's prominently displayed in his AIM profile. For those interested, the link is http://blogitall.com/blog.asp?un=jason. I think I'll devote the remainder of this paragraph to explaining my brother as best I see fit. He's certainly intelligent, though as academic as his own hamster. He has developed web sites (namely My Online Quiz) with millions of visitors, yet no real means to become profitable (aside from a few dollars from banner ads). Despite this, his coding style is sloppy and any sane CS professor would flunk him, yet his programs amazingly appear to work the majority of the time. Abstraction is his enemy, and kludge jobs his specialty. I somewhat fondly remember a challenge we once had: to develop competing Connect-4 programs, and see which won. He, ahem, "borrowed" his program from a code-distribution website, whilst I slaved for a day or so to perfect my AI. However, were it not for his liberal interpretation of the rules, I'd not have been pressured to keep working on my program until it was able to beat "his". I'm still waiting on my checkers challenge ;) He's one of the most generous fellows I know, yet most forms of bacteria have more culture than does he. While lacking in social skill, he more than makes up for it in tagging along with me :) Like me, the majority of his friends are older than himself, though particularly lacking in estrogen content. His entrepreneurial spirit will most likely lead to him either becoming extremely rich, or extremely poor... I find it simply impossible to envision him working some 9-5 job in a stuffy grey box for 40 years just to have the government tell him that his pension bought a few AAMRAM missiles for our war on the country-du-jour. Perhaps I speak too much of the young lad sleeping but a few feet above me now. Ah well, he'll be glad to be mentioned.
Earlier today (yesterday, technically), Natty pointed out an article claiming that the way the majority of high school students write could be best described as a "tangled mass of internet lingo". Do people really have such a difficult time distinguishing formal essays from informal IM conversations? Not that I'm a terribly huge fan of internet shorthand in general, but how hard is it to avoid use in formal papers? More importantly than that, however, is the lack of coherence... basic theses, outlines, and concise points. We discussed a few possible causes, from not readings much (presumably the fault of TV or the computer). As previously stated, I believe TV dinners are the root cause of the dumbing down of America ;)
Of course, the highlight of Friday was On The Bricks that night. Allow me to list the friends that accompanied me (along with probably 80,000 other people): Katie, Melanie, Christina, Danielle, Butch, Nikkie, Dustin, Clay, and Jason. I realized something tonight I've noticed a few times before, that I seem to be the common link between a lot of people I hang out with on a regular basis. It's almost as though I've formed my own social group, after giving up on everyone else's. For instance, Dustin knows me from Masters, an while he technically knew Jason, they'd never have become friends were it not for my originally befriending Dustin. Nikkie, of course, was a friend from Pleasantdale, and now is Dustin's girlfriend. They're all connected to the Mustard Seed social group through me (with whom we often eat out). Katie came to Mustard Seed through Natalie, a friend of mine... and now she's my girlfriend. Rachel and Christina are part of our social group through Katie, who came to be part of the group through me. Melanie, who also previously knew Jason and Dustin, has remained friends only with me and came tonight because of me. And then, how could we forget Georgia, who still seems to talk to many of my friends... obviously a connection through me. Other various people whom I don't see as much, for instance Chris or Rachel Sedlak, are also links into the social group through me... though I didn't count them in this exercise for the don't hang out with this group very often. Ah well, pardon my tangent... it's 5:01 ;)
As for the concert, it was fabulous. Melanie and I rode together, and somehow made it to the Varsity near our meeting time. From there, we went down to Centennial Park, although I believe Butch wasn't as familiar with downtown as I am :) Anyway... $3 admission... good stuff. Ingram Hill was the first major band to play, and I'd say they might have been the best band of the night, had I been familiar with their songs. There's something about familiarity that makes one enjoy a song more when it's performed. Lifehouse played next, and were, as you'd expect, very good. Katie and I embraced each other during "Everything", a nice sweet moment. Better Than Ezra was the closer, and was also very good. Clay, Jason, Dustin, and Nikkie left after Lifehouse finished, and then Butch, Christina, Katie, and Danielle left after a song or two by Better than Ezra, so Melanie and I found each other and listened to a few more songs together before departing. Anyway, it was a great night.