Poat 154

Hey everybody--it's been a while, and I have BIG NEWS!

So, I was down and out for a couple of weeks because I had (get this:) salmonella poisoning! Isn't that great? I always thought salmonella was an imaginary disease invented by mothers to keep their kids from eating cookie dough, but I guess it's real after all: I got it!

And, as if that isn't great enough, I ALMOST DIED!

I don't know much about vital signs, but when I had my roommates take me to the ER because my limbs were going numb, they were really worried about my vitals. Today I got a printout of my medical record; turns out my blood pressure when I was admitted to the ER was 72/42 and my pulse was 126.

That's baaaaaaaaad.

Isn't it great! This is so exciting: I almost died but, here I am, still alive! Go me!

Post 153

Prepositions are not bad things to end a sentence with. Those who are against ending sentences with prepositions must be put down. Their objections to terminal prepositions are the most baseless (not to mention heartless) things I can think of. There is no reason they should be put up with. We need to tell them to shut up! We need to force them to sit down!

I just thought I’d give you something to think about. I really had to think this through. It’s a tough subject to speak on. For listening to me, I give you my thanks many times over.

Post 152

I was completely unaware of the Prescriptivist vs Descriptivist debate at the beginning of 2008: I (like this web browser's spell check) hadn't even heard the terms before. But then, sometime in the fuzzy period between winter and spring (I forget when exactly), one of my roommates gave me a copy of David Foster Wallace "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage" to read, and I found myself diving headfirst into this glorious new can of worms.

(I regret that I do not, at this very moment, have my copy of that essay handy; perhaps on some future day, I will give you some lovely excerpts.)

That essay changed me: when I started it, I had no idea what Prescriptivism was; by the time I gave it back to my roommate, I considered Prescriptivism foundational, a quintessential part of my being, and I was horrified to realize that the dictionaries that take up such a large portion of my bookshelf were mostly compiled by hell-bound Descriptivists who were leading the language to ruin. I was a bonafide Snoot (Wallace's word, not mine).

(At this point, I really wish I could tell you that I'm exaggerating, but for once in my life, I feel I'm extreme enough without exaggeration. I suppose that completely honest would encourage me to say that, rather than changing me, "Tense Present" really just opened my eyes to an issue that I already had a solid opinion about even though I had no idea that an actual debate was raising, but having empowered me with such awareness, it also ignited my indignation against the evil Descriptivist.)

Not very long at all after this intellectual epiphany, I began taking my first course in Linguistics. Were I to pull out the notebook I used in that class and show you the first page, you would see where I wrote on the first day of class BEWARE: LINGUISTICS IS STRAIGHT UP DESCRIPTIVISM and circled it several times.

But then the unthinkable happened: I fell passionately in love with linguistic descriptivism, and I realized that, from a strictly historical standpoint, language did just fine for a few thousand years before the advent of Prescriptivism a few hundred years ago. Nevertheless, I remained ideologically aligned with the Prescriptivist camp because I felt we had to have an academic standard, a right and wrong for every question, and I clung tenaciously to these notions while immersing myself in my linguistics class--sorta like trying to swim with a 25-pound weight (I've done that before; it's excellent exercise but hard to do for very long).

Then summer came, and I enrolled in a Philosophy of Language class, and that's why I am the way I am now. Despite the fact that my professor was a self-proclaimed Prescriptivist, the course made me realize that utterances can only have meaning so long as a community agrees on some kind of association between sounds and intentions, and I came to the conclusion that, though I really like clear-cut right and wrong, language is a very liquid thing, which is why (I think) it's so effective (and also why it's so hard to nail down).

This semester is my first in the English Language program here at BYU. I left summer term a repentant Prescriptivist, now solidly rooted in the Descriptivist camp. Looking at my schedule that included classes such as "Modern American Usage" and "The Grammar of English," I was afraid that I'd be alone in my major: a newly converted Descriptivist in the midst of a hundred Snoots. I felt a little leary as I looked ahead to a couple of years of headbutting with closeminded Prescriptivist.

I have been pleasantly surprised: not only is the ELANG department's allignment decidedly Descriptivist, they also unilaterally hate Chompsky--and I'm all for that! Whereas I feared I was going to war in this new major, I now find myself feeling quite at home.

I have finally found my intellectual niche.

Post 151

I’m about to say something that is, I think, the sort of thing that could cause people to hate me forever. It’s been milling about in my head for the past week or so, and I’ve been trying to devise some way to present it little by little and build up to my slap-in-the-face conclusion, but I’ve decided that that really just isn’t my style. So I’m gonna bank on the assumption that most people who read this blog are accustomed to my bluntness and then hope that that assumption doesn’t cause problems. Please understand that your first impression of what I say will most definitely be incorrect, so read the whole thing before you settle into your opinion.

There was one question I got on my mission that I was never really able to answer very clearly even though it never seemed particularly complicated to me. I’d heard the question from time to time before my mission, and I’ve heard it a few times since; I don’t imagine it is a new question, and I don’t think it’s ever going to stop plaguing humanity, but I have an answer that I am quite satisfied with.

The question: Why do bad things happen to good people?

My answer: They don’t.

Now, see? There you go getting all uppity. Why are you so easily offended? I’m telling you, you’ve jumped to a conclusion that is just plain wrong. I didn’t say that good people have easy lives, I said that bad things don’t happen to good people. Hopefully, by the time you finish reading this post, you’ll believe me.

I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. I moved from one apartment complex to another, but my contracts didn’t overlap, so I had about a week and a half of homelessness. During that time, I went home to my parents’ house for a few days, where I learned that the skin cancer my dad has is worse than he’d been telling me. Shortly after I returned to Provo, a girl in a Passat rear-ended me, totaling my car twice over and screwing up my neck a bit. Less than a week after that, I in all my social suavity sort of blew to smithereens (again) a friendship I had been thoroughly enjoying. All this in the midst of the first week of my first real semester in my new major and while adjusting to a new place.

Now, this may shock some of you, but I actually consider myself well within the category of ‘good person.’ I feel I must be because, to my recollection, nothing bad has ever happened to me—ever. Oh, sure, I know what it’s like to have physical pain so intense it makes me scream or just shake, and I have experienced emotional pains such that I’ve been debilitated by sobbing for hours at a time; I have helplessly witnessed the mortal suffering of those I love, and I have seen those I care about make mistakes. I have tasted hate, been adamantly wished to hell, spit on, pushed around; I know what it is to be frozen with fear. I’ve made mistakes and writhed with guilt and regret. I’ve been rejected. I have felt shunned at times. But I really can’t think of a time when something really bad happened to me.

I list all these unpleasant things I’ve endured from time to time not because to try to convince you that my life has been hard: quite to the contrary, I think that all of those things are fairly typical and that you each could make a similar list. I mean, maybe you’ve never had physical pain so bad it made you shake, but perhaps you’ve been beaten by someone or struggled with a serious addiction or—or whatever other sorts of things people suffer in life. All I’m getting at here is that suffering doesn’t make somebody special: we’re all in this mortality thing together, and we each get our share.

You see, I’m just not convinced that bad things can happen to good people. Paul said that all things work together for the good of those who love God; Brigham Young said that he didn’t feel he had ever had to sacrifice anything for the Gospel because what he ended up with was always better that what he lost. And I say that nothing bad has ever happened to me.

I heard a story once that allegedly came out of ancient China; I think it will be helpful in this discussion (I’m setting it off not because it’s a quote but so people who’ve heard it can skip it if they like):

A man and his son caught a wild horse, brought it home, and corralled it. Their neighbors all came over to see it.

"What a beautiful animal!" the neighbors said. "You are so lucky to have caught it."

"Maybe," the man said.

A day or two later, the horse broke out of the corral and ran away. The neighbors came over to give their sympathies.

"Those damages will take a long while to fix," the neighbors said. "What an unfortunate loss."

"Maybe," the man said.

The next morning, the man and his son discovered that the horse had returned, and with it had come the rest of the herd, all grazing in the pasture. The man and his son barricaded the hole in the fence to keep the animals inside. The neighbors came over to give their congratulations.

"What good fortune!" they said.

"Maybe," the man said.

A day or two later, the man’s son tried to ride one of the horses, fell off, and broke his arm. The neighbors came over to give their condolences.

"He won’t be able to work the rest of the season," they said. "What bad luck."

"Maybe," the man said.

The next morning, a representative from the Emperor came and announced that all able-bodied young men were being drafted into the army, so all the boys of the village went off to war—except for the man’s son because he had a broken arm. Soon thereafter, a horrible battle killed all of those boys. The neighbors came again to the man.

"Our sons!" they lamented. "You are so lucky that yours could not go to war."

"Maybe," the man said.

The point of the story, I think, is that it is impossible to know immediately whether anything that happens to you is good or bad. I have often been amazed at God’s ability to take really horrible circumstances and consecrate them for my good. Also, if you really pay attention to what Moroni actually says in Ether 12:27, I think you’ll find his choice of verbiage (viz. "give") quite interesting. It’s hard to think of trials (and particularly our own weaknesses) as gifts or of humility as much of a reward, but God knows what He’s doing, I’m pretty sure.

Now, I’m not so wise as to be able to see the good in everything; for example, I’m not really sure why it was necessary (or even that it was necessary) for me to have only one kidney. Furthermore, I’m really not sure what good came out of spending the first 12 years of my life wondering why I was in so much pain while it quietly withered away (not that I knew it was withering away: that took the doctors an awfully long time to deduce). Also, I don’t really know what good comes of my occasional social casualties (sure, I learn from them, but isn’t there a better way?). Still, I believe wholeheartedly that bad things don’t happen to good people, and every unpleasant thing I ever encounter will one day be counted a blessing.

So that classic question—why do bad things happen to good people—is really a poor question, if you ask me, because the only acceptable answer is, "They don’t; can you please rephrase the question?" My question is this: Do bad things happen to bad people? I honestly don’t know: I’m not a bad person. I suppose bad people eventually wind up in hell, but I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing because, as we learn in Mormon 9:4, they’ll be happier there than they would be in heaven anyway. (Perhaps that’s taken a wee bit out of context, but I think the sentiment is fair enough.)

Do bad thing happen at all?

Certainly evil is real, and people make bad choices sometimes, but this notion of bad things just happening—I really don’t buy into it much.

Any thoughts?

Post 150!

It's been, I realize, a goodly while since I've been able to post. Because of this (furthermore, because this is my 150th post), I figured I'd go for the knock-their-socks-off approach, and I therefore offer the following disclaimer:

I ASSUME THAT MOST OF YOU READ THIS BLOG WHILE SITTING DOWN; IF THIS IS UNTRUE OF YOUR CURRENT STATE, I BEG YOU TO REMEDY THAT BEFORE READING ANY MORE OF THIS POST.

Everybody sitting down? Good. Here we go.

I--

uh

I--

(Good heavens! This is more painful than I expected! Confessions generally are, though....)

I read a book--a fictional book--a fantasy novel! And I read it--all the way through! Wretched, wretched, escapist literature--and I enjoyed it! Oh woe is me! What have I done? I was such a nice fellow; how could this happen?

*sigh*

Well, I believe the worst is behind us now. I will now proceed to tell you about this book and my experience with it:

I must admit, I found myself honestly suffering through this story at times. You must understand, I am not the sort of man who feels a moral obligation to finish things I start (especially books--especially fantasy novels), but I felt I had to make it through this one. It was a pride issue, really: you see, there are a handful of fictional books (perhaps as many as three or four) that I'd kinda like to read, but they've all either been recommended to me by Confuzzled or Thmazing, and I can't have either one of them feeling the right to gloat over having persuaded me to indulge myself with lies, so I figured I go with a book that neither one of them have recommended to me (to my recollection), a book that (with any luck) neither of them have read.

Ha! Take that, my literary tormentors!

The book is Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson, and (this is the part where my pride really takes a beating:) I think I'd actually recommend it fairly unilaterally. But you must remember, this recommendation comes from a guy who doesn't like fiction.

I just finished reading Alcatraz today. As I was reading it on the couch in my living room, one of my roommates walked in and asked what I was reading.

"Stupid, wretched, escapist fiction, I'm afraid," I said: "Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians."

"Do you like it?" he asked.

"Well," I said, "the plot is fairly uninteresting, and I don't really like any of the characters...."

He laughed. "But the font is nice?"

"Oh yes," I said, laughing also. "The font is very nice."

But I lied. I don't like the font. I mean, it was mostly a pretty standard font with unobtrusive serif, but the author chose to put hand-written notes in a sloppy, san-serif font that was supposed to look like handwriting, and I think that's dumb.

So that's pretty much my recommendation: I didn't really like the characters much, though they were occasionally entertaining, and I didn't really enjoy the plot, though it was occasionally interesting, and I didn't even like the fonts all that much. But I did enjoy the book as a whole.

Now you may find yourself wondering what's left to enjoy in a novel once you take away its plot, characters, and font(s); if that is the case, you and I are not very much alike because I say that, once you take away a story's plot and characters, you have only the most essential part left: the voice.

My friend Schlange is in the off-and-on conceptual stages of writing his first novel. I, being a red-pen nut, thoroughly enjoy attacking his comma usage when he sends me partial drafts. The last time he thus employed my services was about a month ago. Here is an excerpt from the email I sent him (I think it will help you to understand my recommendation for Alcatraz):

I am officially an English Language major. Basically, I'm getting my BA in grammar and punctuation. These things are kind of a big deal to me. I tell you this, not because I think you don't know, but because it will be necessary for you to bear in mind as you read the following that I am a BIG fan of good grammar etc.

One of the reasons that I love to read what you write so much is that you have a very distinct voice when you're telling a story, and it's a good one. Remember that one night when I printed off a couple of your blog posts and proceeded to tell you why the one about pastries was better than the one about speaking good? It's because of that happy, I'm-telling-a-story-I'm-excited-about voice that you get when you're writing in your element. I have a friend from back home who occasionally sends me stories that he's working on, and I always dread reading his stuff because, even though his stories are generally very good, his voice is so flat that I have the darndest time musceling through. But you have a great voice; your voice makes your writing worth reading. So this little grammar lesson I'm about to give you, you can take it or leave it, but just don't let it screw up your voice!

With that said, all I really have left to say regarding Alcatraz is, though the plot is fairly conventional and the characters are occasionally a bit too quirky to be truly lovable, the story telling is A-grade fantastic! The novel is in 1st person, and at the beginning of almost every chapter, Alcatraz stops telling the story and goes off on random tangents. I, being the sort of person who would rather read a well-written essay than any book-length fiction, enjoyed these so thoroughly that, rather than seeming to get in the way of the story, I felt the story detracted from the tangents! I mentioned above that I occasionally found myself suffering through the story at times, but that was only because I wished Al would stop telling me his stupid story and go back to the good stuff.

Strange, no?

But even when he was telling the story, his descriptions were always really entertaining. Also, if you ever do read this book, be sure to pay attention to the way he spells pterodactyl--I thought it was an especially subtle and clever running joke.

So that's pretty much my review, but I'm not done yet. This'll make for a kinda lengthy blog post, so if you're tired, you can stop reading now, but I'd like to include some little excerpts from the book just so you can get a feel for the voice that I'm so enamored of. (Just a sidenote, I found myself laughing out loud at times despite my telling myself over and over, "Hey, kid, it really isn't that funny!" So if you don't find these funny, that's probably because they aren't.) The first of these excerpts is directed at anyone who has ever recommended a book to me; the rest are just fun little excerpts that caught my attention.

FROM PAGE 49-50:

{Open Quote}

I'd like to take this opportunity to commend you for reading this book. [...] [M]y experience has been that people generally don't recommend this kind of book at all. It is far too interesting. Perhaps you have had other kinds of books recommended to you. Perhaps, even, you have been given books by friends, parents, or teachers, then told that these books are the type you "have to read." Those books are invariably described as "important"--which, in my experience, pretty much means that they're boring. (Words like meaningful and thoughtful are other good clues.)

If there is a boy in these kinds of books, he will not go on an adventure to fight against Librarians, paper monsters, and one-eyed Dark Oculators. In fact, the lad will not go on an adventure or fight against anything at all. Instead, his dog will die. Or, in some cases, his mother will die. If it's a really meaningful book, both his dog and his mother will die. (Apparently, most writers have something against dogs and mothers.)

Neither my mother nor my dog dies in this book. I'm rather tired of those types of stories. In my opinion, such fantastical, unrealistic books--books in which boys live on mountains, families work on farms, or anyone has anything to do with the Great Depression--have a tendency to rot the brain. To combat such silliness, I've written the volume you now hold--a solid, true account. Hopefully, it will help anchor you in reality.

So, when people try to give you some book with a shiny round award on the cover, be kind and gracious, but tell them that you don't read "fantasy," because you prefer stories that are real. Then come back here and continue your research on the cult of evil Librarians who secretly rule the world."

{Close Quote}

FROM PAGE 68:

{Open Quote}

Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a "fantasy" novel, you must take all of this things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense.

Rutabaga.

{Close Quote}

FROM PAGE 143-4:

{Open Quote}

You may think those above paragraphs are some kind of foreshadowing. You're right. Of course, those thoughts weren't foreshadowing when they occurred to me. I couldn't know that they'd be important.

I tend to have a lot of ridiculous thoughts. I'm having some right now. Most of these certainly aren't important. And so, I usually only mention the ones that matter. For instance, I could have told you that many of the lanterns in the library looked like types of fruits and vegetables. But that has no real relevance to the plot, so I left it out. Likewise, I could have included the scene where I notices the roots of Bastille's hair and wondered why she dyed it silver, rather than letting it grow its natural red. But since that part isn't relevant to the -

Oh. Wait. Actually, that is relevant. Never mind.

{Close Quote}

FROM PAGE 183:

{Open Quote}

People can do great things. However, there are something they just can't do. I, for instance, have not been able to transform myself into a Popsicle, despite years of effort. I could, however, make myself insane, if I wished. (Though if I achieved the second, I might be able to make myself think I'd achieved the first....)

Anyway, if there's a lesson to be learned, it's this: Great success often depends upon being able to distinguish between the impossible and the improbable. Or, in easier terms, distinguishing between Popsicles and insanity.

Any questions?

{Close Quote}

FROM PAGE 250-1:

{Open Quote}

Now, I would like to take this opportunity to point out that I didn't take the opportunity to point out anything at the beginning of this chapter. Never fear; my editorial comments were simply delayed for a few moments.

You see, that last chapter ended with a terribly unfair hook. By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have got to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It foes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry.

Regardless, because of how exciting things were, I didn't feel comfortable interjecting my normal comments at the beginning of this chapter. So, I shall put them here instead. Prepare yourself.

Blah, blah, sacrifice, alters, daggers, sharks. Blah, blah, something pretentious. Blah, blah, rutabaga. Blah, blah, something that makes no sense whatsoever.

Now back to the story.

{Close quote}

There are also a goodly number of allusions in this book, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Most were very brief, so I'm not sure I caught them all, but I did catch one to To Kill a Mockingbird, on to "The Raven," one to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one to Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, and one to something like but not necessarily The Count of Monte Cristo.

So there you have it. As a parting shot, I've got to tell you that the thing that really sold me on this book was (of all things!) the teaser on the inside flap:

A HERO WITH AN INCREDIBLE TALENT... FOR BREAKING THINGS.

A LIFE-OR-DEATH MISSION... TO RESCUE A BAG OF SAND.

A FEARSOME THREAT FROM THE POWERFUL SECRET NETWORK THAT RULES THE WORLD... THE EVIL LIBRARIANS.

Post 149

It's been a while since I've posted anything--long enough that Confuzzled's been complaining, at least--so here we have something totally unprecedented, something, in fact, that flies completely in the face of some of my most precious credos: a post wherein I'm nice to Confuzzled. Kinda. Actually, this is something that I've been meaning to do for quite a while, but it happens to be in response to something she said a couple months ago, so it might appear that I'm being nice to her, I dunno. If I am, in fact, being nice to her, we'll just call it an anomaly--me stirring the waters just to make sure we don't get stuck in a rut (er--canal, I guess, if we want to avoid mixing metaphors)--or something like that.

Rest assured, Confuzzled: I will, no doubt, be returning to the lambasting that we are all so much more accustomed to here shortly.

Anyway, anybody remember my review of Kung-Fu Panda? That post is an interesting one because I basically claimed that I laughed so hard while watching that movie that my brains fell out and I had no more desire to be a gloomy, pensive individual. In the comments section, my dear, naysaying brother questioned whether such a change could be made all at once, and I honestly didn't know.

Well, it's now been just over two months since I made that declaration, and, though I still find myself being isolationistic in my pensive habits on a regular basis, I think that I've generally become a more happy-go-lucky sort of individual. So take that, causality--er--whatever--!

I've actually wandered far away from where I intended to be, so let me back up: the reason I bring up that post is because Confuzzled commented and said, "Also, you should start writing jokes. Because I don't know any. And you could help me!" Though I responded to the rest of her comment, I purposely avoided that part of it because I wanted to do then what I was about to do now.

Ya see, just a week or two before the historic Kung-Fu Panda Post, I had auditioned for a stand-up comedy club here at BYU, and I had just found out a few days before writing that post that they had decided that I was not funny enough to be in their club. Meh. Whatever. I wasn't terribly interested in being in the club: I mostly just auditioned for the sake of giving stand-up a try. I would've liked being in the club now, but I have different interests developing now that would probably conflict anyway, so 'sall good.

ANYway, what I wanted to do in response to Confuzzled comment that I haven't been able to do just now is to post my audition here. It took me longer than I expected to get that video file from the club, and it's taken me a few weeks to get around to using a campus computer that had the wherewithal to take the video from DVD to computer to blog, but I finally did it today, so here it is. This is me trying (and evidently failing) to be funny. I dunno, you be the judges of funny, I guess:




So there you have it. I generally consider myself a situationally humorous kind of guy: I ain't no performing monkey here to make you giggle on demand, no sir! But, if nothing else, I hope you can find humor in the attempt.

I have another, more melodramatic video I'd like to post sometime, but this has taken me a lot longer than I expected it to, so that will have to wait for another time, I guess.

Post 148

One year ago today, I started this blog.

I wish I had something to say on such an occasion, but I don't, so forget it.