Monday, July 26, 2010

Wardrobe: Shoes

Dear inhabitants of Chicago summer,

Flip-flops are unlovely. Fwap, fwap, fwap, fwap is not an elegant sound-accompaniment for a life. How can one think of someone who fwaps everywhere as beautiful and stylish?

No. No, darling summer-people. They are all wrong. You are all wrong.

Your shoes should support you, should cushion your whole body from the assault of asphalt. They should help you to stand tall and with enviable posture. How can you prepare a life--your life--when your toes are splayed, when your arches sag, when your ankles roll, your back sinks and your shoulders droop?

Your shoes should make walking a pleasure and should help to guide your every step. Your gait should be smooth and should feel effortless. You may dance to the beat of the drummer of your choosing, but there should be some rhythm in your step.

While my blog sleeps, I will creep into her room and steal away all of her offending shoes. On tip-tip-tip-toe, I glide, gathering up all this junk food for the sole(s) in several armsful. I order them banned throughout the kingdom. When she awakes, there will not even exist a word for these fwapping offenders. In her closet will be sturdy and lovely shoes that will cradle, cushion and comfort. In them, she will walk like a queen. Even in the simplest of clothes, she will appear fully, impeccably dressed.

Friday, July 16, 2010

or maybe not

ok, you two. maybe this blog doesn't have to die. if i can find a way to re-purpose this blog so it has more of a theme ... if it didn't feel quite so naked ...

perhaps not death but an enchanted sleep after which Princess Blog will awake wonderfully refreshed.

i suppose this makes me a fairy godmother softening the spell of the evil witch. heh heh.

during the enchanted slumber this fairy godmother will work very hard at providing a new wardrobe for Princess Blog.

stay tuned, then ....

Thursday, July 15, 2010

goodbye

I will be deleting my blog at the end of the month. It was an interesting experiment. Thanks to those of you who read and commented on my posts.

All best,

k

Monday, July 12, 2010

Punctuation garden gone to seed

I did not earn my good-worker dress. Darn. Maybe by the end of August I will have earned it. By the end of August, I hope to have 10 pages written. That's worth a new dress I think!

It has been difficult to get through the reading list I created. This is for a variety of reasons:

1. It's hot in my apartment
2. I've been busy with final copies at work
3. I've been catching up with friends
4. Some of the books are so badly written I throw them across the room in frustration. Getting up, retrieving the book, returning to the couch and finding my place in it all take up a surprisingly large amount of time.

It is difficult to avoid being distracted by the disastrous prose I've been reading. My first thought is usually that I missed something--that I read too quickly and so overlooked the word(s) or punctuation that make the sentence or conceit work. Because I am so generous, I re-read the sentence and too often conclude that I was correct - the sentence is badly written. Then I turn forensic grammarian and try to figure out what would have made the sentence work - sometimes it's as simple as a preposition switch or the addition or subtraction of commas. Other times it appears that a sentence's failure can be traced to the author's attachment to a certain phrase within the sentence: the rest of the sentence simply does not fit with the phrase but the author prizes the phrase more than s/he prizes clarity. Misuse of verbs is unfortunately common. Relationships don't cut, you cannot emasculate a thing or idea, and you cannot sever a split. Lastly, it appears there is an all but irresistible temptation to resort to important-sounding vagaries when approaching innovative or original thought. I suppose that it must be easier to leave readers with a mysterious-sounding short and pithy-seeming sentence immediately followed by something different and easier - more familiar that is - than it is to write one's way to an explanation of what one means.

How will I ever learn to write well when I must slog through so much bad writing? Bad writing is distracting. It is self-perpetuating. It is unethical. It is a disservice to everyone. It generates bad karma.