Solved a vexing issue (to do with Act I development) last night, at least in part. Today I have to see if the theoretical solution can be made to work in actual dialogue.
Watched some basketball on DVR, but missed the game that looked the best (BYU/Florida). Am I the only one who can't stand Bill Raftery? I think he's one of the worst college basketball announcers out there. Not sure what it is--his grab bag of vapid cliches, his constant need to prove to you how much he knows about the plays being run, or his overall personality, which is one of overfamiliar bonhomie. Or something. He's like the drunk in the bar you try to get away from.
Don't know why I wrote about that. Sweet Lord, my life is uneventful.
Nice to see some new comments and responses to some of the earlier posts about art. I'd encourage anyone interested to go back and take a look.
Tutoring today. Wife starts service tomorrow, which means I'm more or less on my own for the next week. Time to work!
2 comments:
The bane of of my life (talk about an uneventful life) is having to listen to people use the same filler phrases over and over. I will note here only three:
"There you go"
"Good for you" (a hideously condescending remark) and
any sentence addressed to me with the word
"dear" in it.
These constitute verbal dandruff -- I believe nobody wants to hear them -- and anybody who uses them gets a gentle lecture from me, eventually. I've lost no friends because of it, improved the general state of language I hear and maybe even shifted (slightly) some interior lives.
I posted this on JMW's blog a year ago, but it's well worth repeating:
"The Unspeakable State of Soliloquy"
William H. Gass, writing in Harper's Magazine (May 1984, pp 71ff):
"Our thoughts travel like our shadows in the morning walking west, casting their outlines just ahead of us so that we can see and approve, or amend and cancel, what we are about to say.
"This is the only rehearsal our conversations usually get. That is one reason we fall upon cliche as if it were a sofa and not a sword; for we have rehearsed bits and pieces of conversation like "Good morning" and "How are you?" and "Have a nice day" to the point where the tongue is like a stale bun in the mouth...
"Indeed, it is true that prefab conversation frees the mind, yet rarely does the mind have a mind left after these cliches have conquered it.
"For our Gerberized phrases touch nothing; they keep the head hollow by crowding out thought; they fill all the chairs with buttocks like balloons; they are neither fed nor feed, they drift like dust; they refuse to breathe."
and,
"I try to find words for the feeling. Without words, what can be remembered? Yesterdays disappear like drying mist."
I can't stand Raftery either. I like Clark Kellogg OK. Nantz is a ninny.
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