In ten days I’ll be boarding a flight to California,
hopefully on a day similar to this so I can enter the plane wearing a parka,
and exit wearing a short-sleeve shirt. I can feel the cold on my back now even
through the window which is about four feet behind me, like whatever the
opposite of a radiator is. I just looked up antonyms for radiator, and the only
word that came up was artifact. I don’t
really get the theory behind that comparison. There are a lot of things I don’t
get.
Here’s a major thing that I don’t get: our written language.
I’ve been writing now for about two and a half years, and I still have technical
hitches with basic punctuation. What’s a semicolon? Is it where the poop goes
before the colon? No. I actually do know how to use them properly, but do you?
As a reader, when you see a semicolon, you are supposed to pause—not as long as
a period, but longer than a comma; you’ll want to watch carefully for the two
and pause accordingly. When I type, I always say the words in my head, and add
punctuation where I stop, pause, or whatever the case may be.
Everything I learned
about punctuation I learned from a book I read in prison titled, Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne
Truss. I read that book over two years ago in St. Cloud that spanned a period
of two days while I was on lockdown for borrowing a radio from my neighbor next
door. It had been left in the cell by the previous tenant, along with a few
unreadable titles, and I went for it. I had just started my writing career, and
I thought it might help to know how to write good. Now I be right, good all the
time. Microsoft Word has a lot of problems with the last couple of sentences,
and I see why. I’m currently struggling with the placement of this obtrusive
picture that I can’t seem to move. And look at that resolution. Hmm. That’s
it for your lesson in English today, folks. I can only go on so far before I
start writing without the aid of knowledge, and then I’d just be copying
Google, or wherever you kids get your information these days.
I’m really on a roll. This is now day nine of my ten-day
work-a-thon. It started last Monday, the 5th of December, at the
laminating factory, and features a seven-day stretch at the Xcel which ends
tonight, and finishes off tomorrow with a day of laminating. I’m off on
Thursday and I probably won’t do anything other than stuff around the house.
That’s the thrilling life of a writer/laminator/cook, or a colamiter as I just
made up. Microsoft word insists that I turn that into coalminer, but I don’t
have the knowledge or resources to enter that world, so I left it alone. Are
you people still even reading this? You should have given up hundreds of words
ago.
I think it’s time for me to take a little time away from
writing, like maybe just a week. I can’t seem to come up with any one topic
that I can focus on for 700 or more words, and I find myself just staring into
space a lot, or at people, who find themselves being stared at, which I’m sure
is quite unnerving. And just like every other time I tell myself to stop typing
for a bit, I’m sure my brain will kick it into high-gear and I’ll be back in no
time at all with my hilarious antics and chilling tales of my life of crime.
But if you don’t hear from me for a while, Happy Holidays, even to the Jews.
