awkward – Page 102 – Oh Fair New Mexico

I generally agree with this sentiment. I’ve seen it applied beautifully to music and painting, and I personally break the principle rule of photography with gusto every chance I get.

The one area that I get a little persnickety about breaking the rules is the discipline of spelling and grammar.

In this area, I get out my schoolmarm glasses and become VERY strict.

I believe that both effective communication and indeed, the very fabric of the English language, depends on proper grammar and spelling.

Despite, of course, the daily assault on the English language lobbed by the texting/twittering/facebooking phenomenon.

I recently read the bestselling book, “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” by Aimee Bender.

It’s a sad, melancholy tale of a young girl who can taste the emotions of the person who prepared the food she eats. It’s an odd and slightly surreal book that delves deeply into the secrets and strange predilections of the family at the center of the story.

But as I dived into the book, I was brought up short right away by the complete lack of quotation marks to designate dialogue.

You know, dialogue is bit tough to follow when there are no quotation marks. Indeed Ms. Bender didn’t even follow standard dialogue format as often the sentences spoken between characters overlapped in a single paragraph.

I found it maddening and it made my progress through the book slow and rather difficult. I often had to re-read pages to be sure I knew what was going on.

I did get through the book, however, because Ms. Bender is a teller of beautiful stories.

There is a book that also eschewed quotation marks that I tried to read ten or twelve years ago that didn’t fare as well. In fact, I got a third of the way through the infernal book then got up the moment I’d had enough, got in my car, went to the library and dropped the blasted book into the donation slot. Literally. I got so mad I hesitated not a moment before I ejected the book from my home.

That book is one you might know, “All The Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy. Mr. McCarthy may be an award-winning author, but he’s no favorite of mine.

Mr. McCarthy’s style on display in his recent spate of bestselling books may be something of a driver to this now popular style of throwing out useful punctuation marks.

To be blunt, I blame McCarthy for the trend.

However, my blame may be poorly placed.

Recently The Good Man and I watched a documentary called “It/ll Be Better Tomorrow” about the author Hubert Selby Jr. Known best for his books “Last Exit to Brooklyn” and “Requiem for a Dream,” over his career, Mr. Selby also flagrantly violated the rules of punctuation, most notably his apostrophes are replaced with slashes. So she’ll becomes she/ll.

However, at least he’s consistent in his use, and there is some sort of mark designating what’s (or what/s) going on, so I can at least follow along.

Not so with ol’ Cormac.

It seems I’m not the only one who has noticed this literary shift.

In an October 2008 essay in the Wall Street Journal, author Lionel Shriver also notes the lack of quotation marks, quoting material from McCarthy’s “No Country For Old Men” by way of example, but McCarthy is far from the only author out there employing this device.

To me, it feels indulgent on the part of the writer to expect that their readers will simply figure it out for themselves.

I think Mr. Shriver sums it up quite nicely at the end of his essay:

“When dialogue makes no sound, the only character who really gets to talk is the writer.”

And the thing is, as a writer, I’ve always thought my job was to get out of the way.

Ah well, as NewMexiKen and I discussed in the comments section of this post, art can be a tricky thing to define. The rules go all slidey* when we talk about what is or isn’t acceptable in creating works of art.

That means I get to keep my punctuation marks and while others can set theirs free.
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Oh…and then there is the inappropriate use of quotation marks. That’s a whole other discussion.

*Also there is my personal habit of making up words. Ah well, back to throwing stones at my own glass house…

The Shame…The Shaaaaame!

So…a couple years back, looking for something easy and sort of trashy to read, I stumbled across some online hubbub about that Twilight book series.

Ya know, I do love tween/teen fiction. I mean, I read every Harry Potter through to the end. The Golden Compass series too.

So I ordered the first three books in the Twilight series (the fourth wasn’t out yet) from the library and I read ’em through.

Well, I read the first two all the way through. The third, I stopped about halfway through and returned it to the library. I was done. So done. Completely, utterly, oh my god why did I read this, can’t unread what I’ve read, d-o-n-e, done.

Oh the angst! The agony! The yearning!

Fine, sure. I imagine the perspective of a 40 year old married woman and a giddy hormonal teen girl are, indeed, rather different.

But I got *pissed off* at the “I can’t be with you” aspect of it. And the “you deserve better” bullsheet.

Ok look, I’ve dated a few men in my time. My thing wasn’t vampires, like Bella. It was cowboys. Beautiful and amazing and soul sucking in their own way.

I’ve had MORE than my fair share of guys who come on all strong, wooed me along, then gave me the “you are too good for me” line. Or the “I’m too dedicated to my work/life/horse/truck/school to be with you.”

Or the “you shouldn’t be with a guy like me.”

It is ALL a form of utter, unadulterated bullsh*t.

Ya like me, ya wanna be with me? Be with me. Ya like me but wanna like a whooole lotta other girls too? Well, sack up about it!

And so in this book, oooh here is this poor *suffering* vampire who can’t be with the girl (cuz he wants to kill her), but then he CAN be with the girl, but I can’t! Yes I can!

No, I break up with you!

But I can’t liiiive without you.

Bella, sista, run. Don’t walk. Run. Find a nice dependable guy (and not that Jacob dude who ends up naked in the woods. That’s just…weird) and get on with your life.

Yeah. I might have had a sort of personal, visceral reaction to the story based on things that might have little to do with the story.

Aaaaanyhow….

So, utter fool that I am, ya wanna know what I did? Well, I’ve been hearing all this mess about the new Twilight movie opening up. I thought…hell, why not. Maybe the movie versions are better.

I finally watched the first movie in the series, Twilight.

I’ll say this, the screenwriters did a fine job of adapting the book. Really. They stayed very true to the story and visually it’s very well done.

And when I first saw a photo of Robert Pattinson, I thought “yeah, ok! He really looks the part of Edward. Perfect!”

But his acting! My god, son! I realize that Edward is all cold (literally) and sullen and austere and a bunch of other things that make him squinch up and be overly emo and serious and stuff.

But dude. Are you even in there? Was your preparation for this role to just go limp and then stand in front of a camera? Have some presence, man!

Gah!

And then the whole push-pull, yes-no thing got me all worked up again, too.

And now I’m just stalking around being irritable.

If you are the sort of person who loves this whole Twilight thing, good on ya. Believe me, I understand. Enjoy your team Edward/Jacob tug of war. Enjoy that moody monster. Really. I bid you no ill will!

Me. I need a brain cleanser. I cannot believe I watched that.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to squirt scrubbing bubbles in both ears and wait for this memory to fade like mold from my shower stall.

So…I’m curious about your opinion

I know, I know. I’m usually the opinionated one here.

But I have a photography related question and I know that my readers are both smart and savvy. And many of you have an aesthetic that is not to be beat!

So I’ll cut right to the heart of the matter.

I spend a fair amount of time looking at websites where amateurs with varying degrees of talent and experience post their photos.

There are some amazingly gifted photographers out there.

And…there are some amazingly gifted photoshoppers out there.

I tend to wince a little when I see photos that are lovely but are WAY post processed. It seems to be “the thing” these days to massively post process photos. So much so that I think we as photographers are losing the skill of setting up the shot on the camera.

When I mention this to fellow student photographers, everyone looks at me with a condescending smile, as though I’m the Village Idiot.

I don’t mind doing a little touch up work, a little color correction, things like that.

But the full scale photoshopping…well. I don’t know, it’s a thing for me.

But I sort of digress.

There is one particular photo treatment that bugs me. And yet intrigues me.

It is basically a photo in black and white where one color is pulled out.

Here, better to show you what I mean. This is my first attempt. I did this photo using the Colorsplash app on my iPhone and touched it up a bit using Photoshop Elements.

It’s not the finest example of the technique, but you’ll get what I mean.

Behold, my bowl of oranges, moments before they were juiced. Delicious!

I’ve seen some really well done versions of this technique, and it can create quite an emotion.

But I can’t help looking at a black and white with one color photo, especially my own, and thinking it is something akin to the old fashioned photo-in-a-brandy-snifter as far as classy effects.

Then again…it creates laser focus to one part of the photograph which can make all the difference in the viewing experience.

Perhaps I tend to lean a little too much toward conventional.

So I’m curious if I should spend some more time perfecting this effect in Photoshop (and thus may learn to love it more) or if I should move on to other lessons?

Thoughts on both sides of the argument are really, really helpful. Feel free to Google “black and white photo with one color” to look at other examples before you render a decision.

Just curious. All thoughts are useful!

Thanks in advance!

Magic Spray – Cures What Ails Ya!

So ok, this year I’ve been keeping up with the World Cup. It *is* the biggest sporting event in the world.

From the giant vuvuzela to the US team’s fairly decent showing. Yes! I’m onboard.

And so of course, I read with fascination a brief Yahoo Sports Blog entry about this elixir known as Magic Spray.

Especially the bit about “…no matter what part of the body the player is clutching in anguish, the attending doctor pulls out an anonymous looking spray can and gives the player a liberal dousing of white mist.”

Hmm. Magical mist, eh? Do tell.

“Sometimes it works like spinach for Popeye, sometimes it only serves as a stopgap until the stretcher arrives…”

Ok. I’m in. Where do I get some? I need it. Gotta have it. Yup.

Magical mist = want.

Especially if they make in emotional flavor.

Boyfriend makes a cutting remark? Spray, spray, all better!

Yahoolio cuts you off in traffic? Spray, spray. No more mad!

Can’t seem to get past the trauma from mommy and daddy grounding you for bad grades? Therapist just leans over, gives you a solid crop dusting, and you’re back in the game of life!

I like it. Of course, it *must* come with a crew of trainers and physical and emotional therapists.

I imagine the scene goes something like this:

Boss loses his mind all over you because you whiffed a deadline.

You call, “Time out, time out!!!”

Your team of windsuited trainers comes jogging out, squats down beside your emotionally prone body, “how you doin'” they ask?

You answer, “Not so good.”

Spray, spray. You are back up and limping, but you are in the game.

The clock starts, and then you tell your boss, “Hey! If you would bother to prioritize the work, maybe I’d meet your arbitrary deadlines!”

Goooooooooooooooooooooooal!

Ya’ll picking up what I’m putting down here? Magic. Spray. Magic spray.

Gotta have it!