As of this writing, no one has risen to the challenge issued here. There can be only two reasons for this: (1) nobody reads the last word, or (2) the reward offered to the winner is not enough to warrant the effort.

Since option no. 2 is clearly not within the realm of possibility, we are left to deduce that, in fact, nobody reads this blog. Which is a shame, really, given the wit and wisdom that fairly oozes from the screen.

In fact, where else where else would you discover that grunting can improve your tennis game? Or read about a “horse race” for women in bikinis? Or learn the ridiculously simple rule for forming a possessive?

So. In the unlikely instance that there is, in fact, some truth to the notion that the reward is somewhat…lacking, I’ve been authorized to sweeten the deal: I will personally call the winner and, using my radio voice, offer my heartiest congratulations.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

Take the Narcissistic Personality Quiz today! I scored a big fat “0,” though, to be fair, it’s remarkably easy to manipulate the results.

In related news, it turns out that narcissists think they’re creative. Go figure. What’s most surprising about that little nugget is that it took a pair of psychologists—one from Cornell, the other from Stanford—to figure it out. A quick call to AMD headquarters would’ve saved them some time.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  comments(2)

To a graphic designer, there are all kinds of interesting things about this story—upper- vs. lower-case letters, font selection, etc. But what really struck me was this line: “federal copy editors are demanding….”

Just think about that for a moment or two. Read it again. Now say it out loud.

There are positions in the U.S. government for copy editors? And they get to demand things? And people have to respond to those demands?

What an awesome country this is.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

As someone who once scraped together a modest living as a music critic, I found the premise behind this diatribe intriguing—until the whole thing quickly became predictable.

The author relies on a single criterion for determining if art is worthy of his esteem: whether he likes it. That’s all well and good, I suppose, except that he points to Damien Hirst—the hack whose “art” includes the suspension of dead animals in solutions of formaldehyde—as one who creates “art for the ages.”

Then there’s the tiresome adulation of the Beatles, the self-aware “to me, [insert popular fiction writer here] is light reading,” the tendentious claim that art has to blow his mind in order for it to be considered “good.”

Yawn.

Here’s a good rule of thumb for aspiring critics: drop the pretense before you write. Oh, and get out more.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

I’m normally not a fan of burning books, but I think I’d make an exception for The Associated Press Stylebook (“More than 2 million copies sold!”). That so many otherwise serious institutions continue to abide by its arbitrary and specious rules is a continual source of amusement to me; that so many adults are unable to write clearly due to its predominance in public education is an unmitigated disaster.

Consider the possessive. Strunk & White treat it thusly:

Form the possessive of singular nouns by adding ‘s. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles’s friend
Burns’s poems
the witch’s malice

Simple. Elegant. And easily understood by the reader. Contrast that with the AP’s instructions, which, in my 2004 edition, contain no fewer than five variations for singular nouns alone (out of sixteen total, including “nouns plural in form, singular in meaning,” “quasi possessives,” and “inanimate objects”).

As is the case with the serial comma, the AP is chiefly interested in saving space in newspapers—creating room for more advertising—rather than in its journalists writing something that can actually be read.

Got a light?

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

In my career as a professional writer, few qualities have been so needlessly celebrated by those around me as consistency. At an advertising agency I once worked at, in fact, there was an account executive who insisted on repeating a printed grammatical error in all subsequent pieces—because to not do so would be inconsistent.

With that in mind, I offer up the following from Aldous Huxley: “Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.”

Word.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

I’ve always harbored suspicions that Oregonians were a bit, well…rigorous in their adherence to green orthodoxy. But I had no idea how rigorous:

This sign, located outside Manzanita, clearly shows just how far they’re willing to go.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

As a followup to last week’s post about beginning sentences with “and,” let me just add one last point for the benefit of those who, for whatever reason, believe that their high school English teacher is right and everyone else is wrong.

From The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (2003):

There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.

Had enough yet? No? Then let’s hear from Charles Allen Lloyd, from his 1938 book We Who Speak English: And Our Ignorance of Our Mother Tongue:

Next to the groundless notion that it is incorrect to end an English sentence with a preposition, perhaps the most wide-spread of the many false beliefs about the use of our language is the equally groundless notion that it is incorrect to begin one with “but” or “and.” As in the case of the superstition about the prepositional ending, no textbook supports it, but apparently about half of our teachers of English go out of their way to handicap their pupils by inculcating it. One cannot help wondering whether those who teach such a monstrous doctrine ever read any English themselves.

Now, this wouldn’t be such a big deal if so many people weren’t absolutely convinced of the veracity of the no-conjunctions-beginning-a-sentence hoax. As Lloyd suggests, to stubbornly insist on obeying such a “rule” against all evidence to the contrary is to handicap the writer. And that makes for bad writing.

There. I’m done now.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  comments(2)