Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Horray!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Things you can't say OR write.
This is a sequel to the post before the last one, made possible only because The Minister of Older People emailed me back! Thank you, sir! You'll remember that The Minister had expressed in an email a thought that didn't quite make perfect sense upon first reading it. However, the general idea of this thought would be easily understandable had he expressed it vocally during a conversation, because the listener's brain would process it quickly without subjecting it to a grammatical breakdown. Well, The Minister is at it again, but this time he's unleashed a thought that would force even the quickest of cerebella to seize up in confusion:
What is the and schedule?
Thanx,
The Minister of Older People
Imagine, if you will, that you were sitting at your desk, and a coworker popped his head into your office and said, "what is the and schedule?" If you have imagined this even half as vividly as I have been able to, there is no need for me to dissect it any further.
When I read this in the email, I grappled with it for a few seconds, and then, as we humans do, I extracted whatever sense I could from it. The best I could come up with was that The Minister would not be able to attend the event on March 26th, and was asking for April's schedule of events. If he had sent the email from his phone, his phone could have auto-corrected his "apr" contraction of "April" to read "and". Yes, I thought, that must be it. So I emailed back to him a list of April's events. I received this reply:
I said I would be there this Saturday the 26th – my question is what is the schedule and/or agenda for the 26th
I humbly beg your pardon, Minister. Of course that is what you were asking.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Spring training
Things you can say but not write.
There are some things that are better said than written. For example, it probably wouldn't be a problem if you were standing in your backyard watering some plants and you said, "Hi, Barry Gibb. You are my soul mate. I'm going to come into your house while you're asleep and steal your socks, so that I can make a shirt out of them. Then I'm going to fill up your bathtub with pictures of me and my cats." You could say that, and chances are nothing bad would come of it. But if you wrote that down in the wrong place (like in a letter addressed to Barry Gibb), you could get into some trouble. Most likely the police, at the behest of Mr. Gibb, would make an inquiry, leading to an awkward series of questions like, "why did you write that letter? Why do you have so many pictures of you and your cats dressed up like old-timey sailors? What's in that envelope addressed to Olivia Newton-John that's in your mailbox?"
Hi Raithburne,
I have tried to call you back and your service does not recognize your name. yes, I would like to attend on the 26th of march. I can be reached at:
๑๐-แปด-เจ็ดสอง = home
สิบสอง-สี่-๘ดส = cell
The Minister of Older People
"I have tried to call you back and your service does not recognize your name." If, in the flow of a relevant conversation, this sentence was uttered, it would most likely be taken to mean, "I couldn't figure out how to navigate your office's voice mail menu to find your extension." But when read, it seems like nonsense. Like the words just spilled into the email before The Minister of Older People had time to organize them into a cohesive thought.
The thing about writing that's different than speaking is that when words are spoken, they are usually followed by more speaking, allowing enough time for the listener to process the thought but not enough time to actually analyze the form in which it was presented. But if the same words are written, they are there for good, stuck on the page or the screen, to be read over and over. So if the writer doesn't take the time to fine-tune those words, it's all too easy for the reader to pick them apart and find no real meaning behind them.
The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder if what my correspondent meant was that when he reached our general voice mail system, he just started shouting my name into the phone. Which is not how our voice mail system works, but it might explain what he wrote in the email (it also would make a hilarious 30-second video). In light of this possibility, please disregard everything you have just read. Thanks anyway.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Oh captain, my captain...
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Funeral hats
Friday, March 4, 2011
Chimichangas
Thursday, March 3, 2011
A goat.
What I've noticed is that there is no place for subtlety in dialogue. At least in the live setting. Because what you have is a bunch of nerds (comics) running around on stage trying to keep the energy going, which means they have to have a symbiotic flow going with the audience. And from what I can tell, the industry-standard way to maintain the energy is to be noisy. The three times I went to improv sketch comedy performances (if it's improvised is it a performance? Or just like an accident on a stage?), the comics who scored the biggest laughs were the ones who forced a punchline by yelling. "A...GOAT!" is one exclamation I recall was quite popular with the crowd. That kid was killing that night. Killing.
I think that's too bad. Because most of the humor in life is derived from attention to small details. Like what a very overweight CEO does with his hands during a deposition. Or the way a cat tries to get something out of a cardboard box. Or all of the filler words and pauses a person uses when they're trying to give you an answer to a tough question they know nothing about (today I was on a phone call with a guy who said "for sure" like 37 times). Stuff like that can be very funny. But in a live setting, there isn't enough quiet space or audience attention span to work with that medium. So it turns into a Jim Carrey movie situation: it's funnier if you're a little drunk. The problem for me? I am never drunk. That's why it's sometimes hard for me to sit through Jim Carrey movies (especially "Ace Ventura". Especially that.)