Friday, July 03, 2009

The Complete Rules of Good Writing

The English language is a complex and ever-changing beast, rife with stylistic eccentricities and open to misinterpretation on many levels. Little wonder, then that for every expert English speaker, there are thousands who find themselves falling down grammatical trapdoors, tripping up over puzzling punctuation and spelling words with diabolical inaccuracy. Here is how you can avoid them:




















A writer should not annoy half of his readers by using gender-specific language.

Always finish what you star.


Avoid overuse of ampersands & abbreviations etc.
 

Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
 

Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
 

Avoid clichés like the plague- they’re so old hat.
 

Be more-or-less specific.
 

Consult the dictionary frequently to avoid mispeling
 

Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
 

Contractions aren’t necessary.
 

Do not use, unnecessary, commas.
 

Do not use a foreign word when there is an adequate English quid pro quo.
 

Do not use hyperbole; not even one in a million can do it effectively.
 

Don’t repeat yourself and avoid being repetitive.
 

Don’t use no double negatives. The double negative is a no-no.
 

Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
 

Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!!!
 

Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
 

Don’t use unattributed quotations.’
 

Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, ‘I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.’
 

Eschew obfuscation.
 

Exaggeration is a million times worse than understatement.
 

Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
 

If you reread and reread your work and reread it again you will weed out the weeds of repetition.
 

It is recommended that measures should be taken to ensure that the length of sentences is not excessive and that the complexity of said sentences is reduced.
 

Never use a big word where a diminutive alternative would suffice.
 

One should never generalize.
 

One-word sentences? Eliminate. Always!
 

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
 

Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
 

Refrain from being indirect.
 

Subject and verb always has to agree.
 

Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors.
 

Understatement is always the best by far.
 

Who needs rhetorical questions?
 

You shalt avoid archaic language.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Commencement Address for High School

Ah, graduation day. After twelve years of enduring annoying teachers, nagging principals, poisonous canteen food, and traumatic insults thrown at you by your peers, you’ve finally made it! And how are you compensated? You are buried with a flurry of meaningless statistics by a dull, sullen and boring alumni member who’s as exciting as Stephen Hawking! Even worse he pretends like life is good from here on in, instead of giving you the straight truth about your impending miserable journey into adulthood, as I do in...


COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS FOR THE CLASS OF 2009
Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2009 batch...the future is yours! 
Mainly because the rest of us don’t want anything to do with it! Global warming, overpopulation, biological warfare, financial meltdown...it’s really going to be dreadful!

And graduation is a time for celebration.
Like celebrating the fact that YOU didn’t have a single classmate go off the edge and hack you all down with a pen knife in the classroom!

You, the Class of 2009 batch, are truly special, for you are the class of the new millennium. 
And, more importantly, you will never have to listen to all that “Bridge the 21st century” turd from politicians, advertisers and every other company trying to con money out of you!

As you embark on your journey into a new era, ask yourself: “What am I taking away from my School years”? A little wisdom..? A little maturity..?
Perhaps a little infection from your boy/girlfriend who swore he/she was a virgin..?

Whatever else you take away, you’re taking away an important piece of paper called the high school degree! 
Which, thanks to decades of dumbing down by our nation’s educators, has as much hope as finding a cure for HIV-AIDS? Not that it matters, because all the jobs you’ll be competing for won’t be worth a flying %$^& anyway!

Once you have the degree in hand, people will tell you to reach for the stars- to strive to be the best you can be. 
Those people are idiots, ‘because you could study for the next 1,000 years, but unless you miraculously happen to have super-skills there’s not a chance in hell, you will be the next Lionel Messi, Steve Jobs or Steven Spielberg. Face it; it’s over before you know it!

The glory of success is there, waiting for you to grab it! 
Actually, the “glory of success” is waiting to be grabbed by the 2% of your classmates- the really geeky, nerdy ones who actually did their homework and sucked up to the teachers- who might buck the trend and achieve fame, wealth and power…only to be struck down in the prime of their lives by cancer, an early heart attack, a car crash or a run-in with someone from the other 98% in a street fight. So you see, life IS fair after all!

Whatever you decide to do, hold onto your dreams… 
They might provide some measly bit of comfort after the world has beaten you down!

…and never be afraid to try and perchance, to fail.
cause no matter how bad you blow it, at least you won’t be as pathetic as these geezers in the front row from the classes of '87,'88 and '89 who have nothing better to do than fill their few remaining days by coming back to their old school and spending three hours - just to get some cheap applause for not having croaked yet!

In closing, since I’m sure a few of you are in a hurry to meet your future head-on… 
In a fatal drunk driving accident after getting sloshed at the graduation party…

…let me just say: good luck. I hope my advice be of value to you. 
Although I doubt it, because if I were any good at this sort of thing, I’d be sitting at home, instead of gazing out upon this sea of void spaces between your ears, barely making enough for taxi fare to get me out of here.

Thank you. 
Go to hell.

Friday, January 09, 2009

CINEMA VS MOVIES

Different people look for different things when viewing a motion picture. Some look for emotional insight and artistic merit, while others look for nothing more than a mindless piece of trashy stuff! But when going to the theater, how does one know what it is they are paying to see? It’s not easy, but I’ll help point out the main differences in..

CINEMA VS MOVIES

If it attempts to reveal the hidden psyche of Ernest Hemingway, IT’S CINEMA
If it attempts to reveal the hidden psycho in the basement, IT’S A MOVIE

If a hot shower is used as a metaphor for the cleansing of the soul, IT’S CINEMA
If a hot shower is used as a private peephole for horny university students, IT’S A MOVIE

If it has a direct tie-in to Sigmund Freud’s “The interpretation of Dreams”, IT’S CINEMA
If it has a direct tie-in to Diet Pepsi, IT’S A MOVIE

If it carefully examines the disintegration of a marriage, IT’S CINEMA
If it carefully examines the disintegration of a human skull, IT’S A MOVIE

If it’s a deeply personal study of Beethoven- the man, the composer, the tortured genius, IT’S CINEMA
If it’s a deeply personal study of Beethoven- the 100 kg dog, IT’S A MOVIE

If it tells the tale of forbidden love taken from the diaries of Mary Shelley, IT’S CINEMA
If it tells the tale of forbidden love taken from the diaries of Paris Hilton, IT’S A MOVIE

If it expands on the themes in the classic “Brothers Karamazov”, IT’S CINEMA
If it expands on the themes in the classic Brothers Mario, IT’S MOVIE









If the director uses a faraway camera angle to illustrate a character’s spiritual isolation, IT’S CINEMA
If the director uses the same thing because the real actor was not available the day the scene was shot, IT’S A MOVIE

If it studies modern society’s total lack of understanding, IT’S CINEMA
If it studies Sharon Stone’s total lack of underpants, IT’S A MOVIE

If they attempt a naturalistic feel by choosing a performer with no acting expertise or experience, IT’S CINEMA
If they attempt to do the same thing by choosing Bruce Willis, IT’S A MOVIE

If the action concerns stricken kids in the Dust Bowl, IT’S CINEMA
If the action concerns shrunken kids in a bowl of Chocos, IT’S A MOVIE

If the film details Michelangelo’s ambivalent relations with the Medicis and the Pope, IT’S CINEMA
If the film details Michelangelo’s ambivalent relationship with Donatello and Splinter, IT’S A MOVIE

If it employs the dramatic skills of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, IT’S CINEMA
If it employs the dramatic skills of the Enterprise’s Ensign Chekov, IT’S A MOVIE