less is more

Words complicate things. Liars use more words than necessary. A wordy explanation could leave your listeners confused, a succinct one clarifies. That is why exercises like hamletin6 are so valuable. They forces to to reevaluate what something is and what it means to you. To be able to summarize long novels with multiple themes and ideas in a few words is no easy feat. Although it's not recommended to write essays in a couple of words, it could be useful to review and to think about what a text really means. You have to really think about the story and the underlying morals to be able to summarize a book in six words or less.


In this post, I'll take it to the next level. Here are a few one word summaries of novels we've read before. They are a bit more abstract than six word summaries, but they work just the same.

The Oedipus cycle: Fate
Oedipus tried to run from what was inevitable, and paid the price for it. He couldn't escape his fate, but in the end learned to accept it.

The Jungle: Need
Jurgis and the family always needed something, whether it be coal or food. They always had a need, therefore always needed to do something.

The Scarlet Letter: Pride
Pride kept Hester strong. Pride kept the Scarlet Letter on her blouse and turned it into a symbol of something other.

You know what's cool? Bow ties are cool.

Recently, the Doctor Who Christmas special aired. Probably on Christmas day. I won't bore you with the details, but here's quick summary.

1. dr sad
2. dr visit humans
3. human like dr
4. human get in trubble 
5. dr saves the day
6. human dies (again)
7. Clara Oswin Oswald

That is the basis of most Doctor Who episodes. However, I've noticed a trend T.V shows and this show in particular. There are episodes that serve only to further the overarching story line. In the long run this makes the show awesome, but it can make the episode bad. Bottle episodes.

Character or story development episodes aren't necessarily bad, just usually. When writers focus on one thing, the episode itself, great things can happen. Shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy don't exactly have an overarching story line. The writers focus on what is happening in the episode and usually that leads to good thing.

This problem only plagues some shows. Doctor Who is a sci-fi action-adventure program and every episode should have action-adventure. If the writers focused on the big picture, smaller episodes wouldn't matter very much. If the writers focused on each individual episode, the show wouldn't be as great as it could possibly be. The creators and writers chose this burden and must live with it, to make the show great.

anywhere in time and space. every star that that ever was. where do you want to start?

Recently, there was a sale at Barnes and Nobles for "classics" and I snagged myself some H.P. Lovecraft. Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in 1890, in Rhode Island. He wrote his first story, The Beast in the Cave, at the tender age of 15. He later wrote The Shadow Out of Time in 1833, when he was 28.

"Man! Look at that archway."

For his first story, The Beast in the Cave was rather impressive. Today's teenagers wouldn't have been able to write anything that would come close to rivaling Lovecraft's short story. The scene was set and the mood was well established. An over zealous tourist gets separated from the group and gets lost in a complex cave system. His torch burns out and he has no other choice but to accept his fate. As a last ditch attempt to save himself, the narrator yells and shouts to attract attention. And attract attention he did, of some beast that had been living in the cave.

The Shadow Out of Time is considerably larger and more detailed. It is more or less a 19th century take on Inception. The story is based around an ancient race of creatures who quest for knowledge. Their society is based around the library and knowledge. As time wears on and their bodies fail, they project their minds into other creatures, effectively having a mass exodus of the entire race, hijacking another species' body. This cycle continues on and on until it affects the protagonist of the story. As a way of gaining knowledge, the creatures send probes into the minds of people in other planets and races. They stay in the body for as long as they need and research the civilization.

All-in-all H.P. Lovecraft is a pretty nifty writer. His stories are short, but have a lasting effect.

Sarcasm^2

Have you ever been so sarcastic, witty and snarky to the point that people think you're stupid? It happens to me a lot. Maybe my humor is too advanced for the rest of society to understand. I'm a big advocate for the snark. It sounds amazingly useful and seems like a necessity.

The snark is a punctuation mark suggested by Henry Denham. It denotes the use of irony and sarcasm. Now then, the use of the snark in novels might not be the greatest idea. I say this because detecting irony in stories is a useful skill and is a main point in literature. However, it is a different story over the internet. I have made fun of people (Oh no! Cyberbullying!!?>!?!!?) over the internet without them knowing. Probably because half the people on the internet are half illiterate. Sometimes I even had to explain my insults to them. However, if the snark was actually used in main stream punctuation, well that'd be really easy then.

There are many other punctuation marks that sound really useful and should be used.

It's a comma combined with a question mark. What else could you ask for? The question comma seems really useful for rhetoric. You could use a series of questions more effectively and it would be more cosmetically pleasing. Isn't underground punctuation the best? 

Life is pretty good.

People who complain about life are annoying. I have 4 AP classes, I finish most of my homework on time and I get at least 7 hours of sleep everyday. Life isn't that hard.

As a matter of fact, life is pretty easy. If you want a good grade, work for it. If you don't want to do homework, then don't do it. Just do whatever makes you happy, because let's be honest here being happy is the whole point of anything.  If doing something doesn't make you happy now or later on, then it's pointless. Don't waste time trying to do things you don't want to.

Another thing to consider is to not freak out about stuff. Seriously. First off it's bad for you, second off it's incredibly annoying to everyone around you. Especially me. Just go with the flow. Don't stress out about things, just fix them if you can. If you can't, oh well.

You kids stress out too much. Just take a step back and chill out, bro. Some things are out of your control and you can't change that.
Also, if homework is making you stay up to three in the morning then first of all your working habits are terrible, secondly you'd be better off not doing your homework. Work smart, not hard. If you can't work smart then don't work at all. It's more beneficial to get your sleep and be ready for the next day than to do some flimsy homework assignment that won't help you in the slightest.

antidisestablishmentarianism

People try too hard to sound smart. In Lincoln's Gettyburg address, he used 220 one-syllable words. We don't need to use big words to sound smart. In fact, using multiple syllable words clogs up a sentence and muddles its purpose. Language is meant to help you communicate clearly and concisely, not make you sound intelligent.

I'm no George Orwell, but there are some writing faux pas that everybody should avoid. If you want to sound smart and intelligent, it is more effective to write clear sentences with a clear purpose. Now then, don’t take it too far. Using concise words is different from sounding informal and buddy-buddy. I write informally, which is a rather bad writing style.

This act of setting a pretense isn't limited only to intelligence. People pretend to be cool, people pretend to be creative, people pretend to be talented. This is a public service announcement to stop. Seriously. Writers, teenagers, kids and adults need to come into their own and stop pretending to be other people.

I think that the phrase “Be yourself” is overused and just inaccurate. It bothers me how people have to be told to be themselves as if by default they try to be someone else.

  Somehow this post went from long words to how society is terrible, I apologize.

..and then a skeleton popped out!

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away

Let's face it, staircases are scary as heck.

My favorite poem of all time is Antigonish by Hughes Mearns. It is not simply some boring poem written by some boring poet. Our more internet savvy readers would know that a story like this is called creepypasta. It's a scary story. Who is the man upon the stair? Is he a ghost? Is he some being from another dimension? Is he the janitor? We may never know.

Let's break this poem down, APE3 style!
 "I met a man that wasn't there", I feel that this sentence sums up the entire poem. How can you meet a man that wasn't there?


"He wasn't there again today", This sentence gives me the chills. It really does. It gives the stair man a purpose, to be there. Before, he was some entity on the stair who wasn't there. Now there is a more sinister and ominous aura about him. He is waiting, watching, haunting you.

"The man was waiting there for me", Again, he is waiting for you. The man is haunting your staircase, waiting for your arrival.

"Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!

Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door.", This is where the speaker's character is put onto the stage. Before you get to this point in the poem, you would take it for what it is. Maybe the speaker really is being haunted by a scary ghost stair. Maybe it's a trick of the light. However, now the speaker's integrity and sanity is questioned. These two lines show erratic, even aggressive, behavior. The reader can vividly imagine the scene in his or her mind: a bearded, old man yelling at nothing in his old shack.