Author: David J.

Is there value in the memory of the outmoded?

Will remembering how to use a rotary telephone ever save the day? How many times have you been forced to escape in a manual transmission car? Oh, and don’t forget to press play AND record at the same time if you want to capture your new favourite song on the radio.

And then, the other side of the coin:

Do you know how to use an axe? A hand saw? Can you paddle a boat? Start a fire in the rain? Make a snare? Fish? What about tanning hides? Foraging?

Technology could have made us stronger. Hardier. More in tune with our hippy selves. It could have made us whole and happy.

But maybe that’s not the point. Happiness isn’t a finish line. You don’t struggle up to it and then just … bask in it happily-ever-after-ly. It’s the smile you wear through the pain of the race, the shield that keeps all the darkness from touching your soft underbelly. And right now, the race is digital. Artificial. Cosmic.

Maybe the runner needs to change to fit the race ….

 

 

If I hadn’t learned it the hard way, it likely wouldn’t have stuck.

Easy lessons fade. The hard-won knowledge of failure lasts forever.

But there is always hope of rain from peaceful skies, and there is always another off-ramp. Another exit. Another rebrand. Forward is inevitable. Insert subsequent cliche here.

Success is the result of unearned failure. Don’t be afraid to think around the corner.

 

I was wrong, and I am sorry.

Arrogance blinded me to the simple truth, but I understand now. I do. I have seen the error of my ways, and I apologize for my transgression. Never again will I be so pretentious as to defend the absolute uselessness of the semi-colon.

In the interest of full confession, I will tell you how I came to this conclusion. I wrote a book. It had 95000 words in it. There were also 612 semi-colons. So, I challenged myself to see how many I could remove for the reprint without losing whatever effect I was hoping to preserve. Anyone care to guess how many I got rid of? Billy? Sally?

The correct answer is 612 (or all of them). I replaced them all with one of five devices. It was that easy. Can’t say that about a period … or even an ellipsis.

So, again, to all the people I offended with my post begging the salvation of a useless piece of punctuation, I apologize. I was wrong.  Let it die in peace; the useless semi-colon.

RIP.

Would you believe me if I told you that vegetables do not exist?

Think about it. Everything that you know as a vegetable is actually something else. Lettuce is a leaf. A carrot is a root. Brussels sprouts are, well, sprouts. And cauliflower … you get the picture.

Now, why would someone create an entire category of food? Could it be to sell you more food? The restaurant industry has been forced down some sneaky avenues in the past, and one of them led to a term for “the things on the plate that aren’t meat.” Hence, vegetables were born out of pure culinary imagination to fill a void no one noticed anyway. 

Another reason not to trust a chef. 

Do you still watch television?
Do you read a newspaper? A magazine? Does your information come from a physical source, or do you consume content in a digital buffet?

I imagine using the term anachronistically – even a single generation so. Tell someone in 2001 that they were consuming content and they would likely punch you for making a fat joke. Because prior to the social media explosion, the term content had a very different meaning.

The only reason I bring the point to light is to expose a fundamental difference in how we see entertainment in the modern day versus only a few years ago. Content was not consumed – it was was watched. Witnessed. Observed. Remembered. It gave what we saw a certain gravity of permanence. Because if someone paid to put it on television, or on the radio – or put it into print – there must be an importance to it. Who would waste money on shouting something that stupid?

Once it was free, however … every idiot could start shouting. And shout, we did (apologies to a few dozen hundred subreddits).

For the last two decades, anyone can say anything to everyone. Loudly. It has not been pleasant. But it has been enlightening. The modern influencer culture is based on an entirely ephemeral structure of digestive bits of content. They aren’t real. We know that. They aren’t experts. We know that,  too. But we watch them for eighteen to twenty-six seconds at a time, and we feel comforted by their refreshing take on something we had previously considered frivolous – or never considered at all. An easy little snack of an idea.

Don’t want to ruin your dinner, after all ….

My friends,

The time has come to stand against the army of punctuation haters threatening to destroy our beautiful language! There are so few acceptable ways to construct a sentence – and even fewer ways to control the flow and cadence. Hence, our helpful little friends: punctuation marks! 

Lately, there has been much rage spent on the fate of the semi-colon; it is the least understood and therefore greatest tool in the box. It’s just another period, really.

Then the comma hate. The stut, stut, stut, stut, stutter haters. Shame on you! Let us stammer out our prose with a little buckboard road background rattling, bouncing, jostling, and jolting our way into your cold, cold hearts ….

And the em dash … the poor, poor em dash – stolen by artificial intelligence as a banner against the human writer!

The hate on ellipses. The hate on italics. The hate on exclamations! The hate on parenthesis as pretentious asides beyond the fourth wall. If you combine all the latent grammar haters into one compendium, all that would leave us with are periods. Period.

“Or do you want to have to ask questions all the damn time?” 

Eight months ago, I sat in this chair, took out a piece of paper, and started writing an outline.

That outline became a draft, and that draft became a manuscript. With a little help from the online world, that manuscript has now become a dream – a dream undying ….

The process is daunting. It requires a lot of pain and a lot of forgiveness. We never know what we can do until we pour all we are into it – and fail. Or succeed, even. Regardless of outcome, reception, and review, I am proud of my journey.

And I am ready to face my firing squad. 

Please – don’t hold back. I have no intention of going away. I will be heard. No matter how stupid what I have to say may feel. Or sound. There is always another mistake to learn from, and always another hill to crest.

Be well, fellow travelers of unkind seas.  And don’t forget, when it comes to stupid, it’s always best to go big ….

… and then, maybe, go home.