Writer's Digest, Please Stop Making Me Laugh

I love that this particular Writer's Digest article already has a typographical and grammatical error within the title:

"Should Your Write a Novel or Short Story?" 

Do you see what I see? ;)

*NOTE - Sunday, May 22, 2011, 12:25 PM*
Writer's Digest has now corrected the title. I wonder why...

Haha, oh well. Happy writing everyone! I shall update later.

A White Christmas & So-called Proper Use of the English Language

The blizzard hit the tri-state area (particularly New York City and the surrounding counties) on the afternoon, evening, and night of December 26th. It left about more than foot of snow in its wake.

People are still trying to shovel their cars out as sanitation workers try to plow through the streets to clear the way for passing traffic. I feel bad for those who are trying to get home but are stuck at train stations, bus stops, and airports, stranded until the rails, roads, and runways are safe enough for travel. As much as I love the snow and snow days, it's pretty rough if you're traveling and need to be someplace at a specific time. My mother didn't even go to work yesterday because the MTA advised that people stay at home as much as possible (some train lines were either delayed or not running at all because of the snow pile-ups and signal problems).

As I listened to the news last night, this has been one of the five biggest blizzards to hit New York City, this one being the second blizzard in 2010 (the first blizzard was in February 2010). It's nice to stay at home and not have to worry about going out, although some people have taken advantage of the abundant snow and had some fun sledding in Central Park, building snow-people, and making snow angels. It's kind of a shame that most of that snow, once they're all either shoveled away or melted away, will become dirtied with... Well, let's just call it yellow and brown snow, shall we? ;)

Sony NWZ-S545

Anyway, my Christmas was pretty nice. My family and I went to church three days in a row (my mom and I sing in the choir while my two younger sisters altar-serve) for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day (which was a Saturday this year), and for the regular Sunday Mass on the 26th. At midnight on Christmas Eve, we ate honeyed ham and queso de bola (Edam cheese) with sweet Filipino bread (called "pan de sal," which I find pretty odd, since it's not actually salty), as well as fruit salad and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

Then after eating our midnight Christmas Eve meal, we opened our presents. I'd been wondering whether I would receive the mp3 player I've been wanting (okay, settling for, really. It's the Sony NWZ-S545, pictured on the right, and it actually had some pretty decent reviews by music-loving consumers) because I've worked so hard to maintain my 3.8 GPA and to get into Psi Chi.

Guess what I got instead as a pleasant surprise because I wasn't actually counting on it? (I've been asking my parents to get me one for YEARS).

Click here to see it. (I promise, you won't get spam or shitty pop-ups.)

OH, YEAHHHH...

My sister and I got the 8 GB version. We smiled and rejoiced once we unwrapped our presents. We're learning how to use the program/music manager for our devices, little by little. We were able to put our favorite songs. Now, we're actually trying to be more helpful with chores around the house so that we might deserve more awesome gifts in the future. (This behavioral reinforcement that my mother came up with sure is working!)

Right now, my device is charging on my computer as I'm blogging this post. :)

There's really no smooth transition into the following topic, so uh, here it is: another thing that's crossed my mind today...

I was browsing through Youtube for the song "We're On Top of the World" by the Juliana Theory when I came across this particular comment:

"nice to hear that i remember this song from that movie too but please work on your grammer and spelling."

What's wrong with the above comment? The user who wrote that particular comment was just as guilty of breaking rules of grammar and spelling (note that it's supposed to be spelled as "GRAMMAR" and not "GRAMMER"). Also, the lack of punctuation just makes the comment more difficult to read.

CORRECTION: "It's nice to hear that. I remember this song from that movie, too, but please work on your grammar and spelling."

Sorry, I just have a thing for calling people out on their BS, especially when the person in question (whoever that Youtube user is) just unwittingly portrayed him or herself as a hypocrite when it comes to "proper" grammar, spelling, syntax, and punctuation. Sure, that comment was left on Youtube and was not meant to be included in an academic thesis. It should, however, behoove people to at least try to write or type "properly" over the Internet.

This is not to say that I myself always write or type using "proper" grammar, spelling, syntax, and punctuation. I know that I don't always adhere to the rules. I'm a human being, after all, and just as prone to errors as the next human being. I do, however, try to adhere to the rules of proper use of the English language even when I send someone a text message using my non-full-keyboard cell phone. It's just easier that way. Also, I don't want to fall into the lapse of "chatspeak." I refuse to do so, although the most I'll ever engage in chat-speak is to occasionally type "LOL" or "LMAO" if I happen to find something particularly funny or if the comment calls for a light-hearted chuckle.

I'm all for experimental types of writing in fiction and creative writing (e.e. cummings has some lovely and whimsical poems), but you should know the rules and learn to apply them in the proper manner before you can actually break them.

Manic Monday Debacle

I should really be studying Philosophy right now. I have a final at 9:00 AM the next day. But for some reason, I'm just not in the mood. I pretty much know the material. I mean, I passed the other two exams with A's. How hard can this next one be?

I refuse to crack open my notebook, for fear that I might crack a fissure in the already volatile thought bubble that is my brain. I refuse to fall into that chasm called worry.

But I'd rather splurge in chronicling my cluttered cognitive formations surrounding yesterday here.

Right now, I'm hungry. There's this cozy restaurant called Spice along 8th Ave., close to NYU, that serves yummy Thai food at affordable prices. For only $5, I ordered a Crispy Calamari Salad, which filled me up right away. It tasted heavenly. A frenzy of flavor tantalized my tongue: the fried salty goodness of the calamari, the fresh mix of veggie greens and tomatoes, and a melt-in-your-mouth minty cool sauce of sweetness. I'm definitely eating there again and I'm definitely going to google the recipe.

That was yesterday evening's dining experience. Just before that, Priscilla, Lily, and I tried going to Washington Square Park. We'd heard that there was a free Fall Out Boy concert going on at 3:30 in the afternoon, thanks to Pete Wentz calling up Z100 and announcing it. Pris told us about it, and so we wanted to check it out. Note that FREE was the buzzword that got our ears signaled to this goal... honestly, it's been a LONG while since I last listened to FOB and I kind of outgrew them. But in any case, it seemed like a cool experience. We figured that it would maybe/sort of make up for the fact that we MISSED a free concert by Adele, one of our favorite artists, at the Apple Store in SoHo a couple weeks before. Unfortunately, we got to the park at around 5:00, and it was pretty much empty. Just our luck for being late (thanks a bunch, MTA!). Not that we were overly bummed out or anything.

(According to Z100 this morning, it turns out the concert didn't even last that long. The police came and said that FOB didn't have a permit to play, so they couldn't set up their instruments. Instead, they performed a capella. Thus, the whole she-bang was relatively short.)

As we stood amid the emptiness of the park, I started hearing drumbeats in the distance, thinking that the band was still there. But as we followed the sounds, it turned out to be a street performer doing a rendition of what must be some kind of cultural, Native American music - complete with chanting and trills.

"Do you really think Fall Out Boy would play that?" Lily said with point-blank sarcasm. Obviously, not. We erupted in laughter right then, and laughed even harder as Lily started to kind of mosh in front of us. Eyes closed, head bouncing, hair flailing, hands and hips gyrating - she looked outright ridiculous. Passers-by shot stares at what looked like three young women who've lost their grasp on reason. Honestly, though, it was fun. :D

While we were at Spice later, Priscilla "introduced" (since Liliana contested that there was no such word in the English dictionary) debacle in one conversation. She pronounced it as "de-BOK-l." But I'd only heard it pronounced as "deb-a-kel" (short a phonetic sound). We got into this whole debate that itself proved to be a debacle, as there really wasn't much of a resolution. We even went so far as to walk into Barnes & Noble on Union Square to look up the pronunciation in a dictionary. When that didn't help, Pris asked a man what the correct pronunciation was.

"Excuse me, sir. But my friends and I would like to know if there is such a world as debacle?" (Here she said it as "de-BOK-el")

"Yes, there is," he replied.

"And can it be pronounced as 'deb-a-kel'?"

A brief, puzzled look came over the man's face but then disappeared into amusement. "Ah, I see. Well, there could be two different pronunciations for the same word."

Liliana looked absolutely affronted. "Well, you know what, Priscilla? I have never in my life heard of such a word as 'de-BOK-el'! I mean, WHAT NORMAL PERSON SAYS THAT?! De-BOK-el!" She started waving her right index finger in Pris's face and doing her trademark head-roll, typical of a Hispanic New Yorker incensed with an affluency for attitude.

"Thank you so much, sir," Pris said as we tried to hush Liliana over to the escalator.

"Not a problem. Have fun!"

The guy must have thought we were obsessive - and in Lily's case, obsessive compulsive - over a single word. We were so engrossed in our stupid debate that we walked towards the wrong escalator.

Pris and I couldn't stop laughing at her persistence, and it continued even as we went to Starbucks to satisfy Liliana's chronic caffeine cravings. (Okay, well not "chronic." Lily just happens to be an avid coffee enthusiast. So to speak. Hehe.)

We were even planning to go so far as to double-check with Mr. A, our English teacher in high school, on Alumni Day (which is scheduled for January 9th). It's kind of sad that we were having this debate when all three of us took AP English during senior year.

Finally, we gave it a rest as we joined the sewer rats in the subway to get home. That was one of the funniest arguments I've ever come across. It was a debacle in itself, if you catch my drift. The only thing that was really solved was Lily's denial of the word's existence. But for me and Pris, it was a win-win situation.

But after all of this absurdity, what can I tell ya?
It was just another manic Monday.