Monthly Archives: April 2010

Readability Be Damned

Back in March when my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday I went onto http://chapters.indigo.ca and into the fiction section to see what I might like.

I initially gravitated to the new Chuck Klosterman book.  His first piece of fiction.  I had read a few of his books before (collections of essays, mostly true stories, and anecdotes) and read him online from time-to-time so I added that to my wish list (it’s called “Downtown Owl“, and I liked it).

Then, I started looking for crime novels, heist books, and other assorted who done it types.  In the new release section was a Don Delillo book that claimed to be about a filmmaker and a U.S. Government inside-the-war room fellow.  In grade eleven I read this book “White Noise” by Don Delillo.  All I can tell you about it today is that I think it ended with the main character in a grocery store but I vaguely remember liking it.  I put his new one on my wish list as well.  It was titled “Point Omega“.

It sucked.

It’s not just that it was a slow moving book.  It never really got started.  It was only a hundred or so pages, but honestly it could have done with another hundred more just so that the really good story lines actually had time to develop.

In my non-expert opinion it was just poorly written, and I can’t even begin to describe how much I now loathe the comma.  This is what this awful book has done to me.  I can’t even look at a comma now without feeling sick to my stomach.

It began with sentences with so many commas I could barely keep track, kept with that theme for a while, continued to overuse them, and finished, finally, with a few pages of disjointed thoughts, separated, of course, by many commas, presumably to promote something I can only describe as “punctuation epilepsy”.

The only advice I can give is to avoid reading this book.  That, and Don Delillo should read “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynn Truss and pay careful attention to the chapter on the comma (assuming for a minute that a hugely successful author of dozens of novels, short stories and plays can take advice from a blathering blog hack like myself).

Potato Chip Update!

Quick update on my potato chip situation.  The math just got better!!

The discount blue bag chips are back to their regular 2 for $5 price and my reliable favourites have now dropped in price by $0.70 now making them only $0.50 more than the cheap ones – and totally worth every penny.

I am pleased.

Entirely Too Digital

OK, you know you’re too immersed in a digital world when you’re doing something that has been done manually for centuries – and can only be done manually – and your brain tries to behave as if it’s sitting in front of the computer.  This just happened to me:

I was putting away my laundry and a t-shirt which was folded (perfectly, of course) dropped off the top of the pile as I walked to my dresser.  This amazingly folded article of clothing became unraveled and started to tumble to the floor.  No word of a lie, my brain thought “CTRL – Z”.

(for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, it’s a keyboard shortcut – pressing the “Ctrl” key at the same time as “z” – that performs a very special action: UNDO)