Prelude to a Nocturne

Once upon a time, Tiresias was strolling through the woods when he chanced upon two snakes copulating. Upon striking them with his walking staff, he was changed into a woman. Seven years later, she was walking by the same spot and the same two snakes were going at it. She hit the snakes with her staff and was changed back into a man.

Things went well for our Tiresias for a few years until he got dragged into an argument between Zeus and Hera. As per usual, they had been arguing and the matter concerned who derived more pleasure from sex - man or woman. Zeus said it was the woman while Hera thought it was we men. Well, since Tiresias was a man who had been a woman for a stretch, he was brought in to settle the matter. He replied:

"Of ten parts a man enjoys one only, but a woman enjoys the full ten parts in her heart."

Hera, not a woman to take being proven wrong lightly, immedately struck Tiresias blind. Hell hath not...

I was reminded of this tale today at someone's sex diary. The author relates how to perform cunnilingus. At one point, she wrote:

If you play your cards right, you'll get some multiple orgasms this way. A woman stays excited for a full hour after she's had an orgasm. Do you realize the full impact of this information? The potential? A woman was clocked at 56 orgasms at one sitting, but me 12...Do you know what effect you would have on a woman you gave 56 or even 12 orgasms to?"

Now, I don't know how long "one sitting" was for that woman (or the veracity of the story, for that matter) but, still, even at my peak, that's like a week and a half's worth of self-inflicted acmegenesis. Damn women and their multiple orgasms!

Tomorrow I must go fetch a laptop. And I bowl. But, before bowling, I'm going to stop at The Pollacks and have a cocktail with Miss Rosie. She needs some advice and has a present for me which, no doubt, involves chocolate. She also has my calendar which I left at her house a couple weeks ago. On top of it all, Rosie wants me to show her some of my writing. I have no idea what to print off for her.

Man! The coffee has really perked me up! And after only 1 cup! Well, it was a large glass, I grant ya but still...I've got some Uncle Tupelo cranked up and I'm rockin' like Dokken! I haven't listened to No Depression in a while.

It must be an interesting time to be a linguist. English, and thereby other languages, are gaining new words and meanings for existing words. Not only is a "mouse" is a little, cheese-eating, furry thing, but also a device attached to a computer to move a parser around a screen. "Cyber" became a verb and another verb, "Photoshop", was introduced. Plus we got 1337. You know, that goofy notation used by teenage computer gamers who think they're all that and communicate with each other in sentences that look like this: "7|-|¡§ +£}{+ ¡§ |/\|®¡++£|/| ¡|/| 7££+".

Of course, there's the normal shorthand that people use in emails, chat, etc. Any form of "your" becomes "ur" and the like. Plus acronyms everywhere: IMHO = In My Humble Opinion, e.g. This being the case, I wonder if our general usage and syntax is going to hell. For most people, it's a short trip. I was sent to a business writing class once, not because I lacked a grasp of the English language, but rather because it was, perhaps, too good. I mean, I expected my co-workers to actually have graduated from high school and thusly be able to read at that level. But I was wrong. The instructor said that corporate communications going out to a general audience should be written at an 8th grade level. Oh...my...fuck. Yes, everyone out there on either side of the States or across an ocean - the most wealthy and powerful country on this planet is infested by a plague of morons.

Honestly, I don't expect grammatical perfection out of everyone around me. But, when I read emails from my boss who can't distinguish between "your" and "you're", amongst "there", "their", and "they're" or "then" and "than", while a co-worker who immigrated to this country from Norway writes and speaks perfect English, I find it very difficult to have much respect for my superior. I was responsible for sending out some department-wide communications and I was reminded by my boss to use my spell checker and such so my emails looked "professional". And this reminder came in an email riddled with spelling and usage errors.

Now, I don't jump on people for not using the Oxford serial comma or for ending a sentence with a preposition, but, Jesus H. Christ, I've received work emails where I felt the need to go to the person's desk and ask them just what the hell they meant. I recall one pretty well because the guy used at least half a dozen tenses/moods of "to be" in the same sentence. You youngins out there, don't believe your English teachers. Hardly anyone looks down upon you for poor writing. It's the vast majority of people who snub their noses at those that can write well.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly understand that every bit of writing is aimed at an audience. It's not like I look at everyone's OD and think, "What a maroon!". I understand that diaries, for example, usually are written in vernacular, are free-form, etc. But still, I wonder if there is a general worsening of people's ability to write well. Are there people out there who actually write business correspondence with "ur" and a million ellipses? Can we no longer make sentences that go beyond subject-verb-object? What was everyone doing in 5th grade English class?

OK, I admit it. I never paid attention to the bit about run-on sentences but at least I spell correctly most of the time. And my style is horrible. Every teacher that I've ever had that had to grade me on composition made good use of red markers because I love the passive voice. Sue me - I like it. This is due, no doubt, to having read a lot of 19th century English literature while growing up. How could they expect me not to end up writing as I do when they went around shoving the stuff down my throat while muttering things like "It's a classic" and "...the basis of a good liberal eduation"? Why use only 1 adjective when 3 will do? More words means more information, more impressions for the reader, more connotations that can be drawn out of the text. That's not to say, however, that one can't overdo it and give the reader a ton of useless crap. (That means you, Stephen R. Donaldson.) And why make me pour over Shakespeare, encourage me to read the Bible, and teach me classical mythology if you don't want me to use it? I'm a whore that way. I don't like things to sit in my brain and collect dust - I try to put them to use somehow. When I am learning something, be it a new word or a concept, repetition is a good way to get it lodged in my cranium for use sometime down the road.

But I like to think that I've found some middle ground in this matter. If I need to wield obfuscation like a lawyer, I can. Or I can be like everyone else and begin sentences with conjunctions. Writing should be fun because language is fun. It's a blast to use a word such as "stultiloquence" in a sentence and follow it up with a redneckism like "busier than a one eyed man at a burlesque show". Yep, those boys at the OED have a big job ahead of them.

I'm off to listen to some ethereal music to lull me into the arms of Morpheus...