My organizational skills

I've been working on putting my book in order, which is an obnoxiously difficult and anxiety-producing task. Here are the current piles I have:

Stuff I probably won't use
Stuff I might use
Flashbacks I once liked but now am unsure about
An early scene
Short little scenes that could go at the beginning
Stuff that should go somewhere
[blank post-it note]
ALL (obviously)
Late stuff
Stuff

It's a good thing I'm so organized or this would be really difficult.

A Facebook status

I know Facebook isn't really fair game because nobody uses their best grammar/spelling/intelligence there. However, sometimes I long for a perfect world in which news organizations can construct logical sentences to make simple status updates. Take this, for example:

Here is a reminder to be safe when out hunting. It is day two and one injury has been reported. On Saturday, the Grant County Sheriff's Department says a hunter accidentally fired a shot into palm of hand. Police say was seat in an elevated ladder stand. He was loading his .45 semi-automatic handgun, when the gun discharged striking him in the palm of his left hand.

This is five sentences. Just five. Again, I realize it is unrealistic to expect journalists to be able to construct five consecutive sentences. And the first two sentences are fine. But then this happens:

On Saturday, the Grant County Sheriff's Department says a hunter accidentally fired a shot into palm of hand.

OK, I'll admit the capitalization here is impressive. I've made fun of our local NBC affiliate for that before. But nice job. However, halfway through this sentence they seem to have forgotten to turn their notes into complete sentences. "Fired a shot into palm of hand"? Possibly this is a traditional journalistic technique in this situation. To be fair, I'm not a journalist, so I may not know these things. 

Police say was seat in an elevated ladder stand.

Again, I realize this is a Facebook update, and I should really not be so hard on journalists. But it would just be so awesome if people who got paid to write or speak for a living could construct complete sentences. 

He was loading his .45 semi-automatic handgun, when the gun discharged striking him in the palm of his left hand.

I'm going to pretend that comma is after the word "discharged" instead.

Hey, local NBC affiliate. Good news! If you were playing baseball, your .400 sentence structure completion average would be awesome!

No work...

Not having work is the bane of the independent contractor's existence. I'll have several months where I'm so swamped I don't have time for anything but work, and then I'll get this bullshit where I have nothing. This is why, while my job is awesome, it also sucks. I enjoy being able to pay my bills.

But anyway, enough of that. Today's lack of work brings me to an important point:

Why is Adam Levine the Sexiest Man Alive (TM or whatever), and why do I want to punch him in the face? Seriously, this bothers me. I know very little about him as a person except that one time he told some reporters to shut up about Christina Aguilera's weight already, which is sort of awesome. I mean, sure his band makes terrible, awful music, but that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to want to punch someone in the face. I can only assume he looks like someone who wronged me, possibly in a past life.

Also possible: one of us is a horrible person.

Falcor translation of the day

"before we"= Buffalo

Specifically the city, not the animal. Odd.

This is what I do all day

My day:

I want to thank you for purchasing this book, or if you are a borrower, I want to thank you for taking the time to read it, or if it's an audiobook to listen. 

Or if it's being read to you, to listen, or if you bought it with the idea of returning it, to read it, or if you bought the audiobook with the idea of returning it, to listen, or if you borrowed it from a friend but intend to keep it, to read it, or if you borrowed the audiobook from a friend with the intent to keep it, to listen. Or if you found it on the ground and are illiterate, for staring blankly at the pages. Or if you found the audiobook on the ground and have no ears, for doing whatever you're doing with it.

They may not be problems at all. They may just be problematic.

Um...

In looking at the bigger picture we ask, to what extent does our personal heritage, physical and social environment juxtaposed the personal experiences and exposures thereof have impact on our condition and how might these alterations effect our program for future life events?

This is absolutely not a sentence. Next!

Comparisons, albeit simplistic, have been made between computer hardware/software and the cortex, while the limbic system, which is more chemical in nature, has been referred to as the emotional part of the brain.

So the cortex is the computer hardware and software and the limbic system is the emotional part of the computer? I don't think so, Angie.

Historically, it will be shown that...

Wait, future tense in the past?

Einstein, who worked from thought experiments from imagining these theories that was subsequently translated into mathematical equations.

Ack! You can't just put words next to each other and call it a sentence!

Perhaps to the layperson this is not an important question.

Good job. Way to alienate your stated target audience with your condescending air of importance.

In fact, endocrinologists may not even be notified!

For the love of god, somebody notify the endocrinologists! 

The Amygdala  Please note this is a subtopic under the Limbic System

Noted. Now what exactly do you expect me to do with your note?

DNA is probably a key component of who we are.

Probably? That suggests that possibly DNA is not a key component of who we are. I challenge you to exist without DNA. Go ahead. Do it.

By and large people, who are born devoid of vision, have a stronger degree of sensitivity.

You don't always need to put a comma before "who." Here you are stating that people are born devoid of vision. Or at least by and large people. I'm not sure what by people are, but I know some large people who were not born devoid of vision. Perhaps you should rethink your sentence construction.

[My blind friend] could enter a funeral chapel and know that a great deal of sadness was present.

Oh my god! It's like he's psychic! How could anyone possibly know that a funeral would involve sad people?!

I have created a brief questionnaire whereby we can look at some key questions from which we can judge our own positions.

OK, this is just getting tedious. Obviously the questionnaire contains questions. You're just padding your book with repetitive and irritating language.

Within a world of cooperation and positive effort, events are part and a healthy perspective, addressed and completed.

At this point I am unsure if I just don't understand things because my brain is numb or if that really makes as little sense as it seems.

There is a desire to want to be like such a person.

I really wish I wanted to be like that person. But apparently I do not have the desire to want to do it.

It is also important to note that situations and conditions are not inherently positive or negative. 

And another guy tries to make the point that we should view rape as a positive situation. Because sure.

These processes of assimilation and accommodation are a necessary process for forward movement.

The processes are a necessary process. Sigh.

When one recognizes that human beings are highly singular, complex human beings 

I'm not going to keep pointing these out because it's just depressing.

We will be looking at case studies that may be composites of different people with similar diagnoses 

Does this "psychologist" understand what a case study is? It's a study of a case. If it's a composite of many cases, that's not a case study. 

Thus, rather than working with the Darwinian model of evolution, our presence as well as that of all species may have evolved from particular space rocks that landed at particular sites. 

And this is where you lose me, folks. This person does not believe in evolution not because of creationism but because we actually evolved from space rocks. 

Good night, everybody!

You are not clever

"Microcosm of the macrocosm" is not a clever phrase. You are not clever for saying it. By definition of the words, a microcosm is a small, representative universe, while a macrocosm is the universe. Saying "microcosm" is exactly the same thing as saying "microcosm of the macrocosm." It is not clever. It is wordy and redundant.

The end.

Here we go again

Client questionnaires are so telling. This new author has this to say about stylistic preferences:

At this point, I do not at this point has any stylistic preferences other than those that have been stated within the MS.

This author is allegedly intelligent and well-educated yet managed to spit this out. Great.

Meese

Today we're going to talk about mousse. Also moose. See how those words sound the same but don't mean the same thing? Here's a video to illustrate:

For some reason people have a lot of problems with this one. I very often read about chocolate moose, which makes me want to leave any comments for the author in fake Swedish. However, lately I've come across these two as well:

She sat down to do her hair, adding moose to the top.

This sounds very painful to me. It's also probably not a good strategy in terms of hair.

They topped it off with a chocolate mouse unlike any they had ever had.

Of course, this could be said of any chocolate mouse. I hope. Or perhaps the chocolate mouse is a cake topper or something. I'm not sure that's less weird.

At any rate, I'm pretty sure today's lesson is not to cover animals in chocolate. Have a good weekend.