#Please tell me whether or not I used the semicolon correctly

[chupacrups]

Anyone else remember the bike?

I re-watched "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" complete after about 4 years, and 50 minutes into the movie, my mind was still trying to process the revelation that Charlie never had a bicycle to deliver newspapers. I took the bike's existence for granted; I even have memories of the standard-issue-haired male Rapunzel riding the cycle as if his dream was to go to the Tour de France instead of the cavities kingdom. So vivid was this memory, that I got to the point of engendering the draft of a 5-chapter AU fanfic… based on a non-existent brown bike.

If my mind doesn't deceive me -again-, I think this if true in the version with Tom and Jerry, but I don't plan to watch it again to check. Do you know how expensive eyeballs are these days? I'm not giving up my other kidney just like that.

Anyway, it looks like the Mortadela Effect has done its thing once again. Have a nice lunch, dear web strangers. And if you already had eated, I hope you have a good digestion.

P.S: That's what the bicycle looked like in my mind, only instead of that light it had like a metal basket.

[dailydj]

1 Kings: Old People Advice

How do you decide who to take advice from?

Whenever I’m feeling like a little bit of self-inflicted torture, I like to read about current political issues. DACA for college students, net neutrality, illegal immigration, marijuana legalization, Asian-Americans in media...the list of dumb things people are arguing over is endless. It seems to me that a common divide in these debates lies between the younger generation of liberal, idealistic, social justice warriors, and the older conservative bastion of cynical, resigned party poopers. I feel this divide on a personal level, inundated by the former group while I’m away at university, but confronted by the latter every time I come home and discuss politics with my dad.

As Christians, but also just as intelligent human beings, I think it’s important for us to understand this divide, because it affects almost all other areas of life too, including the church. There’re two interesting stories from ancient Jewish history that illustrate this conflict pretty well: 

The first involves King Rehoboam, the son of the wise yet idiotic King Solomon. Solomon screwed up by letting Israel turn to idol worship yet again, after all the hard work his dad David put into finally getting them to commit to the whole God thing. As a result, God is going to rip his chosen people apart into two kingdoms, Judah and Israel. Rehoboam’s first big decision as king is whether to lighten the load of work Solomon had put the people under (to build his fancy temple and house and other house and idol sites). The older advisors, who had served with Rehoboam’s father, tell him to go easy on the people and in so doing, earn their loyalty. The younger generation of advisors, however advise him to increase the workload and slave labor, and flex on the Israelites to show how much power he has. Rehoboam’s decision?

“But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him.”

‭‭1 Kings‬ ‭12:8‬ ‭ESV‬‬

He listens to his peers, and as a result the people rebel and the kingdom is torn in two, just as God promised.

So the message from the Bible is clear: old people are always right. Listen to your elders, because they have all the wisdom. Even though, from a political science-y kind of perspective, either decision seems like it could’ve worked out -- many leaders since have had to ask the same question of how to manage and keep power. Regardless, the Scripture’s message is simple and clear -- young people are foolish and don’t understand reality; God always speaks only through those with more life experience.

Unless, perhaps, we choose to read on. Later in the narrative, a young, unnamed prophet arrives to tell the king to stop worshiping idols. God instructs the prophet not to eat or drink anything while he’s there. But then, as he’s leaving, the young prophet bumps into an old prophet, and an interesting interaction takes place:

“And he [the old prophet] said to him, "I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, 'Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.'" But he lied to him.”

‭‭1 Kings‬ ‭13:18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The young prophet goes and eats with the old prophet, thus disobeying God. Then he leaves, and gets eaten by a lion. The old prophet finds his body, and mourns the loss of the young prophet, vowing to be buried alongside him.

I have no idea what is going on here. Like, was the old prophet was trying to test him, or did he lie to actually lead the young prophet astray? Is it supposed to show how even the prophets had become corrupt liars?

Whatever it was, it doesn’t really matter. What we do see is that negative consequences arise from blindly following this older and wiser person. Let us view the situation from the younger prophet’s perspective: there’s this other spiritual leader who really seems to know what he’s doing, and he gives a simple, seemingly harmless instruction -- come eat with me! Perhaps at this point the younger prophet starts to doubt a little bit, whether he heard God correctly. Maybe I misunderstood God’s instructions, he might think. After all, this guy is a prophet too, and he’s been doing it for a lot longer than I have! I’d better go with what he says, just to be safe.

Indeed, following the well-worn path of our elders often feels like a safer decision. But that, I think, is exactly the young prophet’s sin. He decides to obey a man, instead of God, and pays the price for it. He doubts the authority he has been given from God, and instead chooses to define wisdom by his own terms. His fear of being wrong was greater than his fear of God.

At my university, I’m involved in a student Christian fellowship called Intervarsity. As a result, I’m often interacting with Christians that are just a little bit older than me, but who seem way wiser and more experienced from my perspective. I’m really grateful to have all of them in my life, but recently I’ve been noticing an unsettling trend arising -- when I find myself in a crisis situation, my mind immediately turns to my friends for salvation, instead of to God. I think, I need to talk to [insert nearby friend’s name] about this; I need to process with them so they can point me to God; I know God is there, but I’m just not in the right state of mind to hear from Him by myself right now. Yes, even my internal monologue uses semicolons.

Whatever the old prophet’s motives were, one thing is still abundantly clear from Scripture and from our experience in the world: all humans fall short of perfection. When faced with a situation of uncertainty, it is not wrong to ask for advice; ultimately, I believe this is a sign of true wisdom. But I think that relying on human wisdom, whether from our peers or our elders, will fail either way. The question of whose advice is superior, I think, is not “young vs. old”, but rather “humans vs. God”. God is here, and we have authority to ask him directly, as crazy and difficult as it is to believe. Difficult political issues are simple and trivial from His perspective, and I’m pretty sure He could care less about what old conservatives and young liberals think that He thinks. Will I step into the authority I’ve been given when He gave me His Spirit, to go directly to Him for advice? Or will I keep myself in the endless cycle of blind leading blind, perpetuating confusion, turmoil, and injustice?

(There it is again with the rhetorical question ending. If anyone has any better ways to end a blog post, please drop it in my suggestion box.)

[satheon]

The Sins You Commit in Your Writing

It’s a long one. Sorry.

Last week, my old college counselor taught me the difference between an English class and a Writing class. You will take an English class in high school as well as in college, but you won’t take Writing until you get to college. 

Here’s the reason why: you will need writing for just about every single career out there. Professional writing, that is. English (at the high school level) is a core subject that one must study in order to be considered “educated,” which is why you’ll also find it in your GenEd requirements. Writing focuses on the professional element of writing. For that class, only one book is required: Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. In an English class, you will go in-depth into all kinds of works, learn how to analyze the plot structure or core elements of a specific piece of work and express your ideas in a clear, concise essay.

So, satheon, why the fuck is English useful if you’re going into anything other than English? Beats me. Why is history useful if you’re not going to become a historian? Science? Math? I don’t know. Don’t ask me. Ask the people who decided this would be our country’s educational system (USA). I’m just glad I don’t have to take them anymore. Writing is the only “practical” English course because every successful scientist, journalist, historian, or whoever the fuck needs to be able to communicate his ideas to other people exactly as he intends them if he wants other professionals to validate or build on his ideas.

But here’s the thing: fiction writers do not give a fuck about the rules. This class is taught in an English major’s freshman year for a reason. And that reason is that writers (you know, the people who will actually make a career out of it) seldom find anything they learn in that class useful. It’ll teach you proper grammar conventions, sure, but that’s about it. What you learn as a writer comes from reading, writing, and breaking the rules.

So without further ado, I present to you the ways in which you have sinned in you

1) You supersaturate your prose. 

It’s actually disgusting. 

You don’t need to explain every little thing because most of what you’re doing can probably hinge off of context. This is vague, I know, so I’ll expand on this later.

Do not try to use bigger words. 

Holy fuck do not use a bigger word because your ashamed of how small it is and you want to sound smarter. Trust me, you’ll sound 200 times dumber.

“It’s not about how big it is, it’s how you apply the force.”

(Yes, this also refers to penises).

2) Semicolons, dashes, and parentheses.

I don’t care if you use them. But it is fucking distracting IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO USE THEM. 

Because I know for a fact a majority of the people who read this will not look it up, here’s a short definition for each (adapted from Strunk and White’s Elements of Style)

Semicolons serve two functions:

1) join two independent clauses whose ideas relate closely enough that they have equal weight

Mary Shelley’s works are entertaining; they are full of engaging ideas.

This function gives the feel of a comma, but it doesn’t halt flow like a full stop (period) does.

You’ll know that you used it correctly if a period could grammatically fit in the same place (99% of the time, it should be a period).

2) separate items in a list in which commas are already used

Jane, the doctor; Elizabeth, the ecologist; Robert, the veterinarian; and Bob, the historian set out on a quest to find the first Coca-Cola ever bottled.

You know what you don’t use a semicolon for? WHEN YOU CAN’T DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO USE A COMMA OR A COLON. I swear to God, if I had a trigger, this would be it.

Example of how NOT to use it: “That’s what villains are supposed to be; evil.”

No. Please stop.

I’m going to mention colons here because I feel it’s necessary.

Colons are preceded by an independent clause, a sentence that could stand completely on its own. No exceptions.

Example:

Jane felt that she needed the following on her trip: water, a toothbrush, and a good book.

NON-example:

Jane felt that she needed: water, a toothbrush, and a good book.

No. Fuck you. 

Colons have a much stronger impact. They place emphasis on whatever follows. 

Example:

Only one thing could stop her now: her arch-nemesis.

Dashes

A dash is a mark of separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than parentheses.

In other words, it’s punctuation you use when all else fails.

An abrupt break from prose that is so abrupt that a comma would not serve properly here. If a comma would serve where you want to use a dash instead, chances are that you should just use the comma. 

Jane bought me a--wait, where did I put it?

Dashes also serve to announce long appositives or summaries.

The first thought he had after getting out of bed--if he had any thought at all--was to get back in.

The increasing reluctance of the sun to rise, the extra nip in the breeze, the patter of the shed leaves dropping--all the evidences of fall drifting into winter were clearer each day.

A good rule of thumb: (and yes, I know, I’m breaking the colon rule, but this is suuuuper informal) use it only when you have good reason not to use any simpler punctuation.

Parentheses

Punctuation for whenever you include extra information.

Example:

You may not reproduce this document in any way (this includes, but is not limited to: photography, photocopying, or reproducing verbatim).

You can make me happy in many ways (ex: buy me a car).

NOTE: punctuation such as periods, commas, and other shit like that go AROUND the parentheses (as shown above). A period does not go before a sentence. (like this--because what the fuck ew gross and you’re not supposed to punctuate inside parentheses but what am I gonna do now? oh well.)

Yikes. This is LOOONG.

3) Adverbs.

Especially after “he said” or “she said.” Ugh. Kill me.

I’ll talk about dialogue attribution later. That’s another thing entirely.

Ironically, packing your prose with words doesn’t saturate it; it dilutes it.

Adverbs tell a reader, “I’m afraid that you won’t understand what I mean, so I added this here to clarify.”

Honestly, they have it in context, so they probably know what you mean. 

Here’s an example:

He closed the door firmly.

WEAK, right? If we take the adverb out, we get something stronger:

He closed the door. 

You see how the finality of a period gives off the same message as “firmly,” only stronger?

That doesn’t suit your needs? Well, what about this one?

He slammed the door. 

Oooh, spicy. 

One point stands out: a sentence that doesn’t have adverbs is far more engaging, far more entertaining, and quicker to the point.

4) Punctuation around quotation marks confuse you. 

Allow me to settle it once and for all:

No matter what the case, periods, commas, and semicolons GO INSIDE THE QUOTATION MARKS. 

Example:

She told me that I was “alt-right,” but then again, that’s just her opinion.

“I understand your confusion,” she said, “But I just don’t see the problem.”

Do not use apostrophes as a quotation for an individual letter. Use quotation marks.

If you have any further questions on this...maybe I’ll respond if you message me. I probably won’t.

5) The Oxford comma and the possessive after an “s”

The oxford comma and the possessive after an s irk the shit out of me. I have my own opinions on it.

I do not omit the oxford comma to express my ideas as clearly as possible. I use an ‘s after every single instance of singular possession. 

He brought chips, soda, and pretzels.

Chris’s notes are detailed and precise.

The opposite are also correct. (Just fucking pick one, English!)

Pick one and stay consistent. That’s it. No more debate.

6) Dialogue attribution.

Oh boy. This one’s got a lot of debate. 

Said is not dead.

What is dead is the horrendous substitutes you manage to come up with. “Exclaimed” is just about the only wiggle room I’ll leave in this area.

Using anything fancy or selective could just draw the reader’s attention away from the plot line. It’s nasty. 

if you want to keep avoiding “said” like it’s the plague, fine by me.

But using “he said” or “she said” keeps the reader focused on what really matters. Usually from context of the story, the reader will be able to figure out how they said it.

As Stephen King once said, “To write adverbs is human; to write “he said” or “she said” is divine.”

7) If I need to explain to you at this point what passive voice is or why passive voice is the worst thing to grace the earth (the one exception being that it’s a great way to meet a page count minimum), then give up entirely. Or maybe you’re new. Either way, sorry, but I do not feel like explaining what everyone else has already shot to hell.

I’m going to cut it off here. Remember: these are just my two cents, here. Don’t take it personally/seriously, and please don’t remind me of the sins in my work (I cringe every time, trust me).

Any last recommendations I would give to any aspiring writer is 1) read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style at least once, 2) read Stephen King’s On Writing, and 3) read, read, read! Put in the work, and it’ll be sure to pay off.