Funny Things: Like Rain, or Writing Mistakes (Like Too Long of Titles Which Take Up Two Lines, Instead of the Usual One line, For Most titles.) P.S: Three lines for a title are okay.
Rain is a funny thing.
What is rain? Be it beast, person, or
mineral. Surely it is not living, but if this is so then why do we say “It’s
raining cats and dogs,” and not ‘it’s raining like cats and dogs?” Of course
these cats and dogs could be dead, and even if they were alive before their
descent, I’m sure that would no longer be the case for long after a fall from a
cloud to the impact with the ground. It’s a long fall… Yet, winter seems to
come quick, and last long, but spring, unlike fall, or, I should say autumn…
Rain? Oh right, back to the subject…
Is rain good? Is it bad? Is it
indifferent? Is it necessary? Is it wet?
If you faithfully answered, “Who cares”
to the above questions, chances are that you won’t read on. So now all that I
have to do is figure how many people are going to express that universally
common, valid feeling, so that I can determine if I should go on writing. Read
on. Right on. Write?
Well, let’s see. A quick review… I
started off by saying that rain is a funny thing. That is a pretty catchy thing
to start off with, but does it make sense? (I would rather make dollars than
sense any day!) I mean, is rain really funny? Have you ever seen anyone looking
out a window on a rainy afternoon and laughing hysterically? Has anyone even
chuckled politely at rain? Has
rain ever been a punch line? Well, actually I can picture a line for punch,
especially if it’s spiked! But who would wait in line for rain? Would even
being caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella make anyone giggle?
I bet not.
No, maybe I didn’t get off to such a good
start… It isn’t good policy to start off and article with a false statement. It
works much better if you slip them in somewhere in the middle. This isn’t
political writing but I would at least like it to have the same semblance of
deception.
So change the first sentence to “Rain
isn’t a funny thing.” There! That’s true enough and still catchy enough to
satisfy for an opening. It may not be brilliant, but remember that there aren’t
too many who can squeeze water from rocks, and I would rather have rocks
upstairs that a totally empty belfry. That would drive me bats!
Then I ended the first paragraph. Should
have I have ended it? Yes, I think so; it’s complete by itself. Also I don’t
want this article to be run down by long, tiring paragraphs, and especially
long sentences which seem to drag on and on and on with no end in sight, making
the reader’s eyes water, and wearing down, his or her, which ever the case may
be, brain to a point where he or she, again – which ever the case may be –
doesn’t feel like reading on, and the whole point is lost and the readers begin
to wonder if maybe the keyboards period key is broken, or some possibility such
as that, if they are tenacious enough to make it this far, which most people
today have the attention span of a teensy-fly, so they probably baled out long
ago and are now watching funny videos on You Tube of people falling down, which
all tends to draw from the whole message the writer, me, is trying to make,
even if it is a worthwhile cause. So I’ll try to stay away from that.
There are many writing problems. I come
across them often enough. Because I write them down when I see other writers
make them, I totally avoid them.
The worst mistake that I can think of is
not necessarily the run-on sentence. The incomplete sentence can also very
often get on a person’s nerves, and don’t think that for one minute, or maybe
even two, that just because a sentence happens to be extremely long, seeming to
run on and on forever with a deluge of words, like standing under a waterfall
looking for a drink of water, turning the trusting reader blue without a chance
to take a breath (which may actually be the most healthy thing for you). I
promise to avoid them, too.
Another thing I try to do is to keep my
printer heads clean so that the e’s and o’s are not all colored in. That can
also be a great strain of the reader’s eyes. Yes sir, I really try to keep up
with my e’s and o’s.
But I guess that as long as the article
is interesting and makes sense with a strong ring of truth to it, that either
warms his heart or conversely chills his soul, the reader can put up with a few
extra long sentences, along with some extra short ones, and maybe even a few
colored in spaces. As long as the piece in question draws a solid conclusion
and doesn’t just sort of ramble on at the end as if the writer doesn’t exactly
know how to end the article. Possibly because there was never any purpose to
the whole mess and no final conclusion could be drawn from his work on a day
when he really had nothing to say, you may know that I’m a fanfaron, but I
don’t like to boast about it. You may feel embarrassed spending your time with
no form of remuneration, trying to grasp the meanings of niggling prose
scattered throughout. You feel especially obtuse if you went through the
trouble of looking up some unmomentous words that he tossed about, because you
felt left out in not knowing their meaning. You find no punch line at the end
because the writer really had little to say throughout the whole mess of words
except a few fragments of thoughts that he never really tied together. Tying
ideas together is sometimes like tying your shoes, if the stings are weak,
nothing’s going to hold. By the end it becomes obviously clear that these
random thoughts could never possibly be joined in a conclusion understandable
to anybody, especially the writer.
So as not to do any of the above
mentioned I will end this article right here and now and leave you in awe of
it.
Mistakenly yours, Tim Uhr
P.S.
Next time I won’t try to write about rain on a sunny day.