Author: Brian

Don’t ever let anyone tell you dieting and exercise “don’t work”. When you stick with them, they work wonders.

I used to be big. That picture was taken in 1998. I was wearing 40″ waist pants at the time (in that picture, even – I hadn’t planned well that day, I was on vacation in Mexico, and I wore regular walking shorts to that aquarium, instead of swim shorts). Within just a couple of years after that, I was wearing 42″ waist pants – snug 42″ pants.

Dig back into the archives for the most recent dieting and exercise updates, but, long story short, today I did some clothes shopping and I came home with a pair of pants with a 33″ waist.

I haven’t worn pants that small since… well… probably since I was twelve! And I’ve got a bit more to lose…

This post at the Language Log makes me feel much, much better for not having read Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”:

I am still trying to come up with a fully convincing account of just what it was about his very first sentence, indeed the very first word, that told me instantly that I was in for a very bad time stylistically.

The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word renowned. Here is the paragraph with which the book opens. The scene (says a dateline under the chapter heading, ‘Prologue’) is the Louvre, late at night:

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas.

I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don’t do it in describing an event in a narrative. So this might be reasonable text for the opening of a newspaper report the next day:

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière died last night in the Louvre at the age of 76.

But Brown packs such details into the first two words of an action sequence — details of not only his protagonist’s profession but also his prestige in the field. It doesn’t work here. It has the ring of utter ineptitude. The details have no relevance, of course, to what is being narrated (Saunière is fleeing an attacker and pulls down the painting to trigger the alarm system and the security gates). We could have deduced that he would be fairly well known in the museum trade from the fact that he was curating at the Louvre.

The writing goes on in similar vein, committing style and word choice blunders in almost every paragraph (sometimes every line). Look at the phrase “the seventy-six-year-old man”. It’s a complete let-down: we knew he was a man — the anaphoric pronoun “he” had just been used to refer to him. (This is perhaps where “curator” could have been slipped in for the first time, without “renowned”, if the passage were rewritten.) Look at “heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas.” We don’t need to know it’s a masterpiece (it’s a Caravaggio hanging in the Louvre, that should be enough in the way of credentials, for heaven’s sake). Surely “toward him” feels better than “toward himself” (though I guess both are grammatical here). Surely “tore from the wall” should be “tore away from the wall”. Surely a single man can’t fall into a heap (there’s only him, that’s not a heap). And why repeat the name “Saunière” here instead of the pronoun “he”? Who else is around? (Caravaggio hasn’t been mentioned; “a Caravaggio” uses the name as an attributive modifier with conventionally elided head noun “painting”. That isn’t a mention of the man.)

My apologies for the long quote from the original article. It’s just that I love words, and especially well-crafted words, words used in the service of snark.

And if you give me well-crafted words used in the service of snark about other people’s poorly-used words, well, sir or madam… I am delirious.

So, yeah… Dan Brown’s a hack. I’m glad to have had that confirmed.

Note to self (and any nervous parents out there): do not try to diagnose yourself, or a loved one, via teh Google. You’ll only freak yourself out.

Celebrate the living. Celebrate life.

The world was better for having Kurt Vonnegut in it.

The world is a bit sadder without him.

Goodbye, Mr. Vonnegut… goodbye.

I scanned the list over at Wikipedia that shows all the events on this day in history. Although some of the events were intriguing (birthday of Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan? Ill-starred launch for Apollo 13 mission to the moon?)… still I found no inspiration there.

Where do ideas come from? What do I write about when there’s nothing leaping to mind?

I could put up an awesome quote.

I could talk about my day via the alphabet.

I could go on vacation and never come back (yes, I am linking to the most recent post, as of the morning of April 11th).

…so many options. I could rant about my day; I could complain about some poor service I received; I could rhapsodize about a shiny new object that will finally (finally!) make my life complete.

There’s ideas for blog posts in the everyday and the extraordinary; the personal or the political; small posts and large posts.

…and then there’s the kind of post that just tosses a bunch of stuff on the screen, as a place-holder until another better idea comes along. I call these “montage posts”. It feels like cheating, or being lazy… But it’s still blogging.

Welcome to “Got Nothin’ Day”.

Keyboards are nasty collectors of food and gunk. Want to clean it?

Try this.

Don’t try this, unless you can talk someone else into doing it.

On the scale of bravery, obviously the highest reaches are reserved for those who willingly and without hesitation give their lives to save another’s.

Not at those lofty heights, and on a more manageable scale, are those who are dorks. Those who publicly and knowingly stumble, just because; those who make funny faces or wink or stick out their tongues; those who know that fart jokes are truly the great equalizer; those walk funny or talk funny; those with the gift of not caring if they’re viewed as “adults”.

Be a dork and you may not attain vast power over mighty empires and mind-boggling fortunes.

But you may end up rewarded with the infinite richness of smiles and laughter. And even if you don’t – you won’t care.

You’ll be too busy having fun.

“You big dork” is among the most powerful of the Three Word Sentences that shape the world (the other three being, of course, “I love you”, “Let me help” and “Dance with me”). Use it wisely foolishly.

Being an atheist, I may not celebrate the religious holiday of Easter.

I do, however, appreciate chocolate bunnies.

Especially dark chocolate bunnies.

Happy Easter, everyone.

…and the video is pretty snappy, too. Enjoy!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjVtJzTSuPw]