Please, Don’t Murder the Modifiers

The following is a rewrite of the first newspaper column I ever sold.  The new version was recently published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Focus Magazine.  Apparently I’ve spent way too much time reading labels and list of ingredients. 

Please, Don’t Murder the Modifiers

“If you catch an adjective, kill it,” Mark Twain wrote. Sound advice,
perhaps, for people who write newspaper columns, limericks, or fortune
cookies, but what about the rest of the working world? If we whacked
all the adjectives and sent them to sleep with the fishes, several
lucrative industries would go belly up.

For instance–advertising, a billion dollar business. Imagine choosing
a new shampoo based on a list of ingredients. (“This one sounds good..
‘Head Hair Shampoo — This product will clean your hair with a
combination of sodium chloride and glycol distearate mixed with
secretions of rodent glands.’ Wow! I’ll take two!”)

We, as consumers, don’t want to take time away from our families and
many beloved electronic devices to read really boring lists of icky
ingredients. We want to know what the shampoo will do for our hair and
will our sex lives improve if we use it. Will the herbal ingredients
infuse each strand with a brilliant shine, caress it with soothing
botanicals, or frizz it up like a wire-haired terrier on a Cancun
holiday? It would be tough to know if all we read on the label was,
“Our shampoo will clean the dirt out of your hair and leave it . . .
cleaner. Buy it and see if you can finally snag yourself a date or hit
the Powerball.”

While adjectives help us to visualize results we might gain from
buying and using many products, well-chosen modifiers actually keep
the wine-making business afloat.

Without adjectives, professional wine-tasters would lose their jobs
and start sleeping on park benches, trembling hands clasped around
small paper sacks of rotgut wine, muttering in their sleep in bad
French accents.

Imagine this typical scene at “Tres Expensive Winery,” where the head
wine taster is introducing the latest vat of Chardonnay to the local
press

Journalist: “How do you find the wine, M.Poupon?”

Wine taster: “Superb! It was full-bodied yet delicate, forceful yet
subtle, seductive and smooth while retaining a delicious hint of
amiable boldness.”

Without adjectives, the same scene would go like this:

Journalist: “So, how was the wine, M. Derriere?”

Wine-taster: “Ah, it was wine. It had a taste. I tasted it and liked
it. When everyone else tastes it, I am convinced they will like it,
also.”

Adjectives are vastly important to another huge industry–the cosmetic
industry. All major cosmetic houses employ house “noses.” Worth their
weight in gold, Noses have a keen sense of smell and literally sniff
out the individual notes (scents) used to develop perfumes. When “Ms.
Olfactory” relays her findings to the staff perfumer, she must be
precise.

“The top note is laden with a heady blend of spicy jasmine and tart
lime, drying down to the exquisite middle notes of piquant lavender
combined with sweet young rosebuds that perfectly compliment the
bottom note of zesty orange blossoms and dusky magnolia.”

The modifier-free version would not only be boring, but incredibly
frustrating to the perfumer

Perfumer: “What do you think of my creation, Madame Odour?”

Nose: “I think it smells, sir. I enjoy all of the smells separately,
but when they are blended, Mon Dieux! Do they ever smell!”

Someone once wrote, “A perfectly chosen adjective is to a sentence
what an impeccable wine is to a meal–-a complementary and delightful
addition.” Actually, I just made that up in the shower while I
shampooed my hair with frothy mounds of freesia essence, followed by a
generous splash of a spicy, intoxicating vanilla body spray. Half a
glass of a subtly nutty Chardonnay later I’m feeling sublimely
relaxed. Mark Twain, be danged.

40 Stars Shine Over the Hollow This Morning -September 11

For days I’ve been hearing Don McLean’s lyrics from “Vincent” in the back of my mind “Starry, starry night…,portraits hung in empty halls…frameless heads on nameless walls….” I believe the original song was, a tribute to Vincent van Gogh.  Yet McLean’s haunting phrases always remind me of a lighthearted September morning darkened by evil, of the horror and ultimate honor in the deaths of innocents, and of the 40 beautiful souls aboard Flight 93 who were set free from their suffering in a field 8 to 10 miles away from my Hollow.

 The Boeing flew them out of Newark, I believe, and soared westward, bound for salty air currents alive with seagulls.  Instead, the airplane carried them down into the earth near the tiny settlement of Lambertsville, Pennsylvania.  Very early that morning, I had taken a cup of coffee and walked into my yard.  It was not yet light and bats still hunted, swirling around the dusk to dawn lantern.  I looked toward the deep, blue sky above the ridge and saw tiny moving lights that were, in reality  huge airliners. They inched along through a field of twinkling planets and stars.  A pristine morning.  A good lawn-mowing day I thought. 

Ever since that morning, in my mind’s eye, I often see the crew and passengers emerge from the western hillside across the road from my home where, at 10:06 a.m. September 11, 2001, the windows shook as if pounded by God’s angry fist.  From over the western ridge forty of them come to stand in the cow pasture, as if posing for a school portrait. They are always smiling at me. There is an air of innocence about them and an aura that illuminates their hair, so they appear as children playing in the sun.  “Come walk with me,” I say.

“Shadows on the hill,

Sketch the trees and daffodills

Catch the breeze and winter chills

In colors on the snowy linen land.’” 

words by Don McLean

 

 

 

what the …?

The paragraphs in my post of Aug. 27 were somehow reversed when posted to the site.  Still a bit green (not in an Al Gore sense) about WordPress mechanics.

 

 

Other than my Dell woes, news from my hollow is all about wildlife–who saw a big buck at Tom’s place, the large black bear we’ve all spotted in the area, the spotted fawn that lay still in the field by the big maple, and the remorseful, young local girl who couldn’t avoid it and totaled her car.  Berry-picking has been phenominal this year, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and huckleberries(tiny, bb-sized blueberries)–we picked them all and have scars from bugs and thorns to prove it.  School began Tuesday and my seven year old neighbor couldn’t run fast enough with his huge, new backpack on, to greet the bus driver.  That poor driver’s ears must have been beaten to a pulp by the end of their 45- 60 minute run.  She would be content, perhaps, with a silent computer at the end of her work day.

 

 

Spring in the Hollow

I am “endeavoring to persevere,” as Chief Dan George’s character (Lone Wattie) said in one of the best moments in the movie “Josie Wales.”  In fact, all of the best moments were the Chief’s. With a computer with no audio or printing ability, (major surgery is scheduled very soon), I am struggling a bit learning to blog, paste snippets of HTML codes into my site, and other fascinating chores. I tried to watch a tutorial this morning, but tutorials lose some of their educational value without sound.  Made me quite thankful for the gift of hearing, without which I would not have heard this morning:  a wood thrush warbling a few bars, and so late in the season for the most operatic of birds, my collie yawning a comical “Snoopy”  greeting, Ed the cat purring, unintentionally hilarious (to me) soundbites from the democratic convention, and the burbling of my coffeemaker as it brewed my second favorite beverage. (If I could go to Wally World and buy a Mr. Bourbon, I’d be outta here.)

My Motherboard Blew Out (and other disappointing happenings)

Randy, my eccentric, but gifted, computer repairperson, phoned last month and cheerfully reported my motherboard gave out, crashed, or died suddenly during a keyboard stroke.  That was the reason my tower went as dark and silent as a closed coffin.  “You couldn’t have prevented it,” he said, “it was nothing you did, just one of those things.” 

I had barely begun to back up documents,resumes, tax info, etc. , photos, writings, so many unfinished writings.  Had they been spared?  If not, how could I possibly remember all the facts, numbers, images. . . and all the words.  Thousands of them so carefully chosen, more than a few spelled wrong.  My babies, where were they?

Randy suddenly remembered he was still on the phone with me and casually added, “Oh sure, your data is intact.”   For the next five minutes, in an unprecedented burst of concentration, he detailed the repairs he would begin, the parts he could order, the miracles he could perform that would bring my link to the writing world to life again. 

Later, I thought about dusting off my decaying word processor, the one with the worn out question mark key and the missing letter “l.”  The old friend, sometimes hated enemy, that helped a 40ish sales woman with a high school education make initial contact with an area newspaper editor who drug her kicking and screaming and drinking (primarily for the effect) into writing soft features and first person columns for her Sunday magazine.  For the next decade I pounded on my little Brother wp so bad he began to creak in protest. But I learned how to craft articles and landed one on the front page, under the fold, but oh well, of a paper that was read by over 100,000 people.

My wp motherboard didn’t fail after four years.  He never distracted me with e-mails, pop-ups, new CDs or instant messages from my kid.   He never made promises he couldn’t keep.  And I have every word on floppies.

But in the end, I left the old machine out in the garage, under the spare kitty litter pan and the empty coffee cannisters I intend to use around the house in imaginative and decorative ways.  Besides, I was skeptical about writing a story without “l’s” or question marks, wouldn’t you be?

I have my computer back, but it is not the same.  My printer won’t speak to it, or through it. There is no sound, either. It’s so damn quiet I have started talking to myself in a much louder voice than usual.  The cat thinks I’m mad at him.   I’m wondering about Randy and whether he might be an evil genius who installed an evil step-motherboard.  But I am writing and backing everything up on CDs.  My motherboard may have died, but my babies live on.

post script

A good site for mystery fans , just wanted to add it to my WIDGET comments  of Apr. 2 (I was rudely interrupted by a sleepy border collie)–  http://www.harleyjanekozak.com/home.html

Sorry ’bout the widget, Harley Jane

All I wanted to do today was to squeeze out a feed Url (?) from a great writers’ blog by like, really successful authors, into a WIDGET I had ever so gently drug into the sidebar of my new blog at WORDPRESS.COM.  OK, I am a newbie at this computer game, but still….anyway I love the witty Harley Jane Kozak murder mystery/chick lit books.  Sorry Harley and friends of The Lipstick Chronicles –your greatness will remain a mystery to anyone who happens to accidentally google their way into my sorry-ass little blog. 

A Weather Story

This is a breaking news story I made up (for the most part) last summer during hurricane season.  My niece, Lynn, mentioned her sick obsession with the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantori.  She joked, “I can’t rest when I’m worried about where the heck Jim is. I worry about him during storm season.”  She figured he’d be poking his finger into the eye of the hurricane.  That same day I read an actual news article in the “strange news stories” section of my homepage.  Combining the two dissimilar stories made sense to me.  But then voting Republican in the last  presidential election made sense to me, too.  Anyway, here is the silly result.

Monday, August 28, 2006BEIJING – A woman in Hohhot, the capital of north China’s Inner Mongolia region, crashed her car while giving her dog a driving lesson, the official Xinhua News Agency said Monday. Several minutes later, in a shocking turn of events, both cars involved were damaged a second time by American meteorologist Jim Cantori when he inexplicably plummeted from the sky onto the accident scene.Onlookers described seeing “a flying American shoot out of the clouds like a bottle rocket.” Cantori ,who had last been seen by coworkers outside his Key West, Florida motel, nosedived onto the cars, his fall broken by the distraught dog.No serious injuries were reported.”I was outside checking on Ernesto’s movements when I lost my grip on a rotund makeup girl and got caught in an updraft. Before I knew it, I was swept into a flock of confused Canadian geese,” explained the weatherman whose hair was messed up but appeared in good shape, despite a dogbite. “I didn’t realize hurricane winds were that strong! It was an exciting, yet terrifying experience. Wow, I’ll never make fun of Al Roker again.”The woman, identified only be her surname, Li, said her dog “was fond of crouching on the steering wheel and often watched her drive,” according to Xinhua.”She thought she would let the dog ‘have a try’ while she operated the accelerator and brake,” the report said. “They did not make it far before crashing into an oncoming car.” Asked about the the famous flying weatherman who landed on her dog, Li responded, “I don’t care who the American is! I would have bitten him in the ass, too!”Xinhua did not say what kind of dog or vehicles were involved but Li and Jim paid for repairs.

Postscript from the Art Club treasurer

In my most recent post I mentioned a financial website.  I don’t believe my link connected, so here it is again:  http://www.royandassociates.net/notices.htm

My e-file story is there, for what it’s worth, but the “counter ” section is really fascinating (and a little scary.) 

If you feel a bit woozy while looking at it, check your pulse–that’s all I’m gonna say.

Hello from the Boonies

I’m a lazy free-lance writer from Somerset County, PA–about 8 miles, as the crow flies, from the Flight 93′ crash site.  I’ve published silly humor for the Pittsburgh Trib’s Sunday magazine off and on since 1991,  in 3 or 4 Reiman publications,  Writer’s Digest Forum, and for The Blue Oasis, an online writer’s site.  I have written scores of fine fictional stories and even books which,  I assure you,  I will complete when I find them.  As far as this blog thing is concerned, you should know that in the school of computer literacy while you are running for student council president, I am still sitting in the corner picking my nose, which is why I was elected Art Club treasurer four years running.

For those of you procrastinating about filing your federal income tax returns: Vance Roy & Associates of Greensburg, Pa have a great site with timely tips on filing your taxes.  They loved my informative article on e-filing,  published last April in the Trib , so much, they asked my permission to use it on their site.  What wise folks, those Roys. 

You can read my completely serious account of my efiling adventures by clicking this link : http://www.royandassociates.net/notices.htm#TribArticle  If this does not work for you, please cut and paste my heart out and throw it to your gerbil.