Here I am, back again - the surrogate blogment. Feeling a little frazzled after a few drinks with my old pal J. Cheever Loophole, whom God preserve. Later, lying awake at dawn, as I too often do, the sound of the dawn chorus reminded me of something - a mere 3 days late - International Dawn Chorus Day. Here's a kind of link - www.idcd.info - and it's worth a look for the bird picture alone, which, I can assure you, keeps changing from one species to another - that's entertainment! It's all very consoling anyway, and surely a world in which International Dawn Chorus Day is observed, however raggedly, cannot be all bad, or all mad.
N
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Yes indeed, Big Nige, a world in which such a day exists, however poorly observed, cannot be all bad. I must also throw ina teaser regarding Nige's famed flapping flippers, as noted elsewhere on these pages. Though I fear no images will be forthcoming, I can assure you that they were in fine fettle last night while dancing on the bar of The Pit Stop roadside bar and cafe, where he was spotted having a high old time with our mutual friends, J Cheever Loophole, Otis B Driftwood and the delightful Madame Dumont.
ReplyDeleteYour very good health,
Dr Hugo Z Hackenbush
Night of magic Hugo, night of magic. Your very good health, sir.
ReplyDeleteN
More consolations! When you & Bryan meet up, do ye hug and console each other, Nige?
ReplyDeleteGood Lord man - I've never so much as shaken his hand. We are men of the old school. We grunt curtly when we meet, then settle down to a companionable silence, broken only by groans and the occasional utterance.
ReplyDeleteA different story with Loophole and pals, of course.
N
I am relieved to hear it. All manly intercourse should merely involve grunting and the occasional groan. And I hope noone will decide to interpret that in some kind of "clever" manner.
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely Nige's most consoling post yet.
ReplyDeleteI only seem to get a yellow wagtail, however.
Unhinged! The lot of you!
ReplyDelete(By the way, I'm exclaiming the above. So it's not a gratuitous use of exclaimation marks, which is in fact something that drives me to distraction. People seem to be exclaiming all over the place nowadays and with no good reason. What's that all about?
Anyway. Unhinged. Yes. All of you. Didn't exclaim that time, you will notice. Once is enough, I find.)
Brit, I'm convinced that my yellow wagtail (lovely bird, as is the misnamed grey) was eventually followed by some kind of African swallow - though of course I might have been hallucinating by that stage.
ReplyDeleteAs for the much maligned exclamation mark, Neil, I'm inclined to defend it, chiefly on the grounds that it can, even when 'incorrectly' employed, be very useful, especially in the email world, where statements tend to be bald and tone of voice is so hard to judge or express.
In fact, equipped only with the full stop, dashes of various lengths and the exclamation mark, we could go far. Laurence Sterne seemed to be working along those lines.
N
I am fond of the full stop. At least you know where you are with the full stop. It's solid and dependable. And as for the good old dash, it has got me out of many a tight spot. But I'm not a fan of the exclamation mark. It's rather importunate. A bully, even. It should be used sparingly. Although I take your point, Nige, about tone of voice etc. Not sure what the answer to that is. Style, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteI heard the dash is becoming more prevalent because it is easier to spot on a screen than the comma, the colon, the semi-colon or the full stop - and it does duty for all of these.
ReplyDeleteEminent blogger David Cohen once said that the internet is where sarcasm goes to die. Tone of voice is difficult, so even those smiley :) things are sometimes essential (but must be used in moderation).
Well, yes, the exclamation mark seems to have come into its own in the techo age. How many potentially beautiful relationships have gone belly up simply because of a lack of exclamation mark s in emails and, for that matter, texts? Although overuse can make the writer resemble an excitable 14 year old girl, underuse can, at the other extreme, give the impression of a frosty old dowager with a sense of humour bypass and impossibly high standards.
ReplyDeleteI rest my case!!!
Yours, with a hair of the dog,
Madame M Dumont
You may empathise with this sketch on how to use a book, Nige.
ReplyDeleteThanks Andrew - I'm sure I'd have enjoyed that if I could only get it to work - the link was fine but when I got the page it was inert and unresponsive to all my wiles. Aieeee...
ReplyDeleteNige, are you sure you'e actually using a computer? A modern one. You're not accidentally blogging by semaphore, or on a mangle, or posting comments by carrier-pigeon or something?
ReplyDelete(You could try watching it here.)
ReplyDeleteAh Brit - and, before Brit, Andrew - thank you for that! I tried again on my home computer and it worked - and v funny (and apposite) too. It's those steam-driven 'computers' at NigeCorp HQ that are the problem, clearly.
ReplyDeleteSteam driven computers are teh cool.
ReplyDeleteThere (tehre?) is, in fact, an entire sub-genre of science fiction known as Steampunk that can be summarized, more or less, as "What if there were steam driven computers?"
D. Keith Mano, a brilliant novelist and journalist, laid down the law on exclamation points:
ReplyDelete"The exclamation mark should be used only in dialogue, and then only when the speaker has just been disemboweled."