Maybe the reason I stopped blogging, quit the music-review circuit, started posting less on message boards, all that -- maybe I stopped because I came to the realization that I'm not the writer I think I should be. No, that's not extreme enough, and it is also misleading.

I'm getting pretty emo here, but that is what this forum is for: expressing really emo stuff. Bear with me (although the only person who has to carry this burden is... me, isn't it? Well, good. And bad.)

I read articles by professional journalists, writers, &c. written in a clumsier syntax than my own. There was a pretty interesting discussion on Insult Swordfighting regarding Hilary Goldstein's review of Bionic Commando Rearmed; we all agreed the article was poor, but we couldn't agree entirely why the thing was so awful.

This is the sentence he excerpted, which I will also excerpt, for my own archival purposes:

Capcom is finally revisiting the classic with an updated version that takes everything that was good from the past, modernizes it, and then adds new layers of awesome.

I'm with Mitch Krpata: "adds new layers of awesome," is grammatical nonsense. It's

and then "adds new layers of awesome"
"verb adjective noun [of] noun?"

Can we use this form to make a coherent sentence?

Bubbles "was completely of monkey."

Nonsense. The only exception I can think of is along these lines:

"Jesus socked stoic Franklin of Bethlehem"

Okay. That's dumb, but...


Some argue that "awesome" is a colloquialism and therefore permissible. Considering how often I pepper my writing with slangy, purposefully jarring bits of prose, I shouldn't complain.

that's the trouble, though; I have yet to develop a complete, complex, internally consistent voice in my writing. I need to prove mastery of the conventional, Stucker/White school of composition before exploring the limits of my command.

The only way to create a voice like that is to discover it, though composition. I know this, but my prose is so far from what it could be -- hell, from what it used to be, 3 years ago -- that I figure, hell, why not give up?

Well, because I'm compelled to write, and I'm obsessive about writing. I might not understand why I want to disseminate my thoughts expressed though my language on the internet, but I feel awful if I go too long without doing so. But I'm too much like a high school cheerleader gripped with a need to wash her hair 24 times a day or a homeless man stepping on each brick in Pioneer Courthouse Square 5 times before moving forward; these are not a compulsions with any tangible benefits.

It's gotten so bad right now that I cannot bear to read the things I write. I get sick looking at them: I see nothing but flaws, hundreds of sometimes groin-grabbingly obvious flaws, typos, &c. I freak out. I can't take it. I can't go on.

I'll go on.

SUMMER OF EMO continues:

I've really noticed, in the last four weeks, how contemptibly out of shape I've let my self become. I'm not corpulent or anything, but I'm doughtier than ever -- which, while perhaps not the greatest thing in the world, to be 10 lbs overweight or thereabouts.... it's not so repugnant I can't stand to see myself naked.

But it is a definite sign that I cannot eat whatever I want, in whatever quantities I want, any longer. I had an "a-ha" moment like this in high school, as well -- dropping from 180 to 140 lbs starting the beginning of junior year and going 'till the end of senior year -- but I'm pretty sure I developed some minor eating disorder-like behavior in that timeframe, too. I also know that I have become less moderate in the past 7 years or whatever, prone to eating huge amounts of food without thinking, prone to running and running and running until I absolutely "hit the wall," and collapse like a adipose sack of medical waste, prone to drinking until I can no longer drink, prone to staying up all night, prone to sleeping for days...

Getting fired makes one pretty down on oneself. I hope that's it.