Weird Al came out with a new album fairly recently, and my boyfriend sent me a link to his video for “Word Crimes” because, let’s face it, it’s me we’re talking about. For reference, in case any of you aren’t as aware of Weird Al’s affinity for grammar, he’s a self-described grammar nazi, and this song is a clear indication of that fact.
I remember one of my teachers at one point in my schooling mentioning that there is a balance between the good days and the bad days you’ll get. The exact phrasing used to express this idea was “Some days you get the elevator, some days you get the shaft.” Morbid, perhaps, but it’s a saying that has stuck with me since then. I really like similarly structured euphemisms and turns of phrase, and I just learned the name for them: isocolon.
Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes that bad day stretches into a bad week, or a bad month, if you’re really struggling. Usually, that’s not fun for any parties involved. However, if you’re an external observer, and the action is taking place in a book or movie, disaster can be the whole reason you’re paying any attention. If disaster is inevitable, it’s because of a concept called Finagle’s Law.
A couple of years ago, I read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. You know, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. Well, truthfully, I didn’t exactly read the trilogy. I read the first two books and ditched the third after about fifty pages. In this post, let’s talk about what that third book got so wrong.
I have always had a thirst for knowledge and understanding. I read encyclopedias for fun in the 4th grade, and I dominate at trivia to this day. This doesn’t always work well in the writing world. Have you ever seen Lost? I’m about halfway through season three. When I first started watching the show, a friend of mine told me to expect to have a lot of my questions to be unanswered. That advice has made the viewing experience much more enjoyable because I’m not spending half of the episode trying to figure out and reason through what’s going on.
John Keats understood this artistic choice to live in the tension of mystery, and in a letter to his brothers, he gave it a name: negative capability.
