Word Salad

It 5:30 in the morning and I’ve been up for an hour and a half. Surfing, surfing, surfing. I barely even read books anymore. And why should I? Recently in class we were in small groups discussing something about something, and some beautiful little classic book came to mind so I says to this kid “ooo like in blah, blah, blah?” He says; “I don’t read books”. And then later wants me to help him with his paper because oddly enough the composition teacher wants him to actually be coherent in his writing.

And so I’m reading several of my friends myspace blogs. One of them cannot spell even slightly and sees no need for spell check. Essentially every fourth word is misspelled or typo-ed. That does not even address the idea of coherency and trying to connect the messages and thoughts in some form of order. He seems to use massive amounts of question marks and exclamation points ( I’ve counted up to fifteen) when he can not find any effective words to actually say what he wants to say.
I am glad that this (seemingly Post- literate) person is trying to express himself. I will continue to read him. I want to discern his intent and learn new things about him, but it is so JARRING to try to snake out his actual intent. It’s also kind of depressing to think that the public education system has failed people so miserably that they cannot really communicate through the self expression of writing.

A different example of education gone awry is this other fellow who has a good vocabulary in the sense that he knows interesting and expressive as well as obscure words but cannot put them into correct usage. (And again, has there been some sort of universal decision that using spell check is completely uncool?) So while he’s trying to express something important, that he’s feeling intensely, he ends up sounding like Daymon Wayan’s jail house philosopher. Sounding like, “When the constabulary of your soul exhumes the reading of the mind, the expression of the pajamas grasps the cats intent, to wit, the James Bondian anagram.”
Huh?

I readily admit that I have writing issues. For one thing, I write as if everything was a conversation. If it was possible, I’m sure my run on sentences would go two or three paragraphs. I in fact, had a funny encounter at writing lab recently where I had written a five or six line sentence as it’s own paragraph. Of course I was stopped dead in my tracks by the 20 year old English whiz.
But I appreciated learning the things I never learned in no-school though. I never knew that the name of that thing between the commas was a clause for instance. I finally learned some things about colons and semicolons. I learned how dashes are meant to be used. Sure, I’ve already forgotten some of it. But I know where the book is to refresh my memory on the absolute correct usage. And face it sometimes I actually want to fuck up a sentence and bend it to my will instead of being under it’s yolk ( that was a typo but it so illustrates that point that I’m leaving it, I know it’s yoke and anyway try saying yoke and yolk while staring at the written words and see if it doesn’t all turn to Cyrillic in your brain like it just did with me.)

But my point, and I do actually have one, is that because I’ve read kazillions of BOOKS, I have a basically sound foundation to start hanging all the nice finesses on. Because I actually wish to be understood I go back, edit, and try to rephrase things that could be nebulous. ( I know I make it worse sometimes). And for Pete’s sake, I frickin’ spell check, even though I know I’m a decent speller, if for no other reason than I know I’m a shitty typist.

I suppose that there is nutrition in the word salads, and that it nourishes the souls reaching out to just express something. But if it’s meant to have any staying power and not just become bowel movement Du Jour shouldn’t there be some bread and/or meat basics to go along with it? So the reader can feel like they’ve had an actual satisfying meal and light up that cigarette of repletion?