“Paper mâché” #gagamaggot. Seriously, if one uses a French term adopted into English, use it correctly, not butchered half-anglicized and just wrong. Papier-mâché. Heck, if one is going to get the accent marks correct and flub the rest, why even use the term at all?
Practice Does Not Make Perfect
At most, practice makes permanent. Only perfect practice can make “perfect,” and that ain’t gonna happen this side of the Jordan. . .
Still, practicing a musical piece. . . so many different methods, and choices/successes depend largely on skill level and preferences, but I always preferred reading through a piece and listening to it “between my ears” as much as possible before setting hand (and mouth, depending on instrument) or voice to the music. *shrugs* During a quick read-through, I could generally identify places that might need special attention, and could often iron them out, at least a bit during the scan. Then it was mostly discerning and effecting the teleos of the piece, as I inferred it from the leading of the tune and harmonies, as well as the composer’s directions on the page (notes and signs and etc.). When leading a group through a sight–reading. I came to appreciate the STARS method for young/inexperienced/amateur performers. For a group with more developed music literacy, just walking through a piece and noting to the group where I thought the different sections (or the group or the piece or both) might require a bit of attention. That was usually enough to get that attention paid during the first sigh reading session. Usually. *heh*
With volunteer choral groups, I preferred handing out an abbreviated rehearsal schedule, with bullet points derived from my much more detailed outline for each piece in the schedule for that rehearsal. Kept things moving and saved time. Of course, I had to remain flexible and touch on unanticipated issues though those were usually rare. A fav book on choral conducting informed the time I spent doing that. . . I occasionally had voices like those referred to below, and I celebrated their inclusion:
“I have never paid much attention to the ‘quality’ of a choral candidate’s voice. I am much more influenced by the extent of his desire to sing, and by his interest in music. . . May I offer an extreme example of this indifference to vocal endowment. I once had, as members of a chorus, two monotones. It would be impossible to exaggerate the delight they experienced in having a part in the rehearsal of great music, and had I denied them one of the real resources of life, I should always have regretted it. They were not the least sensitive over their deficiency and made no protest at being seated together a little apart from the chorus. Fortunately, their voices were not strong ones. They sang, without deleterious effect, not less than four major choral works with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its conductor.” —
_Choral Conducting_, Archibald T. Davison ©1940, sixth edition: 1950,pp. 27-28.
Ortega’s “Mass-Man” Leading the Way to. . .
Even just a glance at the passing scene leads one to observe that the Internet’s empowerment of Ortega’s “mass-man” and the attendant massive explosion of the growth and influence of “Dunning-Krugerands,” has only exacerbated the downward spiral toward Kornbluth’s “Marching Morons.”
Setting: Far future (less far, now, by a LOT, if today’s society is any indication). “The human population is now 3 million highbred elite and 5 billion morons, and the “average” IQ is 45 (whereas today an IQ score of 100 is average, by definition).” (? Wikipedia)
Well, American Spectator “Snuck” (#gagamaggot) in Another Moronic Headline
Ukrainian Leadership Claims Drone Sunk [sic] Two Russian Patrol Vessels
The headline is more telling than the actual article. If a Ukranian drone SANK a couple of Russian patrol vessels, good, but that R. Emmett Tyrell is willing to put his name on a mag that so grossly abuses the English language in a headline says pretty disgusting things about R. Emmett Tyrell’s lack of literacy, and poor literacy inevitably leads to sub-par communication of ideas (something I have had against American Spectator for some time, now, anyway).
Note: the PRETERITE (A.K.A., simple past tense) of “sink” is in no way, shape, fashion, or form “sunk.” “Sunk” is for perfect tenses (had/have sunk). Any headline writer that keeps his job after stupidly, illiterately, writing the headline proffered here does so only because editorial eyes are also pseudoliterate or just stupid.
OK, OK, maybe the problem is just that American Spectator is staffed with editors and headline writers who pattern themseves after lobotomized Bonobo Chimpanzees or Cooter from Gunsmoke.
American Spectator: promoting the destruction of literacy one headline at a time?
Reason #5,689
“Snuck” is an example of one of the MANY reasons I have such a deep distrust of democracy.
That is all. For now.
Classes of Writers
There are two main classes of writers that can — broadly — be discerned by this bright line divider:
1. Those who know how to use and appropriately do use m-dashes.
2. Pseudoliterate imposters (whose “work” is usually edited by lobotomized Bonobo Chimpanzees).
Oh, there are many other indicators, but that one will generally do the trick.
YW.
🙂
There may be those among my (2?) readers who question which class I belong in based on my own use of an m-dash above. If so, nanny-nanny-boo-boo to you. *heh*
BTW, I read the occassional pseudoliterate imposter for the dubious pleasure of making snarky comments in notes, then reposting those notes in a Amazon review. Yeh, it’s kinda mean, but they EARNED it. One such pseudoliterate imposter I read recently described a wedding (it was in an “action hero” sort of seventh grade boys’ fantasy). My impression of the “classy” (so asserted by pseudoliterate imposter) wedding was of a kinda trashy “trailer park” wedding. (And yes, I know some perfectly nice folks also live in trailer parks, but I’m invoking the “TPTrash” meme for shorthand, here.) It was a hoot trashing that, since it had already trashed itself.
More Contemporary Fiction Foibles
I tend to “file 13” books I pick up whose central character is openly described as “brilliant” and yet who consistently does execrably stupid things all within its realm of assigned “smartitudinousness” (is there a useful real world term for assumed but non-existent inteligence, or may I just use my snarky neologism?).
#gagamaggot
It’s Still “The Little Things”
N.B., as you may note, I like to ignore the rule about writing short, concise sentences, because if a reader cannot parse clear text unless a sentence is short enough for the attention span of a gnat, I do not much care whether they read on. There are some things I like about getting to be a Curmudgeonly Olde Pharte. *heh*
Oh, I have come to expect them, but “Dunning-Krugerands” who are willfully stuck on stupid abound in all realms of publication, nowadays–self-pub, trad-pub, online and “dead tree” magazines and newspapers, etc.–and I still just cannot get used to seeing words in print grossly misused, mind-boggling displays of subject-object confusion, amphibolous construction that renders a text as meaningless gibberish, baffling syntax, the use (abuse) of punctuation as random text-confetti, and evidence of willful disregard for doing one’s homework to support even a thin veil of suspension of disbelief when writing fiction (some scholarly, peer-reviewed “scientific” papers do a better job of supporting suspension of disbelief for their fiction than do many novels nowadays. . . )
For example, except for the rare equestrian fiction by an actual “horse person,” almost every piece of fiction I’ve read in the last decade or more that features horses and riders–westerns, fantasy, mysteries: all of ’em–have gotten nearly everything horse related wrong. And most of the wrong depictions have one thng in common: they hew very closely to popular, mostly “Hollyweird,” depictions of horses and riders, and they almost always simply treat horses as a low-tech, inconvenient substitute for cars and ‘bikes. (And I have yet to read any contemporary writer of a popular genre who treats horse manure with the respect it deserves. *heh*)
But, of course, that sort of “I already know evrything there is to know anout everything” attitude carries across to every bit of a “Dunning-Krugerand’s” writing (and speech, which is why subliterate morons get paid the big bucks to be TV taking heads).
Sometimes, given the proliferation of media influence, the only way to go through a day w/o killing brain cells by listening to Stupid Speech™ or Stupid Writing™ is to turtle up and avoid reading, talking with (or even just peripherally hearing) others at all.
The hermit lifestyle is looking more and more appealing. . .
Seriously: if someone does not even know the difference betweem “come here” and “sic ’em” (go-come, take-bring, etc.) then that person should 1. Shut up/stop writing and 2. Give their best shot at passing a basic English as a Second Language course (their first language being Advanced Stupidity).
OK, that’s enough of me being positive and uplifting. You’re welcome. 😉
Unless One Is Constructing a Half-witty Insult. . .
. . . “not a wit” is. . . witless. “Not a whit” = “not a bit; not an iota; not the smallest part,” etc. “Not a wit” simply indicates someone without wit, a dullard, a dummy, a subliterate “Dunning-Krugerand” wannabe self-pub writer. *heh*
Quick Tip for Subliterate “Dunning-Krugerand” Wannabe Writers
Learn to write “Smarter Than a Fifth Grader (Who Rode the Short Bus to School and Spend Five Years in Fifth Grade Before Being Passed ON)™.”
YW.