To Paint With Light

Thursday, March 27, 2014

I haven't posted anything here or anywhere for the past month or so because I've been busy translating a new book. I think I can safely say that this is the end of my translating career, for I intensely hate it. I sat here for about 15 seconds, thinking of various words - loathe, livid, abhor, detest, revulsion, et cetera, but yeah, I like intensely hate for whatever reason.

But I had two realizations as I was translating this book - a Christian book - which is interesting, because I no longer classify myself as Christian.

1. In the introductory part of the book, there were bunch of "letters of recommendations" by pastors. Nearly all of them were absolutely horrid. Not just bad, but devoid of any useful meaning and overstuffed with pretentiousness. I hate it. I fucking hate it when a writing lacks substance and is deduced into an array of fancy words to impress. Do they have no taste? I mean, it's like eating shit and not knowing how bad it is. If they had re-read what they had written, it should've been painfully clear that they vomited on paper. If not, then I pity them, because they have no taste buds in their brain to differentiate between a shitty writing and an acceptable one.

It's not like I'm some wunderkind, but pastors? It's their job to write sermons everyday. Do your fucking job. If you've taken it seriously, your writing can't possibly suck this much. I now know why most sermons are so damn bad. Because the writing is horrendous to begin with.

2. I have this wonderful speech - a farewell toast actually - in my head. I typically write short speeches in my head from start to beginning, and I almost cried thinking about it. I'm dying to transcribe it onto paper, because I'm so curious how it will sound. But I couldn't do it because translating took up all my time and now, I have to write some letters of recommendations. I suppose I could've written a little bit instead of writing this blog post, but no. The speech will be about the same length, but it will take hours and hours to write and rewrite and edit, while this blog, which has taken about 20 minutes of my time, probably will take another 5-10 minutes to complete. I have to finish the letters of recommendation first or else I'll feel guilty.

I guess that's the difference between obligatory and voluntary writing - torture and heaven. This is why I hated English so much throughout school, yet I've came to love it after graduation.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

The secret to cooking

I have discovered a secret to cooking; you add msg and salt until it becomes edible - or like pho.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

My written art

Here's a story about James Joyce, told by Stephen King (On Writing)

A friend came to visit James Joyce one day and found the great man sprawled across his writing desk in a posture of utter despair.
'James, what’s wrong?' the friend asked. 'Is it the work?'
Joyce indicated assent without even raising his head to look at his friend. Of course it was the work; isn’t it always?
'How many words did you get today?' the friend pursued.
Joyce (still in despair, still sprawled facedown on his desk): 'Seven.'
'Seven? But James… that’s good, at least for you.'
'Yes,' Joyce said, finally looking up. 'I suppose it is… but I don’t know what order they go in!'

I looked up the word "ephemeral" the other day. Sometimes I look up a word I know for no apparent reason. And as I was looking over the comments, I saw this:

"Life is too ephemeral."

I instantly cringed when I saw this. Doesn't it just sound so crude? Short bro, short. "Life is too short," or "life is fleeting," is fine, but "life is too ephemeral?" It sounds like someone looked up a thesaurus and replaced an easy word with a difficult one in an effort to sound smart. But just change the order, and there's magic:

Life too, is ephemeral.

Oh the beauty of the written art.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

-George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

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Someone told me the other day that my writing was wonderful, which was nice but not so flattering (oh my arrogance!). Well, I had written the letter in Korean so the compliment meant something but really, words like great, marvelous, wonderful, fabulous, are not only subjective but merely denote a positive feeling towards something.

An articulate compliment per se would say that a writing is succinct, witty, or genuine. Sure, these are all subjective too, but it goes beyond "I like this." It says, "I like this because."

And it's so much more powerful.

I shou“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

– George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-favorite-quotations-about-words-vol-1/clear-language.html#6W5qf4bxi4VYQA8v.99

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

Sunday, January 12, 2014

I just spent an afternoon debating whether to replace a dash with a comma. The answer is always the same. Replace.

But at least I know that I prefer en dashes over em dashes, with a space on each side. Heresy I know, but it just looks so much better.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Oblivious

I decided to give in and check out what this EXO fad was all about (a boy group in Korea/China). Four months ago when several zit-faced adolescent girls enthusiastically explained some nonsense about EXO-K and EXO-M having superpowers, coming from different planets, losing their memory and living on Earth thinking they were human, that was it for me. I thought to myself, I would rather read twilight. Well, not really.

But I did want to ask how these idiots failed to see the marketing ploy behind having two groups, one singing in Korean (EXO-K) and the other in Mandarin (EXO-M), to the identical tune. I also wanted to ask whether their superpowers included interspecific intercourse (or extraterrestrial intercourse?), but decided in favor of my better judgment.

Mockery demystifies, but also angers. One ought to use it sparingly.

Anyway, I watched the video and I must admit, embarrassingly, that I was blown away. Not by their voice (though the song is surprisingly good), nor their dance (fantastic), nor their face (don’t give a fuck, but I really needed a third example), but by the camerawork. They only use one viewpoint throughout the entire music video. Maybe the idea was copied but I’ve never seen such camera work before.

So I proceeded to watch the video about 30 times, completely mesmerized. And then I realized that I was listening to Chinese.

I’m really glad that I’m not a pilot. Ho Lee Fuk.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

cacoethes scribendi

The best way to deal with my cacoethes scribendi is to write more. As simple as that.