Vamping for time...

So, I was working on the Big Project last night after and evening of ice cream, catching up, and Cards Against Humanity with some pals, and I did the thing that you don't want to do when working in a Photoshop clone: did a save that flattened the layers before I was done messing with one of them. Sheesh! About two hours of meticulous work down the drain, and there isn't even anyone else to blame.

Ah, well.

So the Big Reveal will have to wait another day and the Big Project will look a little bit different since I have too much pixel fatigue to begin the process anew, but what the heck - it's supposed to be fun, not work.

And that last comment leads me to the delicate balance that has been this summer's theme: the Ongoing Projects.

I am happy to report that the physical manifestations of this theme - the daily workout and walk/run - have been resounding successes: I have developed a remarkably consistent pattern. (I have neglected the longboard of late, but that was always an adjunct to the main physicality.)

Likewise the ukulele: while I cannot say that I have played every day, I have been surprisingly disciplined at laying hands upon the instrument and I can feel constant improvement.

The art/drawing/cartooning on the other hand, has oddly been the biggest challenge, as you can see from the report today. It isn't so much this one setback, but rather a focusing issue, that has kept me from being as productive as I would have liked.

And that's the balance of work and play to which I was alluding. I am a firm believer in data-based decision making, measurable goals, and the magic power of spreadsheets, and I have been having Summer Themes for a long time now, but I don't want doing the things I want to do to become doing the things I have to do, because that sorta takes all the fun out of being on summer vacation, doesn't it? And yet I do want to meet my goals, or at least make a good faith effort. And that's where that delicate balance comes in.

Enough of that. One of the first rules of writing is that when you have said enough, or run out of things to say, post a picture of Lego Wonder Woman. So here you go:

Courtesy of the same guy who did Lego-me

Don't dangle that participle at me

So, I'm usually not too much of a prescriptivist when it comes to grammar. As Philip Marlowe said in The Big Sleep, "I went to college. I can still speak English when my business demands it." And since I am an English teacher, that's pretty much all the time. But grammatical rules and niceties have never been a high priority for me - certainly not higher than communication or grace. And that's why I am wondering why a certain passage bothers me so much.

Last night, I was casting about for another summer book, having found The Life of Pi not to my taste. Coco was offering some some suggestions from the few volumes on her shelves that are not spiritual-metaphysical self-improvement/guidance books (Thich Nhat Hanh and the like) or small business/entrepreneurial guides. She handed me a copy of Maisie Dobbs, a "National Bestseller" that, according to the blurbs, was about an adventurous woman private detective in 1929 London. That sounded promising, so I gave the first page a glance:

I stopped short and two thoughts came rushing into my mind. The first was that, according to the first sentence, "Jack Barker" was the "last person to walk through the turnstile..." But Jack seems to be referred to as she. But she must really mean the "tall, slender woman" mentioned later in the sentence, because the next sentence has the possessive pronoun his in it, dispelling my initial thought that the female lead was named Jack. What was going on? Oh, noes - it was a misplaced modifier! The classic dangling participle!

The second thought that came to me was this has happened before. I suddenly recalled that Coco had suggested this book to me a year or so ago, when she first obtained it and I was looking for some light reading. And I recalled having then the same response I was having now: I cannot read this book.

I had absolutely no confidence in the author. A misplaced modifier is neither a mortal sin nor a moral failing, but c'mon - in the first sentence? And comprising an error that raises gender confusion when a reader might easily be expecting to meet the female protagonist on the first page?

I can't get past it. I couldn't a year ago, and can't now. The wind is gone from my sails, and however captivating Maisie the Detective might be, I will never know. That one inauspicious grammatical misstep that opened the book severed and cauterized whatever bond might have grown between reader and writer. So it goes.

I found a Michener book I hadn't read, Hawaii. There were no people in the entire first chapter, just rocks and seeds and some birds. But there were no dangling participles, either.