Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Fonts

I am a Calibri man. I like the traditional, easy-to-read look. There is something to be said for sticking to what works, and being tasteful in the process. People that write in Courier are either over-compensating for not having much to say, or they were alive for the invention of the typewriter. Those that choose Times New Roman are boring. Every word processor has a large selection of fonts, I suggest doing some exploring, you might be surprised at what you find. Then there are the fancy fonts. The fancy fonts are only to be used for decoration. If you are writing something lengthy in a fancy font, you are condemning your reader to a bad case of the fancy-pants. Sometimes someone might want to make it look as though their text is handwritten. These people need to stick to their diary entries, and avoid attempting any semblance of professionalism with this font. Some people want to be heard, and they use the bold fonts. These fonts are unavoidable to a reader, even when their message is better left avoided. And then there are the adventurous fonts, the ones you would expect to see embroidered on the side of a boat or marking the spot of buried treasure. These are not meant for everyday use - I mean cmon, look at that capital I. I  am unsure of why some fonts even exist. Who is meant to crack this code? Grow up and use Calibri. Similarly, some people like to use cursive  fonts that are indeed made up of letters, but are impossible to read. I can only imagine tiny people typing this font with their tiny fingers And then there are fonts created in Old England, meant only for medieval presentations of sorts, and making one feel as if they must write in ye olde languages of the nethertimes. Wanted dead or alive: an ol' western font. Some fonts are in all caps. These are the yelling fonts. it is impossible to read this text without yelling and/or getting a migraine. The cutesy fonts make you want to say "awwwwwww." You  cannot use these fonts without wanting to pinch them right on their chubby little font cheeks. A nanny could advertise with this font and be guaranteed customers. Some fonts are disgusting. This one looks like keyboard vomit. Some fonts are horrifying....BEHIND YOU!!! Some fonts are chubby. Some are anorexic. Once upon a time, there was a font so very small that it had to be magnified 20x to become legible. Yeah, I think I'll stick with Calibri.             

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Houses

Some houses inspire you. The kinds of houses that have tiny attic windows that you can't see into but desperately want to, because on the other side you expect to find something charismatic, like an elderly woman perched behind an antique wooden desk in a room only big enough for her, her sewing machine, and a lethargic metal fan that keeps her cool during the heat of the day. The kinds of houses with yards manicured to indicate care and indifference all at once, whose inhabitants are rarely seen and thus invented by each passerby. The sorts of houses where each room is an individual, where an upstairs bedroom must be found by word of mouth, where trinkets and ornaments have stories behind them. These are the kinds of houses that have yellow siding that is either the result of repainting or wear, that make you feel reminiscent and melancholy, because their ripened charm reminds you of long forgotten summer evenings at your grandparents' house. You write stories about these kinds of houses. Stories with little girls in white sundresses running in and out of patio doors onto wooden porches, and adults in rocking chairs drinking lemonade out of a jar and gazing at the sunlight reflecting off the mist of the sprinklers. Stories where, outside, the rain is pouring or the sun is blazing, but never anything in between. Stories with characters who change when they move in, who discover a new side of themselves, who find their favorite room before they even know what furniture it will hold. And in these stories, the house means something, something that shifts and is yet unchanged, something that is built on eroding soil but has a solid foundation, something that represents the permanence of home.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Poets?

I told myself I would write everyday. Today is a day, so I must write, even though I am not in the mood. I have read in so many reliable places that writing every day is the best way to be a better writer. When I put it that way, it sounds obvious. I want to say practice makes perfect, but I hat cliches. I also hate them. Sitting at a coffee shop as I am doing now can be inspiring, but it can also be oddly irritating. The coffee shop - home turf for the "creative" types - is always bustling with people like me, people who think they are different, who think they are the ones who are going to "make it" in whatever dead-end career they happen to be aspiring to. Even right now, I can look in front of me and slightly to my left and see a woman typing a screenplay. I want to go up to her and say, "I am better than you. Stop trying." She may be much better than me, but I want to be the only one in the coffee shop working on my craft so that it doesn't seem so difficult to get ahead. Yesterday, a group of - OBNOXIOUS - young show-offs sat in a prototypical coffee shop circle, two on a couch, one in a recliner, one cross-legged on the floor, all surrounding a hippy-looking glass coffee table, and talked about things at a volume that made eavesdropping a necessity, not a desire. They were all "poets." I was irritated that they were calling themselves "poets." If they were really "poets," they wouldn't be sitting in a coffee shop talking about it, they would be - well, I don't know where poets go. The point is, I could tell they weren't accomplished "poets," they were just people who try their hands at poetry, then sit in stupid hippy circles at coffee shops and brag loudly about the latest reading they went to. Then they watch loud youtube videos with no headphones and piss off everyone around them. I am writing right now, but do I consider myself a "writer?" No. I haven't accomplished anything deserving of that title. If I walked around telling everyone I was a writer, I would be pretentious. The coffee shop "poets" need a lesson in humility. What is poetry, anyway? Here, I can write poetry on the spot:

Here I sit to write words
They do not spell, they say
To whom is not to know
For to find the meaning
would be to know too much
And this is why
sense is lost.

Yes, that took all of 30 seconds, and it makes just as much sense as any poem I have ever read. Maybe I should become a "poet." I could just make shit up and mush words together in a way that sounds "poetic." This whole prose thing is tricky because it has to actually make sense, follow the laws of English.

This is really not as satisfying as it was yesterday. Hopefully tomorrow I will be more inspired.


Monday, June 10, 2013

The idea-less ramble

Writing. Writing, writing, writing. I have been writing all day, but I had to stop writing and come here to write. I plan to write here until I am satisfied. The good news is I have already accomplished more here than in the other thing I was writing. I wish it was always this easy to write. I am finding this very satisfying. The other thing I was writing all day was much harder to write. I told myself I would come here and write without editing at all, in order to actually get some writing done. I have made a few typos, and I will admit I did go back and fix them. But fixing typos is ok, I just don't want to sit for minutes on end deciding how to edit ideas. Ideas are difficult to write. That's why I am writing this, because I have no ideas to write. This is idea-less, and it feel great. Sometimes you just need to write with no ideas. Should I publish this? Then I would be publishing no ideas. Writing with no ideas and publishing those no ideas. Is that productive? Will anyone enjoy it? Who knows? Who cares? I kind of care. I don't want people to think I'm a crazy person. Maybe I am a crazy person. But I don't want other people to think that. But now I already wrote that I might be crazy, and I can't go back and edit that, so if I publish this, people might think, oh he even thinks he might be crazy, maybe he actually is crazy. They will think I am a crazy person with no ideas. No ideas at all. I just stopped to re-read everything I wrote, which is something I told myself I wouldn't do. But it's ok, I am slowly learning how to not edit my writing every 5 seconds. It is important, and I think writing with no ideas, like I'm doing now, will help cure  me of my need to constantly edit my writing. I just stopped to re-read everything again. This is quite the ramble. The idea-less ramble. That sounds catchy, the idea-less ramble. Maybe that's what I'll call this. But I only need a title if I publish this. Still haven't decided if I want to. But now that I have a good title maybe I should. Hmm. Now I am running out of no ideas. For the past 2 minutes I have been writing with no ideas whatsoever, and it flowed perfectly. Now I have no more no ideas and I don't know what to write, except that I am out of no ideas to write about. I am a little scared to stop though, because I am worried about going back and trying to edit this. Here's what I'll do, I'll count to 3, and on 3, I will click publish. Yeah,what the hell, I'll publish it. I'm not crazy. 1-2-3!