Omit Needless Words!: August 21, 2005

In which there is morbidity — loquacious morbidity.

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I think my entertainment choices have become a little too morbid, even for me. Just yesterday I read an Anne Perry novel, a book on three explorers who died in the Arctic, several dozen threads about death and destruction on the Encyclopedia Titanica board, killed off a major character in one of my stories, left a cat to die on a sinking ship in another, watched a disturbing little Dutch film called Spoorloos, and finished off the day by reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Surprisingly, I slept well, and did not turn into a cockroach during the night. Now I’m looking at large, gory photos of bear-mauling victims while listening to the Peasall Sisters. This must be the definition of morbid insanity.

Lately I’ve noticed that I seem to be the acknowledged family expert on all things dark and gruesome. Every time a relative of mine comes across a grim book or a gory link, they always think of me and make a note to recommend it. My mother keeps coming across gory books she knows I’d enjoy, but they’re so bloody she can’t bear to buy them for me. A few days ago, both my mother and my husband got into an impromptu Q&A on mummies and corpses, and yesterday my mother came over for the specific purpose of asking me about the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath.

Why are there so many pompous people online? I won’t name names, but there are several well-designed, popular sites run by interesting-sounding people… who simply can’t write. They sound like Polonius, and that’s very frustrating, because if they’d drop all the art I’m sure there’s a lot of good matter underneath. To be fair, some of them might not be native English speakers, but still — omit needless words!, as Strunk would say. There should be a rule prohibiting teenage girls from possessing thesauruses.

I shouldn’t really talk, however, as I’ve got the opposite problem — instead of speaking plainly and writing purply, I speak purply and write plainly. My writing style seems fairly concise, but some of the things that come out of my mouth could have been scripted by a fifth-rate Edwardian novelist. Add to this my demented-Victorian-governess-goes-to-Woodstock style of dress, and I’m sure I come off as both pretentious and insane.

I would write more, but a HUGE BLACK SPIDER just came dropping down from the ceiling on a thread, directly over my head. Time to scream and run, methinks.

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