Dog days, anyone?
What do the following have in common? Not to put any pressure on you to answer this question, gentle reader, because after all it is summer, and the dog days are here, and our bodies and minds have been in vacation mode for weeks now (including the three major parts of summer -- pre-vacation, actual vacation, and post-vacation-"tell-me-again-what-we-do-here"), and I'm the kind of writer who tends to fall down the long rabbit hole of an seemingly endless run-on sentence on any given day of any season, and when I crash at the bottom of that fall, and the run-on sentence comes to a dramatic climax, or, more often, just wanders aimlessly down the trail and out of sight, I often find myself asking, like many of my confused English students, "What was the question?"
Simone
Oh yes, what do the following have in common: dog days of summer, writing columns and blogs, and Andy Borowitz? To answer that question, I've conducted thorough research, or as thorough as I'm able, given the season. Here are the results of my scientific research.
1. You can learn much by observing the family dog. Simone, our Italian greyhound, spends at least half of the daytime hours lounging about the house. She's easy to find. Look on the living room sofa or any of her dozen lounging spots. She's made an art of it. Occasionally you can spot her strolling to the kitchen, or more often sprinting to the kitchen in case someone decides to give her a treat, or drops food.
Her breed is built for speed, but not for endurance. A sprinter, not a marathoner. She's great in short spurts, but then requires long naps to recover. Put her on a treadmill and she can walk for 20 minutes, but that's about it for the day.
I suspect that living with this little lounger for the past four years has turned me into a lounger/sprinter as well. Run a marathon? I don't want to watch someone running a marathon, or even think about it. And I do have several favorite spots around the house for lounging. Even at this moment it's uncertain whether I will (a) finish this blog, or (b) take a nap. Don't bet on (a).
2. Speaking of beasts, Lisa Kanae told me recently that a regular blog is "a hungry beast." It must be fed. I've been feeding mine less this summer, once or twice a week, but I'm too fearful not to feed it. I don't want it turning on me, baring its teeth. I wouldn't have the energy to run from it. Not when I'm in vacation mode. So here I am at the keyboard, feeding the beast.
Andy Borowitz
3. Andy Borowitz? Surely you know who he is. "No," you reply, "and don't call me Shirley." Andy writes the Borowitz Report. Here's a sample of his recent "essays" there: "BP Replaces Tony Hayward With Startled Deer," "Palin Says Refudiate Appears In Fictionary," "Hawking: Aliens 'No Longer Interested' In Invading Earth," and "BP Says Oil In Gulf Must Be Changed Every Six Months."
Andy's latest inspired this blog: "In Month Before Labor Day, Pointless 'Filler' Columns Abound: Lazy Columnists Pad Out Stories by Quoting Experts, Experts Say." Here's how that one ends:
There are other telltale signs a reader can look for in order to determine whether a writer has, in fact, filed a so-called “filler” column, according to Crimmins.
One of these is a tendency to repeat information that the reader has already read earlier in the article, with columnists even stooping to using the same quote twice.
“They’ll often quote people you’ve never heard of,” Crimmins says.
Another tip-off is if the column ends abruptly.
Tags: Andy Borowitz, Italian greyhound, Lisa Kanae
