Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Odds and Ends

There was recent thread on an email loop I belong to. It went along the lines of "Our writing group needs to be able to meet online. But a lot of our membership isn't very comfortable with computers. So suggest a solution that is easy for computer illiterate types."

Excuse me? How many problems in logic can you see in those 3 lines? You have computer illiterates who want to meet online? And these are writers who aren't comfortable with technology?

I'm sorry, but in this day and age a writer must be comfortable with computers, the Interweb and all that goes with it. Fact of life. Tool of the trade. You don't have to know how to put a computer together or even how to program one, but you'd better be savvy with some kind of word processing software, email and search engines. Most agencies are moving to email queries and submissions only. How are you going to get your work out there if you can't navigate the Interweb?

And whatever happened to the past tense of so many irregular verbs? Words like "swam" and "sank" and "stank" and the like? All I see now are phrases like "The boiled cabbage stunk" and "I sunk the basketball." No, you didn't. You sank the basketball. You may have sunk many basketballs in your lifetime, but this particular one you sank.

Okay, I guess it was just odd and end. Thought I'd have more to vent about, but apparently not right now.

Carry on.

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