Well, dear readers, we have ourselves a conundrum, oh, yes, we have ourselves a conundrum. What is this conundrum you might ask and I might tell you because it would be unseemly of me not to. The conundrum is that we are supposed to have our Unseemly Live Chat this very evening at six o’clock Pacific Mean Time, and yet tonight at that very hour is the Golden Globe Awards and many dear readers have expressed dismay at the conflicting time schedule. So, since I have no interest whatsoever in the Golden Globe Awards I will leave it to the majority – we can chat tonight at our regular time, or we can chat tomorrow at our regular time. Let’s post early so we can make that decision posthaste. And that is our conundrum in a nutshell. Have you ever seen a conundrum in a nutshell? It’s quite amusing, really, on a surreal level.
Last night I went to my friends Margaret and Richard’s house – I brought over delicious Chinese food and we ate ourselves silly and then Margaret and I went over various and sundried fixes for my book. I don’t fix anything unless she says “okay” – she’s wonderful because she gets very angry if I want to smooth things out too much, especially when it takes the “voice” of the book away. Plus we go over all the little punctuation things that my other proofers have found and we discuss them – I have found I will let certain things go if I feel it disrupts the flow of a sentence or dialogue. I suppose grammar rules were made to be broken and break some of them I do. In any case, certain things did get smoothed out and improved and certain grammar and punctuation problems did get fixed, so there you are. Two more sets of proofing notes to go through, and then we’ll do our final proofing and off it will go. Then, when I get a galley we do the whole damn thing over again ad nauseum, with an emphasis on the latter – oh, an Adler and Ross reference.
I forgot to mention that I heard from Mr. Michael Kerker, my pal from ASCAP, who has once again asked me to do the panel for the Disney/ASCAP workshop. I like doing those very much. For the first time he wanted me to do the first part, the short form, but I’ll be in New York for that one, so I’ll do the one I usually do, the longer presentation. This year, Mr. Stephen Schwartz is not moderating because he is immersed in his new musical, Wicked, so the moderator will be Mr. Craig Carnelia. I will, of course, have a full report for you at that time, oh, yes, I will have a full report at that time.
Well, why don’t we all click on the fershluganah Unseemly Button below before any other conundrums present themselves.
Do you know what the most annoying grammar thing is? The dangling participle. First of all, it sounds lewd. Second of all, who in tarnation invented the word “participle”? I mean, really, that person should have been locked away in a room and left to wallow in their own sludge. Wasn’t that poetic? I only had three dangling participles in the book and we fixed them all, so now we have no count them no dangling participles in the book. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
Let me just say this in my own defense – I did not mean to dangle a participle, it was unintentional, and I feel I should be pardoned and made to do one hundred hours of community grammar service. Have you ever dangled a participle? If so, how did you feel? What the hell am I talking about?
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must sit here and go blind entering miniscule corrections and whatnot. In case you missed my post yesterday, Friday we set a brand spanking new record here at haineshisway.com – our biggest traffic day yet. Congratulations to one and all and also all and one. Donald will have a new radio show up later today, and don’t forget to post your votes for chat tonight or chat tomorrow. And while you’re posting, please don’t dangle your participles because to do so would be unseemly in extremis. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, discuss anything you like, but discuss something. Many topics are fun, so bring up lots of stuff and we’ll all jump into the fray, oh, yes, we shall all jump into the fray. Post away, my pretties, and I’ll be back with the chat decision in a short while.