Friday, April 30, 2004

 

Can I Write Off My In-Laws?

Isaac, John-Paul and I have been discussing the twin dooms of marriage and taxes on Isaac's comments thread. My last reply got long, as in googleplex o's long. So I post it here, along with a recap of the discussion.

Click here to Thrill! As the merits of tax law are discussed by amateurs!

posted by Dan 4:34 PM
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There ain't no justice, baby, there's Just Us

Between this and this, I have now, officially, no more faith in anyone, ever.

Can we take the soldiers who torture and humiliate prisoners, and the diplomats who got fat courtesy of Saddam, and bury them together in a deep, deep pit?

Electrodes and blood money. Heaven forgive us.

posted by Dan 11:51 AM
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Thursday, April 29, 2004

 

Impress Your Friends

For those of you who like the big words...

ultimate = last
penultimate = next to last
what? = next to next to last

antepenultimate

Guys, use this impressive word to pick up a girl in a bar...and watch her tell you that she wouldn't go home with you if you were the ultimate man on Earth.

posted by Dan 12:57 PM
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Tuesday, April 27, 2004

 

License To Ill

My little girl has a cold. I just found out, but I should've realized it this morning. I came back in the bedroom from my shower, and she was still asleep in the big bed. Normally when I come back from the shower, she's reinventing the lever, just to roll Mom off the mattress.

This means no day care while my wife teaches. This means I have to go home early. This means I don't have that extra hour to edit my script for tonight. This means I have to edit my script at work.

I hate doing any writing at work. I used to love it. When I was temping for the Man, it was fine. I was usually in quiet offices where people didn't bother me too much. The workplace sucked, the work sucked, but at least I could get a little writing done.

My current workplace doesn't suck. It's the best job I've ever had. But I can't do more than the occasional blog entry, because I can't concentrate. Because I am working hard, boss! And I am. But also because the men's bathroom is directly behind me.

No, DIRECTLY behind me. At this very moment, about eight feet away, some guy is flushing out last night's chimichanga and this morning's espresso. It's like that all day.

Between that and my little girl's diapers, it's a wonder this site isn't purely scatological.

posted by Dan 11:58 AM
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Monday, April 26, 2004

 

KIS,S

We went out for barbecue, my wife and child and I, and our engaged friends. J, the groom-to-be, put a puzzle before us:

A woman goes to her mother's funeral. There, she meets a man. They go out afterwards and have an amazing evening together. She falls in love with him. The next morning, she wakes up, and realizes that she forgot to get his name or phone number. The next week, she attends her sister's funeral. Who killed her sister, and why?

Click here for the answer. Try and figure it out for yourself, first.

Looking at this puzzle now, I can't believe it took us ten minutes to come up with the answer. Perhaps Saturday Morning Cartoons did make our brains soft. Or maybe it was the beer. I'm sure most of you will have less trouble than I. However, our trouble illustrated an important idea.

This riddle resembles one of those mysteries that you're supposed to ask "Yes or No" questions about, seeking the missing information that makes an irrational story rational. It's not that kind of mystery, though. J refused to answer any questions, because he had given all the information we needed. All we had to do was connect the dots.

Not that we didn't ask questions. We theorized about inheritances and jealousy and secret identities. J just kept saying, "The answer is simple."

The answer is simple. More than that, it's elegant. By that, I mean Antoine de Saint-Exupery's definition of elegance. He was speaking of engineering, but it applies to the above story: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." (courtesy The Jargon Dictionary.)

Replace "designer" with "writer" and I think you'll see my point.

Often, when I'm rewriting a scene, I will think to myself, "Oh, if I just set that up earlier in the play, this scene will work. If I just add this piece of dialogue, it will all make sense." But what very often happens is that the scene comes out clunkier than ever, weighed down by the new baggage.

Here's another way of looking at it. In this riddle, we figured out quickly that the woman did it. Really, there's only two suspects, and the man is the less likely candidate. We searched for a reason why she would do such a thing: there was an inheritance she stood to gain; or, the man was the sister's husband; or, the man was the woman's sister, or her father, or her brother. We were looking for something in this woman's past that would make her actions clear. Yet her actions were clear, if we bothered to extrapolate them from the story. To paraphrase an old concept, we were looking for the bear she ran from, not the tree toward which she ran.

In other words, who cares where the character has been? Who cares what's missing? Where are they going, and what's interfering? Investigate that, and everything becomes clear.

Rewriting a script is a gut-wrenching experience. It's a process of figuring out what really matters in the script. The sensation is something akin to the one I had working on this puzzle. I'm looking for the simple, elegant solution. I know that it's right there in front of me, but I can't see it. Very often, I think, the answer is not to add, but to take away. Strip the play to nakedness, and have a hard look at that. I can always dress it up again later.

UPDATE: Some were confused about where the answer to the riddle is. Hopefully, it's clear now. (hint: "click here for the answer")

posted by Dan 1:22 PM
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Enough Rope

I really need to stay away from newspapers. Between them and the rain, it's hard to keep my inner nihilist at bay.

posted by Dan 1:00 PM
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