08.02.04 - 1:59 p.m.
More blips. After a discussion with Wolf in re: the meanings of names, how he chose his character's names based on the meaning, and while he was helping me pick a name for a new character (Marie-Helene) I was making, he sent me this in re: Rune's names.
Ah! So her names have some meaning after all, maybe! Except, you know, she doesn't like the forest much. Icky forest. With leaves and stuff like that.
Ooooh, and one of my favorite quotes ever, directly from the mouth of Warren McGraw, who panders to the unions with the best of them, and is currently running for re-election to the WV Supreme Court of Appeals:
I just love this state.
Now, here's a commentary I started writing on the art and science of the signature phrase. How geeky is that?
The art of the signature phrase This whole internet thing has brought about - in completely grown people - the same anxiety that gripped everyone at the end of the school year, about when yearbooks came out. What they hell do you write? How do you come up with something evocative but not entirely clich�, or clich�d in a good way, rather than the wholly crappy that those other geeky annoying people tended to come up with? Now, of course, we have that anxiety year 'round, between e-mail signatures and forum signatures and - if you RP - spiffy character signatures that evoke all the neat coolness of your character in three words or less.
I always come up with really superfabulous signatures when I'm listening to songs - personally, I now prefer snips of phrases rather than whole verses - for both forums and for character lines, but I'll go for a (short) verse or a longer bit of prose, as they're less likely to be seen repeatedly, ad nauseum, in crazymaking succession.
The thing about signatures, though - they're only there to please you. I can't make them up, mostly, because random phrases that I've made up, even if they're elliptical and evocative, don't have much emotional power for me. In sharp contrast, phrases from poems or songs DO have emotional power - seeing the phrase is like a glancing blow from the music, a little kiss of the sound or feeling.
It's especially difficult for me, since I am the most pretentious git I know, and happen - also - to have an almost skincrawling aversion to pretension. Quite the predicament that lands me in, eh? Here I have to, somehow, figure [Hmmm. I stopped there. Half-formed thoughts: what do you do with half-formed thoughts? They're like little bits of broken bridges, they leave you swinging over the water, one foot over the precipice, dangerous rapids ahead. Sure, I could, today, reconstruct what I was thinking, but it wouldn't be authentic. Months later, I'm a wholly different person. Hey - I'm a homeowner now. Doesn't that change everything?]
haunted by american dreams [LOVE that signature phrase. Man. I'm going to use that for someone, why can't I remember it when I need it?]
For a while, I used at last -- memory yields which was, of course, quite compelling to me because it came from a Nietzsche quote about the intersection between pride and memory, which I quite like, but which seems pretentious in sum as a signature:
'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that' - says my pride, and remains adamant. At last - memory yields."
Neko case has loads of good phrase snippets for signatures and character signatures:
aeroplanes were never meant to fly.
we've got a lady pilot whose not afraid to die.
we've almost finished reeling in the sky. [all from Lady Pilot]
red wine is fast at the lip of your glass and i'm gonna ruin
ev. ry. thing.
so it's better my sweet that we hover like bees [from With Bees (Outro)]
the scent of your skin and some foreign flowers
Annnnd, a link to a drop-down menu code. I think I was going to try (once more) to make a comprehensive website. Never done it, likely never will. INERTIA! http://www.brothercake.com/dropdown/
