Shannon’s Blog
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The Decision of Meaning
The happiest person in Romeo and Juliet is Rosaline, who had the good sense to be uninvolved. Romeo spent his initial scenes declaring her matchless beauty, his undying love, that there would never be another woman for him, etc., up until he met Juliet and immediately began saying all those things about her instead. Romeo…
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The Crux of the Tragedy
Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language. I know because everyone says so. Like most of you, I was compelled to experience his greatness in school, and I did not particularly enjoy it. (It was Othello. I could not work out the math by which the Great Handkerchief Scandal resulted in murder.) Earlier…
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Redundant Redundancies
Today’s topic is redundant phrases. We have all had it drilled into us that redundancy is bad and clean, effective communication excises the pointless. We also have ingrained into us our civilization’s stock of well-worn and oft-used expressions, which did not undergo a strict vetting by licensed grammarians and therefore contains redundancies. Like Orwell’s animals,…
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Somewhere Out There
On the chance that anyone is not finding current events sufficiently bizarre, the Pentagon released UFO videos. Some people concluded from the imagery that aliens have already surreptitiously visited Earth and are probably planning an invasion that will end life as we know it. Pessimists, though, suggested that the so-called UFOs are really just afterimages.…
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An Icon of Melodrama
If you consider the facts from a certain distance – objectively, even analytically – you would have to conclude that the image of a woman tied to the railroad tracks is grim. Tragic, even, if the evident intention is realized. We take it to be comical, but we’re not really to blame. The damsel in…