New Word

2003-05-21 - 7:41 a.m.

Okay, so I just wrote my first essay in five years. It has brought home the point that a)I lose essay-writing ability over time, and b)500 words is not long enough.

Also, I do not recommend anyone write an essay for an editor if you can help it. I can almost see the little errors, squirming with glee, just waiting for the teacher's red pen to draw the eye to them.

You see, the truth is that I have an absolute terror of semi-colons. I hate them. I've never understood them. If I had my way, the english language would dispense with semi-colons. I want every singtle semi-colon to die a horrible, horrible death (but that's only because I'm too hardened to love them).

You may have noticed that in the 1.5 years of writing these journals, I have used semi-colons much, much less than I should have. I replace them with dashes, commas, and the "seperate thoughts = seperate sentences, or maybe the run-on sentence, or maybe just scrapping the entire paragraph and trying it again" philosophy.

At one point while writing my essay, I froze. I had come to a point where I could use a semi-colon. The possibility of it totally destroyed any hope I had for forming a reasonable argument (the essay was on bias). It stalled all progressive thought. It almost forced me to give up on the essay entirely.

It's sad, really, because the semi-colon has taken on an almost mythical status in my mind. It has begun to represent all of my fears about grammar and punctuation. If someone comments on their confusion about commas, I instantly focus on my semi-colon fear. It's terrible.

In other news, I've invented a new word; that word is "Dismo." It applies to puppies, which makes it a very good word. It's used in the same way as "flock" (of birds) or "pride" (of lions) is used, though Pookie thinks it could apply to other things as well.

Specifically, a dismo is a group of different breeds of puppies that looks so adorably cute, what with its ragtag-ness (ragtagity?), that you expect the bunch of 'em to suddenly turn into cartoons in a Disney movie (get it? DisMo?). Used in a sentence: "A dismo of puppies."

Pookie says it should apply to anything that's just too cute for words, but no, dismo applies only to groups of different breeds of puppies (most often all tied to the same fire hydrant). It's my word. So there.

Cheers,

The Magus

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