The Scribbly One

This post is reproduced from a former blog that is dying a slow and painful death. It (the post, not the blog) was birthed on May 01, 2004.

 
I saw Courtney Love on The Late Night Show with David Letterman last night. Look, I know the boob-flashing incident occurred on March 17, but our TV networks here are slow, ok? So it only got here on May 1.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. (Duh. She flashed him, didn’t she?!) Made me wonder, what’s up with Western women and bralessness? We females are constantly told that we have to wear bras to give our breasts good support. Otherwise, we’re told, the perky things will start to wilt. Or something like that.

But Western women tend to love going braless. At least, that’s my personal observation. I live in an Asian country and female Western tourists are more often than not seen walking around here with boobies bouncing free under a tank top. You can tell because every man’s eyes will be glued to those two nipples obviously poking against the blouse material. I know the weather’s hot… but still!

Don’t Western women worry about the possibility of sagging and losing that nice perky firmness? Oh wait, I forgot… plastic surgery is so common nowadays…

I wonder about writing styles. If I were to start another blog, and use my real name there, would my writing style give me away? Would I be easily identifiable as the author of this blog too?

Is it possible to ‘camouflage’ one’s writing style? Hmmm…

Do you ever feel like you’re being punished for someone else’s incompetence? Picture these scenarios:

• Your colleague is slow. He never gets anything done on time. When the boss needs someone to handle an urgent rush job, who gets assigned to the work? You.
   
• Your colleague is inept. His work is constantly riddled with errors. When the boss needs someone to handle an important high-priority project, who gets assigned to the work? You.
   
• Your colleague is often ‘missing in action’. He’s frequently late for work and tends to call in sick at least once a month. When the boss looks around for someone to handle the problem that has just cropped up, who gets assigned to the work? You.
   
• Your colleague is clueless. Briefing him is a nightmare because he never understands the system or the concept. When the boss needs someone to handle a complex matter, who gets assigned to the work? You.

Looks like inefficiency and incompetence has its own rewards, eh?

On the upside, you’ll reap the boss’s favour and will probably move up quicker within the company, while your colleague will remain in the boss’s bad books.

You can rant all you want about discrimination and claim to be a great writer, but if you can’t even spell correctly, that really doesn’t help your cause any. Great writers do not allow homonyms to trip them up all the time, do not confuse countable and uncountable nouns, do not have such difficulties with subject-verb agreement, and do not jump from one tense to another in the same paragraph. Great writers also know that “even though”, “a lot” and “all right” are two separate words.

I do not consider myself a great writer, but sloppy writing, bad punctuation and lousy grammar irritates me no end. It’s different if English is not your first language - I applaud those who are brave enough to practise writing in English, despite the mistakes they might make along the way. However, when you are a person who not only speaks English as a first language but claims to be a “great writer”, there’s no excuse for careless writing.

How the hell do you translate ‘bodily functions’ into Malay? Cos I wanna use that as one of my category names…

I think it’s generally not a good sign when you look down and you can see your boobs - as well as your stomach below them. *sigh*

Once, there was a woman with stories to tell. The mystique woven around a lady without a name beckoned her, and she succumbed to its lure. Thus was born Scribbler’s Scribbled Scribblings.

And yes, I’m going to be very wordy. Live with it.