Another edition of me trying to justify my graduate study

This is my textbook for my Language & Style summer class. Doesn't it look super interesting‽ * I especially love the completely unrelated cover art depicting water. Or is that cigarette smoke? Either way, couldn't we find a more interesting way to depict grammar? How about this:


Much better.

Anyway, I'm studying for my test tonight on sentence structure, and I saw this as an opportunity to a) educate the world, b) defend my choice of master's study, and c) procrastinate while actually sort of studying in a way kinda.

Turns out everyone who's been freaking out about English grammar since, er, grammar school is sort of overreacting. This is mostly because we teach grammar really badly. In truth, there are only six possible sentence structures in English. Six. Total. If you want to feel like a grammar gorilla on cocaine -- all-powerful, all-knowing, and sort of depressingly manic -- then lend me just five minutes of your day.** Here's what you need to know:

You are aware, of course, that all sentences include a subject and a verb. "The grammar gorilla likes cocaine." "The grammar gorilla chortles." "The grammar gorilla does not give a crap what you think of his hairdo." All perfectly acceptable American English sentences.

I'm going to give you a chart now, but please don't freak out. You can skip it and come back for reference.

SIX BASIC ENGLISH SENTENCE PATTERNS

be patterns SUBJ-VERB-SUBJECT COMPLEMENT
linking patterns SUBJ-VERB-SUBJECT COMPLEMENT
intransitive patterns SUBJ-VERB
transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-DIRECT OBJECT
di-transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-INDIRECT OBJECT-DIRECT OBJECT
complex transitive patterns SUBJ-VERB-DIRECT OBJECT-OBJECT COMPLEMENT

Hi! Okay glad to still have you here. So listed above are the six possible sentence structures in English. I'm going to glaze over the actual definitions and just use a transitive sentence as an example so I can get to the cool part, which is the fact that you can take any of those sentences and make them negative, passive, perfect, progressive, interrogative, or change tense (past/present/future) -- and it REMAINS THE SAME SENTENCE STRUCTURE. So for example:

You like occlupanids.

This sentence contains a subject, a verb, and a direct object (takes the action of the verb; what I like are occlupanids) -- so it's a transitive sentence. Now let's have some fun with it:

You liked occlupanids. (past)
You will like occlupanids. (future)
You don't like occlupanids. (negative)
You are liking occlupanids. (progressive)
You have liked occlupanids. (perfect)
Occlupanids are liked by you. (passive)
Do you like occlupanids? (interrogative)

So we've made seven new sentences that say completely different things -- BUT IT'S STILL THE EXACT SAME SENTENCE STRUCTURE. It's still got a subject, a verb, and a direct object. It's still a transitive sentence.

Is anyone else as bowled over by this as I am? I mean, the sentence element mix-and-match possibilities are literally infinite, and if you know how to boil it down to the basic elements of the sentence -- that is, the form word slots (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) as opposed to the structure words (conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, determiners, etc.) -- then you can create anything. This, my friends, is what I went to graduate school to learn: how to finesse and manipulate sentences. Because, again, that's what writers do. Let's make this sentence as crazy as we possibly can:

Have occlupanids not been being liked by you?
(past passive perfect progressive interrogative)

It's still the same sentence: "you" is the subject, "liked" is the verb, and "occlupanids" is the direct object; we've just thrown a bunch of other elements in there to mess with tense, aspect, positive/negative, and form. Nevermind the fact that there are probably very few opportunities to use a sentence like this. It is grammatically correct, and that's what matters.

For the record, this works for really long sentences too:

Last year, you definitely liked bright green and orange occlupanids despite the fact that my mother's best friend's uncle's sister gave you a huge bag of twist ties for your birthday instead.

All of the information beyond the basic sentence is adverbial; that is, if we stripped it all away, we'd still be left with a grammatical sentence:

You liked occlupanids.

And that concludes our lesson for the day. I hope you learned something. At the very least, you should now know what an occlupanid is.


* Yes, that is an interrobang. No, interrobangs do not get the respect they deserve from English grammarians. Fight the power.
** Satisfaction not guaranteed. But I'm gonna try really hard.

What a writing major does

My god I love Google image search.

Sometimes I have a hard time describing my graduate program to people.

"I'm studying writing and publishing," I tell them.

"Like books?" they ask.

"Well...yeah, sort of. Like, I have writing workshops on things like memoir and revision, and I study grammar and education theory and stuff too."

It's surprisingly vague and hard to explain, and it actually took me a full year of classes to understand what I was really in grad school for. It's not unusual for me to not really grasp the full extent of the syllabus until eight weeks into the ten-week class, and that's fine because it presents me with a series of satisfying "Eureka!" moments on a regular basis.

Now I've only got four classes left to go before getting my MA. One of those classes -- "Language and Style for Writers" -- I began yesterday in an intense 5-week summer session. (Quarters are normally ten weeks.) My next class is tomorrow -- "week two," if you will -- and I again find myself staring at four chapters of reading from the most vaguely titled textbook I've ever seen in my life: Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects (6th edition, natch).

But I'm a few pages into the introduction -- which, I will add, was not actually assigned reading but I decided to read anyway because it might give me a clue as to what the class is really about -- and I'm intrigued enough to procrastinate a bit with a blog post.

What caught my eye was the definition the authors offer for the title phrase "rhetorical grammar," which is basically the choices a writer makes regarding audience, purpose, and topic. The authors use an example of the difference between writing a text message to a friend and writing a formal fundraising request to the university dean. Each format has its own conventions, from spelling to sentence structure to punctuation to emoticon usage, and each audience has certain expectations. Those grammatical choices, particularly those related to sentence structure, are rhetorical grammar -- and the subject of what I'm studying in class. How to manipulate sentences. Because that, my friends, is what writers do.

And yes, it's past 10pm the night before class and I've paused while reading the introduction to my reading, which is not actually part of the assigned 80 pages, to inform the Internet of just what it is I'm not studying. I'm taking masochistic procrastination to a whole new level here, folks.

Generation Tattoo

Today marks the beginning of my fourth (of six!) quarter of graduate school at DePaul. In celebration, and because one of my classes this spring will be focused solely on revision of previously written pieces, I present to you a profile I worked on last spring. Thanks to a scheduling glitch, I had to interview my subject, Caroline Moody, the day after my own wisdom teeth extraction surgery. Considering the amount of vicodin in my system at the time, the subsequent write-up went pretty well, but I'm looking forward to working on more it this quarter. Maybe I'll have a new and improved version to post for you in the coming weeks. Until then, enjoy.

May 2010: Tattoo artist Caroline Moody works on a back tattoo for a client. Photograph by Brittany Petersen.

Caroline Moody is preparing to inflict wounds. She lays out her materials: gloves, needles, paper towels, razor, ink, tattoo machine. Her client, Michael Curcio, is nervous. This is his first tattoo. He had a few beers with friends before making a walk-in appointment at Infamous Ink on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Moody patiently comforts him as she readies her station.

“I get nervous every time I get tattooed,” she tells him. “Once you start it, you’re like, ‘I can handle it, I’m fine.’” But Curcio is pacing as he tries to distract himself from the impending hour-long pain session. “Do you have gum?” he asks his friend. He doesn’t, but Moody does. “I will not get tattooed without gum,” she says as she hands him a piece of fruity Orbit. “It helps. It’s something else to think about. You have to shut off that part of your body.”

They talk about the tattoo design; Curcio worries that a drawing for the six-inch cross he envisions on the back of his right shoulder doesn’t look quite right yet. He asks for Moody’s opinion. She hesitates before laying it on the line: “It’s douchy. I’m sorry,” she says. He laughs. “No. Be honest, by all means.” On the rare occasion a client asks her opinion, Moody tells the truth, and the exchange often leads to a better tattoo. “You’re going to get the best work if you tell your artist to do what they want,” she explains. “Like, give them an idea and give the artist freedom, and that’s how you’re going to get the best work.”

Moody and Curcio rework the cross to remove the tribal elements, which Moody identifies as the source of the obnoxiousness, and both seem happier. Moody makes a stencil of the design and applies it to Curcio’s shoulder, leading him to a mirror to scrutinize the placement. After he sends a cell phone picture to his mom for final approval, he lies down on the tattoo table and lets Moody gets to work.

As her needle digs into Curcio’s flesh, Moody’s face wears a look of quiet concentration. The tattoo machine buzzes and the tattoo shop manager turns on loud heavy metal as other artists work on their own clients. Customers in various stages of tattoo coverage wander the shop, flipping through the panel of tattoo designs that lines the west wall. Moody is one of five artists working out of Infamous Ink, which is one of at least a dozen tattoo parlors in the eclectic and trendy Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. But Moody’s presence in the testosterone-fueled flash shop is different for one simple reason: She’s a woman.

--

No official statistics are available, but it’s generally understood that women are scarce in the tattoo industry. Bill Johnson, the vice president of the National Tattoo Association, says that the number has increased in the last 20 years, but the ratio is far from 50-50. “Tattoo artists are judged on their ability, not their sex,” Johnson says. “[Gender] really doesn't matter.” But while the popularity of shows like TLC’s LA Ink, which stars not one, but three, female tattoo artists, has raised the profile of lady tattoo artists everywhere, there is still an intimidating imbalance. Even with another woman working at Infamous, Moody is clearly in the minority.

“Some people will walk in and think I’m the desk girl and that sort of thing, just because I’m a girl,” Moody says. She has to work even harder to earn their respect, and not just from her customers. “To be taken seriously, I’ve had to take on a lot of mannish concepts,” she says. “I’ve had to be more like one of the boys. Down to how I dress and how I talk, I’m taken more seriously if I’m not emotional or if I’m not overly girly or if I’m talking smack to these guys like they talk smack to me.”

Moody certainly looks the part of a professional tattoo artist. Her ears tote at least half a dozen piercings, including one-inch black gauges. Piercing, it turns out, was her gateway into the body modification culture. And of course, there are the tattoos: Ink covers her back, left forearm and right arm from elbow to shoulder. Eventually, she says, her whole body will be covered. Her favorite tattoos are those that are a little ridiculous, but well-executed – an eyeball with wings occupies prime real estate on her upper arm. Up next: a picture of Yoda playing a banjo on one of her legs, both of which are currently ink-free. Why? “I like Yoda and I like banjo music, and that’s about it,” she says with a shrug. A black t-shirt and the mouth of a sailor complete the ensemble.

“It’s like wearing your portfolio,” she says. “The more body modification, the more professional I look. Spending money on hair I consider to be part of my business. Dropping money on nice tattoo work, that’s part of my job. That’s building my career.” After all, she says, “If I didn’t want to be looked at, I wouldn’t have all this stuff.” Being one of the boys is just part of the business, and in the end she says she’d rather be respected than cherished. “I don’t think you can be respected as an equal and be treated like a lady, you know?” she asks. “I like having the door opened for me. But I know I can do it myself.”

Beyond being a woman, Moody is a member of a generation that sees tattoos drastically different than their parents. While tattoos were formerly the domain of bikers, gang members, and other fringe members of society, today at least 45 million Americans admit to having at least one tattoo. The percentage is even higher among younger brackets: Nearly two in five Generation Y’ers report having at least one tattoo. This is a promising trend for Moody, who, at 26, is just beginning her professional tattoo career.

--

Born and raised to a “very Republican, Christian” family in Louisville, Kentucky, Moody was introduced to art by her mother, who taught print-making at the local university. “Art materials were always around,” Moody says. “I would go with [my mom] to the park and we would draw together. I loved my mom so much, I wanted to do what she was doing.” Moody attended Louisville’s DuPont Manual High School, a magnet school for visual arts, and developed a skill for painting, particularly portraits. She graduated in 2002 and went straight to art school, enrolling in the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. Before she left home, she and her sister designed an abstract, “little whirly” tattoo (Moody had to redraw it eight times before her sister was satisfied), and they went together to a shop in Louisville to get inked for the first time. “I was just kind of fascinated by the medium,” she says. Even so, a career in tattoo art didn’t cross her mind, and she went away to art school with dreams of being a professional painter.

She didn’t finish her first semester at MICA before dropping out. “I was too young,” she says. “I was a pretty sheltered teen, so I was just not really ready to be thrown out in the world.” She moved back home and completed a semester at the University of Louisville before dropping out again. Unsure of what to do next, Moody took a job waiting tables. That’s when she became interested in tattoo culture.

“It was really pretty odd,” she says. “I went from T.G.I. Friday’s to a local Mediterranean place. The more people I saw with tattoos – I would talk to them about it, compliment them.” One day she met an apprentice who told her their shop was looking for a second apprentice. Moody went in armed with a portfolio of her painting work and was hired. She was in.

“I think I fell into it because I really enjoyed getting piercings and stuff,” she says. “That got me hanging around tattoo shops, and these people seemed really cool to me. I liked that they were able to do their own thing. I’ve probably not always been real okay with authority, so being self-employed is a pretty good thing.” Her parents’ reaction to her newfound career? “As soon as they figured out I could pay for school with it, they were on board,” Moody says. “My mom is going to get a tattoo when I graduate from college. I’m really excited. Me and my sister, we’re all going to get flowers.”

But Moody wasn’t quite ready to go back to school. “When I was getting into tattooing, I was in a rebellious mindset of fuck school, I don’t need school, I don’t need it, I can be an artist and do all these things,” she says. Shelving art school, she worked as an apprentice for a year and a half in Louisville before beginning to tattoo full-time. The first person she ever tattooed was a friend, her roommate at the time, who gave her free reign to do what she wanted. “He was like, ‘Yeah sure whatever, do whatever the hell you want,’” she says. “So I just did these little sketches of beer cans and did that on his leg.” And, as expected, that first tattoo wasn’t very good, and neither were the many that followed. “It’s totally understood that it’s going to suck,” Moody says. “That’s just how it is. Your first year of tattoos [is] going to be terrible.”

The transition from canvas to skin wasn’t painless. “You’re working on something that moves, breathes, bleeds, sweats, talks back to you,” she says thoughtfully. “It’s just a picky medium. The human body is fighting you. It doesn’t want this wound to occur.” Not to mention tattooers draw even the finest marks with a bulky, vibrating machine. Even so, the painter persisted, and as she slowly got better, she began to see herself as part of this new world – and it didn’t take long for her to realize how rare women are in the industry.

“It’s not really a feminine sort of art form,” she says. “It’s a manly thing. You’re doing something extreme, and it’s painful. It’s not something you associate with estrogen.” Also, she says, there’s an institutional bias; men have always dominated the trade, and the only way to become a tattooer is to convince these guys to teach you, a dependence that carries its own complications.

“Every tattoo shop...I’ve encountered a sleazy guy trying to sleep with me,” she says. “When I was an apprentice, it was the guys that were teaching me. And it was shitty because at some point I was like, ‘Nope, not getting down with that.’ And this one guy stopped teaching me things. I wasn’t going to put out.” Moody decided she had to get out of Louisville. “I kind of was up to my eyeballs in douchebags,” she says. “I was like fuck this, I need something else, I need to get out of here.” Moody attended a tattoo convention in Chicago and was sold on the city before she even returned to Louisville. She moved in August of 2008 and spent six months unemployed before Infamous Ink offered her a job.

“This shop is not my ideal place,” she says quietly as she watches her colleagues work. Infamous Ink is considered a “flash” shop, which means the tattoos are less conceptual artwork and more simple and straightforward. “It’s still a day job in a lot of aspects,” she says. “It’s like, hey, I want this name*. I want this tribal. I want this heart. And I’m like okay, that’s fine. I’m okay with mindless. It pays the bills.” It’s also a good way to learn.
As Moody began fine-tuning her tattoo craftsmanship at Infamous, she also started classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). “She’s a wonderful student,” says adjunct associate professor Marion Kryczka. “She’s really good, very serious, very smart.” Kryczka says Moody possesses a virtue rarely found in art students – humility – and that she is respected by instructors and students alike. She also has a reputation within the school as a great tattoo artist; her draftsmanship and color sense translate directly into her tattoo skills. “That’s a great thing,” Kryczka says. “I have nothing but praise for her.”

While her tattoo style tends toward “neo-traditional” – bold black lines, heavy shading and lots of color – her paintings have remained focused on portraiture. “I’ve always liked to draw people,” Moody says. “I like to capture a character.” A self-described people person, Moody sees the cross-over between her two art forms as logical: To paint a portrait, she digs into her subject’s character so she can represent not only their appearance but also their nature. A recent subject – a man she describes as “a big sleazy guy,” but also “a teddy bear” – is a perfect example of capturing this duality. As a tattoo artist, she says she gets to meet a lot of people she wouldn’t otherwise, and that’s one of the best parts of the job.

And so Moody leads two intertwined lives: one as an up-and-coming painter, and one as an up-and-coming tattoo artist. “I thought for awhile I was only a painter,” she says. “But now I can’t separate the two. Even the craftsmanship of my paintings has changed quite a bit.” After all, tattoos leave no room for error: “None of your work can be throwaway.”

--

After an hour, Moody finishes Michael Curcio’s cross tattoo. He slowly stands up and walks over to a mirror to take a look. The skin is red and raw, but a six-inch cross, complete with fading (and no tribal douchiness) is permanently etched into his shoulder. “That’s cool,” he says, sounding relieved. Moody covers the tattoo in Vaseline and secures Saran Wrap over it with Scotch tape while relaying instructions on how to care for his new tattoo. Curcio seems shaky but happy.

“I figured at some point I’d put my kids’ birthdays or something around it. Something like that,” he says cheerfully. “If you’re going to put something on your body, I figure it should mean something.”

Cucio’s cross proved to be one of the last things Moody tattooed at Infamous Ink. The next day she went for an interview at another tattoo shop in Wicker Park and was offered a new job on the spot. As she takes a step out of the flash shop and toward more conceptual tattoo design, Moody couldn’t wait to mention the best part of the new shop:

“There’s a lot of ladies.”

* Tattoo artist tip: Never get the name of a significant other tattooed on your body. “To me that’s how you jinx things,” Moody says.

White Chocolate: A Dennis Miller-Style Rant

copyright David G-H @ flickr (http://flickr.com/photos/19998197@N00/)

Chocolate is beautifully simple. There's a reason people go crazy for the stuff; it's delicious and enjoys a culturally iconic status on par with bacon. (And when the two meet, it's magical.) But the love is not unconditional, so can we all just agree that white chocolate is a terrible, utterly failed concept?

Now I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but no one worth their weight in Godiva enjoys white chocolate. It is an affront to the institution of chocolate, a merry “F-U” to the elegant beauty of mouth-watering morsels that are so awesome, they’re an aphrodisiac. Dark chocolate can literally get you laid. White chocolate hasn’t gotten anyone lucky since the 1970’s, and that was only because everyone was exceptionally stoned and named Lucky.

White chocolate isn't even chocolate: It doesn't contain cocoa solids, which are what give other chocolates their brown color. It's mostly milk and sugar. It might as well be a breakfast cereal aimed at eight-year-olds. Is Tony the Tiger looking for a new gig?

White chocolate is the Boone's Farm of chocolates. It's eaten out of necessity, not desire: Your parents are gone for the night and you’ve got one shot at getting drunk for the first time with your dumbass junior high best friend. You consume it because it’s there. It gets the job done. And then you weep with relief later in life when your taste buds encounter the real thing.

In case you’ve ever deceived yourself into believing that it isn’t that bad, allow me to present the pièce de résistance: White chocolate can’t be used in candy bars. How fucking useless is that? Think about it: Reese’s, Snickers, Butterfinger, Milky Way, truffles would all be terrible if encased in white chocolate. It’d be like eating vomit-coated peanuts. With nougat. And I know for a fact that the only people that enjoy that are the French.

If you're still on the fence, take a gander at the sort of marketing available for white chocolate:


I dare you to ever look at white chocolate the same way again.

Death to white chocolate. But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Steve Heminover, Mad Scientist

Last spring I got a chance to interview a really interesting guy named Steve Heminover who happens to do the light shows for all the sports events at the United Center. The fruits of that adventure are below. Enjoy!

Steve Heminover, Mad Scientist

The United Center is deserted. The building hums and the smell of stale beer lingers in the air. It’s eerie, cavernous. Yesterday, 22,000 spectators watched the Chicago Blackhawks defeat the Vancouver Canucks in Game 2 of the Western Conference Semifinal series. But tonight, we have the place to ourselves.

Steve Heminover flips on a light switch in the control box and motions me to a chair overlooking the ice. He turns on a computer that looks like it belongs in a NASA cockpit and drums his fingers on the table. Windows start-up chimes and after a quick test to make sure his half-a-million-dollar equipment is working properly, he starts the show. Four green aerial lasers shoot upward from the corners of the arena. A laser animation of Benny the Bulls mascot is projected onto the floor.

“It’s more impressive with the music,” he says apologetically. Indeed, Bulls fans might overlook the lasers with everything else going on during the opening – scoreboard videos, blasting music, dancing Luvabulls. The United Center is the only arena in the country with a permanent laser installation, and Heminover has been running the shows at Blackhawks and Bulls games for more than fourteen years.

“Have you ever played with an Etch A Sketch?” Heminover asks. “It’s like that but the computer does it so fast. It turns the beam on and off, changes the color, and it has to move it around and all these things have to coordinate at once to make it work.” The end result is a laser animation that represents decades of innovation.

Pre-game laser show during a packed Bulls game at the United Center. Photo courtesy of Steve Heminover.

Fifty-six-year-old Heminover has been working with lasers for so long that he’s helped build the foundation for the entire industry. “When I started in the laser business, nobody had any tools to do what I wanted to do,” he says. “So I had to invent them. I literally wrote, from scratch, my own graphics language for doing lasers.” That language is the ancestor to modern stereoscopy and 3-D technology. If you saw Avatar in 3-D, you can thank Heminover for helping to lay the groundwork.

“I used to wonder when I was growing up why I could do all these things,” Heminover says. “And I realized that what comes easy to me doesn’t come easy to other people. These things are gifts. I mean, I can work in several disciplines. To do laser light shows that I’ve done for years, I have to be an electrician, I have to be a plumber, I have to be a contractor, I have to be an artist, I have to be an engineer, I have to be a safety guy.”

In 1987, Heminover pulled his various talents together to found a multimedia company, Aura Technologies Inc., which specializes in finding creative solutions to technological problems. The company has designed instant-replay boxes for the Major League Baseball, fiberoptics for Motorola, and electronic packaging for Leo Burnett Worldwide ad agency.

“Someday you’ll see a cereal box with a video game on the front,” Heminover says. “You’ll just throw it away when you’re done.”

Heminover seems to live and dream in a futuristic movie. His office is decorated with Star Trek and Star Wars posters. His cell phone ring is a Jetsons jingle. He even looks vaguely like George Lucas. The geekiness pays off; with thirty years of experience in electrical and design engineering, it’s guys like Heminover that continually invent the things we couldn’t even conceive of ten years earlier.

“What did Arthur C. Clarke say?” he asks, eyes twinkling behind wire-rimmed glasses. “'Any technology, sufficiently advanced, will seem like magic.'” Whether it’s the rise of the Internet or 3-D printing, Heminover is always on the lookout for the next frontier. Lasers are just his day job.

At the United Center, my personal laser show is coming to a close. Before he shuts down the system, Heminover says there’s one more feature that is reserved for “special guests.”

“You’ll like this,” he says with a sly smile. “And they say we don’t have a sense of humor.”

He boots up software that came pre-loaded on the laser system. A faint “Pew! Pew!” sound emits from the control room speakers as the 50-by-50-foot grid lights up with the opening screen of one of the world’s most recognizable video games.

“You play Asteroids on the ice of the United Center?”

Heminover starts to answer, but the urgency of fragging a 30-foot laser rock distracts him. He hands me the controls to the world’s most expensive video game and asks, “You got another quarter?”

It's not the best quality video, but you get the idea.

Changing Paradigms

It's Monday, which means I have my Teaching Writing class tonight and therefore I'll spend all of today reading and hyping myself up for it. (Teaching is a frame of mind, people.)

Below is a video we watched the first day of class at the beginning of the quarter. It really blows my mind with how eloquent, interesting and engaging it is. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) took a speech by Sir Ken Robinson and turned it into an animated infographic. The talk poses some really great questions about how we view education in our society, and from where those conceptions came (hint: the intellectual culture, social structure and economic imperative of the Enlightenment).

If learning were this fun all the time, we wouldn't have as many problems with education. One of the things that really jumps out at me is the idea that we shuttle our anesthetized kids through school by age -- "manufacture date" -- as opposed to any sort of objective system. What works for one kid, for one classroom, for one entire socioeconomic class, doesn't work for all.

FDA Approves Alcoholism Treatment Pill

The time has come. Despite a volatile and expensive lobbying effort on behalf of the Southern California Rehabilitation Clinic Consortium, last week the FDA officially approved a revolutionary new pill that purports to cure alcoholism. Pharmacies have since been overwhelmed with prescription requests as alcoholism sufferers camped outside Walgreens all over the country, with some street corners turning into booze-soaked “last hurrah” parties.

“I bought my last bottle of gin today,” self-described alcoholic and Skokie homemaker Terry Davis said. “I’m excited to transfer my dependence from alcohol to pills. Fewer calories! I’ll be a Real Housewife of Cook County yet!”

The pill, dubbed the Voluntary Opportunity to Definitively Knock Alcoholism (or VODKA) pill, represses the desire to drink alcohol and replaces it with hallucinations of puppies and rainbows. Preliminary clinical trials reported a 99-percent success rate, but the limited choice of imagery has left some disappointed.

“Unfortunately I’m a cat person, so I’m looking forward to the next generation that is more animal-inclusive,” Davis said.

Alcohol rehabilitation centers have already felt the economic crunch induced by the VODKA pill. The Lindsey Lohan Suite at the Betty Ford Clinic – a room that is infamously booked months in advance by starlets anticipating their next rehab stint – has been vacant since Tuesday, with all future bookings canceled.

The Ford Center’s marketing director, Don Welsch, said the clinic is looking into a new advertising campaign to combat the exodus.

“We need to remind people that the presence of the VODKA pill hasn’t changed our mission: To offer safe haven for those struggling with addiction,” Welsch said. “Our clinic continues to offer top-notch rehabilitation service in the form of a 12-step program, counseling, business center, daily massages, personal trainers and fitness regimens, access to luxury retailers and custom boutiques, five-star chefs, a 12-screen movie theater, and a whole campus of recreation destinations, including private bowling alleys, swimming pools and an eighteen-hole golf course. Our new slogan is ‘Betty Ford: A home away from home!’”

In other news, retailers report that DVD copies of the ‘60s-era psychedelic children’s show “Spot and His Pet Rainbow” have seen an inexplicable 3,200-percent spike in sales since Monday.

--

Our assignment for Humor & Satire Writing this week was to take an actual Newsweek story from 2007 about the development of an alcoholism treatment pill and turn it into satire. This is what I ended up with. I have new respect for Onion writers.

Question, for my own enlightenment: At what point did you realize this was satire? Or did you? What sounded realistic enough to be true?

Persnickety Preconceptions

I wasn't expecting to like Virginia Woolf. I had some preconceptions, I guess. I mean, she is British. And that can only lead to trouble. Or maybe that movie with Nicole Kidman rubbed me the wrong way. (I haven't actually seen anything but the opening scene, where Virginia Woolf, played by Kidman, drowns herself in a river.) I don't know what my deal was, but as we readied ourselves to read eight of her essays in my English Prose Style class, I was setting myself up to not like her. I was prepared.

Wow, did I have my head up my ass.

Before I say any more, go here and read "Craftsmanship" (written in 1937, 2,900 words) and go here and read "Professions for Women" (written in 1931, 2,400 words). I'll wait.

For those of you too lazy to hit the jumps -- but really, especially if you've never read Virginia Woolf, spend 15 minutes of your day and read these pieces. Trust me on this one -- here are some excerpts from "Craftsmanship":

"No writer presumably wishes to impose his own miserable character, his own private secrets and vices upon the reader. But has any writer, who is not a typewriter, succeeded in being wholly impersonal? Always, inevitably, we know them as well as their books. such is the suggestive power of words that they will often make a bad book into a very lovable human being, and a good book into a man whom we can hardly tolerate in the room."

"Think what it would mean if you could teach, if you could learn, the art of writing. Why, every book, every newspaper would tell the truth, would create beauty. But there is, it would appear, some obstacle in the way, some hindrance to the teaching of words. For though at this moment at least a hundred professors are lecturing upon the literature of the past, at least a thousand critics are reviewing the literature of the present, and hundreds upon hundreds of young men and women are passing examinations in English literature with the utmost credit, still--do we write better, do we read better than we read and wrote four hundred years ago when we were unlectured, uncriticized, untaught?"

"...words do not live in the dictionary, they live in the mind. Look again at the dictionary. There beyond a doubt lie plays more splendid than Antony and Cleopatra; poems more lovely than the Ode to a Nightingale; novels beside which Pride and Prejudice or David Copperfield are the crude bunglings of amateurs. It is only a question of finding the right words and putting them in the right order."

I mean honestly, the woman is writing an essay about words. Just words. Stylistically there is so much going on here; the repetition that suggests she's rewriting, clarifying her ideas as she goes ("if you could teach, if you could learn" could almost have a "nay," in between the clauses) -- this is the major stylistic element Woolf employs that we talked about in class. We see her thought process as she goes, and gimmicks aren't needed to add emphasis; it's almost, in a sense, pure. She also can never seem to find exactly the right word, so she uses a bunch of them along with some asyndeton to give us a fuller picture: "unlectured, uncriticized, untaught." (In other essays, "it creates; it adorns; it enhances" and "a cat--a beautiful cat, a Persian cat." And so forth.) It's almost poetic, this apposition, this redefinition. Both of these stylistic techniques -- along with Woolf's characteristic interrupters and parenthetical asides -- have already made their way into my own writing, as evidenced by this very paragraph. It's amazing how quickly something like that clicks in the brain and adds itself to the standard cannon. It seems simple enough, but I'm continually surprised by how much you can learn about writing simply by reading a lot.

Plus, how could you not love a woman who makes a joke about a typewriter? That shit's hilarious.

And then there's the content of what she's saying -- that "words, English words" really do offer an infinite number of possibilities. The relative ease of the modern publishing process -- as opposed to 200 or 100 or even 50 years ago -- has created a completely different literary landscape. There's a lot of crap out there. And yet Woolf points out that it doesn't matter, because there is still so much greatness to come. Isn't that just a wonderful and refreshing idea? I'm going to get straight to work creating beautiful, never-before-seen prose!!

Or, you know, writing a blog post about not hating Virginia Woolf. I think we'd be friends. Maybe we'd like hang out and go to the movies and she'd be the kind of person who talks through the whole movie about all the elements they didn't consider when writing the script. Then I'd shush her and tell her that you know what, Sofia Coppola is doing the best she can, and anyway she's been nominated for an Oscar and so you should just calm down and enjoy the cinematic presentation. And then she'd sulk and be silent at dinner and she wouldn't call me. And then she'd drown herself in a river.

Wow, that hypothetical went downhill really quickly.

Semantics, Syntax and Split Infinitives, Oh My!

A Google image search of "words" turned out to be quite fruitful.

You know you've made a good choice in grad school programs when a required class that you didn't expect to like finds its way under your skin. Such is the case with History of English Prose Style, which on its face sounds not at all riveting; in fact by the course description I really had no idea what the class was about:

This course seeks to make meaningful distinctions among various prose styles in two ways: first, by considering alternative theoretical approaches to the study of style, ranging from the purely impressionistic to the rigorously quantitative; second, by exploring the rhetorical dimension of stylistic choice by examining the intersection of style and rhetoric in English prose from the Renaissance to the present, including writings by John Lyly, Thomas Browne, Elizabeth I, Addison and Steele, John Ruskin, Thomas Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

I mean, that sounds impressive, but in practice I had literally no clue what the class would actually cover. I cheerfully signed up for it anyway and just hoped that it would somehow be useful in my development as a writer.

It turns out that it boils down to studying the style of writing -- ie the sentence-level elements like structure, word order, figures of speech, etc. Our working hypothesis is that you cannot strip away these stylistic elements -- for example, an author's incorporation of repetitive schemes like isocolon and alliteration -- without taking away some of the meaning. In other words, style and content are inextricably intertwined (hey there alliteration!), and if we understand why the author made the stylistic choices they made, then we can start to gain an understanding of the author's epistemic world view.

I'll insert a note here to remind the reader that I am a graduate student in the study of English writing, and yet this class made me realize that I was never once taught the basics of English grammar. Like, clauses and phrases and predicates and participials and basically why we put words in the order that we do. Understanding syntax -- the combination of words that indicates their relationship to one another in a sentence -- is apparently the key to being a good writer. A high school diploma and a Bachelor's degree, and no one really ever explained that to me until now.

Anyway, as one example of how style impacts prose, our professor had us read a piece written in 1578 by John Lyly. Think of it as a 16th century Oprah's Book Club choice. Everyone who's anyone read it, including a moderately famous contemporary of Lyly's named William Shakespeare. (He was 14 when it was written.) Lyly writes in a way that would make a high school freshman and a college professor weep, but for completely different reasons. (If you're super curious, you can read the piece -- titled "Euphues: The anatomy of wit" -- here. Jump to page 33.) Eventually the prose came to be seen as outdated -- think still talking like a 1980's Valley Girl in the year 2010 -- but it's a really amazing example of what can be done with antithesis and repetitive structures to reinforce the ideas expressed in the content of the piece. In other words, if you're going to compare two things, Lyly showed us how you can write it in a way where the sentences are balanced to the point of ridiculousness, to better make your point.

Lyly was also a big fan, at least in this piece, of playing with the sounds of words. A typical Lyly sentence: "[I]t is no marvel that the son, being left rich by his father's will, become retchless by his own will." See what he did there?

Our assignment for the week was to replicate Lyly's prose style. Mine isn't perfect, but I'm posting it up here as an example. Note the parallel structure and use of opposite ideas (lawless harmony, lascivious entropy) to make the point. Enjoy, and go forth about your day pondering how the public education system is completely failing us when it comes to teaching basic English grammar.

--

It may be that a mother’s love is unconditional, a child’s trust complete, the bond between the two absolute—but what guarantees this connection? One look into the eyes of the infant born of her may be enough to bring any woman of any level of maternal nature to her knees, but how is she to maintain this relationship with one whose eventual humor she cannot foresee, whose sense of wit may be overlooked given the child’s garish characteristics? What natural fortune can this child expect, when her mother’s own unfortunate circumstance was to bear a baby amounting to such a ghastly abomination of nature?

Surely the father is not to be left out of blame; he was present when her entry to the world was painfully wrought, the future population perceptively wronged. Through her wide-set eyes stares the narrowness of a soul without a trace of means or modesty, a person whose holed pockets can do nothing to contain the whole of her ego. Her perfume may be stridently pungent, but her manner is surreptitiously repugnant. Her upbringing stressed lawful harmony, but her subsistence relies upon lascivious entropy. She prefers the payoff before the production, the profit before the performance, the promotion before the presentation.

I mean not to suggest, having evidenced my hypothesis that her existence is unsavory, that her very animation lends itself to the inanity, or even that her parents are to be shackled and shellacked—though I would be dishonest to claim that the thought had not entered my mind. Rather, would you not also conclude that, based upon the evidence, perhaps some sort of winch should be employed to ensure that this particular wench is denied admission to this painstakingly selective program of higher learning?

--

Special shout-outs to Chrissie Watras and Liz Tavares, who will enjoy this post more than anyone else, and who also help me process my homework each week. Thanks ladies.

Snow

I give you my first piece for my memoir writing class. I'm still working on it, so comments or suggestions are certainly appreciated.

Taken the evening this story is based on.

Snow fell for the first time. It glittered like pixie dust in the light from the street lamps and landed on the ground softly, as if it didn’t want to cause a fuss. But there was no one around to be bothered; the streets and sidewalks were empty, hushed.

I stepped outside and filled my lungs with the cold air, watching my breath slowly leave me in exhale. I smiled. For the first time since arriving on campus I felt at peace, light on my feet. I’d just finished finals week, placing an emphatic period at the end of my first quarter of college. I was giddy, practically euphoric.

I started toward my dorm, where my friends were waiting to celebrate. I hummed. I knew I’d aced that test, and I looked around for someone to rejoice with before remembering that everyone else had gone home for the holidays already. The snow was my only companion.

To be alone in a place that is usually full of people and life and noise unnerves me, but on this night I reveled in it. I soaked it in and I felt like a god, alone atop my snowy mount. I walked with my head back, my face pointed straight up, watching the snow come down. My snow. The sky was a dark gray, almost black, and the white flakes were falling evenly, a perfect grid, as if it had been planned that way. I had planned it that way.

I’d moved to Hawaii with my family right before starting high school, and aside from the occasional visit to family on the mainland, I hadn’t seen snow up close in more than four years. Moving back to the Midwest felt like coming home, though my years on a tropical island had severely depleted my cold weather wardrobe. I owned two pairs of socks when I arrived at college, and no winter coat. One extreme winter clothing shopping trip later, I was fully outfitted for even the most arduous blizzard. My collection of long underwear was something to be envied.

On this night, then, the gentle snowflakes had no chance against my many layers of clothing. Still they landed on my cheeks, in my hair, melting in contact with my skin and dripping down the back of my neck. I shivered as I walked past the arch, the gateway to campus. It looked like a postcard. Untouched snow glazed every tree branch, every surface. It was beautiful. Everything was beautiful. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt as though everything in the world were just perfect.

I considered the fact that I was done with a third of my freshman year. I felt like a little kid, one that counted her age to the closest fraction possible so as not to be mistaken for too young. I wasn’t five, I was five and three quarters. I wasn’t a college freshman, I was one-twelfth of the way done with college. I would go on to harder classes, and a thousand new experiences, and I would walk this sidewalk hundreds of times. I would lead the marching band, join an a cappella group, dance for 30 hours straight (twice), and teach myself how to make giant papier-mâché ants. I would also gain 30 pounds, have my heart broken, and feel utterly lost more often than not. And I’d meet my best friend.

But at this moment, alone in my winter wonderland, I was blissfully unaware of all that lay before me. My life was uncomplicated. College was still a concept. I was still figuring it out. As I walked up the steps to my dorm I realized that, for the first time, I felt ready to handle whatever came next. I’d survived one quarter. I could certainly make it eleven more.

I walked inside and the warmth embraced me.

Grad school, quarter 2, week 3. Desire to shoot myself in the face: waning.

This humorous piece in the Sunday Post is speaking to me this week, as I continue to be embroiled in the finer points of the English grammar system. Special shout-out to Chrissie, a goddess of lexicon. On the slate today: schemes and tropes. It baffles me that I never learned this stuff in high school, at least not to this depth. I learned the basics, of course - metaphor, parallelism, alliteration - but it seems as though my teachers avoided anything for which the term has only a Latin name. Epistrophe. Anadiplosis. Antimetabole. Paranomasia. At this moment, it's all Latin to me.

The goal is for it to make sense by 5pm today, which means I should probably stop here.

Future study break.

They don't call it "Corpse Revivor" for nothing

Another day, another unpublished piece. This one is from the Food & Entertainment Writing, spring 2010. I haven't been back to Gilt Bar since doing the research for this piece but the food was phenomenal, and I heard they opened a second (basement) lounge in addition to the main restaurant. Worth checking out if you're in the River North area.

Gilt Bar and the Corpse Revivor
By Brittany Petersen

Gin hasn’t been in vogue since the 1930’s; in fact it’s mostly been relegated to martini menus for more than three generations. Modern social drinkers tend to default to the familiar and simple, especially those who spent college in a screwdriver-and-rum-and-Coke-induced haze. But with the rise in popularity of pre-Prohibition lounges like Gilt Bar, at 230 W. Kinzie, classic, complex, gin- and whisky-based cocktails may be entering a whole new heyday.

Among the bar’s nine specialty cocktails ($10 each) is my favorite classic—the Corpse Reviver No. 2, which is made with gin, Cointreau, Lillet blanc, lemon juice, and absinthe. Described by a Gilt bartender as “lemonade with a hint of annis” (thanks to the absinthe), the Corpse Reviver No. 2 is a smooth, light cocktail that may be the answer for those looking for a gateway into the world of gin. Whereas some gin-based concoctions may leave their drinker smelling of pine trees after a few rounds thanks to the juniper berries from which liquor is derived, the Corpse Reviver No. 2 conceals the gin in a delicate balance of flavors and offers a mild tang that fans of sweeter and vodka-based drinks will enjoy.

Flaunting sultry hues, gold-gilded mirrors, lone Edison bulbs, and miles of dark wood, Gilt Bar succeeds in bringing to mind a 1920’s speakeasy with a modern flair. If you’re looking to expand your knowledge of gin drinks and get in touch with some classic recipes, Gilt Bar and the Corpse Reviver No. 2 are a great place to start.

My Blackberry picture-taking skills are unparalleled.

Experiments in Form

In March I started graduate school in the English department at DePaul University. One of my classes was Food and Entertainment Writing, and so without further ado, I present my first ever restaurant review, written in April 2010. Is this the beginning of a new career path? Probably not, but I can't complain about eating food and writing about it, so perhaps this won't be the last. Bon appetit.

The French Invade Lincoln Square

A new BYOB bistro stakes its claim on Lawrence Avenue

By Brittany Petersen

Soup a l'oignon

When I was 12 years old, my grandmother taught me how to make French onion soup (soupe a l’oignon) from scratch. Our family is not French, so I’m not sure why that particular dish was chosen, but ever since I have scoured the cities I’ve lived in and visited, looking for soup as good as the stuff my grandma and I would make. (She cut up the onions, but the rest was all me.) My official Chicago soupe a l’oignon slot has finally been filled by Rendezvous Bistro, a new BYOB in Lincoln Square.

Rendezvous’ unassuming storefront is deceiving; the interior of the tearoom-sized restaurant is delightfully outfitted with blue banquettes, throw pillows, French posters, and kitschy rooster knickknacks. Café curtains, toffee-colored walls, simple chandeliers, and white linen napkins complete the charmingly provincial atmosphere.

We were the first diners to arrive on a Tuesday evening, and with the exception of one other table we had the place to ourselves for the duration of the meal. (The limited hours of operation – 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday – leave something to be desired.) I clutched an inexpensive bottle of “French” table wine, hastily bought at a corner store down the street, and the friendly garcon poured as soon as we sat down, making small talk in what I determined to be an authentic French accent (and thankfully not judging my wine choice). The no-fee BYOB was certainly a plus, but I wouldn’t mind a small fee in exchange for a menu of a few inexpensive, French, house bottles.

Saumon fumée with cream fraiche and brioche

The Rendezvous menu is hearty and simple, featuring textbook French dishes like coq au vin, steak au poivre, crêpes suzette, and of course soupe a l’oignon. (Everything sounds more delicious in French, doesn’t it?) The selection is modest, but what they do, they do well. The soupe a l’oignon was, of course, my favorite: smooth and fragrant, while avoiding the over-salted pitfall that plagues many iterations of my favorite dish. My entrée of saumon du jour was cooked to savory perfection, with a crunch that still makes my mouth water. My dining companion was content with his hor d’oeuvre of saumon fumée.

Saumon du jour

It wasn’t all great. The bed of vegetables that accompanied my salmon was disappointingly cold to the touch, and the cylindrical potato pieces were undercooked. But the pesto that circled the plate was a delicious accent, and the rich flavor of the cold red pepper was a nice complement that would have been even better served hot. We cleaned off our plates and, happily stuffed, waved off the dessert menu (on which crème brûlée is strangely absent).

Coq au vin

The best part? No entrées exceed $20, meaning you can fill up on French food without emptying your wallet. And beginning May 3^rd, Rendezvous will offer an “early dining” menu from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Thursday, featuring a three-course, prix-fixe meal for $20.10. “Early” diners can create their own happy hour and enjoy menu staples like steak frites and mousse au chocolat.

Rendezvous owner Simo Yaacobi is the former manager of one of Chicago’s mainstay French restaurants, Kiki’s Bistro, on Franklin Street. When he decided to start his own venture, he kept close to home – he grew up in Lincoln Square, and he hired an impressive array of French relatives to staff and serve at Rendezvous. (So I was right about that authentic French accent.) The entire operation is decidedly low-tech, and Yaacobi seems to be leaning on word of mouth and a newly updated website, which features numerous spelling and punctuation errors as well as that annoying thing everyone did ten years ago where music plays when you open the page. Still, the music choice – Edith Piaf’s iconic “Non, je ne regrette rien”* – does lend a proud French flair to an otherwise unimpressive web presence.

There are still a few kinks to work out – service was slow, and it would be fun to see a few more risks on the menu – but thanks to the comfortable atmosphere, friendly staff, and solidly executed menu, watch for Rendezvous to become a Lincoln Square sleeper sensation. Or at least for it to become a little harder to keep the place to yourself on a weeknight.

Rendezvous Bistro, 2656 W. Lawrence Ave.; (773) 561-4400, www.lerendezvousbistro.com. Average bill: $30.

* Editor's Note: For the cultured among you, this was the song featured in Inception.

The Practical Guide to Starting a Cult

I wrote this humor piece for a writing class this past spring. If I inspire just one of you to start your own cult, my life will be worthwhile. Enjoy.

The word “cult” is thrown around rather lightly these days -– Cult of Mac and so forth. Steve Jobs has it pretty good, and you can too: The key to the good life is positioning yourself as the leader of a hapless band of followers that can't think for themselves. (For the quick and easy route, see related article: “How to Usurp Leadership of the American Tea Party from Fox News.”) Wouldn’t it be great to have people fawn over you, love you, kill for you, and do pretty much whatever you say? Of course it would. Here's what you do:

Getting started:
- Choose a text on which to base your teachings. The Bible is an effective but overly ambitious and over-used choice; you may be better off going with something like the operation manual to your microwave. Memorize and meditate on the wisdom in your chosen text. Find phrases (“Read all instructions before use.” “Do not immerse cord in water.”) that can be used as chants later.
- Do your homework. Research other great cult leaders like Tony Robbins, Jesus, Oprah, and Lady Gaga.
- Establish a legitimate-looking front. Personal wellness centers, think tanks and consulting firms are good options, since no one actually understands what they do.
- Name your cult something catchy that is a combination of meaningful words, like “Scientology.”* Don’t forget to set up a Facebook group.
- Go out and find some primary followers. This is where charisma matters: Impress them with lofty-sounding language, scare them with prophesies of the future, and convince them that you are the only gateway to an eternal state of Utopia. It helps if you get them high first.
- Once your inner circle is complete, expand your membership. Target the obviously disgruntled; some people are just itching to leave normal society behind and adopt your way of life. (Other people are just itching. Avoid them.)

Now that you’ve got your cult up and running, find ways to slowly gain control over all aspects of your followers’ lives. Start small, and work your way up. Some ideas:
- Establish a unique look for your followers to adopt. An early-90’s hairstyle is a great place to start. Require all members to sport either a rat tail or feathered bangs. The truly devoted will reveal themselves by attempting both. Praise them.
- Require that everyone live together. Every respectable cult has a compound. The more creative and weird, the better; giant treehouses and dilapidated warehouses are good options. You’ll want something set apart from society, so your followers can’t contact the outside world. Confiscate cell phones, unless they're AT&T. They won't ever have a signal anyway.
- Castrate everyone. Trust me, it just makes things easier.
- Control what your followers eat. You may choose to feed them nothing but Fruit Roll-Ups and Sprite, and that’s fine. Have a weekly Tuesday treat of jelly beans, but only for those with no demerits.
- If you’re running low on jelly beans, award a lot of demerits.
- Keep them busy. Physical labor, croquet and Jersey Shore marathons have all proven effective methods for breaking spirits. As a last resort, force them to read the entire Twilight series in one sitting and write a fifty-page, fully sourced essay on how they identify with each of the characters. If that doesn’t destroy their faith in humanity, nothing will.

At some point you’ll need an exit strategy. Fleeing the country with your followers' worldly possessions (and bank account numbers) is a nice idea, but if you really want to do this right, you'll facilitate your devotees' passage to the next plane of existence. Kool-Aide is cliché; try to go out with a bang. Work in a ring of fire, those are really cool. Tell them you need to die last, to ensure everyone else is properly ushered to the far-off alien planet or wherever you're going. Then run like hell.

* Legal note: That cult name is already in use.

P.S. For an incredibly creepy but accurate video about how to start a cult, go here.