The Vineyards

One of the many stories I want to write someday should start with a man facing a terrible trial, losing nearly all he had, reaching the verge of suicide, and finally being saved by another guy, who would say obvious things like “while there is life, there is hope” and “you must be strong, you will get over this and everything will be better”, then the man would give up and try to rebuild his life.

At this point, the second guy would start facing trials of his own. The story would be solely one disgrace after another for him, and he would lose everything he had. Still, he would stand strong and have faith, better days would come, even if the next night would have to be spent under a bridge, or on a park bench.

When it seemed all had been lost but hope, I would find a way to make him lose yet something else, then lose some more – then he finally would lose his hope. As he contemplated suicide, he would remember that man from the story’s beginning, whose death he prevented, and think of how poetical this all was, that he had reached the same point from where he pulled that man. For a brief moment he would hope someone would pull him as well, and at that exact moment he would see, oh!, that very man.

That very man would prevent the suicide by stabbing him with a rusty knife repeatedly. As the stabbed man agonized on the way to death, the stabber would say that his life never got better after their first meeting, no matter what he did, but he never again had the strenght to try to take his own life, and he blamed his victim for it.

As people start to arrive at the scene, the stabbed man dies; the story ends. We never get to know what happens to the murderer.

* * *

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, on my next life I want to be a Masamune Shirow calendar.

Since I am not a calendar in this life, I would be happy enough being a pirate. It is about two centuries too late for that, though.

I would love to be a blacksmith, too. Two centuries late as well.

Or I could be a blacksmith and a pirate and a good man, and be called Will Turner and look a lot like Legolas. Life would be grand.

But what I really, really wanted was to be a pokémon trainer in the pokémon world.

* * *

One thing in the English language that makes little sense to me is “to try and”. “I will try and jump over a building”. No: I will try; I might fail. If I fail, I will not have jumped over a building. So, “I tried, but did not jump over the building”. If I said “I will try to jump over a building”, however, all is well: I will try, I might fail; I will not (1) try, and (2) jump over a building. It is one action – try to jump -, not two – try and jump.

One type of headline, however, bothers me to no end, more than “try and”. “Intel, AMD show their new processors”; “Sony, Nintendo launch new consoles”; “John, Mary get married”. Why the blazes? Did they spend all their “and” stocks in the “try and”? Whenever I see something like “Sony, Nintendo launch” I expect it to be “Sony, Nintendo’s main rival, launches new console” or similar: one item followed by short explanation between commas, followed by rest of sentence. If there are two elements and no explanation, an “and” should be used. Such confusion for absolutely no reason.

(“It is because ‘and’ is a long word and there is often limited space for the headlines in newspapers!”. Fine. The CNN ticker has limited space, too?)

Then there is “should of” and “could of”. Someone said “I could’ve done it”; someone else was partially deaf, heard it wrong and wrote “I could of done it”, and millions and millions of people accepted it. This is on the same level as there, their and they’re. Feh.

* * *

This post is bitter. It would not be so if I were a calendar, pirate, blacksmith or pokémon trainer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 12:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.