What?
You know, that strange feeling you get when the sentence you just read feels all gross and inside-out, like a burst haggis in your underwear.
A pickling, plastic, Icelandic, blue, oblong, fresh, gargantuan, georgeous barrel.
Eww. That doesn’t feel right.
Of course it doesn’t. Sheesh, were you born in a quaint, spacious, antique, square, red, New England, wooden, hay barn? Of course you were.
Who knew? Not me.
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
There is the school of descriptive overkill. I believe those sentences slide by on punctuation. Periods, mostly. Commas just make them uglier. Read some deep descriptive in the botanical, minutia or travelogue veins and that’s how they do it. “Cluttered table” is never enough for some. A chain of fifteen paperclips woven like a river around chips in the veneer. The desk lamp, mangled by years of obtuse angles held in place by a tarnished brass nose and the charging station for half a pair of Bluetooth earbuds. LEDs winking in asynchronous disorder. Green as grass, yellow as B-12 piss, flashing cop car blue and red. The cracked glass spiderweb of a dead phone. Balled up fur covered velcro, the bowels of a coffee cup covered in mold, and empty water bottle and an ancient dog collar.
I had a book do this to me about 130 different varieties of Palm trees this guy’s grandfather had smuggled and then replanted, that had nothing to do with his girlfriend being kidnapped. But there they were. Holy shit.
Finding inside out sentences is the same process. Drop a period in the middle and see if your brain is letting you put the cart before the horse. A LOT of people miss that. Not so much in sentences but in paragraphs that hopscotch. If you miss it on the sentence level…
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It was a discovery I made about the unspoken order of multiple adjectives. Even just two together, they probably follow that order.
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OFWG = age size shape color gender
Tallish, tan, rugged. A Marlboro man sort in a light brown collarless zippered jacket, wool blend slacks, soft leather loafers.
Who were we writing for there? Add a word, “incongruous,” and it all changes.
The blonde man with the sharply trimmed, dark auburn sideburns stepped from his spot in the tree’s shadow, fell into sync with Jackson’s lazy amble toward Broadway. The man’s blue windbreaker rustled lightly with his walk, his shoes made no sound at all. He was a touch shorter than Jackson, five-nine, maybe ten. He put out a dense, close fitting force field vibe, like he was made out of bricks.
And who there? Who cares about aesthetics?who cares about masculinity?
Find a formula and break it. Good work!!
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light brown collarless zippered jacket
Color : material : function : noun (loosely classified)
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So should I have added linen/suede/twill/silk/wool and knit waist/cuffs? I see the point, but much more than what’s there hits overkill. To me. I see characters as an opportunity to indulge their dress Barbie imaginations. Am I missing something? Casual is easier. Daisy dukes and one of (person) oxford cloth button downs that hung to her knees. Sandals, faded jeans and a well loved Van Halen t-shirt. I subscribe to the don’t go into too much detail about characters and places. The same with garden and pathways. This is a blog discussion, huh?
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I meant for readers to indulge their imaginations and typed right over myself!
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This was a non sequitur topic that I found on the web and never considered to be a thing. But it seems to follow the pattern specified. Nothing to do with too many adjectives or which ones. Just that the order appears to have an unspoken code.
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The Owl hoo hooed and knew. The dog bow wowed and knew. The human huffed and puffed and knew but pretended not to. Did anyone notice this deceit? Mike
On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 5:14 PM Anonymole – apocryphal agitators wrote:
> Anonymole posted: “What? You know, that strange feeling you get when the > sentence you just read feels all gross and inside-out, like a burst haggis > in your underwear. A pickling, plastic, Icelandic, blue, oblong, fresh, > gargantuan, georgeous barrel. Eww. That doesn’t fee” >
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What other animal deceives? Intentionally misdirects? Are humans the only ones?
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I have no idea what this is. Yet…I loved it. Or perhaps that’s precisely why I loved it. Or something. Haggis.
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It’s an unspoken, but apparently documented in certain English as a second language manuals, that this is how all multiple adjectives should be arranged. I never knew there was a formal order.
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Really fun exercise but I love the burst haggis imagery most of all. It doesn’t even need any other descriptors!
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There must be a story about that haggis.
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Ever heard of E. Clampus Vitus? The Clampers? It’s an old California mining fraternity. Initiation was, strange.
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I didn’t know about this organization before. Now I do.
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Hi A. Mole,
Who knew? That is the question. All of us ask it every minute of everyday. No answer, of course. Only a lion at night. Only a bullet for Jesse James. Only a missile’s descent. We can only guess, as we float around the planet that is made from liquid and gas, and we are embedding in the nature of the mystery. Yet it is there and so are we. No one knows. No one has ever known and so we indulge ourselves with the five senses and the four components of reality and we live and die. Who knew? WTF. Thanks. Duke I’m tired.
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> we are embedding in the nature of the mystery.
An event witness is an event changed — by observation.
If you’re tired now, who’s gonna be there to record the tears and bloody coughs that spatter and roil in the dust? This is the moment, your Mexican moment that, documented, will cast your words into the ears of the world.
Vitamin D. Really really.
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