Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Oh those pithy moments

Every few weeks, I work on canceling out subscriptions that I accidentally sign up for or just start to think are unnecessary. Maybe for example, I wanted to stream a show or movie and signed up for a service online. A lot of these things you can sign up for are designed to have an ongoing monthly fee paid via a subscription process. That is something I try to avoid. Some of the things I accidently subscribe to are email or text messages with no direct cost other than the time it takes you to deal with them. A lot of web forms that are filled out ask for email and phone numbers. Inevitably those turn into unwanted correspondence. Right now every day I’m getting a ton of unwanted correspondence. Sending “stop” to unwanted text messages and taking the time to unsubscribe to corporate and political emails all takes time. Strangely enough this seems to be an acceptable strategy that corporations adopt as part of what is now a routine and accepted marketing strategy. Everybody is trying to grab just a little bit of my attention in order to either build brand equity or convert sales. Now is a really strange time for advertisers in the marketplace as things are shifting within the community at large. People working on marketing teams within corporations are seeing diminished returns within the advertising space and trying to pivot to a new strategy. 

Sometimes the words just fall into place. Oh those pithy moments that produce amazing prose are few and far between this early in the morning. Most of my pithy moments happen during writing sessions at the end of the night. Maybe I have to spend the entire day building up to being a productive and pithy writer. Given that most of my content generation errors on the side of being word economic in general being able to take pithy to the next level could be considered a skill. Most of the time it is not a useful skill to have. Given the iterative nature of my writing and how ideas and concepts are reworked by being freshly rewritten from day to day until I’m satisfied with the output and sometimes even after that delivering extremely pithy arguments is sometimes self-defeating. What is being said via prose has to be communicated and the nature of strong and viable communication involves building a narrative that communicates the story in a way that can be understood. Extremely pithy prose might very well say the exact thing that needs to be said, but it might get communicated in a way that is obscured from the audience being able to walk away with a particular intended meaning. That is why the art of writing is inherently the art of communication. You have to take the very essence of the argument and distill the parts in a way that can be shared and ultimately repeated by others. You want a solid argument to ripple beyond being read one time and ignored. That argument needs to ripple out across the public mind to make an intellectual dent in the universe. 

That last line was a quintessential attempt at producing a pithy moment of prose. It turned out to be slightly lacking and obvious, but at 06:00 hours it will have to serve as a solid example of the topic being covered today. It is going to take me a few minutes to edit these paragraphs today before hitting submit and allowing this to post. I can tell a few parts need a little bit of work to ensure they are readable and grammatically correct. My recipe for caprese crostini on the other hand requires no editing to communicate a tasty point. It is incredibly simplistic and ultimately a very satisfying appetizer to accompany a meal. That probably was an unnecessary aside at this point in the writing process, but given that this is generally an example of a stream of consciousness driven prose experiment that is what bubbled to the forefront of my mind. Perhaps it just demonstrates my lack of focus on the topic at hand. It does appear that this third paragraph has already required a second page in my document editor. That is probably an interesting sign for the rest of the day that is quickly approaching. Maybe today I’ll end up engaging in highly efficient communication with people. It might just end up being a day full of pithy moments. Oh those pithy moments and the entertainment value they bring to life via the power of prose. 

Recipe for caprese crostini appetizer (vegetarian)

Ingredients: baguette of appropriate size, olive oil, heirloom tomato, fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh basel, balsamic vinegar glaze, salt, and pepper

Directions: 

  1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees 
  2. Slice the baguette to crostini size portions (between a fourth and a half inch) and lightly brush the slices with olive oil after placing them on an oven safe baking sheet/tray
  3. Bake the crostini for about 10 minutes. I baked mine for about 15 to allow them to get a little more crunchy. This step needs to be monitored to ensure the result matches your expectations for crostini doneness. 
  4. While the bread is baking thinly slice the mozzarella, tomato, and basel
  5. Build the caprese crostini appetizers by stacking the mozzarella, tomato, and basel to your desired state and top with salt and pepper (if you want S&P)


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