Jessica Alfieri

writes everything you see here.

• Pour Some Sugar on Me

  Oct 14, 2009 tagged as writing

  ANNOUNCEMENT:

  Ladies and gentlemen, please stop soaking your books and newspapers in liquid (pouring over them),

  and also stop holding your sad financial status over the heads of same reading materials (pooring over them),

  so you can start carefully reviewing the material at hand already (poring over them).

  
  

• Sigh

  Oct 14, 2009 tagged as writing

  I think we’re going to look back on this period of literally expressed expressions (“…blah blah blah, sigh…”) as modern writing’s “awk” high school years.  The tabloid period.  Post-post-post modern.  None of us can be bothered to show anymore, so we just tell.  IN. ALL. CAPS.

  
  

• When Copywriters Get Lazy

  Apr 20, 2009 tagged as writing

  I posted this watch at A Very Fine Thing earlier today, and although I don’t usually read product copy, when I tried to just look at the orange watch, my eye kept rolling over to the side of the page where the word “fun” was being tossed about like a two dollar hooker.  Okay, so it was used three times.  That’s the same.

  – Silvertone metal with super flexible rubber watch band and white epoxy face
  – Not waterproof or water resistant, for fun only!
  – Face is 1″ in diameter

  Talk about fun! This is a great sporty watch for the beach, bike riding, or any fun activity.

  I love it when a description is trailing off and there’s really nothing left to say, but there’s dead space that needs filling, and the only option the writer seems to see is the backdoor exit: make a huge generalization and run.  This watch, it is perfect for ANY! FUN! ACTIVITY!

  So it’s the perfect movie watch, the perfect antiquing watch, the perfect crocheting watch, and the perfect stripping watch.  To each her own fun, right?

  
  

• Sono scrittrice.

  Aug 4, 2008 tagged as Italian, Price is Right, writing

  For the first time in more than six years, I have to compose a set of words, type and double space them, and submit them for a grade.  Of course, I suppose it’s another (more important?) kind of grading I receive every time I submit words for money, but they’re usually not double spaced.

  Anyway, my Italian assignment options are to a) talk about your average day, from waking up to falling asleep; b) describe your favorite vacation; or c) invent a story based on one of six cheesy photos included in the lesson.  Length: one page.

  Photos include:

  1. a desperate-looking man with a 70s-era mustache staring at us woefully from behind bars;
  2. a couple that seems to be ringing in the New Year, dressed in drunken black tie (=untied) as she ruffles his hair and feeds him champagne; and
  3. a group of ladies who lunch, laughing with their mouths wide open, with the subtitle, “L’Inglese ha fatto spese” (=The English[women] shopped.)  Insert wild laughter.

  So I didn’t really love the photo options, and I’m definitely not going to bore our instructor with another one of twenty stories I know he’ll have to read: “I woke up at 7:30, brushed my teeth, went to the gym, took a shower, ate some cereal, went to work…”

  I imagine him reading all these compositions, repeating the words that we mostly already know how to say, which he probably mastered as a five year old, on and on until he takes a fork to his eye.

  So I’m choosing option c-1.  A story about something else.  After all, sono scrittrice.  (“I am a female writer.”)

  Sure, I’ll have more crazy-wrong phrasing and use grammar in a way that will probably create a brand new tense, but at least it won’t be boring.

  Right, so now I have to actually do it… and the rest of my work.  I’ll post whatever I come up with tonight.

  Unless you want to do it for me.  Italian-speakers, come on down!