Week In Perspective

We're at the end of another stellar Monocles Galore week. We want to thank Eli for being this week's Friend of the Site, and all of you for reading and your contributions to the caption contests. Here are this week's co-winners "The quality of penthouse pets has really gone down lately. Look at this young lass here..." and "if i knew more about erotic gay literature, i would write a caption that made it seem as though that is what they were reading." Perhaps many of our readers come from British prep schools. [Sophie's note: Perhaps they were written BY ROBERT GRAVES, WHO DID GO TO BRITISH PREP SCHOOL, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

A lot of people ask us how we come up with ideas for our posts. We get struck by inspiration in all kinds of places, the worst being the kidneys. This scene actually happened, and exemplifies the creative process behind Monocles Galore.

Scene: Editor's meeting at James's house

James's dad: So what is this?

James: It's like…you know…a website…with like…where we're funny, and we're like…writing, like, in the style of like….other writers.

Sophie: It's humor writing about literature and history

James's dad: So who provides the humor and who provides the literature?

Sophie and James: Blank stares.

James's dad: yeah…so, what, it's like George Washington crossing the Delaware and then you make fun of him because he had a leaky boat?

James: Haha no that's stupid

Sophie (whisper): James, write that down.

Have a great weekend.

Using Rhetorical Devices: A Great Way to be a Baller

It goes without saying that to be an awesome writer you should also rock the slicked back side part and bamboo cane like TS Eliot.


If you read the site you are currently reading, you know that there are many writers we aspire to be like. Now obviously we can't all be Nabokov, unless you are Nabokov, in which case you can. Logic aside, there are a few things you can do to improve your writing and just generally be awesome. I would know, because I am a best selling author (true story). And look where I am now!!!!!

Rhetorical devices are an important way to be a cool writer. Let me elaborate. Rhetorical devices, as everyone knows, are an important way to be cool (as a writer). Do you think I became a best selling author by NOT using rhetorical devices?

But don’t worry. Take it from me, being a best selling author is a lot easier than it looks. Because the cool thing about rhetorical devices is that you’re already using them without even knowing it. Ever said, “Hey look at that guy. That guy is ugly!”? You just used anadiplosis. Let’s look at a few more, taken from the banter that goes on around the MG offices. And while you do that, I will be over here looking at my scrapbook about my book--the one filled with rhetorical devices and that was on the best seller list—and sucking Jack Daniels from the bottle like there’s no tomorrow. I might even vomit on your stuff, which you will then be able to sell on ebay (because I am a best selling author).

You’re welcome.

1. Asyndeton: Leaving out conjunctions between words or phrases.
“Hey, tampon face, this is my desk. Can you please clear all your old Us Weeklies, Boswell’s London Diary, old coffee cups, crumpled up pieces of paper?”—James
“Well at least I’m writing and doing stuff. All you do is play fantasy football, talk about how girls won’t hook up with you, instant message with Tony, email the rugby team.”--Sophie

2. Epistrophe: Repeating a word or words at the end of a series of phrases or sentences.
“Well all you do is work obsessively and talk about your foul ex friend Violet! ‘I hate my foul ex friend Violet.’ ‘My life was ruined by my foul ex friend Violet.’ ‘I want to write a piece about what Ben Franklin would think about my foul ex friend Violet'.”—James

3. Metanoia: Taking back a statement, then restating it more strongly, specifically, etc.
“I hate working with you. I picked the worst, laziest, most immature writing partner in the entire school, no wait, in the entire universe.”--Sophie

4. Anaphora: repeating the first word in a group of sentences, clauses, or phrases.
“And I hate working with you! And by the way I lied when I said I liked Notebook Girls. I think it was a stupid idea, a stupid book, and it gave you a stupid big egotistical head. I QUIT.”--James

5. Zeugma: using a verb literally and figuratively.
“Great. You just quit your job AND your friend.”—Sophie

6. Hyperbole: extreme exaggeration
“So…wanna go to the campus center? I’m so hungry I could eat like eight gajillion burritos.”--James

7. Alliteration: repeating the first consonant sound in a group of words.
“What a stupendous suggestion. And while we’re there, we can talk about that baller Ben Franklin piece I want to write: thirteen things that Ben Franklin would say…about my foul ex friend Violet…if he were high.”--Sophie

8. Diacope: Repeating a word or phrase but with a different word or phrase in the middle.
“Excellent idea, my friend, excellent idea.”--James


Damn right!
(Expletive)

Week in Perspective

(Jerry's mom voice) How could anybody not love him??!?!?!!?!?


This has been a weird week for all of us here at Monocles Galore. Well, mainly just James. He’s been living Ben Franklin’s thirteen resolutions, which hasn’t been easy for him, since it means he can't mack on girls at parties or shove food down his throat until he gets so full that he unbuttons the top button and wheezes until somebody brings him a glass of milk. Also, I told him that Walt Whitman called America “the greatest poem,” and now he’s filled with all these conflicting feelings: USA #1 versus Poetry is Sissy.

This week’s caption contest went better than last, since instead of zero responses we had two responses: “the greatest blowjob in all of history” and “Sophia Dumaine’s bat mitzvah.” I don’t know which is least appropriate—one that is about oral sex or one that is an inside joke about how waspy one of our friends is. Well, you know what our motto is around here: everybody wins!
(Except losers and my foul ex-friend Violet, who is a loser.)

Manliest Moments in History

Nice guns, lolz!!!!


Sophie
Note: James came up with this ridiculous idea that we work together on a piece, which I hate. I didn't want to do this, but we're on a time crunch, and someone's gotta pay the bills around here. Personally, I think calling anything in history "manly," and then assuming that this is somehow cool, is stupid. But not like anyone listens to me anyway, so here's my list, jerks. I'm going to the movies.

-Hemingway’s entire existence
-JFK’s hookup with Marilyn Monroe
-Caning of Charles Sumner. The guy that beat him up, though probably mentally ill, took Sumner out in front of EVERYONE.
-Goldmining Era
-Sherman’s march. Sherman was a total baller and just drove through the south destroying everything in his path. Ok, it paved the way for years of the south as an economic backwater with tremendous social and racial division. But it all worked out for the best, right?
-Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders.
-FDR crippled yet able to walk.
-Kid Curry, famous outlaw Butch and Sundance’s Hole In The Wall Gang, escaped from jail, and this other time he killed a guy and the guy’s friends and the cops that came to get him.


James
Note: Sophie is a lame.

-When Maximus Decimus Meridius was commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius, but then he got betrayed by the emperor’s son who became the new emperor so then Maximus had to go save his family but then his family was dead so he was father to a murdered son and husband to a murdered wife and he became a gladiator who defied an emperor, and he had his vengance.
-The time the firemen came to my house because my attic smelled like burning. Firemen are sweet.
-Andrew Jackson and the trail of tears. He never cried.
-When Harrison Ford said, “Get off my plane.”