I enter the branch and find about three dozen bored customers calmly waiting for their number to be called. Where to obtain a number is non-obvious, so I hang around waiting for someone to finish at the desk closest to the door. After five minutes of standing dumbly, I hear a woman’s voice behind me say in English, “Can I help you, sir?”

“Ah, yes! I would like to open an account here.”

The woman, in her early 30s, I guess, furrows her brow and says, “Hmm. Ok, please wait a minute.”

I sit down and join the gathered, immobile Egyptians. The woman returns and asks for my passport. She disappears and I’m left alone for several minutes staring at the pretty tellers processing the masses.

The woman returns again and asks, in front of the entire waiting room, “How much will you be depositing today?” I say quietly, “About $800.” “$800,000″ she says loudly. “No problem.” I had no bag. Where the hell did she think I was stashing over three quarters of a million dollars on me?

I correct her. She says, “Well, you know, we require a minimum of $2,000 in an account. Will you be able to do that?”

“Yes. But I’ll need to transfer money from my US bank.”

“But you will be able to maintain that, yes?”

“Um, yes.”

“Please follow me.” She leads me to a desk in the back of the large room. I realize she thinks I want to open an account in US dollars, so I tell her that I’m a student at the AUC and that I’m just looking to open an account in Egyptian pounds.

“Egyptian pounds?” She looks worried. “But, why?”

“Because I now live in Egypt and want to pay bills here.”

“What sort of bills?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Rent, tuition…”

“But you can do those in cash here. Egyptians work mostly in cash.”

“Yes, but I would also like to open a cell phone account and they require a bank account.”

“I see. Well, you will need to maintain at least 5,000 Egyptian pounds in this bank account. Will you be able to do that?”

This is getting annoying. “Seeing as it’s considerably less than the $2,000 I would have been able to maintain in a US dollar account, then yes.”

“Hmm. So you have Egyptian pounds with you today?”

“No, I would like to exchange my dollars for pounds and deposit them.”

“Oh! I wouldn’t do that! We don’t give a very good exchange rate here.”

“What’s the rate?”

“I don’t know. But I know it’s much better outside the bank.”

“Can you suggest a place where I will get a better rate?”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

Despite all this, I decide to proceed with opening the account. I defer depositing my money so I can find a better exchange rate. I tell her this and she warns me that there is a 40 pound fee per month for each time my account is under 5,000 pounds.

“When will this fee occur?”

“I don’t know! The system does it! Only the system knows!”

“So I have to deposit my money today?”

“No, no. You can do it later.”

“Good,” I say. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“We’re closed tomorrow.”

“OK. I’ll come Saturday.”

“We’re closed Saturday. It’s our weekend.”

“Sunday it is.”

She hands me a letter “welcoming” me to HSBC. At the bottom of the letter it says I will receive a copy of all the documents I signed stating fees, conditions, etc. I ask her for these copies.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“This letter states I will get copies of everything.”

“What? Really?” She takes the letter and looks at it. “No, no. This letter is the documents [sic] it’s talking about.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, yes it is.”

We go back and forth about the meaning of the sentence. It’s only when we reach abstract opinions on the need for self-referential documents to exist that I give up. I’m returning on Sunday to close the account. Sure, I’m losing the 40 pound account opening fee, but if it’s this much hassle just to give them my cash, just imagine how hard it will be to get it back.

Welcome to Egypt.

Scene: Atlantic Avenue and Court Street, 11 p.m.

(Three black youths enter, stage right)

Black Youth 1: Let’s get that n____r!

Black Youth 2: Yeah, get him!

Black Youth 3: Get that n_____r!

(They cross left, chasing after another black youth. They start to beat him)

Our Hero: (standing stage right) What the f*ck… (reaches for phone to call the police.)

(A Hispanic man with an American accents sidles up to OH from stage right)

Hispanic Man: These n____rs are stupid!

(OH ignores him, turns to leave)

HM: I love this shit. (pause) Just say n_____r one time. Just say it.

OH: No. (He starts to walk away. HM follows.)

HM: Come on! I’m not black; I won’t be offended.

(Black youths exit, stage left)

OH: No. That’s just not something I say lightly.

HM: Oh, OK. Have a good night! (He exits stage right ahead of OH).

Fin

-

“Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.”

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Caveat: I am a terrible writer. I am also a bastard.

Dear _____,

After reading your story, I’ll give you some blunt advice. Your story needs to be re-written. It feels like a first draft and is not ready for publishing. That said, it’s not unsalvageable. Here are a few things you need to do:

1. Choose a point to the story. I read it three times and still can’t nail down any kind of solid meaning. Right now it feels like a vague allegory to ________, but there’s little solid evidence. Find a reason behind all the action and write towards that.
2. Be sure you understand words before you use them. If you’re unsure, look them up. You misuse a lot of words, like _____, ________, ________, ________, ejaculate, and _____ that don’t make sense in the context.
3. “Ten-dollar” words seem forced and unnatural. Words like “________” and “________” scream for the reader to pay attention to your word choice and not the actual story. Remember, you are creating a world with your words; you are not showing off your vocabulary. Watch for spelling mistakes. There are several in your story which make it hard or impossible to understand a sentence, further removing the reader from the action.
4. The dialogue is too stilted. Example: “We have conversation that erodes my stress from supporting him.” This type of wording is awkward and it forces the reader to re-read the line at least once to get the meaning, further separating him from the story. Read your dialogue out loud to see if it sounds like something you would say. If you’re tripping over your words, it’s not good dialogue.
5. Be clearer in describing action. Bad wording makes it hard to figure out what was going on. Also, certain pronouns are not clearly referenced or don’t agree with their subjects.
6. A little bit of research can add a lot of depth.

Despite all of this criticism, the story has merit and could be a great read. Just focus on what you want to say and say it plainly and with confidence. One last tip: wait at least a day before revising. A bit of time away helps you get your head out of the story and see what needs to be fixed.

Sincerely,

PureTwaddle

P.S. I wish I could send this back in time twelve years.

To my dismay the New York Time‘s blocks this functionality with a nasty little ToolTip script that forces you to research highlighted words with there terrible meta-definition system (in a pop-up, no less!). This script also blocks the ability to copy-and-paste text; probably a paranoid reaction by the Times that a blogger, heaven forbid, may want to blockquote some text from an article.

After a bit of digging around in the page source, I found the offending scripts and excised them with AdBlock using these rules:

||graphics8.nytimes.com/js/util/tooltip.js

||graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js

Light testing shows these rules don’t break any other site functionality.

On a side note, when I first sought a solution, I searched Google for “new york times copy paste script,” which brought up Free Copy & Paste JavaScripts and other Scripts as a first hit, from About.com, which is owned by the New York Times company. At least one of their branches doesn’t fear basic information sharing.

Scene: The Frozen Food Aisle. Our Hero is stocking frozen cereal

Enter a Middle-Aged Man in Army Coat

MAMiAC
Do you have any just regular plain waffles?

OUR HERO
Nope. Just the gluten-free ones.

MAMiAC
Jesus! What the hell did people do twenty years ago? Gluten-free. Cage-free eggs. (Gestures to the dairy section) They’re showing mercy to chickens. When I was in Vietnam, we killed people; we didn’t show any mercy.

OH
Yes, but they were technically free-range.

MAMiAC
(Laughs) Yeah. (Exits)

OH
(To himself) I need a new job.

We’re holding a launch party on Thursday, December 16th at WORD in Greenpoint at 7 p.m. Free beer, free readings, and free copies of the magazine. Come on by and check it out if your in the borough.

This error message pops up on an embedded a video of ducks being knocked over by the wind accompanied (inexplicably) by Nas’ Hate Me Now. Sony is cool with you watching ducklings in distress while listening to low-grade rap as long as it’s not outside of the YouTube.

I can’t help but imagine an intern in a gray cubicle mulling over whether this video should be embeddable or not.

As seen on invertedsoapbox.com.

This is the sentence I changed in editing at the the sacrifice of flow to break up the monotony of repeating the same initial word. Here’s the sentence I ignrode in editingbecause I paid too much attention to the previous sentence. This sentence allows me to use a word that no-one has ever superrealized, yet you’ll accept it because clicking “Read more” means you’re already hooked on my post. Also, quotation marks make me seem more authoritative. Now I mention the mundane thing that happened to me today that triggered this blog post. I follow with a description of my outrage that will fly way over your head. Here is a relevant link.

This is an awkward transition. Now I mention something relevant in pop culture that will pique your fading interest. This next sentence won’t really relate that well, but you’re still thinking about the pop culture reference so it doesn’t matter. Then I post a video which you’ll draw your own conclusions from.

Here’s where my point runs out of steam and I realize it doesn’t have enough heft to sustain a four-paragraph post. This is where I try to cover up that I’m an amateur writer by pretending to achieve enlightenment through pacing out my unedited criticisms of something too far removed from real life. This is where I notice my run-on sentences and then take comfort in knowing that all great modern writers use them.

Here’s a hasty conclusion because I just saw a Twitter post about the death of the blog and I need to post a comment post-haste about how the blog is still a vibrant and exciting expression of our new media frontier. A pithy comment follows that, though profound at first, makes less and less sense after you stop reading.