John Kricfalusi (pronounced Chris Fah Loosy) has been posting a lot lately on his hatred of blandness. To wit:
Do All Bland Movies Make Profits?
Live Action Bland
Who Are The Bland Leads?
Popeye is NOT Bland!
Solving the Bland Problem
After reading these posts I was suddenly struck by a revelation! I saw the light! I finally got it! That revelation is, JOHN K NEEDS A THESAURUS! I mean it starts to get a little monotonous to keep reading the same repetitive word over and over, again and again, redundantly.
He obviously has a dictionary since he provides the definition for the word bland in one of his posts, but a thesaurus would really be a boon for his writing since it would provide variety and interest. After all, if you promote the theory that cartoons should be written by cartoonists, then you should learn to write eloquently, too.
So in order to help my idol, I shall list for him some alternatives for bland:
average, banal, banausic, big yawn, blah, bloodless, boilerplate, boring, bromidic, characterless, clichéd, cloying, colorless, common, commonplace, corn, corn-fed, cornball, corny, conventional, dead, deadsville, diluted, dim, dismal, drab, drag, draggy, dreary, driveling, drudging, dry, dull, dullsville, everyday, familiar, featureless, feeble, flat, flavorless, fuddy-duddy, garden variety, general, generic, hackneyed, halfhearted, heavy, hoary, ho-hum, hokey, hokum, humdrum, inane, inferior, insipid, interminable, irksome, jejune, lackluster, laid back, leaden, lifeless, limp, literal, lusterless, mainstream, matter-of-fact, mediocre, middling, mild, milk-and-water, moderate, monotone, monotonous, moth-eaten, mundane, muted, namby-pamby, nerdy, neutral, nondescript, no place, nothing, nowhere, oft-repeated, old chestnut, old hat, ordinary, pablum, pedantic, pedestrian, phoned in, plain, platitudinous, played out, plebeian, plodding, pointless, ponderous, prolix, prosaic, quotidian, regular, repetitious, repetitive, routine, run-of-the-mill, sapless, spiritless, square, squaresville, soporific, so-so, spiritless, stale, staid, standard, stereotyped, stock, stodgy, stuffy, stupid, tame, tasteless, tedious, tepid, threadbare, tired, tiresome, tiring, tripe, trite, typical, undistinguished, uneventful, unexceptional, unexciting, unexpressive, unimaginative, uninspired, uninspiring, uninteresting, unoriginal, unremarkable, unseasoned, unstimulating, unvaried, usual, usual thing, vacuous, vanilla, vapid, waterish, watery, weak, wearisome, well-worn, wimpy, wishy-washy, white bread, workaday, worn out, wuss, yawn, zero
May these words come in handy to Mr. K’s future polemics against the creeping blandness of modern animated cartoons.
(Image stolen from LewRockwell.com
25 comments:
What's another word for "THESAURUS?"
dictionary, glossary, terminology, vocabulary, word stock, wordbook, wordlist
Cause I'm Baby Cakes....I am the world!
I'm not afraid to get ecited.
Well, I heard the word "gullible" was actually removed from the dictionary!
But, then I looked it up and there it was!
Huh!
That's all well and good for big-shot New York reporters like yourself, J.J. ...what with your cute girls from The Globe's stenograhpy pool doing your thesaurus-checking for you while you enjoy a 3 martini lunch, but what of the poor, unwashed, common working men and women out there in the cartoon blog-o-sphere?
Once again, Chris, you hold a mirror up to my life to reveal the accurate working conditions here at the Globe. I completely forgot about you poor working slobs out there on the internets. I would suggest, since most of the huddled masses probably can't scratch up enough pennies to buy a thesaurus, that they go "online" and look up a "virtual" thesaurus -- like on a "website" or something.
Dad kisses tongue first. The ladies seem to like it.
I think he is very much aware of the different words for bland but it's pretty obivous why he only uses that one word, because he is teaching people. It's alot easier for people to remember one word that everyone knows for something.
pcunfunny,
That's an interesting defense. Politicians do the same thing, often repeating the same "talking points" on tv again and again, in order for it to sink in with the public. It's a little too similar to propaganda for my taste.
Also, ironically, by the repetitious use of the word bland John K is actually making his own writing seem dull. Or bland, if you like.
I have friends that get excited...I'm Baby Cakes! I am the world.
I like extras skins with color and flavored crevice jellies too.
I think John cares not about his online blog writing diction.
My guess is that he's rather teach people to draw, I'm just gonna go ahead and throw that one out there.
Jorge,
In order for Mr. Kricfalusi to teach people to draw via his blog he has to use words to convey his meaning.
Also, the topic of writing for cartoons has come up on his blog in the past. Sitcom writers may create lousy cartoons but they are at least educated in respect to diction and proper English. If cartoonists are going to take back their industry from these writers, they will have to convince producers that at the very least they know how to write properly (not to mention creatively).
As an example, take you're own sentence, "I think John cares not about his online blog writing diction." Is sounds clunky to the ears. It would sound better if it were written as "I don't think John cares about his diction with regards to his online blog essays." (I'm sure some people could think of a better way to phrase that sentence than I just did.)
Just my two cents...
Or the fact that you used "you're" instead of "your"?
>>Or the fact that you used "you're" instead of "your"?<<
Exactly, Jorge. Good catch! I included that misspelling as a test to see if you would notice it. You passed, and now you're ready to go on to the next step. Today you are no longer a boy, but a man! Godspeed, my son...
I suspected as much...
>>Excellent Jorge! I made that grammatic error as a test to see if you would notice it. You pass with flying colors. You may be ready for headier stuff next time. Maybe hanging participles, double negatives, tense errors, or the dreaded neither/nor, either/or conundrum. Maybe even "pronoun trouble" <<
Maybe we could go around telling people to stop getting "infer" and "imply" mixed up. And for that matter, "conserve" and "reduce." Also, "your" and "you're", "to," "too" and "two" and "its" and "it's".
J.J. can you gives us some dirt on John.K?
J.J., I have trivial information regarding the undecipherable Popeye article referenced on GAC. (the one that calls Ali Baba "Ali Saliva".) I can't post anything there because I never registered and apparently they aren't accepting new registrations.
What that half-English half-Martian writing is, is apparently the Wikipedia entry on Popeye, translated into some other language and then retranslated back into English. The elements of the article line up exactly.
Sorry to be off-topic in the wrong forum, but I can't find another way to alert you.
Thanks for the information, Hubbithub.
another word for thesurus is lexicon as you well know J.J. if you find this info please remember me in your next collum cause i wanna be way up high where it's always balmy, and no one says hey mouse go get me a pack of butts.
another word for thesurus is lexicon as you well know J.J. if you find this info usefull please remember me in your next collum cause i wanna be way up high where it's always balmy, and no one says hey mouse go get me a pack of butts.
sorry for the double post I'm an idiot
sorry for the triple post I'm obsessive compulsive.
Hi Joe,
Whaddaya know? I shall indeed remember lexicon. It's a good word, that lexicon. It just rolls off the tongue. I could say it all day. Lexicon, lexicon, lexicon.
you suck!!!
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