Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for May 28, 2024

Gah

Meet the exit.

From a meet and greet to a meet and beat.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, criticize.

The closest my mother ever got to being able to say “My son the doctor” was my handwriting.

PS: These days, I type and if that’s not feasible, I print.

What is that on the table? The last person that tried to be a critic?

The author undoubtedly desires to demonstrate that the pen is at least equal to the sword by stabbing the critic with the writing instrument.

I once had a boss whose handwriting was so bad that I accused him of going to medical school to study penmanship.

If that sword is Excalibur, they must be meeting King Author.

When it comes to signing, top athletes practice toward “characteristic” and quickness over legibility.

I read that Shakespeare spelled his name 13 different ways!!

There are millions of DIY critics on social media

I taught penmanship for years. The consistent goal was for the student to take their time and take ownership and pride in how their penmanship appeared. Then the Michigan Board of Education changed their focus to frequent testing. As a result, we no longer had control of our classroom time for things like penmanship.

Nobody asks to meet the critic because they always give their opinions free of charge.

I wonder when we will replace the signature line on credit cards, signature machines, etc. with a thumbprint. Few even try to scrawl their signature and most just squiggle a line.

Whither Nebbish?

The critic seems more popular than the author.

No one can ever accuse me of misspelling my name in my signature — because nobody can read my signature in the first place! :-D

The critics today have taken the woke pill. On movies I wait a while for the audience reviews to come in on Rotten Tomatoes. Avoided more then one bomb that way.

And the most predatory of all critics are College Administrators.

I hope that is a dagger and not a cross

At least this author has found a professional to read his work. No publisher (exception below) will accept a submission that does not come from an established agency and no agency will accept a submission from an author who is not established.

The exceptions are direct to press companies that will accept any drivel from any idiot because it costs them almost nothing. Readers go online to look for anything that might appeal to them. If they read eBooks, they pay a small sum for a file. If they want a real book, they pay a larger sum to have a physical copy printed and an even larger sum to have it shipped.

The problem is that most so-called authors of such stories are either barely literate, extremely boring, or incapable of concise writing.

I just finished a science fiction novel that told an original and interesting story in an unprecedented manner. Trouble was the author wrote a 200 page book but took 650 pages to tell it.

This is a meeting that is never going to happen. Hey, even Shakespeare didn’t always spell his name the same way.

We remember the artists; no one remembers the critics.

Loks like he has Hamlet for a critic. ’Alas, poor Yorick! My gorge rises at his spelling."

There was a commentor, I believe his handle was “Riverine” had an avatar of a Viet Nam era river boat. Has anyone seen his comments lately? Been a while.

You have to pay him not to show up.

An author is someone whose doodling is legible.

The critic is setting himself up to be called a racist.

I bought a first edition hardcover copy of a book signed by the author. The “signature” was a faint, straight line on the page inside the front cover. Thankfully, the signed version was not more expensive than the unsigned version.

He brings his own critic. It saves time.

Well, I guess the author can spell his name however he likes.

you get a famous person’s autograph and you STILL don’t know who it is