Adam Martin's Blog - Posts Tagged "mac-guffin"

PORTMANTEAU
A portmanteau (from French porte-manteau) is a linguistic blend of words, in which parts of multiple words or their phonemes (sounds) are combined into a new word, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or motel, from motor and hotel.

SUPREME LEADER SNOKE
A portmanteau of snort and cocaine? He looks like a coke fiend who banged his forehead on a kitchen counter. If it appears like a cheap attempt at drug humor that may have been the point, conceived from stoners in the art department.

EMPEROR PALPATINE
A portmanteau of palpitation and Ovaltine? In 2011, Ovaltine was banned in Denmark under legislation forbidding the sale of food products with added vitamins. This is what happens to your appearance when you have Ovaltine withdrawals.

DARTH VADER
A portmanteau of Siddhartha and invader? Siddhartha is a novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha. He now works for the Death Star.

THINK INSIDE THE BLOCK (NOT OUTSIDE THE BOX)
According to the block universe theory, the universe is a giant block of all the things that ever happen at any time and at any place. The past, present and future all exist and are equally real. Every moment of your life is out there in space-time, already developed, like a single frame on a film reel. When you stop thinking outside the box, there are several advantages:

1) You don't have to worry about knocking over other boxes and getting them all mixed up.

2) You don't have to worry about which box your in: The box that contains your box, or the box that's inside your box.

3) If you stand next to a box, you're already thinking outside of the box, and you haven't even done anything yet.

4) If there's no box in sight, but at least one box exists, your standing outside of a box by default.

5) You don't have to imagine a box and then imagine yourself thinking outside of some imaginary box. Now, you can go back to just "thinking" without all this stupid "box" stuff.

6) If there is a box in the universe that contains all the boxes and yet is not itself contained within a box, what you end up with is a block, not a box.

7) You can't think outside of a block universe. It's already been done for you. Here's one now...

SECOND HAND PERSONALITY DEFECTS
Ever notice that odorless personality defects in others are even more annoying than second hand smoke?

ACRONYMS
Everyone and their mother's corporation makes these things up on a daily basis. So do I. The uglier and dumber, the better.

ACYM
This is the acronym for acronym. Try using it in a text message and see if anyone knows what you're talking about.

TOE
Time On Earth. By wasting my TOE you're wasting your own. Think about it, but not with my TOE. Use yours.

LBP
Long Boring Passage. It's the reason I skimmed over your boring battle scene with tribe A slaughtering tribe B, and after the carnage of dead text-soldiers subsides, so what? Why was this important?

LBPC
Long Boring Passage Condensed.

ABZI
Always be zooming in. It also sounds like the name of some foreign terrorist group (it probably is). If you think this acronym is ugly, well so is UNICEF. It sounds like the name of a unicorn virus. Speaking of unicorns...

UNICORN PLOT
A unicorn plot (my terminology) is any plot where the characters serve the plot points, rather than the other way around. Unicorn's are sterile, since they're imaginary creatures that don't really exist. So, you write a story about a unicorn and becasue it's convenient to the plot, the unicorn can suddenly have unicornlings (my terminology again). The event is motivated out of the blue, rather than following a previous train of thought.

Avoid unicorn plots by suggesting somewhere in the preface, the first chapter, the interview process, the first date, the coupon, the butthugger strap, the toothbrush handle, the lid, the latch, the logo, etc., that the unicorn may be able to produce unicornilings. Now the logic makes sense within the context of the story when it happens.

However, the unicornling never serves as a central figure, object, or goal, but rather as a Mac Guffin...

MacGUFFIN
In fiction, the MacGuffin is the excuse that motivates all the excuses. It is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. AI (as in) the maltese falcon in The Maltese Falcon, or the shark in Jaws, or the Death Star and the entire warehouse of self-referential merchandise appearing in Star Wars. IWO (in other words), if there were no Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, Red Baron Pizza, sterotypical Nazis, Muslims, or women in distress, Indiana Jones would have no excuse to go adventure-busting and have no excuse to make all the excuses that amount to the latest excuse for the next Indiana Jones movie.

The Death Star my be considered a set piece, yet when you buy the Lego-fied toy version for a child it's about the size of a MacGuffin.

If you you want to purchase a Honda MacGuffin, you now have an excuse to get into all sorts of economy car mischief that motivates you as the driver, while the car serves as mere device, until you arrive at Mc Donald's and sit down to eat your MacGuffin with cheese, wherein your next plot point unfolds.

ARE YOU A MOUNTEBANK?
I've always wanted to call someone a mountebank for being dishonest, but the word sounds more like a compliment. I picture a mountebank as someone who mounts horses and rides gallantly along river banks with their head held high.

mountebank
[ moun-tuh-bangk ]
noun
a person who sells quack medicines, as from a platform in public places, attracting and influencing an audience by tricks, storytelling, etc.
any charlatan or quack.
verb (used without object)
to act or operate as a mountebank.

IMAGINE A CUBE...
Then rotate it in your mind. Did the cube rotate or did your point of view rotate while the cube remained stationary? How do you know?