While the tactics also deserve mention
Just one part of this fight gets attention
Though the details aren’t clear
This is all that you’ll hear:
“Constantine’s win? Divine intervention”

Event: Constantine has his “vision” before winning the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
Year: 312
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Milvian_Bridge#Vision_of_Constantine

This week on Brevity=Wit, in honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday, we will be taking a look at Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.”  Originally this poem had nothing to do with Halloween (it was first published in January and set, if you manage to read all the way to the second stanza, in December).  Because of a certain element of popular culture that was dear to me in my youth, however, I will always associate it with October 31st.

Now I’m sure we all remember the basic story in this poem: guy brooding in his study, raven flies in, says “Nevermore” a lot.  Right?  Nothing really happens.  And to tell us that nothing really happens, Poe requires over 6500 characters!  It’s monstrously inefficient.  The word “nevermore” alone is repeated eleven times.  I mean, come on!  You only have to say it once or twice before we get the idea.  Here’s what we would get if Mr. Poe was cut off before he had a chance to get bogged down in all his trochaic octameter:

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly”

He has time to set the scene, at least.  It’s midnight, the guy is tired, reading a bunch of books.  But that’s all we get.  There’s no way to know if he’s reading in order to distract himself from the soul-crushing despair of losing his lover or if he’s just cramming for tomorrow’s exam.  Maybe he’s a yes-man; all we get to see him do is nod.

It goes without saying, of course, that the title character does not get a chance to appear.

Here’s a version that manages to remain short while still including such key elements as, you know, actually mentioning the raven:

“One night I heard a knocking at my door—no, the window.  It was a raven that reminded me of my onetime lover Lenore.  It said, ‘Nevermore.'”

There you go.  You’ve got the raven, you’ve got the “nevermore.”  What else do you need, really?  Sure, it may lack the driving pattern of internal and external rhymes that makes each stanza surge forward and then pull gently back like a wave lapping on the shore, but is that really what’s important here?  It’s all about the raven, right?

Listen to me, you who read this: it behooves you that you heed this
Don’t be forced now to concede this; these are not some Language Courts
To be shorter is not better. Don’t begrudge every letter
These fool limits only fetter, and put me quite out of sorts
That my Raven might now Twitter puts me highly out of sorts
Quoth the author, “Eat my shorts”

The big robot closed in on them
The humming’s pitch grew high
“Hey, former SOLDIER!” Barret yelled
“How do we beat this guy?”

“How should I know?” Cloud replied
Attempting to stay cool
“I must have slept right through that class
Back there in SOLDIER school

“Your guess is as good as mine”
To which Barret said, “Shit
I’ll do what I always do
I’m gonna shoot at it”

“Wait,” said Tifa. “Here’s one thing
That in my school I learned:
Your attacks will hurt much more
When its big back is turned”

Cloud got in behind it
And the Airbuster was trapped
To this formation it soon proved
Unable to adapt

Spin one way, get struck by sword
The other: fist, foot, gun
Toss in a few lightning bolts
And that robot was done

This week’s puzzle:

A teacher gets himself intro trouble because he stays up late listening to music and reading. His assistant makes things worse because he can’t read, and his neighbors further exacerbate his problems because they have good memories.

Last week’s puzzle:

A man with a taste for more mature women ends a journey sooner than he originally planned. When he ends up in trouble because of a business rivalry, his only hope of redemption is to teach children how to do something he can’t do himself.

And the answer is . . . ▼

Though her sister’s more famous by far
Olympic better served the White Star
This big ship stayed afloat
Even sank a U-boat
For her class, she was well above par

Event: Launch of RMS Olympic, sister ship to RMS Titanic
Year: 1910
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic

Today on Brevity=Wit we delve into the realm of irreverence and (hopefully not too serious) blasphemy by taking a look at the Ten Commandments.

When the Commandments were first handed down by Moses, coming down from Mt. Sinai bearing in his hands the stone tablets presented to him by almighty God, I have to assume that no one would really have dared to disobey them.  Nowadays, of course, the commandments are disregarded all the time, as anyone who watches the news can attest to.  I have to wonder if the Ten Commandments are regarded so lightly today because they weren’t designed to match the modern attention span.

Let’s see how far we get before people run out of patience, working from Chapter 5 of Deuteronomy in the King James Bible:

“I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods before me. Th”

Well there’s your problem.  Moses was too long-winded.  It’s no wonder that the majority of the Commandments are ignored today.  Depending on how you count them, you’re not even able to finish the first one without running over your character limit.  Moses at least gets a chance to start on the next imperative, but all he has time to get out is a “th.”  We can assume it’s going to be a “thou,” but that’s as far as we can guess.  We don’t even know if it’s a “thou shalt” or “thou shalt not.”

So I present this abbreviated version of the Ten Commandments.  Not only does it get in all the important points before everyone stops paying attention, it also allows you to save a fortune on stone tablets:

“I’m God. I’m #1. Respect my name, Sunday, Mom and Dad. No murder, adultery or theft. Don’t betray your neighbor or covet his stuff.”

In the beginning there was the Word.  But the Word was too long and confused modern audiences.  So nowadays we have the W.

Cloud did not want to explode
And end up as debris
“I used to be in SOLDIER
Surely you remember me”

A large robotic soldier
Came in from the walkway’s side
“I call it the Airbuster!”
From the chopper the Prez cried

This week’s puzzle:

A man with a taste for more mature women ends a journey sooner than he originally planned. When he ends up in trouble because of a business rivalry, his only hope of redemption is to teach children how to do something he can’t do himself.

Puzzle from two weeks ago (I apologize to anyone who was hoping for the answer to this puzzle but missed it because of last week’s digression.):

A retired teacher makes a detour in the middle of a long trip to visit a former student. His most recent pupil runs away before he can meet the former student, and when they next encounter each other, the new student’s friend has to come in and separate them.

And the answer is . . . ▼

(NOTE: this is for October 13th, not the 12th)

Where on Earth is the center of time?
Where to draw the meridian Prime?
O’er these questions and more
The committee did pore
They chose to follow Greenwich’s chime

Event: Prime meridian officially established as passing through Greenwich, England
Year: 1884
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conference

Today in our ongoing quest to ensure that nothing is longer than it absolutely has to be, we consider the source of this new project’s title, Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Young Prince Hamlet does not seem to take to heart Polonius’ comment that “Brevity is the soul of wit.”  The statement was not addressed to him specifically, but we all know that Hamlet was skulking all over the castle in his real-again, fictional-again madness, so I’m sure that he heard it, and he appears to ignore it (to be fair, so does Polonius).

For example, let us look at Hamlet’s famous soliloquy from Act III.  Hamlet sets up a problem (whether or not he should kill himself), considers all possible aspects of the two sides, and then comes to a vague, unsatisfying conclusion.  He just goes on and on, without any consideration for the audience, or even for poor Ophelia, who has to stand there on the side of the stage and pretend she can’t hear him.  You’d think if all he was going to accomplish was to demonstrate his indecisiveness that he could at least be quick about it, but no, he drones on for nearly fifteen hundred characters!  Here’s what the speech would have sounded like if someone had had the good sense to cut him off after one hundred forty:

“To be, or not to be?  That is the question—
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take a”

“Take a chill pill,” I think, is the only suitable ending to that last phrase.

These days we already have a standard abbreviation for this speech: we just say “To be or not to be?  That is the question,” and we forget that the rest of the soliloquy even exists.  This solution may be fine for everyday use, but if I were writing for Shakespeare and wanted to include a few more ideas from the original speech (such as, for example, the fact that “To be or not to be?” refers to living or dying, which is often lost today) while still keeping it within a sensible character limit, I would probably say something like this:

“Should I die?  Tough question.  Life is hard, and I can put a stop to that.  Then again, death’s a mystery.  Who knows what happens?  I guess that’s why people like me hesitate.”

There.  We know the problem, we know there’s not going to be any resolution on it any time soon, and we get it all without having to sit there for minute after minute listening to him talk about contumely, bare bodkins, and fardels.

This allows plenty of time for Ophelia to come over and strike up a conversation:

Ophelia: hey ham. sup?
Hamlet: *shrug* thinkin bout death
Ophelia: 😛 geez emo kid. y dont u b a litle more emo?
Hamlet: i dunno. what comes after death? if only I knew . . .
Ophelia: w/e. u can stay here and write some crappy poems or somthing. im gonna go hang out w/rosey and guild. u know, have some actual fun for a change

For there are no slings and arrows more outrageous than the whims of a woman’s heart.

If you readers have any suggestions of famous speeches, poems, or excerpts of literary works that you would like to see covered in this project, please let me know.