Jane Eyre's Cover Design

Wow, I love this illustration! Beautiful colours! Nice balance! Good typeface for the title! Creative choice of papers! (You have to see the real book to understand the latter) Everything really gives me the feeling of a classical story! Overall: B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L! XD

WARNING: I don't own the copyright of this image! If the owner wants me to delete this post, I will be glad to do it. I just want to talk about the design here. This picture is taken from http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lcj5y4FcqS1qzh8aeo1_250.jpg

An old saying I have often heard is "Don't judge book from its cover." I'm sure you often heard that saying, especially if you've been used to English language.

All I can say is "Well, are you kidding???" Look at the three quotation-marks I put here. I rarely do that -- only for things that I want to super-super-super-super-emphasize.

I'm not a philosopher and I'm not a wise man, so I don't have a problem to say otherwise. But I often buy a book, and every time I go to a bookstore, I'm forced to pick one from hundreds books there. And believe me: If your book doesn't have a nice cover design, most people will just skip it. Except if you're already famous, that is.

Sad, indeed, but that old saying needs renewal. 

After the design, of course the content of the book is also important. I never argue that the content is less important. I buy a book to read them, not just to admire the cover. With an exception of design books, of course. It's useless to buy a good-designed book that has awful story. Usually, I'll put that kind of books in the deepest part of my bookshelves. I haven't even finished reading some of them.

So what's my point here? That both the cover and the content are important. No cover, no one will buy it. No content, throw it in the bin. It's pretty straightforward, like everything else in this world.

Geek? What Geek?

*Glup* I really am a geek. I'm definitely not a party animal -- even just a thought of attending makes me sick. :-(

Sometimes, I'm thinking what's the characteristic of a geek. I have tried to type it in my dictionary, and here is the result:
1. An unfashionable or socially inept person.
2. A person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest.
3. A carnival performer who does wild or disgusting acts.

Well, I suppose (or I hope) I don't fit with the third definition, but I definitely am the first and the second. I hate it when I have to buy fashionable clothes. I always wear the same clothes for what feels like ages -- more, if possible. I won't buy anything except my family protests. I don't know why, but I just don't like it.

But, ladies and gentlemen, if a geek is always unfashionable, it clearly doesn't fit with the second definition: "A person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest". So, the second definition says that people who love shopping (notice that I sayid "people", not "women") are also shopping geeks. They're fashionable, aren't they? But are they called geeks? Nope.

So what is geek? Er, actually, there's nothing called a geek. That's just a word, you know, made of alphabets G, double-E and K. Words are just codes, as someone said (Barthes, I suppose, or Fiske. I forget), and these codes have no meaning except if a society gives them a meaning. It's a result of relationship between codes and conventions in a society, where a code consists of words connotes a specific meaning. And this meaning, sadly, is defined as "an unfashionable or socially inept person".

In conclusion... do you need any other proof I'm a geek? Heck, what kind of person will talk philosophy in his just-for-fun blog, except if he's a geek? I even started this post without any idea it will end up this way. Well, here goes my holiday...

Rats, I really hate going to parties... >:-(

Linguistic Disaster

Okay. Sometimes, I can't understand what's the reason I choose English over Indonesian language. I mean, Indonesia is my mother tongue, right? So it should--should--fit better for me. Or so to say.

But as I think more about it, there are the differences between these two languages:
1. English tends to be cooler. It's more straight, more complicated and more strained, with plenty of rules called "grammar". On the other hand, Indonesian is more "barbaric". Though there're some rules to organize sentences (subject + verb + object), there's no tenses that makes it more complicated. These rules aren't named grammar, either: it has special name called "EYD" (short for "Ejaan yang Disempurnakan" or Perfected Spelling).

2. English is more suitable for serious stories. This might be because of subjective perception in the culture, of course, but the novels and novellas work better in English. The reason is probably because this language has more "everyday" vocabularies than Indonesian.

3. HOWEVER, Indonesian language works better for humor stories. One reason is because Indonesian language has a big collection of swearing words, coming from different languages in Indonesia's subculture. Even Sundanese language (one of the native languages) has its own swearing words, and then combined to the swearing words in Javan language and the other native languages. As a result, Indonesia's national language itself has much more bad words than English. This is kinda embarrassing, actually. -.-"

4. English humor needs more twisted ideas to be funny. Unlike Indonesian that can use "absolutely inappropriate" words to be funny, swearing words in English are more straightforward and unimaginative. The most often heard, of course, is word f*ck, motherf*cker, c*cks*cker and such words. Compared to Indonesian: Anj*ng, Bab*, T*i, Bangs*t, Kampr*t and so much more. Swearing words in English are similar to one another (the 'f' words to the 's' words), but Indonesian is more varied. I can't believe I'm talking about this... -.-"

5. Even the accent itself has an impact. Indonesian accent is more varied in its "up" and "down". This means that Indonesian people can use different types of voice to give different meanings. This works very excellently for irony and similar stuffs. English, on the other hand, is mostly higher than Indonesian. There's no "down": just up, up and more up. It's difficult to understand if you haven't experienced both languages by yourself. :-P

Language is part of the codes in a society, or so I've heard. So, it is possible that language also represents the society it belongs to. And because these two societies (Indonesia and English-speaking countries) are different, the languages must also have different impacts. I wonder how these two languages can be created in the first place. Wish I can make a research about it. :-(