Yaolee Chen

English 101

Reading Alan Fobbs’ Papers

Glenn Simshaw

Alan Fobbs’ papers are the excellent reading material for the people who could not fall into sleep at nights. Fobbs’ writing had committed two types of criminal act that he had either talking too much or said too little. Any normal healthy eyes will automatically set his or her brain into resting while trying to understand an unreadable Fobbs’ papers.

The Fobbs’ papers are the sleeping pills, evidence one: he had said too much on a sentence, like “The sky is blue unless it is full of clouds. Or unless there is dust in the air or millions of dust mites or flying autumn aphids or soot or sweet pea petals or dead skin or …” An analysis of this sentence, “the sky is blue unless” will turn a normal healthy mind automatically into the idea: Well, the sky probably is red or orange or yellow or green or purple. And then a health normal mind will keep on reading the second idea from Fobbs’ thoughtful sentence. “Unless it is full of clouds”, the second idea might be the sky has a tinny silk cloud, or the sky has a rippled cloud, or the sky has a huge cloud of dark-blocky-shape like the dirt. Then the reader will struggle his/her brain to place the word “unless” together with the first idea or with the second idea. A normal health mind will relocate the word “unless” in the very begin of the sentence: “Unless the sky…”, or “The sky unless”, or “The sky is unless”, or “is blue unless”, or why not “unless is blue”; so, Fobbs is saying “the sky is blue”--- “Oh, no, he means anything, but blue”. A normal healthy brain will be frustrated and, believe me, the reader will fall into sleep automatically.

The second evidence of that Fobbs papers are the sleeping drugs, is because he had said insufficiently. For example, Fobbs wrote, “Some things float”: a good reader will wait with patient to find out what the “Some thing” is the writer talking about. But unfortunately, the author provided insufficient information, and all the reader can do is to fix his/her eyes on the print “SOME THING” but really getting nothing from the reading. The reader will wait and wait and wait, till he/she falls into sleep.

One will not offend Fobbs’ papers unless you have a brain like me. I will mechanically keep searching and looking what Fobbs was trying to say in the first stage: where to put the word “unless”. And my brain will keep working and working till I, do to myself, run into a mental disorder. So, I am excused to read Fobbs’ paper.