- So now it’s not “what the founding fathers meant” but “what the mid-nineteeth-century fathers meant”? Look, Iowa GOP, it seems to me that, if the best you can come up with is a version of a constitutional amendment that was never actually ratified, you’re grasping at straws. [via]
- Bloomsbury will e-publish a one-million-page Churchill archive. I’m imagining some lonely archivist shouting, “But it’s one million and one pages!” and being told to quietly get rid of the offending page. But that’s probably just me.
- “Carpe diem” doesn’t mean “seize the day“? Man, Robin Williams was a terrible teacher! [via]
- Man, more rejection letters should be like this. (Conversely, less of them should be like this.)
- And finally, first this, now this. I have got to start riding the subway more often!
language
Tuesday various
- I see the dead Tauntaun wedding cake. And I see the zombie wedding cake. But what I don’t see is the obvious next step: the zombie Tauntaun wedding cake. Get on it, cake-makers!
- The movie(s) may still disappoint, but I’m genuinely excited by the new Harry Potter trailer.
- Martin Scorcese, meanwhile, has never seen the Harry Potter movies. I think they passed up a great opportunity to have him direct one of them. Seriously, can’t you see De Niro or Keitel as Voldemort?
- I’ve been saying this about emoticons for years and years. [via]
- And finally, today through Thursday marks the third Harlan Ellison Rare Book Purge. I’m tempted, though mostly by the stuff that’s a little outside of my price range. Say what you will about the man — and heaven knows there’s a lot to be said, both for and against — there’s no denying that he’s written some phenomenal work.
Thursday various
- It’s neither especially “great” nor in any way “new,” but this great new Rolling Stones song is definitely interesting. It’s one from the vault.
- George Washington owes $300,000 in overdue library fines. Good luck collecting that. [via]
- These are protests I can get behind:
- Student uses Westboro Baptist Church visit as fundraiser
- Green Apple Books donated 100% of the profits of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance. [via]
…a flashlight panning over thoughts, rather than thoughts given light via considered expression.
As McWhorter says, “this is someone watching thoughts go by at a certain distance and gluing them together willy-nilly — for the first time.” [via]
Out of all ho
Today’s phrase of “forgotten English,” according to my desk calendar of the same name, is “out of all ho,” meaning “out of all restraint” and “derived from the exclamation ‘ho!’ — used to stop the combat at a tournament.”
Which has pretty much nothing to do with today.
Aside from a late afternoon meeting about our e-commerce system — a meeting that threatened to keep me at work until 5 o’clock, but thankfully didn’t — not a whole lot happened today. I finished reading Already Dead by Charlie Huston, a pretty gritty but deeply entertaining vampire detective story, and at work continued reading about transference and countertransference, specifically how they relate to the counseling of older adults. Why, what are you reading?
It’s my sister’s birthday — she’s four years younger than me — but otherwise pretty much just an average, wintry Tuesday.
Wednesday various
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- Your roof is leaking if you think I’m going to start using any of this 1950s hipster slang. [via]
- Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And then, of course, I blew away the other road with my machine gun.Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle wanted to be a poet. [via]
- And finally, M. Rickert on storytelling:
I think that to say every story has already been told is to dismiss the temperament of words, to devalue nuance and meaning. Yes, of course, if stories are summed up into one or two sentence synopsis, then I imagine they all fit into certain categories. But stories are not just a matter of summation; if they were, the summation would be enough to satisfy that need for story. In fact, every word matters. I don’t know why people are so eager to diminish stories. You don’t hear architects bemoaning that every building has already been built. Within each field of creation there is a structure that exists as the foundation of that creation. The opportunity for expansion and artistry lies within that structure and is not diminished by it.