May 2010
1 post
“Use spaced en dashes – rather than close-set em dashes or spaced hyphens – to...”
– Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (via Design Intellection, guywithabike) OH FUCK MY WORLD IS ASHES (via syntheticpubes)
March 2009
1 post
“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”
– Tom Clancy(via dominilucy)(via enamour)(via figuremeout)(via bigfun)
February 2009
1 post
alanajoy:
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don’t do it. if you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it. if you’re doing it because you want...
January 2009
4 posts
Truman Capote
waksays:
INTERVIEWER What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?
CAPOTE I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use...
“Writing is like hammering coal out of the earth; revising is like eating cheese...”
– AU Professor Jonathan Loesberg, 01/14/09 (via girlindc) (via 24freedinners) (via suicideblonde)
Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction →
asie:
katespencer:
grutty:
Sage advice for the modern writer.
Esp. the bit about TK’ing it instead of getting lost in a Google search
“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives...”
– George Orwell, in “Why I Write.” (From Mise en Abyme). (via mills)(via fatmanatee) (via peterwknox)
December 2008
1 post
November 2008
5 posts
“Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the...”
– Consequences:
Gentle Mode: A certain amount of time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing.
Normal Mode: If you persistently avoid writing, you will be played a most unpleasant sound. The sound will stop if and only if you continue to write.
Kamikaze...
“the only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you create will...”
– margaret atwood (via ryanluikens)
President Obama - washingtonpost.com →
Excellent editorial from the editors of the Post.
October 2008
1 post
Advice from a person with a BA in psychology →
“Jason Roeder really did earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Then he sort of wandered off. The following counsel is not meant to substitute for professional therapy, psychotropic medications, the endorphin surge of a long run, taking a bubble bath, yelling at a waitress so you’ll feel like a big man, or going to Urban Outfitters and shaking a Magic 8 Ball that you’re...
September 2008
3 posts
“Language stands to speech like a pattern in relation to the garments that can be...”
– Martin Montgomery, An Introduction to Language and Society xvi (1986)
likemice:
Bon Iver Skinny Love
August 2008
7 posts
Kurt Vonnegut: How to Write With Style →
asie:
cubicle17:
Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead —- or, worse, they will stop reading you.
mm-clam chowdah.
A is...
Devastating
confessionizer:
I should have married you. Perhaps my life would be different, perhaps my life would be happier today. Perhaps my life would have been on a better path. If only I could turn back time, I’d spend it with you.
“I think ultimately we shouldn’t worry too much about what ideas young adult...”
– Jezebel (via peterwknox)
All in favor of critical thinking skills, say, “Hey!”
July 2008
16 posts
Haiku
aberjona:
Cool night on the roof Though the day’s sunshine still glows Hot bricks beside me.
Watchclaudia:
A remake of the Dark Knight trailer starring two little boys & a batman bigwheel.
Heh. Hopsital.
In keeping with the kids/bikes/popular-culture-meets-daily-life pastiche we seem to be working up here.
A man weirder than the man Addie saw
I drove by a man riding his bike in flip flops and a red thong and nothing else. He was pulling a small trailer that had a child’s bike on it. Thank God a child was not in the trailer because they would have had a close-up view of his bare ass. I shudder at the thought of a child being exposed to such treatment.
Just write. →
An Overheard Conversation at the Suburban... →
aberjona:
if the Suburban Neighborhood Pool were in Deadwood.
More Strange from days past →
The thing about the reduplicative copula is is...
I’ve already complained loudly about this here, but lo and behold, Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day deals with this very matter:
is is. As early as the 1980s, a doubled “is” (called a reduplicative copula) became common in American speech {what I meant is is that …}. This is not the type of double that is sometimes grammatically required {what it is is a major...
Jury Duty
My mom is at the courthouse right now responding to a summons she got to report for jury duty. She doesn’t want to do it, especially because her favorite grandchildren are visiting right now.
I suggested she draw a swastika on her forehead but I am fairly certain she didn’t do that. But it got me thinking we should make a list of the funniest excuses/reasons to get yourself out of...
Character
He walked with a limp, although no one knew why. In the 27 years he had been alive, he had never gotten hurt, not even sprained his ankle. His hair was patchy white. Not grey because of aging. White. Like he got really scared once. He wore it pulled back into a low ponytail that showed off the spots. His red wire glasses outlined his watery eyes. The wrinkles on his forehead and around his...
More strange, please.
Friends,
Let me share with you a true story.
While driving the kiddos home in the rain, I saw an extremely tall man…riding his bike…while wearing flip flops…a bike helmet…and a speedo. He was wearing nothing else.
Later, I shared the story with Dayne, and he said, “That’s about as strange as it gets.” To which I replied, “Is it?”
...
damekana: I am seriously digging this person's... →
At the moment: very summery. Different from summary. One’s an adjective, the other’s… well anyway, to summarize, this goes well with a rum & coke. And a squeeze of lime. Cuba Libre.
—aberjona
Fail. Damekana appears to have changed names, or left Muxtape. A discarded mux! Not the ultimate sadness. But it means the link won’t work.
Olsson's Braces For Chapter 11 Filing -... →
Bum news — I returned from our honeymoon only to discover that my favorite bookstore and cafe has had to close its doors. No fun: lots of great memories at that place.
More here.
“Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League dees, and there I...”
– Ring familiar, anyone?
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education, by William Deresiewicz, from this month’s The American Scholar (interestingly titled on the front-cover of the magazine “Why Ivy-Leaguers Can’t Think”) is a must-read.
Now, I know: there’re lots of great people in that system. But...
Don be strong.
June 2008
16 posts
Paging Briannalisa →
This one goes out to my friend, Domaldo. Create away, my friends.
Lego Legos. Pointless. Brilliant. →
I know there are people out there who are much more into Legos than am I (as Ironic Sans may illustrate). Nonetheless, this little video had me all wistful.
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in...”
– Winston churchill (via thresca) (via claudia) (via aberjona)
from shore to shore years hence
aberjona:
Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore; Others will watch the run of the flood-tide; Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east; Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high; A hundred years hence, or ever...
Palimpsest-Pentimento
aberjona:
These two words fascinate me. Different definitions, so different uses—but they seem somehow related. pa·limp·sest n. 1 : writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased 2 : something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface pen·ti·men·to n. An underlying image in a painting, as an earlier...