You’re fun, energetic, serious, and focused on what’s important. You may not have the world by the tail, but you’re going to look like you do, by gum.
Whoa! Another earthquake. They seem to come every morning about this time too. Did you feel it? It isn’t just me, is it? (via David C. Cook)
I just pulled up something I wrote in 2002 and thought I’d share it with you. It’s true. I did not make this up.
My co-worker was home alone when she found a large spider on a pile of towels. She smacked it repeatedly with a fly swatter. screaming all the while, but afraid that it was only stunned, she scooped it up in the towels, dropped them on the driveway, and whacked it several more times, again screaming the whole time.
Later, she overheard her husband asking her son about the spider in the driveway, assuming he had run over it in his car a few minutes prior.
“Oh, that big, brown thing?” her son exclaimed. “It was huge! I couldn’t believe it! Good thing Mom didn’t see it.”
Our friend Anthony Sacramone sends a link to a snarky column at Intercollegiate Review: “How to Be a Really Lousy Journalist for Fun and Profit”:
Start with the assumption that your own views are moderate. Within your newsroom, they probably are, even if last night at a colleague’s dinner party you argued for single-payer health care and mandatory re-education camps for homeschoolers. Then, instead of describing the views of people outside your newsroom, just label them “right-wing,” “anti-abortion,” or “extremely conservative.” You might be wondering if, finding rational argument too burdensome, you can just resort to calling the people you disagree with bigots and dismiss them. Turns out you can!
If you need to beef up your word count, throw in a few stereotypes and clichés about backwoods believers. Be careful even here, though, as you don’t want to showcase views that might catch on.
Read the whole thing here.
Lars shared this article on Facebook, and I was moved–moved I tell you–to share it here, because you can’t get good writing like this often: “The voice at the other end of the line gave a sigh, like a mighty oak toppling into a great river, or something else that didn’t sound like a sigh if you gave it a moment’s thought. ‘Who cares what the stupid critics say?’ advised the literary agent. ‘They’re just snobs. You have millions of fans.‘”
Michael Deacon writes in response to the Dan Brown’s upcoming novel, Inferno
The novel is another unique take on art history and world conspiracy. From the book: “Against [the backdrop of Dante’s Inferno], Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem
Dude! That is one unique thriller! I’ll go on record now by predicting this will tell of a Manx plot to manipulate world currency. Dante has been rumored to be Manx sympathizer among all the scholars who have studied him. Sorry, I should have given you a spoiler alert.
On a note related to Lars’ last post, here are ten American habits which at least one Brit cannot understand. Take flossing, for instance, or talking to strangers.
By contrast, here are ten British habits which apparently don’t jive with Americans. Take avoiding eye contact and direct intentions. I wonder how many times I’d be tempted to tell a Brit to shut up.
And now for something completely different:
In the spirit of Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine, I offer the following excerpt from the nonexistent book, Lars Walker’s Fulsome Compendium of Rightfully Forgotten Church History:
The Vigilant Baptist Movement (June 1852): On June 3, 1852, independent Baptist preacher Titus A. Drumhead founded the Vigilant Baptist Fellowship. The Vigilant Baptists took their marching orders from Luke 21:36: “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” Operating on the hermeneutical principle that nothing whatever in Scripture is ever to be taken symbolically, Rev. Drumhead declared that he had given up sleeping forever, trusting that God was able to sustain him in wakefulness so long as he lived. He exhorted his congregation (which consisted of six people) to follow his godly example. On June 5 of that same year, the Vigilant Baptists nearly entered into a merger with the Independent Church of Spiritual Water, a group which took its inspiration from John 4:14: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst….” and so abstained from all liquids entirely. The merger was never consummated due to Rev. Drumhead’s unexpected unconsciousness. Awakening twelve hours later and concluding that he was not among the Elect, Rev. Drumhead became a Methodist. The fate of his movement, however, was happier than that of the I.C.S.W.
Our friend Loren Eaton gave me a plug over at his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall, yesterday. Thanks, Loren.
Finally, another great article about an American cartoonist from Stefan Kanfer at City Journal. This time he writes of Winsor McCay, the first great (and insufficiently remembered) newspaper cartoonist and pioneer animator. When I was a kid, my grandparents had a book of Little Nemo in Slumberland in their house. I glanced at it, but didn’t care for the look of it. Little Nemo, in particular, looked like a sissy to me.
And indeed, McCay’s work isn’t really for children. As an adult I’ve had the chance to look at a little of the man’s work, and it’s… gobsmacking. Great vistas of incredible, hallucinatory images splashed all across the newspaper page in full color. The man’s draftsmanship, modeling, and use of perspective have never been surpassed. In fact, I don’t think anyone else ever tried to do what he did.
This is for our friend, Hunter Baker of Union U.
This is common, perhaps, and fun. Readers have retitled works to better describe them, such as George Eliot’s “Why Be Nice To Your Siblings When You’re Just Going to Die in a Flood” (The Mill on the Floss) and George Orwell’s “If You Give a Pig a Windmill, He’ll Pursue Absolute Power.” This one from David Foster Wallace looks like a great title to me.