Goofing

The Sixth Weirdness

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A few days ago, the Maverick Philosopher linked to us in connection with an Andrew Klavan post he wrote, primarily pointing out this article from The Weekly Standard.

So, now I have to confess what’s wrong with me, eh? Well, one man’s weird is another man’s social obligation. I should ask my sister what is truly weird about me. Take for example:

1. I always carry a pocket handkerchief. I’m sure some people think that’s weird.

2. I can’t break the habit of falling asleep while praying, bent double on the floor with the circulation in my legs (and sometimes my arms) cut off.

3. For all the joking I do about beer, the closest I’ve come to drinking one is a sip of someone else’s O’Doul’s.

4. Despite #3, I confess I have consumed almost an entire bottle of Cognac on my own. Over several months, but still without any help from the sweet wife, who avoids alcoholic and caffeinated beverages like stagnant pond water.

5. From memory, I can sing a few songs from the American War of Independence.

Tags: I’d like to see Blestwithsons and Lintefiniel take this up, if they haven’t already.

Goofing

Nothing tough about this one

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Andrew Klavan has this essay up over at City Journal today.

That high-pitched noise you hear in the distance is me, screaming, “I wish I’d written that!”

Michael at The Euphemist has come out of hibernation long enough to tag Phil and me with a “Six Weird Things About Me” meme.

Now there’s a challenge.

If he’d asked for six normal things about me, I might have had some trouble.

OK, where do we start?

I have heterochromia iridis. This is not a rare, debilitating genetic disease. It’s the condition where a person has bi-colored eyes. A famous instance is the rocker David Bowie, who has one blue eye and one brown. My H. I. comes in a different form, where the two colors are mixed in the eyes, in a pinto pony combination of brown and gray (or blue, depending on the light and who’s looking).

I like folk music.

I don’t like cheese of any kind, except in pizza.

I actually much preferred the second Conan movie to the first one.

I have no good memories associated with any sport (except for live steel combat).

I can read Norwegian in the old, Gothic Fraktur typeface.

I shall now take my hat and cane and go.

Fiction

Alternative History Named Evil

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Author Orson Scott Card calls a thriller he read “evil.”

At the beginning of the book, we are shown a Palestinian during the 1948 war over the creation of the state of Israel. . . . [Steve] Berry sets this scene against a background in which Israelis are systematically driving all the Palestinians out of Israel; the Israelis are heavily armed by the British while the Palestinians have no weapons to counter them; and the Israelis have rounded up whole villages of Palestinians and slaughtered them, men and women alike. . . .

This is the kind of thing that readers — especially ones who don’t know anything about history — are likely to assume the writer has researched, so that it can be trusted. . . . So when a novel like Berry’s The Alexandria Link treats such events as background, as if everybody knew that this is how Israelis act, what it is really doing is furthering the propaganda of one side in a desperate war.

Uncategorized

An Abundance of Single Cats

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Have you seen the list of 40 things which only happen in movies?

  • One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at once (this is known as Stallone’s Law).
  • All grocery shopping involves the purchase of French loaves which will be placed in open brown paper bags (Caveat: when said bags break, only fruit will spill out).

One of them stands out above the rest for me, that being “all single women have a cat.” Help me out here. I know all single women do not have cats, but aren’t there a lot of them who do? I mean, most of them?

Writing

Rooten English Spellin

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Ever wonder why the words through, bough, dough, and rough, are pronounced different despite their similar spelling? Mark this down as another opportunity for that familiar past-time of all warm-blooded Americans: blame the French. It’s an exaggeration, but don’t let petty details get in your way of a good anti-Gaulic rant. From David Crystal’s The Fight for English: How language pundits ate, shot, and left:

Much of the irregularity of modern English spelling derives from the forcing together of Old English and French systems of spelling in the Middle Ages. People struggled to find the best way of writing English throughout the period. … Even Caxton didn’t help, at times. Some of his typesetters were Dutch, and they introduced some of their own spelling conventions into their work. That is where the gh in such words as ghost comes from.

The words in our first sentence come from the Old English words thurh, boh, dag, and ruh.

Uncategorized

It’s Friday. All you get is scraps

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Will Duquette of View From the Foothills is another favorite blogger of mine whose posting has regrettably decreased. But he put up an entertaining poem about Smeagol this week, and I wanted to wave you in that direction.

Guy Stewart shares this butt-kick for discouraged Christian Science Fiction writers.

Have you heard the recording of Alec Baldwin chewing out his daughter on voice mail? What’s your take on that? I know that even the best parents can be pushed past the limit sometimes and say things they regret, with no harm done in the larger scheme of things. But I grew up in a situation where this kind of tirade was pretty much daily fare, and so it’s hard for me to judge where the limits are. Do you parents out there respond to the recording by saying, “Wow, I’m glad there wasn’t a recorder on the last time I cut loose on the kids,” or do you say, “That was definitely over the line”? I’m just curious. I honestly don’t have a gauge for this, and I’m not a parent myself.

Uncategorized

It's Friday. All you get is scraps

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Will Duquette of View From the Foothills is another favorite blogger of mine whose posting has regrettably decreased. But he put up an entertaining poem about Smeagol this week, and I wanted to wave you in that direction.

Guy Stewart shares this butt-kick for discouraged Christian Science Fiction writers.

Have you heard the recording of Alec Baldwin chewing out his daughter on voice mail? What’s your take on that? I know that even the best parents can be pushed past the limit sometimes and say things they regret, with no harm done in the larger scheme of things. But I grew up in a situation where this kind of tirade was pretty much daily fare, and so it’s hard for me to judge where the limits are. Do you parents out there respond to the recording by saying, “Wow, I’m glad there wasn’t a recorder on the last time I cut loose on the kids,” or do you say, “That was definitely over the line”? I’m just curious. I honestly don’t have a gauge for this, and I’m not a parent myself.

Authors

The Great Expectations Log Flume!

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What luck! There’s a Charles Dickens theme park in Kent, England. “If it’s done right, it can exploit precisely the kind of thing that made Dickens popular in his own day,” one man says.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture