Why These Things Are So and Such
I keep forgetting I can write stuff here. There’s a Text button option, if you don’t want to upload images, music, or something else.
On the other hand, I really have nothing to say. I’m fine if everyone understands I’m politically independent; there’s nothing else to say about that. I’m spiritual but I don’t believe in a deity as most people define it; again, end of discussion.
Walk through my city with me.
Frozen Mississippi River.
The Unknown Bear: documentary
A friend of mine has initiated a Kickstarter to fund a documentary: the population of sun bears in Borneo is dwindling. Paul, my classmate in Bali, wants to raise awareness of these gentle, intelligent creatures before people wipe them off the map. They make popular pets due to their demeanor; they’re hunted for their pelts; and their bile is prized for Chinese medicine (predictably).
Biodiversity is the concept that the ecosystem upon which our livelihood relies works best with as many different animals and plants to support it as possible. Monocropping destroys vast tracts of land; removing a predator species allows the prey to overpopulate and suffer, as well as placing a burden upon the animals or plants it needs for support, which sets off an ever-widening wave of imbalance. Raising awareness of sun bears will generate interest in finding peaceful, creative ways to allow them to exist peaceably alongside human settlements, rather than at conflict with the invasive human species.
It doesn’t take much to support a Kickstarter project, but it does take a lot of people. If you have a couple bucks, please consider helping my friend, and the Bornean sun bears, with a show of support.
Reluctant thief leaves Papa John’s with pizza for his hungry family instead of cash
man who apparently summoned the courage to rob a Montana pizza restaurant changed his mind as the clerk started to hand him money, broke down crying and ended up leaving with a pizza to feed his hungry family.
Helena Police Chief Troy McGee praised the clerk’s actions. “I’d say the clerk was pretty astute,” McGee said. “I mean, he knows how to talk to this person. Kind of commiserated with him a little. Talked to him about it and you know actually changed his mind about robbing the place. That was pretty good.” (Fotolia)
Pressed for comment, CEO John Schnatter blamed Obamacare amid some choice expletives. He emphatically assured the Montana community that the clerk would be dragged through town behind a pickup truck, per store policy, for violating the chain’s “no handouts to goddamned welfare cheats” code.
‘Not every opinion is valid:’ Carleton University free speech wall torn down within hours
Only hours after students installed a “Free Speech Wall” at Carleton University to prove that campus free speech was alive and well, it was torn down by an activist who claimed the wall was an “act of violence,” against the gay community.
“What we wanted to promote was competition of ideas, rather than ‘if I disagree with you I’ve got to censor you,’” said Ian CoKehyeng, founder of Carleton Students for Liberty, the creators of the wall.
Installed on Monday in the Unicentre Galleria, one of campus’ most high-traffic areas, the wall was really more of a 1.2 x 1.8 meter wooden plank wrapped in paper and equipped with felt markers.
By Tuesday morning the wall was gone, destroyed in an act of “forceful resistance,” by seventh-year human rights student Arun Smith.
This is hilarious. A soi-disant human rights activists tears down a public-access “free speech” banner.
The best argument against democracy, of course, is to speak with the average-joe-on-the-street for ten minutes.
This happens all the time. Every car horn, every whistle, every cat call and lewd exclamation, strengthens the lesson I’ve been taught over and over and over again throughout my entire life: as a lady, my body is on public display and open for judgment—from anyone.
Most men who will see this are decent, rational guys who will sympathize with my feelings. A small, vocal handful of dudes will send me private messages about how women like me can’t “take a fucking compliment.” This is not for either of you. This is for the guys who don’t know yet that attracting unwanted attention doesn’t make women feel good, no matter how nice their intentions are. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can say that I personally get embarrassed, often scared, and always—ALWAYS—ashamed, in some way, in how I look.
So… now that you know, cut it out. Tell all the girls how nice they are and how amazing they are at their jobs instead.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr’s Eight Rules for Great Writing
- Find a Subject You Care About
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your hose or a love letter to the girl next door will do.
If your office doesn’t host a late-night Pajama Jammy-Jam… why not? Why do you stay there?
For dinner, we had a chili cook-off. No dearth of good eats for this 24-hour rebrand.
Our first meeting of the day: we’re conferring with The Bridge for Youth to get a sense of what they’re looking for in a rebrand.
http://redeyerebrand.com/#timeline
I walked across town to try a shot of Pappy van Winkle, when one bar was highlighted as having received a supply. The online magazine represented it as exceedingly rare. The bartender was bewildered as to why the place was full of people requesting this and Rip van Winkle all day. I told him about the article, and then I witnessed a small gang altercation, and then I waited for a bus with a bunch of teens smoking ditchweed. But I got to try the bourbon.
His Awful Library
“Wait here, won’t you,” he told me. “I’ll be gone momentarily.” One thing I appreciated about him was his unfailingly correct usage of momentarily, much like how he never misspelled truly and knew that hee hee had two E’s each. He was a rare breed, rarer with each year.
I rested my hat on the end table and wandered over to a large wall of books. I knew him to be a voracious reader, and subsequently he was a collector of literature. Factoring in the sheer quantity of the books in this room, I perceived a dim and fuzzy line between librarian and hoarder, but I chose to give my friend the benefit of the doubt.
The titles on the shelf before me were unfamiliar: The Barcarole of Homelessness, by Daryl Huppert. The Apothegm of the Strongman, by Javier Manderscheid. Heskett’s Thrombus of Commonality. What the hell…
“See anything you like?” His voice, close behind my nape, startled me.
“I’m detecting a theme to these books.”
He nodded sagely. “Somewhere I developed a predilection for realistic fiction, memoirs, creative non-fiction.”
“That’s not it, it’s…” I held out The Patient of the Town.
“Ah, yes, Earnestine Nakasone! I heard about her on NPR last week. She sounded intriguing so I had to pick it up.” He took the book from my hand and hefted it, grinning at it. “I had to look up bildungsroman, too, to appreciate this tidy little novel. Nakasone really takes her time with developing the protagonist, but at the end she makes a perfectly ordinary life feel like something truly epic.”
“No, that’s not what I’m getting at.”
“Not that I have much Japanese pastoral precedent against which to measure it, of course, but-“
“The titles!” I shouted in his face. When he got on a roll, there wasn’t much one could do to dissuade him, but he absolutely hated loud, sharp noises. He flinched and took a swing at my ear. Of course I ducked, but pursued: “Why do you only collect titles that follow a noun-of-noun format?”
He looked up at his broad wall of books as though he’d never seen it before. It was five minutes before he asked, “Do I?”
- The Pornographer of Subspecies, Fernando Ricca
- The Sea of Advertisements, Eric Smit
- A Degree of Range, Harriett Yeaman
- The Flight of the Shade, Julio Lasky
- The Contemptuousness of Lissomness, Lady Chandra Dupler
- The Formant of the Presbytery, Father Ted Sebree
- Turn of the Crampon and Other Tales, Maricela Erick
- Selenographer of a Woman, Lilia Brow
- The Abrogator of Trades, Christian Roberie III
“There’s certainly a case to be made.” He shrugged. “But it’s nothing more than coincidence, I assure you.”
Something in his diffidence offended me. Seizing hold of his upper ear, I led him about the room and challenged him to find me one book that broke from this format. He stalled, claiming personal injury, so I slammed the French doors shut and shoved his china cabinet before them, guarding my barricade with my person.
Three hours later, he confessed. “I was going through a bookstore and I noticed this pattern in the book titles. I thought it was my imagination, as I could recall titles that did not fall into this pattern. This seems to be a new trend in contemporary literature.
“I decided to see how far it went, and I made it a personal challenge to buy books that used the noun-of-noun template for a title. I never thought I could fill a room, but…” He waved his arms around: he filled the largest room in his manse, with no duplicate titles, and informed me another score of crates were stacked in his garage, awaiting storage space. He planned to build some central shelving, eight shelves high, running down the center of this room.
Rather than allow him to succumb to this whimsical tastelessness, I pushed him through a window—defenestration, he called it—and set the room on fire.
NoTengoEnie
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Memidex
Memidex is an excellent cross-reference tool for spelling and usage. Refer to Merriam-Webster to start with, but if there are any questions, settle them with Memidex.
