On Words and Business

For a little light holiday cheer…check out the C-SPAN coverage of Santa Claus bail out hearing.

You read it here first: I can’t chew gum while I write.

At no stage of writing, from blank page to rewrites or edits, can I be chewing gum. Even if I’m not reading the piece out loud to myself. Don’t know why.

What can’t you do while you are writing?

A fun website to amuse; and to ensure your writing is as full or free of buzzwords as it needs to be.

BuzzWhack–Dedicated to demystifying buzzwords

Literally.

Bookmark this page: RealSnailMail.net

It’s officially launching on August 11, but you can test it now.

An email is loaded onto a chip on the back of an a live snail, when it comes near enough to the pick up point. Then, whenever the snail gets near enough to the drop off point, the email will be picked up and sent on to the recipient. Speed of light everywhere except on the snail’s back–so who knows how long it’ll take to arrive.

So cool!

Ahhh…now that Memorial Day has passed, a reader’s thoughts turn to a list (or pile, as you prefer) of books to read for the summer.

Starting off my summer is The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson. This book is, as described on the back cover, laugh-out-loud funny. The woman who sat next to me on the plane yesterday can attest to my occasional and, I would imagine, startling outbursts of laughter. This man is a literary genius.

A little taste

“The slowest place of all in my corner of the youthful firmament was the large cracked-leather dental chair of Dr. D. K. Brewster, our spooky, cadaverous dentist, while waiting for him to assemble his instruments and get down to business. There time didn’t move forward at all. It just hung.

“Dr. Brewster was the most unnerving dentist in America. He was, for one thing, about 108 years old and had more than a hint of Parkinsonism in his wobbly hands. Nothing about him inspired confidence. He was perennially surprised by the power of his own equipment. ‘Whoa!‘ he’d say as he briefly enlivened some screaming device or other. ‘You could do some damage with that, I bet.’

“Worse still, he didn’t believe in novocaine…”

Three new and fun discoveries, if you like grammar. Which, “according” to a recent entry in The Grammar Vandal , the white folk’s among us should.

The Grammar Vandal

Apostrophe Abuse

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks