Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
J.P. Donleavy, an early literary hero of mine, was quoted in Playboy (May, 1979) as saying, “Writing is turning one’s worst moments into money.”
Would that this were so. Meanwhile, another spin on the essence of writing is going the rounds on Facebook:
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In other quarters, writers instead turn whiskey into piss and engage in binge writing in the intervals between their alchemical endeavors. (I encountered the expression “binge writing” listening to a Letterman interview … Read more
Vertically walleyed: A new affliction, an occupational hazard for the digitally connected and cool, a neologism of sorts coined right here and right now.
“My students tell me about an important new skill: it involves maintaining eye contact with someone while you text someone else; it’s hard, but it can be done.”
That’s from a great NY Times article by Sherry Turkle, “The Flight from Conversation.” And this advice has expanded my notion of what’s fittin’ and … Read more
Only a year ago the forces of tradition prevailed (click on image):
Now the AP Stylebook has reversed its position. And in the streets there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth as right-thinking editors everywhere protest the onslaught of lexical entropy to the point, some fear, we’ll be left to describe human experience with nothing but “whatever” and “huh!”
In breaking news, Shakespeare has been disinterred by a team of archaeologists and mediums in search of … Read more
Here on my eight-floor balcony, watching the sun retire across the river to the west, I can almost hear the waters advancing from Saphan Kwai. Or is that merely the kerfuffle of conflicting rumor? For weeks, here in Phya Thai District, we’ve awaited the floods from the north as they advance with glacial alacrity. One of the many rumors, inconsistently promulgated by government officials, was that we might well be spared altogether.
Ultimately, though, it seems the hi-so spirits of … Read more
In a recent post, “Get your new words while they’re hot,” we looked at neologisms that have appeared in these pages. Read on for more along those lines.
Back in March of this year Bill the Mathematician sent me to the “Church For Christ” site, which quoted Sarah Palin’s now-famous remark:
… Read more“We need to take this opportunity to talk about Jesus and rebute these lies and show people they cannot simply seek the truth, but
Watch the English language evolve! Here are some of this site’s neologisms—original, borrowed and even commissioned—from my posts over the past year or two. The numbers refer to how many hits each gets on Google as of right now.
* Cymbalalalazophobia (fashioned to order by Dr Anthony Alcock, coiner of words for our age extraordinaire). 0 hits (a big surprise) 
* Iktsuarpok (with thanks to the Inuit and to Adam Jacot de Boinod for collecting this specimen). 7,570 hits
So just the other morning I suffered something like a flash of cymbalalalazophobia, which is hardly surprising, Sara claims, given my lifestyle.
My recent “Hope in dark times” post elicited the following Facebook query: Is there an official fear of hi-hat cymbals phobia?
If there weren’t, it stuck me that I had a friend who might be uniquely qualified to coin such an expression. Dr. Anthony Alcock is not only a fine classical scholar, linguist, Egyptologist, jazz & blues … Read more
Just when things couldn’t get any worse, they did. But it turned out they didn’t really, and Sara’s right, I worry too much.
I’ve just come back into my office, and I heard this horrible rasping from the left wing of my iMac. My mind is going, “It’s the fan, right? It can’t be the hard drive, it can’t be the hard drive, aiyeeeee.”
Careful investigation has revealed the real problem. I had an online jazz station playing, way down … Read more
Iktsuarpok: an Inuit word more useful to us citizens of the digital universe than umpteen expressions for varieties of snow.
Here’s how the blogsite Mental Floss characterizes the expression:
… Read more“You know that feeling of anticipation when you’re waiting for someone to show up at your house and you keep going outside to see if they’re there yet? This is the word for it.”
And it occurs to me that iktsuarpok might enrich modern English, where it could just as
Dorothy Parker’s opinion of the most widely recognized writing style manual in the English language:
“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
But those who nevertheless persevere and do become writers should understand this: One cardinal principle underlies all other rules of style, … Read more
