Blog Drain
Found prose
This is from a book my wife bought some years ago, THREE PICASSOS BEFORE BREAKFAST, by Anne-Marie Stein, published in 1973, a memoir about her life with an art forger.
This sentence, about her affair with a married man (not the forger), is remarkable for the amount of unnecessary information crammed into it, superfluous words, self-contradictions, and the glorious clumsy galumphing to a halt of its final phrase. Read it and you’ll agree!
“I had known from the beginning that it was an impossible situation, yet the fascination of cavorting clandestinely with such a man, fifteen years older than I but so incomparably cultured and romantic, prompted me to succumb to my own better judgment and to ignore the lessons imposed on me by a strict mother and a disciplinarian-minded father who had served with distinction in the diplomatic corps.”
Defenestration?
Merriam Webster on-line has listed the most looked-up words of 2004.
1. blog
2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton (for you Lance Armstrong fans)
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration
Who said that?
"He danced on a small table for about two hours. He was calling out the whole time, not to the people in the room, but to the other world. My job was to sit near the table and make sure he did not fall off."
Plant your call.
A new bio-degradable cell phone comes with a sunflower seed embedded in its casing.
Found prose 2
From a review of THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES in Slate, by Paul Berman:
“The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time.”
Maybe, but I’ll bet he looks cuter on a motorcycle than Paul Berman does.
Good news for doomsayers!
From Reuters: “The Optimist Club of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, is disbanding after 24 years, citing lack of interest.”
He said that.
Ber Xiong, explaining that his friend, accused hunter killer Chai Soua Vang, was considered a shaman in te Hmong community.
DIY Science
New Scientist magazine has compiled a list of scientific things to do before you die, and even after.
These include:
--learn Choctaw.
--swim in a bioluminescent lake.
--boil an egg with a mobile phone.
--achieve multiple orgasms.
--take a trip to Florence to see Galileo’s middle finger (preserved)
--make world’s smoothest ice cream with liquid nitrogen.
--after you die, have the carbon in your ashes turned into a diamond.
--defenestrate a peloton.
DVD
Bill is out of town for a week; in the meantime, twiddling.
This is from a book my wife bought some years ago, THREE PICASSOS BEFORE BREAKFAST, by Anne-Marie Stein, published in 1973, a memoir about her life with an art forger.
This sentence, about her affair with a married man (not the forger), is remarkable for the amount of unnecessary information crammed into it, superfluous words, self-contradictions, and the glorious clumsy galumphing to a halt of its final phrase. Read it and you’ll agree!
“I had known from the beginning that it was an impossible situation, yet the fascination of cavorting clandestinely with such a man, fifteen years older than I but so incomparably cultured and romantic, prompted me to succumb to my own better judgment and to ignore the lessons imposed on me by a strict mother and a disciplinarian-minded father who had served with distinction in the diplomatic corps.”
Defenestration?
Merriam Webster on-line has listed the most looked-up words of 2004.
1. blog
2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton (for you Lance Armstrong fans)
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration
Who said that?
"He danced on a small table for about two hours. He was calling out the whole time, not to the people in the room, but to the other world. My job was to sit near the table and make sure he did not fall off."
Plant your call.
A new bio-degradable cell phone comes with a sunflower seed embedded in its casing.
Found prose 2
From a review of THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES in Slate, by Paul Berman:
“The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time.”
Maybe, but I’ll bet he looks cuter on a motorcycle than Paul Berman does.
Good news for doomsayers!
From Reuters: “The Optimist Club of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, is disbanding after 24 years, citing lack of interest.”
He said that.
Ber Xiong, explaining that his friend, accused hunter killer Chai Soua Vang, was considered a shaman in te Hmong community.
DIY Science
New Scientist magazine has compiled a list of scientific things to do before you die, and even after.
These include:
--learn Choctaw.
--swim in a bioluminescent lake.
--boil an egg with a mobile phone.
--achieve multiple orgasms.
--take a trip to Florence to see Galileo’s middle finger (preserved)
--make world’s smoothest ice cream with liquid nitrogen.
--after you die, have the carbon in your ashes turned into a diamond.
--defenestrate a peloton.
DVD
Bill is out of town for a week; in the meantime, twiddling.
posted by Merle Kessler at 5:37 PM
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