Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Places to See, 1st Week of September 2013 Edition


Because nothing says "I don't much care" like a bad photo of the Halvah cat shredding paper towels on the unvacuumed carpet...

Lately I have been deep in the grip of end-of-summer apathy, and writing much of anything longer than a grocery list has been a struggle. And so, I will resort to the "hey, look at that!" approach, so you (hopefully) fail to observe the fact that my portion of this blog post isn't really much longer than a grocery list.

1. Obsolete words which should never have gone out of style. Check it out, all ye beef-witted spermologers.

(Personally, I think my favorite is tyromancy. Or maybe groak. There are a number of groakers at my house, primarily of feline and canine persuasions.

2. Somewhat related, only different. Ever wondered what some of those odd sounding diseases in old novels would be in modern language? There seems to be a certain amount of guesswork involved, but I found this site interesting.

3. While we're looking into the past, if you haven't seen this blog before, plan on wasting a good bit of time there the first time you check it out: Ask the Past. All sorts of advice from old books. Want to lose weight? Grow a beard? Impress the ladies/guys? Ask the Past can help!

(Or you may wish you'd never asked...)

4. On a more serious note, this is excellent advice for any aspiring writers out there. Elmore Leonard on writing.

My favorite line is probably the most difficult to put into practice: "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

Rewriting is *hard*.

5. Speaking of writing, how about some writing objects? Here's a short video showing how pencils are made--fascinating to watch!.

6. And finally, just because (thanks to Mike Clemens)... Screaming Jelly Babies Experiment

2 comments:

notagain said...

I've read "grass widow" in a 1930's Perry Mason but not the California variant. Interesting links thanks for posting them.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the links. Those obsolete words and phrases are always fun. I had seen the Elmore Leonard rules before and they work! But my favorite was the pencil video although it dispelled my impression that those good Staedtler and Faber Castell pencils were made by German elves.

Jeff The Bear