Story of my life

via I Love Charts

Drink

Via Bookninja Comics  :)

Margaret Atwood Writes Like Stephen King?

A few days ago I posted a link to the now viral I Write Like, a tool that lets you paste a few paragraphs of writing and then determines which author you write like.

It turns out that because of the sites popularity, successful authors have used the site to see who they write like. The results? The site isn't quite accurate (which became apparent when my results were Nabokov). Apparently Margaret Atwood writes like Stephen King, to which she responded via Twitter:

According to the I Write Like analysis, I write like... Ta da! Stephen King! http://bit.ly/bBCMB3 Who knew?4:17 PM Jul 13th via web
Lady Gaga's Alejandro lyrics are considered Shakespearean, but we already knew her lyrics are "incredibly literary". Clearly the site is just for fun, but I wonder how Margaret Atwood felt when Mel Gibson's rant to his ex was imputed and she was the result.

The Versatile Blogger Award

Today I got my third blog award and I'm really excited about it! A big thanks to BookSnob for choosing me to pass it along to! The Rules for the award are:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (In no particular order...)
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

Now to the vain part: sharing seven things about myself. (Isn't writing a blog vain enough to start with? Yes, but in a good way.)

1. I feel naked without earrings.

2. My favorite place in the US is New Orleans. My favorite place I've visited so far in the world is a three-way tie between Amsterdam, Paris and the BVI's.

3. I used to think I was a really good driver but lately I have been cutting people off without meaning to because the space I thought was there just wasn't. This is something I need to work on. On a related note, I have a really hard time driving at night because my depth perception doesn't seem to work after dark. Do they make glasses for that?

4. My favorite game in the whole world is Trivial Pursuit. I really want to get the Book Lover's Edition but I have a feeling I would need to track down more English majors to play with me.

5. I won't let you borrow my books if you dog-ear them (ehhhm, Melanie) but I scribble and annotate all over the pages. I'm not sure why I'm ok with one and not the other.

6. My biggest pet peeve is when people don't use adverbs correctly.
7. I want a miniature bulldog puppy more than anything but I am holding off until I can make it a very happy dog. Oh, and I'm going to name him Potato. I visit puppy stores every chance I get and molest bulldogs with kisses while calling them potato, like this poor guy below:

Quotables: C.S. Lewis

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'indefinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. 

-CS Lewis

Yes I Do Things Like This.

I can't help it. It basically makes me the most annoying person ever but I just can't stand when people don't use their adverbs correctly.

I don't know how I have friends.

My Love for Alliteration

My love for alliteration has reached an all-time low. This afternoon as I was eating my lunch I found myself scrolling through my Facebook friends, making mental notes of who I could marry based on whether or not their last name started with a "B".


Let's be honest, there is nothing better than having an alliterative name. I once met a man named Cooper Collins and couldn't get him out of my head for weeks - not because I was especially attracted to him, but because his name was impossibly sexy.


Is there something wrong with me or do other people think about these things too?


In related news, this might explain my crush on David Byrne.

One Big Anagram

This video makes me smile. Watch it in full.

My Non-Existant Tabula Rasa

Another new year and another day that is not so different from the last. Yes, we're in a new millennium, but it's no different from 2008 or 2009. It's just a meaningless way of measuring time.

For most people the new year offers a tabula rasa - a chance to start over from scratch and erase all the bad habits that defined their life throughout the previous year. However, for me, it doesn't feel like much is changing. Nor do I feel like changing much. I enjoy my bad habits and those lingering 2 lbs I have been meaning to lose. I could drink a little less coffee and try to be a little more green, but I've grown to like the shaky feeling in my arms when I finish my third cup of coffee on an empty stomach, as I throw away my paper cup.

Maybe my cynicism is weighing heavy on me because it's a Monday morning and like most people, I hate Monday's and I am most definitely not a morning person. Or maybe I gained a little wisdom in the last year and understand the new year for exactly what it is - a day that isn't different from any other.

However, a while back I decided with the new year approaching I would resolve to speak more candidly and here is a passage that continues to inspire me to keep that resolution:

"If you ever doubt the power of language, listen more closely. Witness the magic the first time someone whispers "I love you." Watch a woman put on head phones, close her eyes, and have her life changed by a lyric. See a bad moment flipped upside down by a well-timed joke. Words propel us, empower us, make us human and more than human. We constantly struggle to say what we mean and mean what we say. To "wrestle with words and meanings." that's what t.s. eliot calls it. But as we whisper and shout, stutter and spin, we create order out of the chaos around us. We are built of words, and we live by them, too."

Do We Ever Say What We Mean?

Christopher Silas Neal

I was catching up on my Modern Love over the weekend and stumbled across “Even in English, a Language Gap”.

The author, Jennifer Percy, states, “Euphemisms, politeness, suggestiveness, sarcasm, irony and passive-aggressive gestures — all risk being lost in translation. In my writing class, I teach my students about subtext. I tell them people alter their conversations depending on whom they wish to address. I tell them people rarely say what they mean, that we are constantly revising our words, that the movement from thought to word is often transformative and strange.”

This statement got me thinking; in relationships, and in life, how often do we say exactly what we mean? How much of our speech is spoken in euphemisms or dysphemisms to avoid or create conflict?

As we are approaching the New Year I have been considering resolutions. Perhaps my resolution will be to speak more candidly in hopes of making my life a little simpler. Rather than relying on others to decipher my subtext I can articulate exactly what I mean when I mean it. As far as resolutions go, this is a lofty one. I can’t exactly measure every statement that comes out of my mouth as being “exactly what I mean”. But, I feel like a step toward that direction will due.

I can’t help but think of one of my favorite Dr. Seuss quotes, “Be who you are say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind”. That basically sums it up. Speaking candidly, I think it’s something many of us aspire to do but few of us actually pull off.

Quotables: Roy Blount Jr.

Awhile ago I picked up the book Alphabet Juice and I am having a ton of fun with it - mostly because I'm a nerd.

This book is unique and I am going to let the inside cover do the talking: Did you know that both mammal and matter derive from baby talk? Have you noticed how wince makes you wince? Ever wonder why so many h-words have to do with breath?

Roy Blount Jr. certainly has, and after 40 years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, (author of over 30 books) except greeting cards, he still can't get over his ABC's. In Alphabet Juice, he celebrates the electricity, the juju, the sonic and kinetic energies, of letters and their combinations. 

As I mentioned, I am having a ton of fun with this book. It consists of entries that resemble a dictionary but rather than definitions, Blount provides us with a humorous and intellectual take on what makes words so scrumptious.  And, of course, the book is filled with words involving usage and grammar. 

Here are two of my favorites so far:

absolutely

Is heard more and more often in conversation as truth gets more and more relative, whether we like it or not. We need a good solid thumping way of saying yes when, as Alessandra Stanley puts it in The New York Time's, "practically every... drama in prime time is a spooky mystery in which things are never as they seem and nobody can be trusted". Cf. amen

groin

AHD says this is perhaps from the Old English grynde, meaning "abyss" or "hallow," influenced by loin. WIII agrees on grynde (related to ground) but says the oin influence is from the British-dialect groin (related to grunt) meaning "the nose and sometimes the upper lip of an animal (as a swine)."

   (Omigod, I just discovered where oink comes from.)

   If you ask me, groin is a portmanteau of grind, as in bump and grind, and loin.

I also enjoyed Blount's take on Google but the entry is three pages long and in my book, that surpasses a quotable. 

You can read the introduction of Alphabet Juice, courtesy of The New York Times and a review that actually does the book justice, via The Washington Post. 

I'm Mad at the Oxford American Dictionary

The Oxford American Dictionary named its word of the year 2009 and I couldn’t be more let down; unfriend. Really? Am I let down because the word unfriend has been in my lexicon for the last six years and those is charge of nominating these words took so long to catch up to Generation Y?  Perhaps it’s because the word is completely uninteresting. I understand the award isn’t actually for the word itself but rather the meaning, which speaks to our nation’s over-consumption of social media. However, in my not-so-humble opinion, I can’t help but think the people over at OAD were slacking.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denying that 2009’s word of the year should reflect our recent obsession with social media; I just think the OAD could have given the award to a more interesting word. For instance, intexticated. Not only is this word much more fun to say, but it’s also funny; distracted because texting on a cell phone while driving. I would also go so far as to say this also describes any social setting where one should be socializing but instead is absorbed in a far more interesting conversation via text, or perhaps dirty texting. Which brings me to another word: sexting – sending sexually explicit texts and pictures by cell phone. Perhaps the people at OAD thought this was understandably inappropriate.

Either way, I’m disappointed. You can check out the other contenders here. What do you think?

 

I Hate Irony (and When People Confuse Coincidence For Irony)

Today I got to thinking about the irony of modern communication and its effect on society's communication skills. In an age when connecting and conversing is easier and more prolific than ever, how is it that our communication skills are at an all-time low?

Two hundred years ago communication was limited to speech and the written word. There was no texting or twittering and language was something to be admired. People prided themselves in precision of word usage and pronunciation. Language was like the best kind of boyfriend: rich and romantic.

Fast forward to the 21st century: we tweet in 140 characters or less, spend more time emailing than we do having actual conversations and would rather text in acronyms than use complete sentences. 

(For the record, LOL is a complete and undeniable deal-breaker.)

This little rant has reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite TV shows, Californication. Hank Moody, an attractive, extremely pessimistic, self-loathing, sharp-tounged writer I can't help but love to hate, detests the Internet's effect on modern English as he explains:

"The Internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24-hour a day access to kiddie porn. People, they don't write, the blog. Instead of talking, they text. No punctuation, no grammar. LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me that it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating which a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English."

I couldn't agree more.

I realize I am a hypocrite, as I too blog, text and email one word responses - all from my iPhone that, like Hank, I love to hate.

Let the self-loathing begin.  

I Know We Aren't All English Majors, But Good Grammar Is Hot.

This weekend I took a copy editing class at the request of my boss. It was a nice little refresher course (I was a copy editor for my college newspaper) and reminded me of a few pet peeves I would like to share.

Incessant exclamation points: For the love of all things punctuation, use exclamation points sparingly.  I understand that these punctuation marks have become more common in the digital age because it is harder to convey emotion through text. However, this phenomenon does not mean you need to use five of them at a time. It just makes you look ridiculous and for me, is a deal breaker. The same goes for question marks.

That and which: These words are NOT interchangeable. “That” should be used with restrictive clauses and “which” should be used with nonrestrictive phrases (also called essential and nonessential). How can you tell which is which? A nonrestrictive clause can be eliminated from a sentence without changing it’s meaning. And as long as we are on the subject, do NOT use a comma to separate a restrictive clause (that), but DO use a comma with a nonessential clause (which).

Redundant idioms: It seems these days people think the more words they use, the smarter they sound. Unless you are struggling to increase your word count on a term paper, I can’t stand the redundancy. Why say “manner of which” when “how” will suffice, or “over-exaggerate” when the meaning of the word “exaggerate” means to overstate? Can we over-overstate? No.

Adverb usage: Many people seem to be confused about adverbs. I can’t decide which is worse, not using them when needed or using them incorrectly. For instance, bad vs. badly. To say “I feel bad” expresses an emotion, whether sympathetic or not well. To say you feel “badly” implies there is something wrong with your sense of touch.

If you feel as strongly about good grammar as I do, you can order the shirt shown above here.

Confessions of a Grammarholic.

One of my favorite blogs, Grammar Guard (www.grammarguard.org), ridicules the ungrammatical speech of celebrities, political figures and athletes, to name a few.  As a self-proclaimed grammarian, I find myself struggling to keep my mouth shut on a day-to-day basis when a friend blurts out “who” when the sentence merits “whom”, or when singular-plural agreement is thrown out the window (FYI: everybody = singular). One has to be somewhat of a language nerd to fully appreciate this blog, as Grammar Guard claims, “We’re passionate about language, and so are our readers”.

After perusing the blog today, laughing at celebrities who may be more beautiful than me but could stand to take a lesson in English grammar, I began thinking; why do we use the words we do?  What do the subtle differences between words that are commonly used, sometimes used or misused reveal about the speaker?  Are words a product of who we are or are we a product of our words?  If the way a person drives can reveal their personality type, can’t a study of their lexicon expose the inner-workings of their brain as well? 

While I am rarely inspired to read non-fiction, I decided to check out Amazon to find a book that can answer my questions.  The result: The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker.  While writing a paper on second language acquisition in college I read a few chapters of Pinker’s book The Language Instinct and actually still remember it 3 years later, which in my opinion, says a lot.  Anyway, I’m hoping Pinker’s newest book can teach me a thing or two about the relationship between language and the way the mind works.  "In The Stuff of Thought Steven Pinker explores how the mind works in a completely new style- by examining the way we use words.  What does swearing reveal about the emotional brain? What do the ambiguities of dating say about our social relationships? How do semantic niceties- like the ones that got our last two presidents into trouble- unmask our conceptions of time, truth, and responsibility? And what does the spread of new words (such as the mysterious term spam) tell us about social trends?"

 I’ll let everybody know whether or not it’s worth his or her time.  (See, singular-plural agreement- it's not that difficult).