Friday, August 24, 2001
Japan
posted at 5:15 PM
Reading Revolutionary Road. I'm so depressed I'm
thinking of swearing off all commited relationships
for the rest of my life. That opening, with the
play....? My god. Then the fight...He's just
apologized to the wife without knowing she's not even
there.
Took a cold shower as I'm sweating like crazy in this
heat. Can't read and can't figure out how to open a
short I need to shoot, so I'm stuck in
bleakville...Actually, I bought Easter Parade for her
as one of her b-day presents and she's suicidal. All
she said to me was, this is my life....
Jimmy P.
posted at 5:04 PM
After years of flooding, Grundy, with a population of 1,175, plans to
move its downtown to higher ground by decapitating a mountain just
across the chronically treacherous Levisa River. The flattened
mountaintop is to be the base for a new town center with wireless
communications and usable new land that will double the size of its
current six acres. With its minuscule $1.5 million annual budget,
Grundy has managed to become the beneficiary of a $177 million
project combining the resources of the Army Corps of Engineers and
the State Department of Transportation. The remake is to leave this
old lumber and coal town higher and drier than it has ever been. In
the end, a picturesque bend in the river, which has often given way
to flood waters, is to become a futuristic swath of Appalachian levee
with a highway on top.
posted at 4:56 PM
HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH PROPERLY
1. Verbs HAVE to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
19. The passive voice is to be ignored.
20. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
21. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
22. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
23. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
24. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
25. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
26. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
27. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
28. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
29. Who needs rhetorical questions?
30. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
And the last one...
31. Proofread carefully to see if you left any words out of your
posted at 4:50 PM
New Jersey is a peninsula.
New Jersey has the highest population density
in the U.S. An average 1,030 people per sq. mi.,
which is 13 times the national average.
Highland, New Jersey has the highest elevation
along the entire eastern seaboard, from Maine to Florida.
New Jersey has the highest percentage urban
population in the US with about 90% of the
people living in an urban area.
New Jersey is the only state where all its
counties are classified as metropolitan areas.
posted at 4:46 PM
Sometimes Tierney really shines. What a column!
-- Strength Through Failure
You might try contemplating Dante's ninth circle of hell, in which
the worst sinners of all (traitors) are frozen in ice. For a more
specific image, consider the icy problems of Peter Freuchen, a Danish
explorer in the Canadian Arctic who faced what may well have been the
all-time worst-case scenario.
In 1923, Freuchen took refuge during a blizzard near Hudson Bay by
digging a cave in the snow. He awoke to find the entrance blocked by
a snowdrift. (He might have benefited from Mr. Piven's book, which
advises building a snow cave at a right angle to the prevailing
wind.) He was trapped in a dark space not much bigger than a coffin,
with icy walls so hard that he couldn't dig out with his hands. After
many desperate hours, he got an idea.
''I had often seen dog dung in the sled track,'' he wrote, ''and had
noticed that it would freeze as solid as a rock. Would not the cold
have the same effect on human discharge? Repulsive as the thought
was, I decided to try the experiment. I moved my bowels and from the
excrement I managed to fashion a chisel-like instrument which I left
to freeze.''
Freuchen used the chisel to escape, but by then the toes on his left
foot were frozen, and gangrene set in. Far from doctors and
anesthetics, Freuchen used a hammer and pliers to amputate all five
toes himself. ''I cannot attempt to describe the physical pain,'' he
wrote. ''Perhaps one could get used to cutting off toes, but there
were not enough of them to get sufficient practice.''
Does the heat seem a little more bearable?
posted at 4:46 PM
Title: Entrepreneurs Dream Up New Repellents To Keep Deer From Devouring Suburbs
Sick and predictable blather. The presence od deer will never be tolerated. And the population statistic the writer alluded to is a fabrication.
Strength Through Failure
posted at 4:44 PM
What happened to zipern.com? It seems to be dead
posted at 4:41 PM
Weird. But I guess it's better than a Carnival Cruise (et al.) which would undoubtedly leave fifty pounds of here raw excreta behind in the crystal waters of Prudhoe Bay...
Maybe the'll have a kaffe-klatsch with John Leonard!
-- Strength Through Failure
posted at 4:41 PM
The Jewish community in Afghanistan was once a proud one, with 40,000 people, flourishing businesses and a distinctive Torah design.
But the population eroded through the last century, and recent decades have seen the Soviet invasion, civil war and the rise of the radical Islamic Taliban movement to power.
Now, as far as anyone knows, the community has dwindled to just two men -- and they dislike each other. What's worse, their sole remaining Torah has been confiscated.
Afghanistan's last two Jews -- Ishaq Levin and Zebulon Simentov -- live at separate ends of the same decaying synagogue in the Afghan capital and are feuding, each claiming to be the rightful owner of the synagogue and its paraphernalia.
``Sometimes he tries to talk to me but I don't like him. I turn my head,'' Simentov said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Religion-Today.html
posted at 4:40 PM
The Secret Service and the Utah Republican Party have worked out a
compromise gun ban during Vice President Dick Cheney's scheduled
keynote address during the state GOP convention. The two sides have
agreed to provide gun lockers outside the convention's security
perimeter for safe storage of firearms packed by delegates who are
licensed to carry concealed weapons.
http://www.sltrib.com/08232001/utah/125185.htm
posted at 4:39 PM
Monday, August 06, 2001
duboisnyt: more angelina/billy bob gossip:
As we all know by now, the duo exchanged vials of blood some time ago so that each could wear a piece of the other in an amulet around his or her neck.
duboisnyt: But necklace or no necklace, Billy Bob apparently did
not feel that he'd shed quite enough bodily fluids to
express the depths of his love, so he went back in for
more -- as a special surprise for Angie.
duboisnyt: "For our anniversary, I had a certificate drawn up that states I can never leave her for eternity," he says
duboisnyt: "I signed it in my own blood with a paintbrush,"
posted at 7:22 PM
Thursday, August 02, 2001
Subject: my favorite lede ever...
August 1, 2001 -- Troubled "West Wing" honcho Aaron Sorkin, nabbed on drug charges in April, says he was often high on crack when he wrote the 1995 movie "The American President."
-- AllnStrtt
posted at 3:12 PM
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