Tag: other people saying interesting things

For Your Amusement

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A couple of language-related links of possible interest:

The first one is Strong Language: A Sweary Blog about Swearing.  I’ve said before than profanity and obscenity have a grammar of their own, and if you’re not fluent in the vulgar tongue you shouldn’t try to fake it – either do your research or leave it alone.  As for invented bad language, the kind that’s sometimes found in (usually not very good) fantasy or science fiction, let’s just say that it tends not to work very well.  If a writer doesn’t know how to swear in plain modern English, they’re not likely to be able to transpose that music to another key, either.

But if you’re minded to do the research – or if, like me, you’re a certified member of the word nut tribe – blogs like the one above are a good (and entertaining) place to start.

Another entertaining blog for the word nuts among us is Not One-Off Britishisms, a blog concentrating on bits of British slang and idiom that have migrated across the Atlantic into American English. (Not surprisingly, this blog also features profanity and obscenity from time to time, as in this post from 2012, where the blogger and commenters discuss the differing reactions on either side of the Atlantic to Loki’s insulting words to the Black Widow in The Avengers.)

Where I’ve Been

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Snowed under, mostly.

Well, not quite in the literal sense; the driveway and the front door never actually became impassable, though the town snowplows were admirably zealous in replacing the ridge of snow at the foot of the driveway on a regular basis. Nevertheless, February was a bitterly cold and snowy month, with only a couple of days when the temperature outside even drew near 32°F, and so far March has only taken us above freezing for a couple of afternoons – not enough to melt all the snow by a long shot, and the weather forecast for the next week is calling for more snow and daytime temps somewhere in the twenties.

The cold winter, with the thermometer occasionally swinging from twenty below to twenty above in the same 24-hour period, has also played merry hell with our plumbing.  A word to those contemplating a move to deep snow country:  PVC pipes do not cope well with conditions of extreme cold, and their natural lifespan is greatly shortened on that account.  Pipes all over town have been freezing and breaking and springing leaks, and the local plumbers have all the business they can handle.

All of this is a long way around to explaining why I haven’t posted for a while.  I’ve got a post on commas in the works; meanwhile, have a couple of amusing or at least interesting links:

If you’re writing a fantasy novel and one or more entries on this list make you cringe, you may need to rethink a few things.

Also, a blog post on the origins of “okay”.  (Personal position statement here:  I’ve always favored the Cherokee and/or African loan-word theory, and think that the “Orll Korrect” and “Old Kinderhook” etymologies are a bunch of hooey.)

And finally, a tale of modern-day cattle-rustling in the Texas Panhandle.

 

Ursula K. Le Guin Gets Her Snark On

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She read a New York Times interview with Kazuo Ishiguro about his forthcoming novel, The Buried Giant, which takes place in a non-historic just-post-Arthurian England, in which the author frets that his audience will say that it is fantasy.  (To be fair, it contains. among other things, a dragon.)    And she was moved to speak.

I’ve said this here before, and I’ll say it again:  One of the things I respect most greatly about Le Guin is her steadfast refusal to disavow the genre.  More than one author, upon attaining literary respectability, has stashed their propeller beanie and their Spock ears in the far back of the closet . . . all honor, then, to the ones who don’t.

Today’s Bit of Amusement

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Over at The Toast, “How to Tell if You Are in a Logic Puzzle.”

Because heaven knows, Logic Puzzle Land has only a tangential relationship to Real Life Land.

Obligatory writing reference:  When constructing plots and figuring out character motivations, remember that Fiction Land generally strives to reflect Real Life Land, not Logic Puzzle Land.  There are a few instances where it’s closer to Logic Puzzle Land – the strict-form allegory, for example, or the roman à clef – but those are the exceptions rather than the rule.

(Now that I think of it, that’s a good way to distinguish between an allegorical work and one that merely makes heavy use of symbolism and metaphor:  If the workings of the plot and the actions of the characters appear to be taking place in Logic Puzzle Land, you’re probably dealing with an allegory.)

For Your Amusement

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A trio of links, from the useful to the odd.

Table Scraps — a food history blog, with more blog links in the sidebar.  (Including one to Pass the Garum!, a blog about Roman cookery.)

Three-Panel Book Reviews, a webcomic that says entirely truthful and funny things about works of literature.  I especially liked the one about Jonathan Franzen, but they’re all good.

And finally, a performance of “Lord Barnard and Little Musgrave” (as “Little Matty Groves” was known before it crossed the Atlantic) sung in Esperanto.

Presented for Your Amusement

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A quartet of links to things that caught my eye or tickled my fancy over the past few days:

Descriptive Linguist Tom Scott Preaches the Good Word

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The good word, in this case, is the singular neutral gender pronoun they, and Scott has a wonderful YouTube video and accompanying post on the subject.

He’s got a whole bunch of other posts about linguistics up on YouTube, and they’re all worth watching and reading.  It’s nice to see entertaining pedagogy taking place outside a formal context; knowledge is a good thing, and deserves a chance to go out in public and meet people, instead of staying cooped up in the classroom all the time.

For Your Amusement

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A trio of links:

These people have developed a blight-resistant American chestnut tree, and are now crowdfunding a project to plant 10,000 new trees and start the work of bringing the species back to American forests.

Here are some nifty pictures of spherical layer cakes frosted to look like planets – complete with proper planetary cores.  And here’s a link to a tutorial on how to make one yourself at home.

And finally, in honor of the upcoming holiday, a link to NASA’s cornbread dressing recipe.

I Just Want to Say…

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…that one of the things I’ve always admired about Ursula K. LeGuin is her steadfast refusal to perform the dance of genre disavowal every time the mainstream tries to claim her for one of their own.

You Should Probably Go Read This

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Especially if you’re active, or intend or hope to be active, in the greater science fiction/fantasy writing community:  sf writer Laura J. Mixon (aka Morgan J. Locke) provides an exhaustive investigation and analysis of the work – if that’s the appropriate word – of a “new, young” writer who turns out to be a well-known internet troll with a long-term record of personal attacks and community destruction.

(No, I’m not giving that person’s name(s) here; I have no desire to give them any more Googlejuice, or to set myself up as a target for somebody to punch full of holes.  But the blog post at the link will provide.)

As far as writing advice and philosophy go, two associated points that are more directly in line with the concerns of this blog:

First, this person’s personality and their pattern of bad behavior do not stop them from being a good writer.  Even a cursory look at the history of world literature should suffice to demonstrate that the gift of being a good writer and the gift of being a good person come in two separate baskets, and it doesn’t always happen that an individual gets handed both.

Second, it behooves all of us to be careful and charitable about what we say to and about our readers and our colleagues, because the field is close-knit (not to say incestuous), and the same faces will keep turning up around us in different contexts as the years go by.  And these days, the internet is forever; somebody will always have saved the emails/kept the screencaps, and the truth, however embarrassing or inconvenient, eventually will out.