Wednesday, April 02, 2003
;PF: I started a band myself a few years ago, and it really hasn’t gone anywhere. SB: It can be really tough. PF: I play trombone, we’re punk-rock brass. You should check us out. You just wonder if you ever will make it. If anyone will ever believe in you enough to give you a contract. (Source Link)
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
;Goodbye, Lenin! is on its way toward becoming one of Germany’s biggest box office successes. Four million Germans have already seen the film in its first month, according to the distributor, about one million more than the number of Germans who saw the entire run of the 1998 hit film Run Lola Run, which also became a hit in the United States. The producers say they have spoken to a number of companies, including Sony Classics, about distributing the film in the United States, but so far there are no plans. “The film is too complicated and historical for most Americans,” said the film’s director, Wolfgang Becker. (Source Link)
;I was talking to a friend of mine recently, a man who I will—for the sake of anonymity and my own personal satisfaction—refer to as Hernando Innocent Atlatl III. He sings with me, and has been singing most of his life. I asked him why he hadn’t ever taken singing lessons. He prevaricated (Atlatl has turned prevarication into an art form, let me tell you). He said that he didn’t have enough time—he was too busy. As we talked more and more he eventually told me that he had decided not to take singing lessons because he had been singing for years and years. He was an excellent amateur singer, but taking lessons made him a serious singer, a professional. He’d been singing too long to risk finding out he wasn’t any good at it if he ever really tried to make a go of it. There were some opportunities in life, he had decided, that you should chose to miss. (Source Link)
;His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and ear phones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72). (Source Link)
;In a nation of immigrants, we all have ancestors who decided it was time to go. Around the world, people make the decision every day, packing a few belongings onto a cart and walking away from the action, as is happening now in Kurdistan and Baghdad. What happens when it’s our turn? Much has changed already; how much more will have to change before it becomes time for me to sell the house? Sew gold coins into the hem of my jacket as I gather the loved ones around me one last time? It’s not here yet, but is the hour approaching when, once again, we might decide to bid farewell to yet another homeland? (Source Link)
This is the personal weblog of Grant Barrett, editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, a collection of words from the fringes of English. More about this site...
Recent Catchwords
- springboard injunction n. (8/28)
- turabosis n. (8/28)
- Truman Show delusion n. (8/28)
- relokill n. (8/27)
- toothpick rule n. (8/27)
- age-doping n. (8/27)
- narcisurfing n. (8/27)
- chemical rapping n. (8/27)
- LPU n. (8/27)
- peanut buttering n. (8/26)
- whipsawing n. (8/26)
- momtourage n. (8/26)
- thin file n. (8/26)
- two minute man n. (8/26)
- family forest n. (8/26)
- squircle v. (8/25)
- pocket litter n. (8/24)
- cuckoo smurfing n. (8/23)
- kill screen n. (8/22)
- yac n. (8/22)
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- Wilf? Yuffer? Get real!
- Lexicographer Laurence Urdang Dies at 81
- A thesaurus can be harmful
- Can bad language punditry be stopped? Can false attributions for classic quotes be fixed?
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- Scottish Language Dictionaries fundraiser
- SouthWest Writers
- Disfluencies: What do they mean by “I mean”?
- A hearty endorsement of shout quotes: scare quotes used for emphasis
- How to buy a dictionary
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- Saying it wrong on purpose
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- New slang unpacked
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