PARVUM OPUS
Number 226
May 17, 2007
Shakespeare Behind Bars is a documentary about prisoners in Kentucky who produce a Shakespeare play every year, in this case, The Tempest. See it if you can. It might come back on television (Sundance Channel) or to a theater near you. Check the list of venues on the web site.
NOTES FROM HARRY H.
Jesus in Beijing: As
Capitalism was seeping into China in the early to mid-1970's, Reverend Angley
was offered the opportunity to go on crusades there and pray for the sick by
referring to praying for the sick in the name of Jesus as the "New
Technique."
Makes me think that you could sell anything in China if you name it correctly. Remember Engrish, the peculiar English the Japanese love to plaster on their retail products? Looks like Chingrish is translating things into acceptable Chinese-think. Christianity is now "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and the "New Technique".
Sheryl Crow was here:
SHE MUST BE JOKING, MAYBE:
Sign in a truck stop men's room: "Real men don't need toilet paper!"
Well, real environmentally conscious men don't need it, anyway, nor anyone who owns a bidet.
Writer / word maven Dick Lederer knows about the gratuitous S:
Under "THE DEBATE GOES
ON," please note that the correct term is "daylight saving
time," not "daylight savings time." There's no bank account
involved. This error is known as "the gratuitous s" and shows up in
such errata as "in regards to," "anyways," "numbers
crunching," and "the Book of Revelations."
I knew about "in regards to" and "anyways" but the other examples were not part of my automatic spelling response[s]. Maybe now they will be in the future.
Someone submitted this note to Found:
Bee [with
a drawing of a bee] careful of what you may wish for.
[in a
different handwriting] Like wishing for
Wealth, Health, or in other words: Anything Else!
[The finder commented] This is the last page in an old The Baby-sitters Club book called Logan Likes Mary Anne! that I found. I wonder if this person wrote it as a book review or if he were this jaded to begin with. Does the story have anything to do with a bee? Or is it just a young person's attempt at making a metaphor about a bee's sting perhaps?
There are a couple of things I could comment on here, besides the cute spelling of "be", but I'm going with the subjunctive error: "...if he were this jaded to begin with." The subjunctive tense in "he were" would be OK if the sentence went something like this: "If he were very jaded, he wouldn't have drawn a cute bumblebee." Here, we're talking about something that is not true. In the found note above, the finder isn't imagining something that is untrue, but is asking a question about a fact (was he or wasn't he jaded). Another example: "If I were you..." We all know I am not you. "Was he the one who drew the picture of the bee?"
I've been quoting Dennis Miller pretty often lately because I've been enjoying his new radio program (which you can listen to online). He suggested a logo to help popularize the War on Terror: WWT, to parallel WWI and WWII.
I think something like WTW would look good on a T-shirt.
He got sidetracked using the word Asian, "or whatever the latest word for Asian is this week, pan-Pacific or whatever." Oriental seems to be considered rude or something, but only in North America, according to Wikipedia. There's always a new way for people to take offense, although I'm not sure if it's actually the Asians (etc.) who are taking offense here, or the PC police taking offense on their behalf. Wikipedia refers to Diane Ravitch's list of words (and images) that have been banned in textbooks (warning: whoever posted this list used the really bad word at the head of the page).
The Puritans are back, but this time sex has slipped the leash and it's words, thoughts, smoking, and junk food that can put you in the stocks.
When Mike Sykes used the word eggcorn, I couldn't find a definition at first, but finally found eggcorn at World Wide Words. It's a cousin of the mondegreen, which is misheard song lyrics ("I kissed this guy" for "I kissed the sky"). An eggcorn is a word or phrase that's not quite right, like saying eggcorn for acorn. An examples is the woman who said her washing machine had given up the goat. She meant "given up the ghost", i.e. the spirit, i.e. the machine died. The goat in the machine. Goat and ghost sound somewhat alike. These mistakes are caused by mishearing words, as with mondegreens, but must chiefly be made by people who don't read much, so they don't see the written word or phrase, and who also do not analyze what the word or phrase might mean. If you were in the habit of throwing your goats into the washing machine, there might be a logical basis for the confusion, but otherwise, why would you make that particular error?
Found in a review of Rush Hour 3: "The repairing of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker..." Although I like to eschew surplusage, as Mark Twain tersely advised, I would have inserted a hyphen: "The re-pairing of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker." (Repair, by the way, also means to return or go, thus the heading, and is related to repatriate, reparation, and prepare.)
Some words that used to have hyphens no longer require them, such as cooperate. But every time I used to see the COOP sign in Harvard Square (a student book store), which I assume is short for "cooperative bookstore" or something like that, I would think "chicken coop". How do you read words like reenergize, reenter, deescalate, and so on?
Someone called into a radio program to complain about the lack of Korans in hotel rooms. Most hotel rooms have a Bible in a drawer, because the Gideon Society has been donating them for about a century, as well as to the military and to prisons, and they're on campuses too. I received a little Gideon New Testament some years ago, and learned that some students used Bible paper to roll joints, which even in my less righteous days I found rather shocking. If you find no books in a hotel room, I'd assume atheists have been at work.
I got this e-mail ad from Writers Relief: "We love to share our information with writers, and we're happy to pass some of these INSIDER'S SECRETS along to you." There are no insider's secrets to writing, just a lot of knowledge and skill to be acquired by a lot of reading and work. This looks like a fairly expensive service for wannabe writers. Actually I'm not sure if there are insider's secrets about much of anything anymore, since you can get directions on how to build a bomb on the Web.
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2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.
Short Order is a new series of my short stories in 5
1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet format. The first two are available now for $5
each (includes mailing).
/// In Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn, a young
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role model, a real big-time gambler, Stockyard Stan of Kansas City. But when
Carl comes up short on his gambling debts, he finds himself wearing concrete
boots in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. 26 pages.
/// Still Ridge is about what happens when the old-time moonshine business meets up with a predatory modern bottled water corporation. How far will Kate, a newcomer to the mountains, go to protect the water supply? 22 pages.
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WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at www.sonnyrobertson.com and www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".
SEARCH
IT OUT ON AMAZON : It is the glory of God to conceal a
thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs 25:2
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made of matter, but music.
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