Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
OUT OF SKIN by Emily Carroll is a beautiful and haunting online comic. Go see it please and check out the many more comics on her site.
I’m starting to get reacquainted with some characters. While considering the finished chapters I already have I went back through Unlikely Bedfellows. It has not suffered from being drawn a couple years ago (not like the very beginning of Levi Levi which I find very clunky and awkward looking). But, the pic on the left isn’t the final incarnation of Will and Jack from UB.
Aaaand…color makes me happier with this sketch of Crisco.
Do you want to see something hilarious? Something playing on both historical and modern adaptations of beloved characters? Something irreverent? Then go see The Adventures of Shakespeare and Watson.
When I talked about my enjoyment reading a master of language talk about language, I was not actually ascribing to the strange and overly picky arguments that erupt when someone publishes a grammatical error on the web. I kind of ignore all those because they seem pompous even if there are careers and jobs based around them, and they could eventually affect how kids learn language in school. They happen often online and with vehemence, rage and extensive arguments. Sometimes they even result in movements like Kill The Apostrophe.
Do we need an apostrophe? Would getting rid of it simply make more our language more complex by making contractions into words of their own right that would evolve separately from their root? Usually changes to language don’t affect the people or understanding of people living during the change, but what about one hundred years from now? Two hundred? Whatever grammar, spelling, and definition changes may happen in my life time, none of them even approach the magnitude of downgrading Pluto’s classification. Pluto, you are still a planet to me.
It’s been a while since I was immersing myself in language education. I feel bad to have not mastered a language other than English, especially because I find the process of learning another language so fascinating.
On the old Bean (nothing but an archive in my home computer now) I wrote up an entire post testing the merits of a handful of online language learning sites. I imagine that most of the information is obsolete now, even though many of the sites still operate and send me news emails regularly.
Anyway, enough boo hooing and reminiscing. FSI Language Courses has texts and mp3s of the language programs developed by the Foreign Service Institute. If you want to learn a language, why not learn the way military and diplomats have before? And do it for free.
I am going to brush up on some stuff right after NaNoWriMo. I promise.
If you want a rundown on why TPP is bad and why fast tracking it through Congress is bad then read: The Most Nefarious Part Of The TPP Proposal: Making Copyright Reform Impossible | Techdirt.
If you want more information on what’s wrong with TPP then look here: EFF: Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
The TPP is being written completely in secret so fast tracking it through Congress will mean our representatives could be agreeing to things they have not had the chance to discuss and the people have not had the chance to consider. Wikileaks has pieces of this agreement if you want to double check the people telling you to question the people telling you it is good.
If you want to contribute your voice to those apposing Fast Track and the TPP: EFF can help you.
I feel free. John McWhorter has just released my mind from an ingrained belief that I couldn’t end a sentence with a preposition in his essay: Grumpy Grammarian: The Dangling Preposition Myth | New Republic.. You who were schooled around the time I was, when cursive was still graded for its style and clarity, will understand. Certain rules of grammar were pounded into me.
Later, during my studies of great literature, I was able to let go of some elements of proper grammar for the purpose of conveying feeling and character. If I don’t need it when I am speaking with others in life then neither do the folks I write about. I break tons of rules while writing fiction, but when writing professional articles and organizational reports, that last edit for acceptable language always leaves me with dangling prepositions to clean up. Now, I will try not to worry so much about them.
Oh, and John McWhorter is a fabulous master of language who talks about the idiosyncrasies and ridiculousness of language and people’s reaction to it. If you love to read like masters dissect their art as much as I do, and you have not heard of him, go go and read.
I am not doing my best at writing today, so I made a cover for my Nanowrimo novel instead. I present: The Devil of Westhope-Fairview.
Westhope and Fairview were each very small towns in the same valley in Wyoming, recently relocated so that the valley could serve as a water reservoir. To save money and labor the two towns were combined into one not far from the shores of the reservoir. All of the townsfolk are settling into their new, factory shiny, homes, and the local government is gearing up for an election season to trim the duplication of town officials.
Charley Albright, formerly of Fairview, thinks one of the mayoral candidates, the Westhope attorney Hilary Beedle, is the antichrist. Charley has made it his mission to stop Beedle at all costs, to save the town and all the world.
If I have not said this before, I love the internet archive. I imagine that the sentiment is shared by anyone trying to dig up old information. I have been saved by books digitized by the internet archive in my work, and in my private genealogy research.
I also love the Public Domain Review. It is almost like a best of the internet archive, in that it pulls out items of interest like the Curiosities of Puritan nomenclature (1888). Of course, the Public Domain Review also highlights items of curiosity in other places all over the net. It is a great place to find archival collections of all sorts that are normally not easy to pull out of a [insert name of search engine here] search.
Now if you, like me, have spent some real time with genealogical research then you have spent time with the nitty gritty of history. You have read over land grants, court transcripts, and small claims; you have dissected the language of historical sketches and town diaries written hundreds of years ago; you have wondered why 15 men within two generations of the same family are named Vine. So books like the Curiosities of Puritan nomenclature (1888) are interesting because they explain why surnames came about at all, where they came from, why there are so many Rogers and Johns, and much more.
Burke and Boogie from Leftovers, another comic trapped in the planning stages, but I swear I will get there.
I was reading about how a group of researchers endeavored to map out temperament and disposition across the nation. It made me think of the times I’ve traveled and left a state with a distinct impression of the people who lived there.
America’s Mood Map: Find Which State Matches Your Personality | TIME.com. uses that research about the temperament and disposition of people who live in different areas and makes it into a quiz too. I belong in North Carolina! I tried to go there once too…hoping to get my Masters at UNC, but I didn’t get there. I got my Masters, just not in North Carolina.
