Face of Shakespeare revealed?

There is debate about this, although it appears the most authentic portrait of Shakespeare has been found. Hansome fellow. And now the critics can rage some more about his sexuality!

Pencils did not always come with erasers.

I would just like everyone to know that today is the 151st anniversary of pencils with erasers. That is all. Keep it in mind.

via

Flatulence, Faculty, and Foust

I was scrolling through authors at the Pennsound site after my classes today and came across the name of Lara Odell–you know, Logan Esdale’s wife? It was wedged just between Alice Notley and Charles Olson.

The site has actually inducted two of her video projects into its galleries, with one featuring none other than our dear friend Logan. The ever-pensive pedagogue here joins poet-rock star Graham Foust to discuss their latest publication: A 360 page book examining the consequences of the whoopie cushion in a post-modern age. It is a profound examination of flatulence during a time when “so much that happens, doesn’t really happen.”

This stuff is like, real life hilarious (segments with Charles Bernstein never hurt). But also incredible.

“Unmaking Whoopee, or the Text is Thus a Gas” -2006

PS: I had no IDEA there was this much hubbub in the put it up! Clearly Greg’s photo wins though. Free iPod Touch for you.

Renowned Author Dan Brown writes prose like a monkey surfer eating a hamburger as wide as the ocean on which he surfs.

Okay, so…I have never read Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code), nor do I ever intend to. But I DO read language log. Quite avidly. And I stumbled across an entire string of Brown-bashing posts by Geoffrey K. Pullum, one of the contributors to the log.

I found them to be hilarious and great. It doesn’t make me want to read Dan Brown, but it does make me want to read more and more articles bashing his prose style into “a heap on the floor.”

I strongly suggest you read all of the links I’m providing…even if you’re not a language nerd like me I think they’re insightful and funny and they say a lot about the general reading public.

Here’s a quick excerpt of Pullum’s opinion of Brown:

“I’m sorry, but this man is simply not competent to write prose for public consumption. He should be dictating his wild, action-filled plots to a literate ghostwriter who knows how to string description and dialog together.”

Ok here’s the links to Pullum’s many bashings. ”again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again“

I don’t understand you Stink Onions! (and other fun etymologies)

The following image is from the Atlas of True Names. It’s a pretty cool map that replaces the geographical names with their (occasionally false/presumed) etymologies. Here’s a snapshot of North America. “Stink Onion” is my home town (I actually already knew that one). My favorite, though, is “I Don’t Understand You!” which is the apparent etymology of the word “Yucatan.” Although language log contests the story, apparently Spanish explorers asked natives what the land was called, to which they replied “Yuk ak katan,” which in their language meant “I don’t understand you!” It’s a hilarious story and I hope it’s true, but LL chalks it up to a common etymological “folklore” that pops up all over the world. Nevertheless, it made it into this atlas, so that means it’s true, right?

Click on the link above for a bigger/more complete map.

(one more quick note: Trinidad & Tobago means exactly what you would think it means: Trinity & Tobacco. Fun name)

10 Most Annoying English Phrases (And Funny Things)

So Oxford Researchers say. Here’s the list. As it turns out, I’m 79% annoying.

1 – At the end of the day
2 – Fairly unique
3 – I personally
4 – At this moment in time
5 – With all due respect
6 – Absolutely
7 – It’s a nightmare
8 – Shouldn’t of
9 – 24/7
10 – It’s not rocket science
AND ONE MORE CHOICE VIDEO FOUND BY NICK

Freshly Painted and Right Down the Street from Utopia

An airport is a phenomenon, is a circus, is an other-world. Being trapped in one, recently,on a day many flights were cancelled, I marvelled at the slow denigration. People are shrunk to equals as if snowglobe dwellers, it seems, when no puff of the chest or threat to the ticket agent will guarantee a way to the comforts of home, though the woman with the situationally inappropriate and unexplainable leigh around her neck sticks her short fat arms out and squeals repeatedly like she is the only one stranded.  The crowd of thirty to fifty something New Yorkers in the smoking area shake their greased heads at gold watches and threaten under their breath to “just rent a fucking cah.” One tells me, between drags of a Marlboro Ultra Light, that this is second day his flight’s been cancelled, then sighs with his hands up like fuck it, asks where I’m from. He’s sort of a creep, though more comical, with bits of something in his teeth, a painful shorts/socks combination, the sunglasses with a necklace-cord.  There is a child crying behind the “Polly’s Cafe” concession stand; her mother wilting at the sight of a more wilting fruit-salad, perhaps about to cry herself, not listening to her daughter.

I settle for a flight the next day, though the agent offered weakly I could “..be on standy? On the..24..2..no, the 6-Linda?” and walks away to her supervisor mid-sentence. She shuffles back after ten minutes and it turns out no, no, nothing today.

A good friend picks me up, though we’d said our goodbyes earlier that morning, both our eyes bleary from the long night, which ended like all do. We did the quick goodbye thing, businesslike, a firm but brief hug, a kiss on the cheek, a second-long hand squeeze. We would not be seeing eachother for a while, but had forgotten, somehow, until that very minute.

So he picks me up and we laugh quietly (april fools, tricked you!) and get coffee in a city we don’t know well, but enjoy just fine, that he’s thinking about moving to. The windows are open, the beach rushes alongside us, trying to keep up, and we both nod and sing-along: this is not half bad at all. At the coffee shop we sit in the outdoor patio, the east wall of which features a few rather realistic paintings of theseold cowboy sort of guys, no background, facing eachother in conversation. The sort of guys who still carry a handkerchief, treat a woman with respect, have been buying their high-waisted pants the same place for twenty years. As he and I talk we get the feeling they’re listening just a little, grunting and nodding, like I know that one, that’s for damned sure pal. We have not been very happy, my friend and I, and we talk about it and say things we’ve been repeating to ourselves but not others for a while, probably.This makes these things true.

By the end of his espresso, my iced coffee, and three cigarettes, the old men painted on the wall who know all the things we’ve yet to learn are still muttering to themselves; we make big sighs but also laugh big, slap eachother’s knees and get the hell out of there.

Leaving the coffeeshop we pass one of the New Yorkers on his cell-phone and giggle into eachother’s shoulders–he is not in on the joke.  We get back in the car, passing yellow houses covered in bougainvillea on the way, holding hands and glad for this stolen time. We thank the airway for fucking up. We thank the weather hazards in the northeast that kept the woman with the innapropriate leigh and the sweaty, unshaven New Yorkers away from their destinations.

We go to see the apartment he’s maybe looking at, park across the street and walk up. The smell of new paint on old walls is coming strongly from somewhere in the five stories, and the foyer is wooden,  the stairs well worn and happily walked upon. There’s a restaurant three buildings away called “Utopia,” and we are amused at the possibility  of living right down the street from Utopia, on the left hand side.  He hopes it has not been rented and I hope so too.

Back in the car, we put on a song we both know well. “Great song,” we grin emphatically, for the five hundredth time, and think of the things we have been telling ourselves but not others, that today, we told each other; that today we made true.

Robert Fagles, 1933-2008

Robert Fagles, translator of Latin and Greek, died on March 29th 2008 at the age of 74. He was brillliant.

From Homer’s Odyessy:

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

From Virgil’s Aeneid:

We breach our own ramparts, fling our defenses open,
all pitch into the work. Smooth running rollers
we wheel beneath its hoofs, and heavy hempen ropes
we bind around its neck, and teeming with men-at-arms
the huge deadly engine climbs our city walls.

Across Lite

So this is basically for micah but pretty awesome and, well, we all like crosswords. Here is the crossword program used by the New York Times to publish their crosswords online. You can also use it to create crosswords. Its very nice. It says you can save them in binary and publish on your site…weekly put it up things anyone? I’m going to fool with it more later. Here’s a link to the download and another link to the pdf describing the nerdy method in which one must create their own crossword.

Across Lite

How To

British People Are Funnier

Here’s a skit I found while perusing the Language Log. See if you can figure out who the guy in the bowtie is. This challenge specifically applies to kevin, sara, john and peter (though he doesn’t read the blog). I figured it out at the end when the related videos popped up.