Writing is not easy. Just for a small blurb about a link, or a photo-heavy article, I find myself going over and over every word, rearranging, adding, deleting, trying to make it more clear and concise. The finished product doesn’t reflect the effort. If I stay up til 3AM to get something finished, it shows. There will always be a typo or an extraneous word that I won’t notice til some commenter points it out. Then it’s too late to pretend it never happened. Yeah, one great thing about writing on the internet is that you can edit after the fact, but you can’t, or rather shouldn’t, delete the comment pointing to the mistake. Just a few days ago, I found an excerpt from one of my articles reprinted at Neatorama with a typo in it! Aaaagh! I can fix the original, but I can’t fix what was already copied from it. Honestly, I am more literate than it seems. I just get in a hurry and my eyesight is slowly going south. But I can still joke about it!



I Am Thesaurus

Typewriter Erotica. From back in the day when a successful businessman hired a woman to type for him, and then of course, had fantasies about her. Some pictures NSFW. I included this here because at one time all writers used typewriters. (via Dark Roasted Blend)

Wit Lit 101: Five Classic Novels That Bring the Funny.

Miranda July wrote a book. She created a website about it. If she shows as much imagination in her book as she does in her website, I want to read it!

Blog of the Day: Judge a Book By its Cover does just that. A librarian reviews covers only, especially the bad ones. Funny!

People keep buying books, but they don’t catch up on reading them. Here’s a Flickr pool of books waiting to be read. (via Grow-A-Brain)

The Book Inscriptions Project is collecting things people write in books. Some are totally fascinating, some just make you wonder. (Thanks, Shaun!)

The Golden Age of Book Ads. (via Grow-A-Brain)

Nina sorts books so that the titles tell a story. Can you do this? (via Neatorama)

The Library Tub is for those who like to read while bathing.

Old Hoss answered a meme.
What book or movie changed your life?
I am sure that it was Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, the one that's about 6 inches thick. See, when I was a little guy I couldn't see over the fence between us and the neighbor lady. But I got a little help from my friend -- the dictionary. By standing on it I could see over the fence straight into her bedroom. Hoo boy, what a education I got....

New Product Announcement

Announcing the new Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device, otherwise known as the BOOK.

It's a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use even a child can operate it. Just lift its cover. Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere -- even sitting in an armchair by the fire -- yet it is powerful enough to hold ass much information as a CD-ROM disk.

Here's how it works: each BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper (recyclable), each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. These pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence. By using both sides of each sheet, manufacturers are able to cut costs in half.

Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet. The BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. The "Browse" feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Most come with an "index" feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.

An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open the BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session -- even if the BOOK has been closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers.

Portable, durable and affordable, the BOOK is the entertainment wave of the future, and many new titles are expected soon, due to the surge in popularity of its programming tool, the Portable Erasable-Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language stylus [PENCIL].

Where to Publish Your Paper

If you understand it and can prove it, then send it to a journal of mathematics.
If you understand it, but can't prove it, then send it to a physics journal.
If you can't understand it, but can prove it, then send it to an economics journal.
If you can neither understand it nor prove it, then send it to a psychology journal.

61 literary euphemisms for masturbation

(via Puppies and Flowers)
1. Blurbing yourself
2. Burying the lede
3. Challenging Alexander Pushkin to a one-handed duel
4. Coaxing Salinger to come out and play
5. Coming up with a gripping plot twist
6. Conjugating the verb
7. Cooking up a big oily batch of Victory Gin
8. Dangling your participles
9. Deconstructing The Fountainhead
10. Dipping your madeleine into Proust's tea
11. Finishing the first draft by hand
12. Freelancing for the glossies
13. Getting just a little too into pictures of Dorian Gray
14. Giving it a first pass
15. Giving the protagonist some internal conflict
16. Giving your narrative a Faustian theme
17. Having a strong opinion in your writing workshop about the power of symbolism
18. A Heartbreaking Wank of Staggering Spunkage
19. Hiding Rushdie from the Muslim assassins
20. Hunting for treasure in Injun Joe's cave
21. Interrogating JT LeRoy and his five accomplices
22. Jack Kerou-whacking
23. Joining the Beat Generation
24. Launching a ship to the holy city of Byzantium
25. Listening to Portnoy complain
26. Looking for clues with Tintin and Snowy
27. Mangling the English translation
28. Mixing your metaphors
29. Much A-Goo About Nothing
30. Oliver's Twist
31. Palahniukin'
32. Paying extra for the hardcover
33. Paying the bills with a hack novelization
34. Paying yourself in contributor copies
35. Picking the pull-quotes
36. Pinning Garp with a Half Nelson
37. Polishing Nick Hornby's head
38. Pottering your Chamber of Secrets
39. Print-on-demand
40. Proofreading the galleys
41. Putting out Polyphemus' one good eye
42. Putting the "wad" back into "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow"
43. Querying the editor
44. Rattling your stick inside a swill bucket
45. Reading poetry aloud
46. Recouping losses incurred by the Publishers Group West bankruptcy
47. Saying yes, yes, oh god yeeeeees to Ulysses
48. Shooting at Joan Burroughs with your flesh musket
49. Shooting your own author's photo
50. Signing the first edition
51. Skimming the Cliff Notes
52. Slapstick (or: “Lonesome No More”)
53. Spanking the Monkey (sometimes known as "Spanking Arthur Waley's translation of Journey to the West ")
54. Splitting infinitives
55. Stocking the remainder table
56. Tap-tap-tapping at your chamber door (only this and nothing more)
57. The other lonely impulse of delight
58. Touring Rosings with Mr. Collins
59. Transforming Gregor Samsa into a monstrous vermin
60. Using the passive voice
61. Varnishing your Booker Prize

Thought for today: I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman where the Self Help section was. She said if she told me it would defeat the purpose . -Dennis Miller

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