On TV, reporters and pundits discuss a bunch of presidential candidate Senator Clinton’s old letters, written to a friend when she was 16 years old. They read, “Sunday was lethargic from the beginning as I wallowed in a morass of general and specific dislike and pity for most people but me especially.” April: 16? Did they say 16? HE: Yep. April: Wow. I don’t know many 16-year-olds who would use the word “morass” in their everyday language. HE: At 16?…
Lisa Andel’s rules: Topic: Must include one of the five senses — taste, touch, sight, sound, or smell. Even if you just name your character “Smelly Bob” it qualifies. Length: 100 words A sharp tap on the nose woke Bandit. “Wake up and smell the dragon dung. Time to rise!†The words rang like a church bell, and he’d have protested had it not been for the slicing pain in his skull. His mouth tasted of cotton, and his eyes…
I admit that this one wasn’t all that well thought out—I normally don’t think well during summer months; my brain’s too fried. However, the calendar says one thing, and normally, you would go look for that one thing to find the egg, but this time, I didn’t quite think it through, and that one thing doesn’t exist, since I didn’t post when I should have posted this month. Heck … the first person to tell me when I should have…
This one’s a biggie. It seems like everyone in the world and their mother get this wrong, and by this, I mean the difference between the three verbs to lie, to lie, and to lay. Turaluralu. First, we have the verb to lie, meaning to tell an untruth. Of the three verbs, this one is the least misused, as most people know how to conjugate it—and why not? It’s very straightforward. Today, I lie. You lie. He lies. We lie….
Reading the credits crawling up the screen after watching Harry Potter, H.E. and I remark on the names and job titles. HE: Stunt secretary. You’d be perfect for that. Me [imagining self leaping four-story file cabinets, whipping phone cords around the necks of villianous clients, and shooting stapleguns at evil bosses while racing around office desks]: Oh, yeah. I could totally do that. HE: I mean, because of your clumsiness. I can see you stumbling around the office, knocking yourself…