TODAY KICKS OFF THE WOULD-BE novelists’ annual motivational event, NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write 1,667 words a day for a total of 50,000 by November 30. (I participated one year, and have a fairly mediocre…
Tag: learned
What I wish I’d known before I had to learn it.
It’s Really Spelled “Hallowe’en”
(TO BE CLEAR, IT’S ACTUALLY a slight abbreviation of the phrase “All Hallow’s Evening,” AKA “All Hallow’s Even,” AKA “Hallows E’en.”) There’s something to be said about archaic or alternate spellings / renderings. For example, a beloved English teacher once…
5 Thoughts: Informed Appreciation
1. IT’S ONE THING TO LIKE something. It’s something quite else to know why you like it — and how it came to be. 2. “Informed appreciation” is the key to that knowing. Only when you can comprehend the effort,…
The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad.”
— Salvador Dali
Pithyism #$$$
IN THE ABSENCE OF A national social-service corps, and for proper character-building, everyone should work in retail sales for a year. (Especially during the holiday rush.)
Ask Me Another
IT’S HARD TO STAND OUT from the billions of people using social media — but you can do it in a small way, at least among friends. I’m speaking as a self-appointed Facebook Questioner, posing queries every Monday through Friday…
“It’s Just That…”
THERE’S A THING — WELL, LET’S call it a verbal placeholder-prefix — used by writers of audiovisual entertainments when they want a character to segue away from or into an awkward conversation. My friends, meet: “It’s just that…” You’ve heard…
Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Sing Glad Songs to the Memory of Groovy English Teachers
WHEN MRS. BOISVERT TOLD ME in ninth-grade English class that I had the soul of a poet, I grimaced. “I want to be a scientist,” I said. She had no answer to that. But she had answers to lots of…
Neither Rain Nor Snow Nor Sudden Car Door
BOMBING STEEPLY DOWNHILL ON SAN Francisco’s pedestrian-thick California Street while screaming “No brakes!” was just another day in my brief life as a late-1980s bike messenger. I had gotten into “the life” by happy accident. Having been fired from a…
How Many Dead Friends Are There?
AT LEAST ONCE OR TWICE a week The Metaphorager‘s access logs reveal that someone is reading “Letter to a Dead Friend,” a 2010 paean to my still-dear psychic twin James “Sputnik” Gjerde. At this writing (March 2019), there have been…
Why I Love: Robert Anton Wilson
IT’S THE WAY HE BLOWS my mind. It’s the way he mixes conviction with doubt. It’s his searingly funny prose. It’s his search for Ultimate Relativity. It’s that he taught me some important Latin phrases, like “Cui bono?” and “Non…
Road Wisdom
“WHEN YOU’RE ON THE ROAD and somebody offers you something, take it.” This piece of learning was gifted me by a temporary chauffeur during my 1985 hitchhiking trip (detailed elseblog) who, somewhere on EB I-80 between Placerville and Stateline, asked…