"An Abecedary" by Paul Dean:

How many ways can one get tossed aside?  John Walkenbach checked Google and discovered the following:

• Tossed aside like a 7th grade boyfriend
• Like a forgotten dream
• Like a worn-out pair of boots
• Like a rag doll
• Like a useless bag of linseed
• Like a dog after his job was done
• Like a soiled tissue
• Like a dirty mop
• Like a master artist's sketch
• Like a broken appliance
• Like a taco wrapper
• Like a child's doll
• Like a piece of trash
• Like a wad of yesterday's news
• Like a used play thing
• Like a spent cigarette
• Like a sack of pork chops
• Like a Big Mac box
• Like a fat pedestrian
• Like a fad
• Like a goddamn rubber glove
• Like a moldy beanbag chair
• Like a dirty napkin

(Via J-Walk Blog.  Linked illustrations courtesy of Abecedarian.)

Information Prose :: A Manifesto in 47 Points :: Version 1.0

by Jeremy P. Bushnell, jeremy@invisible-city.com

1. Human beings are thinking creatures. In order to write about human beings in a complete fashion, one needs to write about how human beings think.

2. The ability of language-based stories to depict thought is precisely what keeps them competitive in a world flooded with stories. Image-based stories— movies, television programs —can depict how people act in ways that are seductive and successful, but very few possess an aesthetic mechanism complex enough to reliably depict the nuances of human thought.

3. Human thought reacts to its environment. Writing accurately about the way people think therefore involves writing accurately about the environment in which people live.

4. Human beings live surrounded by information. To write completely about human beings therefore means taking on the duty of writing about information.

5. The human mind references its own memory banks incessantly. Writing that seeks to document the human mind will reflect this.

6. The literary device of the extended flashback is not an illustration of the way we actually experience memory. We live in a perpetual wash of microflashbacks.

7. The memory stores remembered experience in the form of a collage of information drawn from hundreds of thousand of sources. Many of these sources are media sources. Many of our stored experiences are experiences of watching, reading, or listening to media, in either a primary or a supplementary capacity.

8. Media matters to people. It contributes to how we define and understand ourselves.

(to be continued)

From the atlas of humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt:


Little-known fact #1: The total number of soldiers who died on the American side during the Revolution was "no more than the population of a small town in Ohio or Nebraska" (Ray Raphael, A People's History of the American Revolution, 2002, p. 89).

Little-known fact #2: "For every NYU kid [who has trouble adjusting to adult life], there's another student from a small town in Nebraska who goes to college in a small town in Ohio in hopes of fitting in" (Spiny, commenting on this blog posting.)

Meanwhile, Columbiana claims the distinction of being "the Biggest Little Town in Ohio," but not necessarily in Nebraska.

Q: "Who wants to play the ghost of Hamlet's father?"
A: "I."

First Person Ominous

---

Q: "Who is impartial?"
A: "I."

First Person Objective

---

Q: "Who feels invincible?"
A: "I."

First Person Omnipotent

---

Q: "Who can bi-locate?"
A: "I."

First Person Omnipresent

---

Q: "Who here can referee?"
A: "I."

First Person Adjudicative

The Corsair Ergonomic Keyboard For Pirates

Redundant: "exhibitionistic streak"

Q: "Who ate everything?"
A: "I."

First Person Omnivorous

---

Q: "Who feels defeated?"
A: "I."

First Person Subjugated

---

Q: "Who knows what's going on?"
A: "I."

First Person Omniscient

---

Q: "Who will win the lottery?"
A: "I."

First Person Prescient

---

Q: "Who cares?"
A: "Not I."

First Person Ambivalent

"The Shortest Day"

Short verse
    We need,
Most terse
    Indeed,
That it—
    This lay—
May fit
    This day.
Short sight
    Of sun.
Long night,
    Begun
At four,
    Sunshine
Once more
    At nine.
A. M.
    Meets eyes
Of them
    Who rise
If no
    Fog hide—
Then woe
    Betide;
The day
    That ought
To stay
    So short
A space
    Can't show
Its face
    Below.
But when
    It goes,
Why then
    One knows
New Year
    Will soon
Be here—
    Then June,
So bright!
    So sweet!
So light!
    We'll greet
The day
    That's long
With gay,
    Glad song—
Excessively long-footed verse will undoubtedly characterise what
            we say,
For Longfellow's longest lines skip along when we've long longed
            for the Longest Day.

—Punch, Dec. 24, 1892

Perhaps this is where all the a-holes come from.

This is one of my favorite forewords.  It's from Adventures in the Arts.  Via ffffound.com.

"All one-letter words are, by definition, stingy." —Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics (1968)

The following gag is courtesy of humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt:

What Can Be Said of a Non-Book?


A mention of "non-book indexing" led me to explore the current state of non-book literature.  The first item I found was entitled Energized Hypnosis: A Non-Book for Self Change.  It promises to put the reader into a hypnotic state, automatically.  (A marketing idea for computer manuals?)  This non-book has received several five-star reviews, but then again, by definition the raves would suggest themselves, eh?  One five-star review noted that, "For one thing, you don't have to do, think, or know anything."  Finally--the act of reading made as mind-numbing as watching television!  One three-star review had me in stitches:


I suppose I can agree that the market is saturated with "normal" books.  And I agree that while italics can blow one's mind on an occasional basis, they become dangerous with long-term use.  But to complain about directly communicated information?!  (Going back to that line, "I certainly didn't feel entranced," imagine a bad review of a horror film saying, "It's bullshit -- I didn't puke even once!")

Trivia about non-books:

"Many times the cataloging record for non-book items is much longer than the record for books.  This is due to the fact that there are more pieces of information needed in a non-book record.  The physical description is often longer, and there are usually more notes that are useful or required in a non-book record" (Idaho's Alternative Basic Library Education Program).

"A non-book is a non-book is a non-book, even if it comes from the pen of a distinguished political scientist" (Lewis A. Coser, review of Political Promises: Essays and Commentary on American Politics by Nelson W. Polsby).

"A publisher selling to a non-book retailer might well be asked to provide books marked with the Universal Product Code (UPC)" (Barcode-US.com).

"The non-book book is not a new phenomenon in publishing, but it has become more commonplace. ... A non-book differs from a book in several respects. It feels padded, reading more like a newspaper or magazine story in which a lack of time, adequate space, or brain matter keeps the writer from conveying complexity, perspective, gravitas. It trains its eye too much on today's headlines. And it too often prosecutes rather than explains" (Ken Auletta, review of Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood by Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters).

"In dealing wlth a 'non-book collector' who has a rare and valuable volume, express surprise and enthusiasm" (Delmar French, NYT Review of Books and Art).

Ne'er-do-wells shouldn't get all the attention.  What about:

Someone who is always helpful: an "e'er-do-well"
A kindly atheist: a "non-belie'er-do-well"
A most fetching labrador: a "retrie'er-do-well"
A protector of broad-tailed semi-aquatic rodents: a "bea'er-do-well"
A butcher who expertly wields his heavy broad blade: a "clea'er-do-well"
A mechanism's reliable projecting arm: a "le'er-do-well"
A 24-hour do-gooder: a "whene'er-do-well"
Someone who attempts to do the right thing: a "endea'or-do-well" (Brit. "endea'our-do-well")