Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category

Tina Fey’s Reviews

April 7th, 2011

Usually publishers include a one-sentence, catchy review to the cover of a book. Here’s what the publisher included for Tina Fey’s new book:

Once in a generation a woman comes along who changes everything. Tina Fey is not that woman, but she met that woman once and acted weird around her.

PRAISE FOR TINA FEY:

“You’d be really pretty if you lost weight.” (College Boyfriend, 1990 )

“Tina Fey is an ugly, pear-shaped, overrated troll.” (The Internet )

“Mommy, where are my pretzels?” (Tracy Morgan )

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR BOSSYPANTS:

“I hope that’s not really the cover. That’s really going to hurt sales.” (Don Fey, Father of Tina Fey )

“Absolutely delicious!” (A Guy Who Eats Books )

“Totally worth it.” (Trees )

“Do not print this glowing recommendation of Tina Fey’s book until I’ve been dead a hundred years.” (Mark Twain )

“Hilarious and insightful. Laugh-out-loud funny — oh no, a full moon. No! Arrgh! Get away from me! Save yourself!” (A Guy Turning into a Werewolf )

Hunger Games: Turkey Edition

November 24th, 2010

Every year it’s tradition for the President of the United States to pardon a turkey from being killed for Thanksgiving. But how do those turkeys get chosen? They compete in a dancing competition, trying to impress the judges into letting them live another day.

Here’s more to the story.

A Squick Too Much

August 31st, 2010

Scott Westerfeld loves language. Read Bogus to Bubbly and you’ll see how much effort he puts into creating worlds. I found myself saying “nausea-making” in conversation and realized I had read too much about Tally Youngblood.

I’m reading Behemoth right now and it’s a good follow-up to Leviathan. What I’m noticing, though, is his repeated use of lingo from the time period. In reading a blog post of his about using wordle to judge word choice, I caught on to how I overuse words like “just” or “walked” in my own writing (and offenses from an author whose name rhymes with “Ames Atterson”).

That’s why I’m surprised to see squick, Dummkopf, and barking spiders show up on almost every other page. I’m no Clanker expert, but I’m sure steampunkers have other ways to say words. In Uglies, it was a set of syntax rules. Here, it’s more a short list of vocab words. It doesn’t take too much away from my reading enjoyment, but, as I’m working on a writing project with its own grammar rules, I’m trying to learn for my own nausea-making world-creating.

I have Mockingjay

August 24th, 2010

I’d tell you more but I want to read.

You never know what you’ll do in Photoshop each day.

August 13th, 2010

Here’s today’s example, a project for our maintenance staff:

I love the font.

FirstGiving

August 11th, 2010

A friend of mine uses FirstGiving to organize fundraising events for HopeKids. I’m wondering if our school could use it for raising money for ALS research/treatments, like what we did with our staff fashion show.

Improv Everywhere: Star Wars Subway

July 14th, 2010

Check out Improv Everywhere re-enact the opening scene from A New Hope:

Writing insight from the past and the future

April 21st, 2010

Check out the real-life interview of Mark Twain by Rudyard Kipling here.

io9 has a great article about using the Find feature in Word to improve your manuscript. That article can be found here.

Gotta Keep Reading

March 4th, 2010

I’ve seen other videos parodying the Black-Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”, but this one is fun for librarians:

Also, a congratulations to the school for choreographing that many students.

The art director has some explaining to do.

August 29th, 2009

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Here’s a hint: De Beproeving has been around longer.