Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

One of my birthday presents was a handy dandy paperback  book by the  name  of Fab Fun Facts, which  isn’t really a  book in the sense that somebody  wrote  something original and put some thought  into  it, or anything like that.

I get the feeling that it was more a question  of the editor looking at one of  his  staff writers, and saying ‘we need a meaningless book, put together a list of interesting  trivia points,  2  sentences or less  and less  is better.  And  then the  writer went  to google and  put together such a list.

Also, it was written in Danish and then translated into English, so put all this together and you’ve got  lots of typos, which I noticed  before I’d even opened the book  because there was one right there on  the cover Women’s hearts  beats  faster than  men’s.

Typos grammar mistakes, and I caught at least two factual errors.  “1776 was the last  year  in which none of the world’s nations were at war,” and “Before carrots were orange, they were purple” which is a gross oversimplification from the version I’d heard, which is that they used to exist in many colors, and that makes sense because you have to have something  to cross-breed the purple carrots WITH before you get the magic orange.  Also, there was pretty definitely a war going on and one of the sides (hint: Britain) was among the world’s nations in 1776.

Still, it was good enough to use with my gymnasium students, and I learned that 40% of those who died on  the Titanic were crew,  90% of babies prefer the right breast, Rene Descartes had a thing for  cross-eyed women, and Nicole Kidman is afraid of  butterflies.

It’s like “learn something new every day” on steroids.

Just got back from an above average poetry reading at my favorite tchaiovna, I guess you’d have to say my favorite tchaiovna ever, as none have ever made much of an impression before, but the A Maze in Tchaiovna is truly an amazing place, with the board games and the hookahs and the French and Czech and English lessons going on out front, and then you push through the door that is disguised as a bookcase  and go back into the poetry section, and then you push back further, through more false cupboards into a room they call Narnia, which is magical indeed, nudge,  nudge, wink, wink, and there are a couple of other hidden rooms back there, too.
They serve you a big pot of tea that’ll keep you for  the whole evening, and they have a collection of fantasy pots and cups, it’s quite fun, tonight I had an elephant.  I’ve never eaten there, but  I’ve heard the food’s good, too.

Tonight there was a really good rant poems about how nobody came to see her when she was locked up in a psych hospital and “They all  had reasons I couldn’t argue with,” and a girl who could really sing the blues, her own songs, real powerful voice, and some snappy Instagram dialogue poems, and a bit of  commentary (good riddance) on the ‘retirement’ of senile old racist Prince Philip, aka Mr. Queen Elizabeth II.  There were some regulars and  some first timers,  a couple of very cool dogs and a 6 month  old baby.

I’m already looking forward to the next  one, but I’ve got to  get  something new  written.

I am, I suppose, what most people would call a Grammar Nazi.  The way  I see it, I’m just an English teacher and wannabe writer who takes language very  seriously.  But, if people want to call that  being a Grammar Nazi, I can live with  it.  It gives me more credit than I actually deserve, because I am fairly slack about  it, but I’ll take it.

I correct people a lot on the difference between lose and loose, for instance.  It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine because I’m sure people who spell lose as loose are basing this are just trying to write, phonetically, what they have heard and what they have heard is loooooooser!, with at least 7 o’s in it.
I started correcting people whenever I saw that about 2 or 3 years ago, focusing on that specific error because there aren’t enough hours in the day to  correct  everything, and if I focused on that I  could  make a  difference.  I have noticed, on my own particular Facebook page, that the incidences have dropped considerably, although it’s a rare day that I don’t see one or two.
I’ll also correct people on  the difference between their, there, and they’re, as well as your and you’re, even though  I’ve been known to screw them up myself.
These spelling  errors are the type that spellcheck won’t catch, because the misspelling itself is a word.  So, when  they are writing the post, they won’t see the  squiggly  red line.  I wish people  would  learn  to spell, but I see  how  these slip  through  the cracks occasionally.

The one I caught flak over  today, though, was correcting  somebody who said “A large military budget is nessasary.”  Unless his computer is vastly different from mine, he saw a squiggly red line when he wrote it.  If you then put your cursor over the squiggly red lined word and right  click, you’ll get a box with a list of words you might  have meant, and you can  just click  on that  to  automatically correct your spelling.

It’s easy.   Even a moron can do it.

Basically, all  I  wanted to do this afternoon was sit around the  flat and get high, but we had two coupons for the cinema and Sam said he wanted to  see  something call ‘The Circle,’ which I immediately looked up.  Emma Watson, that’s a good point.  Tom Hanks, that’s another.  Plot, innocent girl starts work  at high tech  firm, realizes they are totally evil and does something about it, sort of like Tom  Cruise in The Firm.  Check, sounds like my kind of film.  Then I  saw that the critics rated it at 14% and audiences only a bit higher.  Oh, well, like I  say: we had the coupons.

It wasn’t a bad movie.  While I’m glad we didn’t spend money on it, I’m not unhappy to have seen it.  It didn’t actually lower my  IQ, as some of them will nowadays.  The plot was good enough, The Circle is a mega-popular social media company/cult that wants to take over  the world and  force  everybody in the world to  think alike and they almost get away  with it until Emma Watson gives a really great speech at the  end and all the people who thought she was a geek now think she’s awesome, and the world will  now  live  happily ever after.
The weakest part of the film, and I hate to say  it, was Emma Watson.  I loved her in the Harry Potter films, and I’ve heard reports that  she is astounding in Beauty and the Beast, but I just couldn’t get a grasp on her supposed personality in this.  She just seemed kind of always down.
One of the bright parts was the girl who  was her best friend. I forget the actress’s name, but she was Amy Pond in Dr. Who.

So, see it.  Or don’t  It really  won’t make any difference to the world what  you do.

Civilization has its ups and downs.  Politically and meteorologically, today was not a bad day at all.

In France, Emmanuel Macron was elected president, which may not be so great in the end because from all reports I’m hearing, he’s essentially a smooth talking corporatist, but the evil Marine Le Pen is  out, and she might have done serious damage to the EU.

Meteorologically, today  was the first day this year I was wandering around outdoors without a jacket.  Bad that it’s taken so long, good that it’s here.

Despite all  the ups and downs, science continues to move forward, because that is the general direction in which science moves.  Out into the universe, deep  inside the ocean and our bodies, and back and forth in time.  Not just inventing new inventions, which is cool  enough, but steadily exploring and adding to our collective knowledge.

The Cassini spacecraft is in  orbit around Saturn and sending back lots  of pictures  which the good folk at NASA are describing as ‘Awesome’ and ‘Unbelievable,’ and I’ll just have to take their word for it.  Unless they actually spot somebody waving to the camera, one rock looks very like another to me.

I am not mocking space exploration, I  am all for space exploration, I’m just saying that I can’t tell the difference between one planet and another.

It’s the looking back  in time aspect of  science that impressed me today.  Archaelologists in  northern  Germany have uncovered a site, on the marshy banks  of the Tollense river, with lots of dead bodies, human and horse, along with arrowheads of both flint and bronze, clubs, swords, and stuff like that.
They’ve carbon dated the whole shebang at about 1250 B.C.  That’s when ancient Egypt was a thing, long before Athenians invented science and democracy, long before Romulus and Remus were even born.  Meanwhile, in Northern Europe, people were already starting to form civilization and have mighty armies.

Sets the old historical  clock back  by a century or two.