Clipmarks | haraya's Writing collection

Top 10 Drunk American Writers

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:32:14 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: I'm looking for the women..

"After a month's sobriety my faculties became unbearably acute and I found myself unhealthily clairvoyant, having insights into places I'd as soon not journey to. Unlike some men, I had never drunk for boldness or charm or wit; I had used alcohol for precisely what it was, a depressant to check the mental exhilaration produced by extended sobriety."

"As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind."

"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you."

"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."

Tags: writers, list, american, quotes, drinking, drink, men, literature, photos

Writing as Performance: Revealing "the calculation that underlies the appearance of effortlessness"

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:27:46 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: PDF

Clip Source: www.harvardmagazine.com

But I hope I have done enough to suggest that you approach your writing not only as if it were a performance but also as if it constituted, for the moment, an ethically adequate object for your deepest ambition.

Tags: certainty, stephen greenblatt, writing, quote, ethics, performance, projection, motive, theory, literature

The History of Writing

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:33:52 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Revisiting & re-clipping some of my old stuff. (I recommend the source article for an illustrated history of abstract thought and writing, with the evolution of alphabets.)

Clip Source: www.historian.net

Language existed long before writing, emerging probably simultaneously with sapience, abstract thought and the Genus Homo.

As long ago as 25,000-30,000 years BP, humans were painting pictures on cave walls. Whether these pictures were telling a "story" or represented some type of "spirit house" or ritual exercise is not known.

Around 4100-3800 BCE, the tokens began to be symbols that could be impressed or inscribed in clay to represent a record of land, grain or cattle and a written language was beginning to develop. One of the earliest examples was found in the excavations of Uruk in Mesopotamia at a level representing the time of the crystallization of the Sumerian culture.

For the next step toward the development of an alphabet, we must go to Egypt where picture writing had developed sometime near the end of the 4th millennium BC.

One of the earliest examples is the name of NAR-MER, either the first or second Pharoah of an united Egypt in 3100 BCE.

Tags: history, alphabets, writing, scripts

Sylvia Plath

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:22:10 GMT

clipped by: morgainelefaye
clipper's remarks: A collection of videos.

Clip Source: irmavermaat.vox.com

A Tribute To Sylvia Plath And Ted Hughes - Part 1

A Tribute To Sylvia Plath And Ted Hughes - Part 2

A Tribute To The Poet Ted Hughes

Sylvia Plath Reads 'Fever 103'

Sylvia Plath Reads 'Daddy'

Sylvia Plath Reads Lady Lazarus

Sylvia Plath's Ariel

Tags: poetry, sylvia plath, ted hughes, youtube, mlf

Origins of the Fountain Pen

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:14:14 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.muslimheritage.com

Origins of the Fountain Pen

Qadi Abu-Hanifa Al-Nu'man bin Muhammad an outstanding publicist of the early decades of the Fatimid movement was confidant and companion of Al-Mu'izz, son of Al-Mansur, who came to the throne of Egypt in 953 C.E. (341 A.H). Al-Nu'man died in Fustat (old name for Cairo) in 974 C.E. (363 A.H).

In one of his many works entitled Kitab Al-Majalis Wal-Musayarat, which is now available in a beautiful edition by Al-Habib Al-Faqi, Ibrahim Shabbuh and Muhammad Al-Ya'lawi (Tunis 1978), he describes Al-Mu'izz as a figure of wide intellectual powers and curiosity, a great constructor of palaces , gardens, irrigation works, canals, reservoirs and aqueducts. He also recounts Al-Mu'izz commissioning the construction of a fountain pen:

"We wish to construct a pen which can be used for writing without having recourse to an ink-holder and whose ink will be contained inside it. A person can fill it with ink and write whatever he likes. The writer can put it in his sleeve or anywhere he wishes and it will not stain nor will any drop of ink leak out of it. The ink will flow only when there is an intention to write. We are unaware of anyone previously ever constructing (a pen such as this) and an indication of ‘penetrating wisdom' to whoever contemplates it and realises its exact significance and purpose'. I exclaimed, ‘Is this possible?' He replied, ‘It is possible if God so wills."

Tags: history, muslims, invention

Mind your Commas!!!

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 20:59:34 GMT

clipped by: tchak4123

Clip Source: www.canongate.net

3 Famous Commas

THE FATAL COMMA
Czarina Maria Fyodorovna once saved the life of a man by transposing a single comma in a warrant signed by her husband, Alexander III, which exiled a criminal to imprisonment and death in Siberia. On the bottom of the warrant the czar had written: `Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia.' The czarina changed the punctuation so that her husband's instructions read: `Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia.' The man was set free.
THE BLASPHEMOUS COMMA
In several editions of the King James Bible, Luke 23:32 is changed entirely by the absence of a comma. In the passage that describes the other men crucified with Christ, the erroneous editions read: `And there were also two other malefactors.' Instead of counting Christ as a malefactor, the passage should read: `And there were also two other, malefactors.'
THE MILLION-DOLLAR COMMA
The US government lost at least a million dollars through the slip of a comma. In the tariff act passed on June 6, 1872, a list of duty-free items included: `Fruit plants, tropical and semitropical'. A government clerk accidentally altered the line to read: `Fruit, plants tropical and semitropical'. Importers successfully contended that the passage, as written, exempted all tropical and semitropical plants from duty fees. This cost the US a fortune until May 9, 1874, when the passage was amended to plug the hole.

- F.B.

Other lists in Words

Have a browse of the List of Lists down the left hand side of this page for more lists in different subjects...

Tags: humour, anecdotes

2006 Bad Sex in Fiction Award

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 16:01:12 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: I think I know someone who could do worse, but let's not talk about that.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

LONDON - First-time author Iain Hollingshead scooped a dubious literary honor Wednesday, winning the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for his novel, "Twenty Something."

Hollingshead beat established writers including Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell, best seller Mark Haddon and literary maverick Thomas Pynchon to the prize, which aims to skewer "the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel."

Judges were moved by Hollingshead's evocation of "a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles." His description of "bulging trousers" sealed the win, the judges said.

"Because Hollingshead is a first-time writer, we wished to discourage him from further attempts," the judges — editors of Literary Review magazine — said in a statement. "Heavyweights like Thomas Pynchon and Will Self are beyond help at this point."

Hollingshead, 25, who received his award from rocker Courtney Love at a London ceremony, said he was delighted to become the prize's youngest winner.

"I hope to win it every year," said Hollingshead, who receives a statuette and a bottle of champagne.

Now in its 14th year, the award was established by the Literary Review to celebrate truly cringe-worthy erotic writing.

"It's mixed metaphors, embarrassing fumbling. It's the redundancy of the scene in an otherwise good novel," said assistant editor Philip Womack.

Last year's winner was food critic and novelist Giles Coren for a memorable passage comparing a male character's genitalia to a shower hose. In 2004, the prize went to Tom Wolfe's novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons," for sex scenes the judges called "ghastly ... inept ... (and) unrealistic."

Tags: fiction, writing, literature, sex, awards, contest, humor, novel, people

Half of teachers make simple apostrophe mistake

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 05:19:37 GMT

clipped by: ArghDangIt
clipper's remarks: yikes

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Two-thirds made a basic apostrophe mistake in a test administered to more than 2,000 workers from key professions. Eight per cent even muddled the use of I and me.

Teachers made a string of blunders despite being responsible for drumming correct English into the next generation.

They managed only to match financial workers, who are hardly known for their strong literacy skills.

Among other errors, teachers slipped up on the correct use of apostrophes, with many making the classic "greengrocer's" error.

Plural nouns in English do not have an apostrophe - as in "newspapers" - but the rule is often broken.

Shopkeepers sometimes advertise apple's and pear's for sale, hence the term greengrocer's apostrophe.

In the punctuation test, two thirds wrongly tried to place an apostrophe before or after the "s" in the sentence "The 70s was a great decade for music".

Nearly half failed to use the apostrophe correctly in "The Smiths' house is a disused windmill".

Another exercise required workers to choose the correct word in the sentence "I implied/inferred/ensued from his art collection that he was extremely wealthy".

Seven per cent wrongly picked "implied" while a similar proportion believed the answer was "ensued".

Eleven per cent thought it was "none of the above" while seven per cent passed on the question altogether.

Some eight per cent failed to give the correct answer to a question requiring respondents to choose between "I" and "me".

Steve Girdler, a director at Kelly Services, said: "The research bore out our suspicions about the UK's poor levels of competency in grammar.

"A logical solution would be to send people back to school, but closer inspection of the results revealed teachers were far from the grammar gurus they claimed to be."

A spokesman for the National Union of Teachers pointed out that teachers were far from being bottom of the class in the online test, adding: "It would be nice to eliminate the problem completely but teachers are human beings and subject to error."

Tags: teachers, grammar, english, u.k.

Six Word Stories

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 06:30:42 GMT

clipped by: lwassink
clipper's remarks: inspired by hemingway's famous six word story "For sale: baby shoes, never worn," great short stories by sci-fi authors.

Clip Source: wired.com

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.
- William Shatner

Vacuum collision. Orbits diverge. Farewell, love.
- David Brin

With bloody hands, I say good-bye.
- Frank Miller

Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth.
- Vernor Vinge

Dinosaurs return. Want their oil back.
- David Brin

I saw, darling, but do lie.
- Orson Scott Card

Tags: short stories, hemingway

On language and power

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 05:53:07 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: A couple of good quotations on the importance of being able to express yourself clearly and well, to the effect that proper language leads to clear thinking.

Clip Source: www.scriptoriumdaily.com

Words, Power, and Education

We must bring imagination to the task of communicating thought. The task grows harder every day because of the multitude of techniques, because of the proliferation of meaningless verbiage, and also because the younger generations have been steadily deprived of the four great traditional safeguards: formal logic and the Latin Grammar, which were a negative defence against fallacy and slipshod syntax; a dogmatic theology and the habit of good verse, which were a positive education in the handling of the magical images.

– Dorothy Sayers, “Poetry, Language, and Ambiguity,” in The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement, 1957.

and the other from Richard Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian, found in his brilliant, offensive, hilarious first book Less than Words Can Say:

Truncheons are for louts. The great masters of social manipulation use language. They know, furthermore, that the establishment of a flexible and subtle language for the ruling classes is only half of what’s needed. The other half is the perpetuation of an ineffective and minimal language among the subjects. Ordinarily, the second half is assured by man’s natural propensity to bother himself as little as possible, but history occasionally requires that the rulers take some special pains to preserve the ignorance of their subjects.

A fluent command of English cannot exist as an isolated skill, a clever stunt. A person who speaks and writes his native tongue clearly and precisely does so because of many other abilities, and those other abilities themselves grow stronger through the fluent manipulation of language. The simple matter of being logical is a function of language. A million high school graduates capable of fluent English would be a million Americans capable of logical thought. What would we do with them[…] ? You think they’re going to buy those lottery tickets and lamps in the shape of Porky Pig?

Tags: education, language

Letter tells of truce in trenches

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:08:15 GMT

clipped by: haraya

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

He refers to himself only as Boy, the name by which his mother knew him. A faceless soldier of the First World War.

But his letter survives, five pencilled pages of an Army-issue notebook, describing to her one of that conflict’s most poignant moments: the Christmas truce of 1914.

The letter, discovered amongst a collection of unremarkable manuscripts and due for auction next month, tells of how British and German troops facing each other across No Man’s Land put aside killing for a day to play football and swap cigarettes.

Writing home on Christmas Day, Boy tells his “Dear Mater” of “the most memorable Christmas I’ve ever spent or [am] likely to spend.”

The guns, he wrote, had fallen silent about teatime on Christmas Eve, and since then not a shot had been fired.

As night fell, the Germans placed lights along the edge of their trenches before approaching the British lines.

The letter continued: “They also gave us a few songs so we had quite a social party. Some of our chaps went over to their lines. I think they’ve all come back bar one. They no doubt kept him as a souvenir.”

The Christmas truce began around Ypres with greetings shouted across ground littered with dead.

In some parts of the Western Front it would last until New Year’s Day. “There must be something in the spirit of Christmas as today we are all on top of our trenches running about,” wrote Boy. “Whereas other days we have to keep out heads well down.”

What became of Boy is a mystery.

The letter, to auctioned at Bonhams on Nov 7, should fetch between £500 and £1,000.

Tags: war, letter, auction, people, christmas, germany, britain, soldiers

Automatic complaint-letter generator

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 03:50:25 GMT

clipped by: BigBadWolf
clipper's remarks: For the lazy. You input names and it does the typing for you.

Clip Source: www.pakin.org

Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator

Complain about a person

Use both upper- and lowercase letters!

What's the full name of the person you want to complain about? (This style indicates a required field.)


	Title	First	Middle	Last	Suffix
(e.g.	`[Mr.]`	`[John]`	`[Q.]`	`[Public]`	`[, Jr.]`)

Is that person male or female?
Do you normally refer to him/her by first name, last name, or title + last name?
How many paragraphs do you want to generate?

Complain about a company/organization

Tags: letter, humor


(e.g.	`[Microsoft]` or `[the power company]`