Short 09

“People want to read a book for one of two reasons: because the story is very good, or because the content relates to them.”—Curtis Rider (he’s very wonderful)


The irony is extreme: I made a grammatical mistake in my Typo Challenge post. See correction below (an excellent explanation of correct comma usage). Imagine large slice of humble pie. (Side note: Commas have always been hard for me, sort of like swimming is hard for cats.)

Having been a junior high English teacher, and having taught that "you must have a reason for every comma you use," I am not a proponent for random commas. However, this sentence truly needs one, as there is a clear subject and verb on each side of the conjunction (after your introductory clause, which is appropriately set off by a comma):

When a typo sneaks into the paper, concerned readers may submit the correction to the editor and it will run in the next issue.

The comma belongs after editor.


Speaking of cats, we have acquired another kitten. Curtis found it crying under our pile of scrap metal one morning. We’re dangerously close to becoming Crazy Cat People.

Left to right, back row: Curtis. Left to right, front row: Scout, Gulliver, Brave.

Left to right, back row: Curtis. Left to right, front row: Scout, Gulliver, Brave.

Cats before baths are much happier than cats after baths.

Cats before baths are much happier than cats after baths.

Short 07: A Plug for Breakfast

In honor of

A) 12 hours of writing other things,

B) Breakfast,

C) Breakfast,

and

D) Breakfast,

here is a plug for the values of breakfast. Eating a well-balanced (delicious) breakfast kickstarts your metabolism, cheers you up, and helps you not faint from hunger (three wonderful things). My relationship with breakfast teeters on the brink between enjoyment and fixation (or maybe I’m already obsessed and just unwilling to admit it).

Breakfast

Short 06

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds, 
Or bends with the remover to remove. 
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, 
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
If this be error and upon me prov'd, 
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

—William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Short 05

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.—Ernest Hemingway

Only Begin . . .

Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same story
To-morrow, and the next more dilatory,
For indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute!
What you can do, or think you can, begin it!
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated;
Begin it, and the work will be completed.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Short 04

A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men.
— King Solomon

Short 02

The more you study, the more you learn.

The more you learn, the more you know.

The more you know, the more you forget.

So...

Why study?