Category: articles
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Terms of War: The Rules of Our Upcoming Engagement
As an amateur linguist, etymologist, and philologist, I care about the origins and meanings of words. Some say, “every word was once a poem,” and that’s a piece of how I feel, but mostly I care about words because I believe them to be living things, organisms tethered to the very life of humanity. No…
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Sitting at the feet of : a Group Travel Millionaire
Mike Zirbel went to work for a little family theme park down in the Ozark Mountains of Southwest Missouri called Silver Dollar City. It was 1974, the same year People magazine printed their first issue with Mia Farrow on the front cover. Silver Dollar City assigned Mike the Group Travel sector as a minor portion…
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Storyssentials: Dialect
“De man ain’t asleep — he’s dead. You hold still — I’ll go en see.” He went, and bent down and looked, and says: “It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He’s ben shot in de back. I reck’n he’s ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face —…
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Bad Thinking: Yeah, But That’ll Never Happen, So…
Recently, I was debating a hot topic with a brother of mine and he responded with that classic line: “Yeah, that sounds great, but that’ll never happen, so what do you really think?” He was accusing me of using this informal fallacy often called “wishful thinking” or “the Nirvana fallacy.” I was raging against the…
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Noble Beast Transmedia to Publish My Work
Noble Beast Transmedia Publishing Company will publish the digital story Slice of Life around the middle of February. Fans of Kickstarter might notice the name of their up-and-coming transmedia app, Steampunk Holmes. For Slice of Life, a transmedia team was assembled by the fabulous author Ellie Ann: Consisting of the infamous Gary Morgan, comic artist the mellifluous composers Raphael Cutrufello and…
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Happy New Year
Hey gang, Should old acquaintance be forgot, I wanted you to know I enjoyed our conversations this year. Looking forward to next year. Hugs, Kisses, and GINORMOUS DISCO BALLS THAT FALL FROM HEAVEN,
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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journo
Finally got around to seeing this sucker and I was pleasantly surprised. We’ll break this one up simply, the bad news first then the good. The bad news? There were moments where my secondary belief (for Tolkienites) or my suspended disbelief (for Coleridgers) completely quit and I was left in a dark theater saying, “Seriously?!”…
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10 Ways to NOT read Milton’s Poetry
BOOM: Vol. 4. COMPLETE POEMS IN ENGLISH, MILTON At this pace, I’ll be doing good to finish these suckers by my 30th birthday. For those who have only started reading and hanging out on here this year, I’m actually in the middle of a Harvard Classic read-through. I started out sprinting like Seabiscuit but slowed…