A new translation effort aims to make all of Shakespeare’s plays comprehensible to today’s audiences Source: A Facelift for Shakespeare I once interviewed an actor playing Hamlet who preferred using Shakespeare’s language in a production where the rest of the cast played a revised text. He felt the text was perfectly understandable if it was …
Category Archives: Oddments
Goodbyes: Irish and Serbian
This is something I used to do more in my 20s but never knew there was a name for: the “Irish goodbye,” said of someone who leaves a party without saying their farewells to the host, the other guests, etc. Also referred to, says the Slate article, as “ghosting.” A young woman in our office, who …
Generic Corporate Promo Video
Everything You Hate About Advertising in One Fake Video That’s Almost Too Real | Adweek. Satire could be defined as “that which seeks to improve.” Or, as Dick Cavett reported George S. Kaufman saying, “Satire is what closes on Saturday night.” In the case of this video and, particularly, the McSweeney’s piece by Kendra Eash …
The Conet Project
I must have heard about the shortwave numbers stations years ago on this Lost and Found Sound recording for NPR’s All Things Considered (original page, YouTube version). The story was strange, the recorded sounds spooky, and the low-fidelity of the shortwave signal making them sound even spookier, as if other sounds and voices are edging …
Domestic Comedy
Exchange between me and Liz as we drove past Ravenscroft school. ME. That’s where Matthew did his play. LIZ. Yeah, that musical about Noah’s ark. He was Ham. ME. (Pause. ) (Seriously.) He was doing his best. LIZ. (Pause.) No! His character! His character’s name was Ham! He was the son of Noah!
A word fraught with meaning
I like embroidering my plainspoken, earthy, everyday, quotidian speech with particularly Victorianesque embellishments and verbally diabolic adornments that I dredge up from profligate readings of literature, ephemera, and old Monty Python sketches. Or maybe I just like words with lots of syllables. To that end, I sometimes clot my electro-mails and casual conversation with antique …
DOOMSDAY IS … Friday (for 2014)
Which means that Friday falls on: the last day of February (this is the key fact if you remember nothing else. Doomsday is always the last day in February for every year.) 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, and 12/12 5/9 and 9/5 7/11 and 11/7 March 7 (7 days after the last day of February) January …
Durham Comics Project
The Durham County Library has some great librarians interested in graphic novels and cartooning. Here’s a link to the Durham Comics Project site, with an absolutely charming little strip drawn by a little girl in their comics workshop. The strip is titled “Our New Swing Set.” I love the little look of puzzlement as they’re building the …
Tonight, for whatever reason, a little Laurel & Hardy was indicated…
Because, some nights, I just need an earworm that will put a smile on my face…. …and then I need to follow it up with another earworm and a little softshoe.
The Rise and Fall of Mr. Zip
Informative and fun little article on the US Postal Service’s push to get Americans to add a 5-digit ZIP code to their envelopes and post cards. The effort started in 1963 and it took almost 20 years before Americans changed their habits — or knuckled under, depending on your point of view. Interesting slice of …
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