She was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size . . . Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.
Lewis Carroll
To express what one wishes, one must look [...]
With the end of the semester approaching, your professors will soon be returning your essays and term papers—graded, with copious comments. Because we know it can be really difficult to translate your instructors’ oft-cryptic, hastily scribbled gibberish into plain ol’ English, we’d like to provide some helpful translations of their comments:
Comment: “First of all… “ [...]
Did a workshop this weekend on detective fiction for kids, kids between the ages of 8 and 13. We started off as villains, committing the perfect crime – crimes from stealing a sofa to throwing a brother’s hamster off the balcony. These crimes were wish fulfillment meeting bended rules – the sofa was hated, the [...]
It’s hard to find powerful figurative language. A good metaphor or simile needs to surprise you, either by describing the same old thing in a brand new way, or else striking a chord of recognition, putting it in some way that you immediately know is just what you meant but you never knew exactly [...]
As I was re-reading David Foster Wallace online, I received a forwarded email. It was from an aunt whose emails usually contain blinking/singing American flags and/or truisms that would have been cross-stitched on a pillow a generation ago. DFW would have loved her. The emails implicitly assume that I voted for Bush in both cycles [...]
Dear Ethicist:
I have this friend who’s a ghostwriter. She’s been asked to do a book for a potential client, and is feeling really torn. The job would pay a lot, and it would take only a short time — just three months or so. The potential client has done a few books in the past, [...]
Good people, I’ve been asked to say something at a wedding. The wedding of two people I introduced. One person was the good friend of my former upstairs neighbor in my apartment; the other person was the ex-girlfriend of a friend who has since fallen off the radar. She moved in with me after they [...]
I grew up in a family that swears. When I was four years old, my grandmother (not much of a swearer, herself) asked me not to say “fuck” around my 18-year-old cousin, because he might be offended by it. I suspect that she would likely have been more embarrassed than he would have [...]
I am reading a book about a human who falls in love with a vampire. It is summer novel, wonderfully trashy with page after page of “should I?” or “shouldn’t I?” plucked like petals in endless dilemmas. The vampire is cold and beautiful. The girl is soft and spunky. Their relationship somehow transcends triteness under [...]
It’s that time of year. With two weeks to go, our students are scrambling to finish their research papers, desperately trying to eke out that A or B—or, in some cases, just pass the class. Inevitably, and unfortunately, one or two or seventeen of our students will be desperate enough to cheat. Perhaps a few [...]
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