A somewhat goofy mini-collection of stuff I’ve been reading, stuff I’ve been thinking about and oh, some completely random crap.
Basically the stuff that never gets mentioned here because I’m not the kind of person who can just make some teeny little point. Not into the whole brevity thing, as the Dude would say.
Actually, I’m under the strict compulsion to write ten pages about anything on my mind. So this is me. Practicing brevity.
Oh boy.
Even more stuff to read.
I include links to Twitter handles too, when I can. If you’re not a fellow Twitterite, here’s my post about why it’s so great.
Item! Post No. 17 in a semi-ongoing series that lets me blurt things out excitedly and tell you what I’m reading and thinking about.
Item! My NPR name is Hanvi Aachen!
Loved this post from Liana Maeby.
“Eric and I recently discovered a shared fascination with the slew of impossibly named NPR hosts we listen to every day: Renee Montagne, Steve Inskeep, Corey Flintoff, Korva Coleman, Kai Ryssdal, Dina Temple-Raston.
“In fact, we’ve often wondered what it would be like to be one of them. A Nina Totenberg or a Renita Jablonski. A David Kestenbaum or a Lakshmi Singh. Even (on our most ambitious days) a Cherry Glaser or a Sylvia Poggioli.”
Oh yes. My gentleman friend and I have had this conversation many a time.
Actually, we end up talking about how poor Nina can never go to a German-speaking country because “mountain of corpses” is pretty much the worst surname ever.
Anyway … here’s Liana’s excellent tip:
To make your own NPR name, you stick your middle initial somewhere into your first name. Your new last name is the smallest foreign town you’ve ever been to.
Reporting from Portland, Oregon: I’m Hanvi Aachen.
Liana is @lianamaeby on Twitter. Hat-tip to @sally_j for sending me there!
Item! Art Picnic!
The wonderful Leah Piken Kolidas is doing an Art Picnic class this Saturday,
It takes place by phone and it’s all about giving your creativity some love, being playful, working through some blocks.
You don’t need to be a working artist (though you can) and you don’t need special supplies.
You just need to be up for spending some time with your creative side and finding out what happens (which somehow always turns out to be astonishingly therapeutic)
It’s $25, which is ridiculously reasonable, and she’s also giving away an mp3 recording of a grounding exercise to use before any creative activities to tune into your intuition. I love Leah so much.
She’s @leah_art on Twitter.
Item! Taking on grammar! Take that, pretentious asshats!
Loved this piece on Fifty Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.
“English syntax is a deep and interesting subject.
It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don’t-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can’t even tell when they’ve broken their own misbegotten rules.”
Thanks to @tumblemoose (George!) for getting me to read this.
Item! Design and print your own fabric!
This is such a completely fantastic idea that I almost can’t stand it.
It’s not so much the words “print custom fabric on demand” (though yes, fabulous) as the possibility.
Go drool over the lovely pictures and then do what I did yesterday: spend a few minutes daydreaming over all the fabulousness that is now possible.
In other, uh, unrelated news, I’m totally making Destuckification Station curtains for my office. Ooh, and maybe a Shivanaut poodle skirt.
Thanks to @pdxlilly for the nudge. Now my gentleman friend will blame her for the curtains, but it will be worth it.
Item! Talking truth.
Kyeli wrote an amazing post this week called It was me all along.
It’s pretty heavy, and deals with some hard, hard stuff (abuse, rape, awfulness). It’s also surprisingly uplifting, and makes some very important points about what it means to take care of yourself with awareness and intention.
Very useful. Very strong.
Love to sweet Kyeli. Thanks for being an inspiration and an all-around good person.
EDIT: Gah! I love her stuff so much that I accidentally sent you to a *different* great post. The one I wanted to link to was It was me all along. And the one I referenced here was expanding your edges as growth. Sorry. Read both!
She’s @kyeli on Twitter and is one of my favorites.
Item! 25 more people to like!
My friend (and now almost-neighbor … since I strong-armed him into moving to Portland) Chris Guillebeau put me in his list of 26 people he highly respects.
What an honor. Chris is such a genuinely lovely person.
We first connected over the whole “whoah, someone else running an online business who is totally not a sleazebag but is also willing to be a. themselves and b. successful” thing. But now we just hang out because it’s fun.
Ooh, and my favorite part of this post is when he refers to my gigantic family in a way that makes it sound as though I have a brood of nine children or something.
When in fact it’s just my semi-alternative living situation. You know. Me, my gentleman friend, my younger brother, my duck (who is also my business partner) and her pet chicken.
Also: if you have not read the 279 Days to Overnight Success Manifesto that Chris wrote, something is seriously wrong. It’s free. It’s terrific. There is some very useful advice in there that everyone should have.
He’s @chrisguillebeau on Twitter.
Item! Generate a meaningless corporate mission statement!
I spent way too much time this week playing around on this site.
Because generating a meaningless corporate mission statement is just too much fun.
My latest is:
We sincerely believe in following the highest quality stakeholder value by questionable methods and functionality overcoming all obstacles.
Awesome.
I cannot remember (argh! sorry!) who sent me to the mission statement generator. Please remind me if it’s you!
Item! Speaking of sounding like a robot …
If you don’t actually want to sound like a robot, my genius copywriter friend Kelly specializes in non-sounding-like-a-robot fighting off robot invasions.
Go drool over her Website Jetpack offer and admire the gorgeous illustration from Sparky Firepants, whom I wrote about last week.
Kelly is @copylicious and Mr. Pants (aka David Billings) is @sparkyfirepants.
That is all.
Happy reading.
And happy Blustery Windsday. See you tomorrow.
Follow
So I’m Dwick Tigny-Noelle, reporting for NPR from Columbia, South Carolina.
I feel more Liberal already.
Dick Carlsons last blog post..Why Yes — I AM The Big Cheese!
I’m Lauka Allestrup!
Wow “Lauka” works surpisingly well for an NPR name!
Luccy Vichy, reporting from London, England.
(Haha, that doesn’t sound too bad. I think that’s the next pen name, if the first one goes wrong!)
Lucy Viret (aka randomling)s last blog post..There is no “should”.
Havi, thanks so much for adding your drool to the puddle that’s already accumulated beneath my feet over the amazing Sparky Firepants’ illustration!
P.S. Will you PLEASE add the Shivanaut Poodle Skirt to your Shop? It’s a must-have item for spring! And maybe you could also look into adding a Destuckification Cape? I want to provide maximum value-add for my stakeholders.
Kelly
O.k., I scared my cat half to death when I cracked up over the Shivanaught poodle skirt. You can put me down for an order too. 🙂
And thank you times a zillion for talking up the Art Picnic extravaganza, Havi! You are the bestest!!
p.s. My NPR name is Lemah Andros. I may have to change my name because that is super fabulous. 🙂
leahs last blog post..Be a Color Detective
So much good stuff in this post- from the serious – the amazingly soul-baring post by Kyeli to the sublime- the NPR names- what a hoot! It is mandated (lol) that I listen to the local classical station at work- and when Lakshmi Singh comes on with the news update I am always in awe of her name. I definitely need to get myself an NPR name! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to prepare my corporate mission statement 😉
carma
carmas last blog post..Of Cheap Gas, Night Vision Goggles, Tattoos and Vasectomies- oh my!
“Actually, we end up talking about how poor Nina can never go to a German-speaking country because ‘mountain of corpses’ is pretty much the worst surname ever.”
LOL! Despite having heard “Totenberg” dozens of times, my brain never translated Nina’s last name.
Barely related note: I was in Switzerland on the day Ronald Reagan died. The radio was playing when I entered the hotel restaurant for breakfast. The first thing I heard was “Ronald Reagan ist tot.” That brought me up short.
Anancy Ilgau, reporting from Blacksburg, Virginia.
And now, of course, all future emails from me relative to working with Hanvi shall be signed, “Live from my iMac, Marilssa Allende.”
Fun. 🙂
Marissas last blog post..Advice from Your Ten-Year Old Self
I have yet to see an NPR name that doesn’t seem right-on. It’s truly a magic formula.
My head is spinning with fabric ideas, including a destuckification cape. I’m imagining the sort of thing you could pass along to someone else after you have successfully worked through the stuck. And don it to channel Havi’s superpowers. Woo hoo!
This is too fabulous.
Sjally Atrani and Anancy Ilgau will be reading selections from Marilssa Allende’s new book today, with commentary from Dwick Tigny-Noelle. Meanwhile, let’s hear from Luccy Vichy with an update on the latest from Lauka Allestrup.
GENIUS.
And yes, I need a destuckification cape. Come on, crafty people! I know there are like, a thousand knitters who read this blog. Someone’s got to volunteer to sew my cape once I make the fabric, right?
Oooh oooh! I can sew it. 🙂 Witness my mad sewing skillz from Halloween: http://tinyurl.com/cteqvj
(As usual, I spend waaaay more time on my S.O.’s costume than my own.)
I’m Barbjara Jena, reporting to you from Valencia, California.
Love it!
Barbara J Carters last blog post..The World’s Biggest Artist Colony
Selma has a pet chicken?????
How come no-one else noticed this? Must all have been far too busy concocting NPR names …
Fabulous post, Havi. (And I did notice you on Chris Guillebeau!)
Oh boy. So I’m … Annad-Liza Pitlochry reporting from Colorado … you know, where to insert the “d” into my first name is a difficult decision!
Off to go follow the links …
Anna-Lizas last blog post..Pollyanna Checks in from San Francisco
I have never heard NPR, but I think I can work out some UK parallels.
Signed,
Jamesh Baden-Baden (rotflmao)
James | Dancing Geeks last blog post..Too fast to write about it
Uh oh! I don’t have a middle initial! What do I do?
Riins last blog post..The more things change…
Angujs Maurepas here.
I’m so glad you linked to Geoff Pullum’s brilliant debunking of Strunk and White. Incidentally, Pullum knows more about English grammar than virtually any other living person, so he knows what he’s talking about. (Thanks to him, I feel perfectly at ease with that terminal preposition.)
Angus Gordons last blog post..Why every local business needs an up-to-date Google Local listing
@Riin – oh, have one of my brother’s. He has two. Let’s see. Take an N. Maybe that will work.
Angujs Maurepas! Jamesh Baden-Baden! Caaroline Mousehole (okay, you win)! Annad-Liza Pitlochry! Barbjara Jena!
Barbjara. Damn. That sounds so real.
@Caroline – I kind of misspoke. I mean, she treats her chicken like a pet but it is only a toy chicken. So it’s not as weird as it sounds, the whole duck-chicken thing. No, I guess it is. But just not like that. Oh, never mind. I will stop now because I’m making it worse! 🙂
I was never before confronted with elements of style in a scholary way, only in the internet-ideot “you and your grammar suck and here’s why!” way. (I was taught English as a second language – my native language is German.)
I’m glad I’m not the only one who went “Bwuh?” over that book. Incidentially, a friend is an an author from the USA and he dislikes the book, too.
Do Brits have a problem with it?
The company statement generator is seriously funny. :3
Carinas last blog post..Switching off the words.
The NYT article on Strunk & White added Dorothy Parker’s take:
“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
Personally, I like the illustrated version by Maira Kalman and Strunk.
Hmm. Rinin Coxheath?
Hey! My new supervisor has a duck!
Riins last blog post..The more things change…
@Riin – Rinin Coxheath is superb. I think you win. Also: a duck!
@Ruth – Yay, Maira Kalman! Yay, Dorothy Parker! You just made my day twice. Love it.
@Carina – Bwuh indeed. And internet people can be completely obnoxious, yes. Ugh. Every time I teach in Germany, no one ever points out how completely appalling my grammar skills are – they’re almost always ridiculously nice about it, which I appreciate.
Hmmm, let’s see… Joskiane Sauteurs? or maybe Josikane Yazd? (ok, that last city isn’t small at all, but I loved it!) Not quite sure about either.
What about a Selma poodle skirt? It would be the greatest thing to wear on rainy days!
I would make an intelligent remark, but really all I want to say is Sonnia Montauban.
Sonia Simones last blog post..Sing with Your Own Voice
From Western Scotland, London, England*, this is Natchan Zaandam.
*my alter-ego also moonlights for FOX 😉
Erm, Havi, I was the one who introduced you to the Mission Statement Generator. Which I located for the estimable Ms. Parkinson. Who did not pick an NPR name above, so we’ll leave it at that. :o)
Live from San Francisco, this is Mimchelle Braidwood, signing off.
@Michelle Russell – of course! How could I have forgotten that?
THANK YOU. Also, Mimchelle Braidwood = the awesome.
@Josiane – Selma poodle skirts!
Oh my god. If I get one than Sonia will want one too … this is going to be fabulous. Now that we know how great Nancy is at sewing (loved the pic!) … I can see how this could be trouble. I may have to stop working entirely and focus on my new clothing line!