Awesome Elephant

Perfect Words

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 19:29:00 +0000

Testing GWD post

How To Always Have The Perfect Word

Ever feel like you just can’t find the perfect word because maybe there isn’t one?

Or maybe a word pops out in the heat of the moment that feels right, seems right – but upon further reflection, you realize, “Hmm, maybe that’s not actually a word.”

Politicians are notorious for their freewheeling use of vocabulary. Sarah Palin drew public ridicule when she posted a (now deleted) tweet calling on Muslims to “refudiate” support for the proposed Mosque at Ground Zero.

Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate

~ Sarah Palin, Twitter, July 2010

George W. Bush was regularly lampooned for his fast and loose approach to the language. “Nucular” has earned honorary status in our lexicon.

Palin tried to save face by drawing a connection between her “creative” word play and the tradition of writers such as Shakespeare in creating new words.

Shakespeare Palin is not. But she was right in arguing that the practice of creating new words is a literary tradition that has produced some staples of the language.

Literary Lexicon

Shakespeare alone is credited with coining hundreds of new words and phrases – including accommodation, bedroom, revolting, satisfying, uneducated, and watchdog, just to name a few.

Other authors known for their neologisms include Lewis Carroll – for words such as “slithy” for “lithe” and “slimy,” and “frumious” for “fuming” and “furious” – and Anthony Burgess, who created a whole new world of slang for his droogs in A Clockwork Orange, including yarbles, gulliver, and horrorshow.

The difference between these authors and Sarah Palin is their creations were intentional to set tone, build character, and create a new type of world – they weren’t the result of a slip of the tongue or the confused mashup of two words.

Making Your Own

Channel your inner Sarah Pa – er, Shakespeare – and find opportunities to create new language in your own writing. You can take the Lewis Carroll approach and find inspiration in joining two words together, or take a cue from Anthony Burgess and adapt words from other languages (he Anglicized some Russian words to create his slang).

If you’re really clever, you can come up with entire new words on your own. It will deepen your characters and bring them to life. You’ll be seen as a writer with a unique voice who – perhaps – is breaking ground and contributing to the vocabulary of future generations.

Still need a little help?

Wiki How has created a “Create a Made-Up Word” tool to help you on your way. Also check out The Unword Dictionary and Psuedo Dictionary to get a feel for some common “made up” words that are a part of everyday language now.

For shizzle – gotta celebrate!

-

Maria Rainier is a freelance writer, blog junkie, and current resident blogger at First in Education. She performs research surrounding online degrees and in her spare time, enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop at all costs.
Read more at ghostwriterdad.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bsvsr

The Sexiest Men In The World

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:05:00 +0000

According to Kirsty anyway.

I know that some men have top ten list of the women they dream of meeting but they carry it around in their head. They don't laminate it as Kirsty did!!

The big news is that some dude named Jimmy Fallon is top of the list. Apparently he's very famous. Who knew?

So if you want to see whether you're one of the other nine, you'd better pop across to Gone Bananas.

Dave (Come visit me at Mister Good Guy and Selfish Blogger)

.

I've doubled my subscribers overnight

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 10:13:00 +0000

Awesome news. I've doubled my subscriber count overnight!! I'm really thrilled.

There are now 2 subscribers to this blog.

Yep, read it an weep. TWO. Although I must confess that I'm one of them.

I guess I'm now obliged to write an ebook or a manifesto to explain how I did it.

I'll be a A-lister by the end of the week!!

Dave (Come visit me at Mister Good Guy and Selfish Blogger)

World Trade Center by Mike Goad

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 18:18:00 +0000

I don't want to reproduce it here because I haven't asked permission, but Mike Goad, whose blog is called Exit 78 has published a fantastic picture of the World Trade Center a couple of months before the terrible events this day in 2001.

I urge you to go take a look at THIS picture.

Kindle kindness

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 17:17:00 +0000

On Twitter today I posted something about wanting a Kindle and got a response from none01 basically telling me how much she loved hers.

Naturally I followed the links to find out who would be so helpful and it was Simone who blogs about everything and nothing. Latest blog post: The prey of a shopaHAULic

Simone lives in Germany and blogs in two languages (on the same blog)

Dave (Come visit me at Mister Good Guy and Selfish Blogger)

Awesome Indeed

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 15:40:00 +0000

In a slight change to the purpose of this blog I'm going to use it to link to some of the people I meet online who appear to be friendly, helpful and interesting.

I've spent ten minutes messing with the design and it's at a stage where it'll do. :-)

Dave (Come visit me at Mister Good Guy and Selfish Blogger)

Brand New Key

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:19:00 +0000

Someone having fun.

Brand New Key lip dub from Rebecca Hughes on Vimeo.

I'll tell you what's awesome...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:55:00 +0000

A never say die attitude.

Everything is awesome

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:24:00 +0000

Look around and see it.

HAHAHAHA LMAO at Dancing to The Court Of King Caractacus

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:57:00 +0000

It's too good to be true!!!

Having found the just posted about the Court Of King Caractacus I found this great video which just cracked me up!!!

I didn't even know there was a dance to go with the song, but here it is:

The Court Of King Caractacus

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:49:00 +0000

Songs My Children Won't Let Me Sing To Them #1

I sing to my children in the car as much to annoy them as to entertain myself. the truth is I can't sing a damn note anyway so it's difficult to know whether they don't like the song or whether it's the singing that bothers them.

Ha ha!!! Either way it's a winner!!!

You're The One That I Want

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:02:00 +0000

I've just been to watch my eldest son (9) in the school production of Grease. It was absolutely fantastic. Probably the best school production I've seen so far. The teaching staff got involved too and the kids were totally and utterly loving it.

An awesome elephant moment for sure!

Bring Me Fun, Bring Me Sunshine, Bring Me Love

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:33:00 +0000

Morecambe & Wise were high profile entertainers while I was young. I remember them fondly.

I also remember the song they closed the show with.

I like the song, but I especially love the message...

...bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.

Champion the Wonder Horse

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:56:00 +0000

A bit of nostalgia.

Saturday morning TV before humungousaurs were even a twinkle in the eye of the cartoonist.

I'll be all yours - soon

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:09:00 +0000

I owe several people a huge chunk of my time, and they'll get it, I just hope they'll forgive the delay.

Awesome Day

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:51:00 +0000

Hi!!

I hope you're having an AWESOME day!

That is all :-)

Awesome Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:32:00 +0000

One of my 4 children had a birthday over the weekend so I've been busy in the best possible way.

I ran late with getting the latest post out at Mister Good Guy but it's a damn good one in my humble opinion.

It's good because I've got back to the focus of Good Guy and today I reverted to highlighting charities as the lead in to my daily update posts. It's even more awesome than that though, because I've also started using RSS feed widgets for each of the sites on the Mona Lisa. I inserted all 29 into today's post, but I can insert inividual feed widgets into posts... for example:

RSS Widget courtesy of FeedWind

What did he say?

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 11:28:00 +0000

About ten minutes ago we drove past a guy in a car who was very animated. He was in a queue of slow moving traffic. With his windows down and our windows down we could hear that he was angry... he'd probably been cut up by a jerk. Clearly he wasn't getting to where he wanted to go fast enough and was making his feelings known.

My 9 year old boy asked, Dad, why did he just shout 'bucket'?

Picture credit

Jingle Bells In July

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:48:00 +0000

Distracting!?

Distracting doesn't even begin to cover it!

I've just put published the Sunday Love Song over at Selfish Blogger, whilst at the same time listening to my boys playing Jingle Bells on the keyboard against a latin rhythm. I'm not kidding you, it's driving me doolally.

Not content with that they're also changing the words...Jingle bells, jingle bell, jingle all the way... old man billy lost his willy on the motorway - hey!

You have to laugh!! :D

Awesome People Awesome Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 01:09:00 +0000

Part 1. Because there are loads of awesome people and awesome sites on the Mona Lisa Million.

I'm offering sections of a giant Mona Lisa picture for sponsorship. The sponsor gets me shouting about them and the great thing is I'll be donating a big chunk of the profits to good causes.

Click HERE to get your site on the Mona Lisa

FeedWind provide the magic behind the widgets!!

Scorchio

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:24:00 +0000

It is sooo damnably hot here in Blighty. I don't do hot. I'm pale and get prickly heat.

My boy asked me how hot it was and I told him it was "Scorchio" needless to say he looked at me like I was an idiot.

SCORCHIO!!!

Ben 10 is SO over

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:53:00 +0000

One of my boys has been collecting Ben 10 cards for a year. They were all he talked about and he nagged incessantly to increase his collection. He was obsessed with them and appeared to treasure them so we continued to get them for him. Last month he stopped nagging. And today we he informed us that it's over. Ben 10 isn't fashionable anymore. Ouch. I didn't see that one coming. eBay, here I come.

Picture

I might be rich

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:59:00 +0000

I always love to see the "News About Your Ticket" email.

There was a euro millions rollover last night.

Wonder how much I've won?

Surprise ending to Star Wars short

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:44:00 +0000

That DarthVader guy I mentioned in the Queen post tweeted a link to this video:

Thought some of you Star Wars nerds (mummy blogger) might enjoy it.

@Queen_UK

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:31:00 +0000

In yesterdays newspaper there was an article about the unlikely stars of Twitter

Here are two of them:
Queen_UK
DarthVader

More about the Queen