AA GILL IS MY NEW WRITING HERO

AA GILL at Amazon

 

 

Wow, Gill is fearless, sarcastic, really sarcastic, smart, street-wise, worldly, and loving. He was a restaurant/food critic that I discovered on one of Anthony Bourdain’s shows.He has a fantastic personality, and speaks eloquently on the connection between food and…well… everything. Food and politics. Food and nationalism.  Food and love.  Food and diplomacy. Food and philosophy. He’s handsome, fun, intelligent, and dyslexic.

It’s true. He writes about how much work it is for him to get anything written. His penmanship is awful, so he has people to translate his notes for him. He talks about it with refreshing honesty. That’s one of the reasons why he’s my hero.  If he can be a famous writer with dyslexia, what the hell!  Here’s the lesson for all of us who have limitations – you can still control how much you accomplish in spite of them. You can do anything you set your mind to. He’s the proof – if you need more proof.

If you can get hold of a copy (www.ebay.com) (www.amazon.com) of Paper View: The Best of the Sunday Times Television Columns, this is a great place to start getting a feel for his writing style.  It’s very conversational – like cocktail party banter. Like that part of the party where you’ve been there long enough to get into deeper conversations with some of the more interesting guests. It’s witty in the best sense, emotional, clever, and honest. After I read this book, I immediately bought 3 more and binged on Gill the way people binge on their Netflixfavorites.

Here is Anthony Bourdain and Gill having dinner in Scotland after a day of shooting.

Twice on CNN, I’ve tried to record this specific episode. The first time I tried, it was the day of the Florida nightclub shootings. The second time was the evening of another mass shooting a week or so ago. I’m just going to bide my time and keep an eye on the channel for it to rerun.

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Webnovelas feat. William Levy–Part 3

I’m sorry to report that the links no longer work. Univision has completely redone their site and no longer has forums for these stars. They just have news feeds now.

The Festering Blurb:Bursting Open w/Pungent Prose

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Time Changes All Things

William Levy Forum

Jacqueline Bracamontes Forum

Maite Perroni Forum

Univision Foros

Wow, I had not been to Univision forums for a long time. I am distressed to find that they no longer do celebrity forums. What does that mean?

It means:

• None of the links to the webnovelas work.
• There is no more William Levy forum at that site.
• There is no more Jacqueline Bracamontes forum.
• There is no more Maite Perroni forum.
• There are no more forums for the novelas that they starred in.

What does that mean for this blog? Well, the webnovela posts are the most visited in the entire blog. Anything that features William Levy in this blog gets the most hits every day. And now, the links are useless. I’m probably going to end up re-blogging the posts to announce that the links no longer work. There goes half my readership.  (The other half if the Elizabeth Lowell groupies).

Major suckage.

Thank you to the readers who searched here for their Levyrroni and Levymontes links. Let’s see what the future brings.  There’s certainly no shortage of William!

 

 

 

Technorati Rats Leave the Sinking Ship

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/06/23/technorati-quietly-killed-its-once-authoritative-blog-ranking-system-in-may/

When I started this blog, I used TECHNORATI to establish my online presence. It was good. It was easy to use.  It was a definitive tool for blog statistics. The article (click on link) describes how they sank and disappeared.  So, for both readers of this blog, none of the Technorati tags are going to work. I’m very sorry for any inconvenience.

Time changes all things.

Swetergrl

ALL HAIL THOTH — EGYPTIAN GOD OF SCRIBES & WRITING

This post has received a lot of hits the last couple of days. I find Thoth particularly fascinating because his myth combines wisdom with writing. One was the instrument of the other.

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Thoth

by Marianne Dixon

Thoth is the name given by the Greeks to the Egyptian god Djeheuty. Thoth was the god of wisdom, inventor of writing, patron of scribes and the divine mediator. He is most often represented as a man with the head of an ibis, holding a scribal palette and reed pen. He could also be shown completely as an ibis or a baboon.

As with most Egyptian deities there were many different stories regarding the parentage of Thoth. Many sources call him the son of Re, but one tradition has him springing forth from the head of Seth. This latter story is reminiscent of the birth of the Greek goddess Athena, who like Thoth was the patron divinity of wisdom.

Myths concerning Thoth show him as a divinity whose counsel is always sought. His most significant role is during the battles of Horus and Seth. Thoth is a staunch supporter of Horus and his mother Isis, maintaining that Horus’ claim to the throne is just and the murderous Seth has no right to the kingship of Egypt.

Elsewhere Thoth is a reliable mediator and peacemaker. When the goddess Tefnut had a dispute with her father Re and absconded to Nubia, it was Thoth that the sun-god sent to reason with her and bring her home. Thoth was also present at the judgement of the dead. He would question the deceased before recording the result of the weighing of the deceased’s heart. If the result was favorable Thoth would declare the deceased as a righteous individual who was worthy of a blessed afterlife.

Thoth was also a lunar deity, and whatever form he took he wore a lunar crescent on his head. Some Egyptologists think that the Egyptians identified the crescent moon with the curved beak of the ibis. It is also suggested that the Egyptians observed that baboon was a nocturnal (i.e. lunar) animal who would greet the sun with chattering noises each morning.

As he was messenger of the gods Thoth was identified by the Greeks with their own god Hermes. For this reason Thoth’s center of worship is still known to us today as Hermopolis.

The Festering Blurb:Bursting Open w/Pungent Prose

 

 

Technorati Tags: mythology,Egypt,Thoth,Ra,Seth,Hermes,Hermopolis,Marianne Dixon,heiroglyphics,Egyptian mythology,Isis,Horus,Tefnut

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2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,000 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 50 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

How to Mark A Book by Mortimer Adler (1940)

You get a highlighter and/or a pen. Then you write in the book. It ain’t rocket surgery. C’mon people.

The Festering Blurb:Bursting Open w/Pungent Prose

The article “How to Mark A Book”,  written by Mortimer Adler, appeared in Saturday Review in 1940.  This post is by my first guest reviewer — my mom!  This is a draft.

Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.
Mortimer Adler

Hi, Blanca,

I sort of went through the paper you gave me on “How to Mark A Book.”

The author, as I see it, would like for every reader to ingest the written word of a book.  Of course, that applies to any book worth reading.  So who decidees?  Current book reviews, hurried scanning through the book, or take it personally that if you are a true lover of books, you have to stop reading and mark up the book with your notes or, as he says, write your notes on pieces of paper and attach them to the…

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