"Hey, Malkovich! Think fast!"

... and 31 other supposedly unscripted movie-moments.

(I think No.8 is my favourite.)

Who guards the Guardian?

Before (Jeremy Brier's summary of Emily Thornberry's opinions...)

After (the Guardian's summary of Jeremy Brier's...)

Fantastic

Attn  Smyth,

I am Barrister.Larry Martins, (legal practitioner/advocates) Lome Togo. West Africa.I would like you to indicate your interest to receive the transfer of US $ 6,million left behind by my late client Mr S. M. Smyth, a national of your country, before the fund gets confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this huge amount were deposited.I will like you to stand as the next of kin to my late client whose account is presently dormant, for claims. Please contact me at (larrymartins455@yahoo.com) for more clarifications. 

Hon.Larry Martins
(larrymartins455@yahoo.com)

Gaelic

Gaelic is the traditional language here in Scotland - although it's rarely spoken outside of communities rife with incest. Most people speak the Queen's English (if, that is, the Queen has a serious case of Tourette's).

- Danny Bhoy, A Visitor's Guide to Scotland

True story

Today I wrote a poem, entitled 'Story', and labelled 'non-fiction'.

These things happen.

Reem

Dot Wordsworth asks if Joey Essex knows what 'reem' means.

Five pounds right here says he doesn't.

(Soldiers know what 'to ream' (sic) means. They even have a tool for it. Ahem.)

'We DO NOT accept poetry or short stories.'

Please don't call and say "I know you don't accept poetry, but I'd just like to read you this funny poem I've written anyway." That would be greatly appreciated.

- The Oldie, submissions guidelines ('What we DON'T want')

InDefinition - 73

selfie-explanatory, adj. what it'll be like listening to people go through their holiday snaps ten years from now

Only in English (literally) - GUEST ENTRY

"You know what happened last month, without anybody noticing? Webster's Dictionary expanded the definition of the word 'literally' to include the way it's commonly misused. So the thing is, we now no longer have a word in the English language that means 'literally'. 'Literally' doesn't have a synonym. So we're going to have the find a Latin word for it, and use it. But see, I don't know any Latin. So when I say that I am 'literally going to set fire to this building with you in it, before I hand over the keys to it', you don't know if I'm speaking figuratively or literally."

- The Newsroom

Spectator 'Books of the Year'

or; How to Blog, by Jeremy Clarke.

The science of the movie screenplay

in which there are a handful of interesting facts, generally concerning Lord of the Rings - 'one of the biggest successful film projects ever' - and most especially the bit where we are instructed ('Screenwriting Pitfalls') never ever to rely on the Deus ex machina, like, and I quote, 'the eagles at the end of The Lord of the Rings'.

Received

(courtesy DS Hilton)

Tinder

An Erasure Poem, by Yesika Salgado.

Base humour(?)

[source redacted]

War literature - what is it good for? (2)

Recently, I had [the] experience [of] listening to Major General John Borling (USAF, retired), a former fighter pilot and six-year Vietnam POW. When asked to name the most important courses he took as an Academy cadet, Borling immediately responded: “Humanities courses—art history, music appreciation, literature, introductory philosophy.”

- Thomas G McGuire, in War, Literature, & the Arts

War literature - what is it good for?

What are the humanities about if not the cultivation of an informed conscience, a habit of reflection in which the flow of thoughtless action and means-end calculation is interrupted by a consideration of historical contexts and ethical considerations, by an imaginative awareness of the character and consequences of action, by a deep investment in the human condition and its possibilities? If those with such knowledge and such capacities do not assume some kind of responsibility for worldly action, including the management of violence, then that responsibility passes to the Kilgores, and the Kurtzes, of the world. 

- Geoffrey Galt Harpham, The Humanities and the Dream of America

NB - 'cissexism'

Apparently a 'cis' is someone who identifies with the same gender that they were born with. So that's a thing now.

- Tim Stanley, in The Telegraph

Myleene Klass 'wipes the floor' with Ed Miliband

In which I initially thought The Telegraph had used inverted commas to denote that Ms Klass did not, in fact, actually use the would-be leader of the country to mop out her kitchen.

Alas (twice over)...

Mini biog

(from this month's Literary Review)

Also

'An Ode to Photocopies', by Nick Ripatrazone.

No.2 is a poem unto itself.

And also (again):

The role of the high school English teacher is also not to create a legion of English majors — God help us — but rather to pause a student’s hectic and harried day and get them thinking about words.

John Updike

was rejected, twice, from Harvard's most prestigious creative writing class.

And other matters.

'The three war cemeteries...'

Is it a 'thing', then, in commemorative inscriptions (and/or elsewhere) that you can put a comma between words written in the lower case, but not if they're in capital letters?

Or does one of those two (?) places contain two (or indeed even three) war cemeteries within it?

(One might argue, in the circumstances, that the comma before 'saith the LORD' is one of the more superfluous punctuation marks in the English language.)

Which realisation (#tag)

['Hashtag' oddness - part 3] has now served to completely ruin this otherwise extremely funny Late Night with Jimmy Fallon sketch that up until about five minutes ago I used to venerate.

Such is life.

Oh, and another thing (#tag)

['Hashtag' oddness - part 2]

This thing here - # - is not a 'hashtag'. It's a 'hash' (as they used to tell you on the more complicated kinds of phone-calls), also known as the 'pound sign', 'number sign', and even, apparently, the 'octothorpe'.*

A hashtag is the hash sign followed by the cutesy commentary. #likeitsaysinthisOEDdefinitionrighthere

See?

--
* which makes perfect sense, but this is the first I've heard of it.

Just how much should I let it annoy me

that in this pathetically simple advert someone couldn't even be bothered to format the '.co.uk' into the same font as the 'WH Smith'?

Answers on a postcard - addressed to my psychiatrist.

Books I've actually finished lately: 58

Tis the season to be X44

Books I've actually finished lately: 57