First Looks category archive

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6 p.

Finding parking is a lot easier with the sun still out.

I’ll have–oh, I don’t have to order. The waitress knows what I want.

And since my attendance is so sporadic, all I can say is she’s a damned good waitress.

Several years ago, our dog Beau, a black lab, died.

He lay down on the back porch and didn’t move for days. When we took him to the vet, he didn’t make it.

Animals, unlike most people, know when their time has come. Also unlike people, they know that death is not an unnatural occurrence.

One of the most power lines I have ever read was in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes. Now, Burroughs was pretty much the pre-eminent hack writer of his time. I have read most of his stuff. It’s about as profound as a hotdog, and, frankly, just as much fun to read as a hotdog is to eat at a summer barbecue.

But in that one book, he wrote this line: “Tarzan considered death to be something to avoided, but not feared.”

We could all be guided by that.

Why all this drivel?

In today’s local rag, Lisa Scottolini wrote of the death of her dog.

It was time to do the window boxes today:

While the windows were out, the neighbor brought home his new Chesapeake puppy.

The dogs were very interested in him.

In other news, the roses are coming in, starting with the minnies.

And the poppies are taking over.

Jeez, even I know that when the label says, “This is a poison,” the product is probably a poison.

Dick Polman translates St. John speak.

Mithras on putting old, stale, vinegary wine in new bottles.

I promised my tech writing class to dig up a list of online resources about writing. After intense research (half an hour on Google) here are some of the items I found. I figured I’d post them here, in case someone finds them useful:

Here is a short list of free on-line resources on writing and grammar. They will lead you to other resources.

I recommend highly that everyone read The Elements of Style. It says more about how to write well in 46 pages than many books do in 460 pages.

These resources will lead you to others. A web search for “English grammar” or “English grammar tutorials” will turn up many more.

Reference

Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
The classic American book on writing clearly and concisely.
http://www.bartleby.com/141/

Grammar Girl Podcasts
A light-hearted but useful look a common grammar questions.
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

Judy Vorfeld’s Webgrammar
http://www.webgrammar.com/

AskOxford, the Oxford University (England) Press
http://www.askoxford.com/betterwriting/classicerrors/

Grammar and Usage for the Non-Expert
http://grammartips.homestead.com/

The Guide to Grammar and Writing
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

Brief Guide to Business Writing
http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/faculty/kbrown/writing.html

Suite101.com Business Writing Course
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17951/seminar

Tutorials with Quizzes

Open Distance Learning Grammar
This includes quizzes. Sometimes the questions are a little too concise (so concise as to be confusing), but free is good.
http://odl.vwv.at/english/odlres/res8/Grammar/grammar.htm

University of Calgary Department of English
http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/grammar/

English 101 Grammar
http://www.englishgrammar101.com/

My, the guy has a gorgeous voice (no, I didn’t hear the opening of the game–I was at DL–but I heard the rerun):

It began at a Havertown sushi bar, where he confessed his dream to a parishioner.

Then, last November, his adoring congregation celebrated his 10th anniversary as rector of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Wayne by surprising him with the chance to realize his dream.

Tonight at Citizens Bank Park, before the Phillies match bats with the Atlanta Braves, the Rev. Frank Allen’s dream will come true when he sings the national anthem.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled,” says Allen. “I’m very patriotic and I’m a baseball nut.”

On hand will be more than 1,100 members of his flock, who are “going to be making a joyful noise,” predicts Glenn Porter, a St. David’s congregant. “When was the last time 1,100 Episcopalians gathered in public? We’re not a showy bunch.”

Plus, the Phils are winning.

The question I have is this: Why is St. David’s Church in Wayne, when it should be, natch, in St. Davids, right next door?

At Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6p-9p.

Surprisingly enough, if you can’t take SEPTA, there’s almost always parking on South Street between 18th and 19th.

Addendum:

The radio traffic report warned me about everything except the accident on the Platt Bridge.

No, I don’t think this is his video, but he linked to it:

They seem much worse than usual this year:

From Delaware Liberal, through a glass darkly:

Here sunk in the depths of CSI: Miami reruns, I just saw a Verizon Wireless commercial in Spanish. It’s so new it’s not even on YouTube yet.

Duncan sums it up.

Drinking Liberally tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, Pa., 6 p. m.

I’d much rather be there than where I’m going to be, which is at a church meeting explaining to the Administrative Council that the price of fuel oil (you know, that stuff we were supposed to get from Iraq) is breaking us.

Your daily dose of executive incompetence (emphasis added):

Amanda Smay, an English major at a Pennsylvania college, longed to go to London next month with a study-abroad program.

Then sticker shock set in. The 10-day trip would cost about $2,800, or 75 percent more than two years ago.

This time on health care. Robert Reich:

This is becoming something of a pattern with McEconomics. McCain issues a policy, such as his tax cuts for everyone under the sun including corporations, followed by a vague “don’t’ worry about the price tag.” But as old-time conservatives used to be fond of pointing out, there’s no free lunch. The net price tag on McCain’s election-year promises already dwarf everything HRC and Obama have proposed. His “high-risk” pool idea is in the same broad “don’t worry about it” category. Which means we should worry.

McCain’s health care plan won’t work even for average people without pre-existing conditions. He wants to end the tax break for employees who get health insurance from their employers (I’ve gone on record in support of de-coupling health insurance from employment), but would offer only $5,000 per family in tax credits to pay for what they’ve lost or never had. Absurd. The average cost of employer-funded health care in the U.S. last year was over $12,000 per family.

Steven D. over at the Booman Tribune meditates upon Cicero and Clinton.

Daily post on the failed stewardship of the Party of Privilege (emphasis added):

Mark Price, a labor economist with Pennsylvania’s Keystone Research Center, lists the ingredients for what he terms “the most liberal definition of unemployment”: people who are unemployed and looking for work, people who want jobs but have given up looking for one, and people who have taken part-time jobs because they can’t find full-time work.

These measurements provide the broadest measure of labor underutilization, according to Price.

Last month, 9.2 percent of the workforce fell into one of these three categories.

I did really bad.

See whether you can do better.