I vow to never give my students a reason to do this.
The Spontaneous Overflow of Powerful Feelings
"where do you teach english?"
from Anonymous
CT. I’m actually teaching social studies in Hamden now as a long term sub, but my cert is in English. Hoping to get a permanent spot in the area soon.
From “One Today”
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
— Richard Blanco (2013)
I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.
Augustus Waters to Hazel Grace, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
We could end homelessness with the money Americans spend on Christmas decorations.
(see in high-res)
// from think-progress
→ Adjectives
“Adjectives are frequently the greatest enemy of the substantive.”
- Voltaire
“[I was taught] to distrust adjectives as I would later learn to distrust certain people in certain situations.”
- Ernest Hemingway
“The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.”
- Clifton Paul Fadiman
“When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them — then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when close together. They give strength when they are wide apart.”
- Mark Twain
“The road to hell is paved with adjectives.”
- Stephen King
“[The adjective] is the one part of speech first seized upon and worked to death by novices and inferior writers.”
- J.I. Rodale
“Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.”
- Ezra Pound
“The adjective has not been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.”
- E.B. White
“[Whoever writes in English] is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective.”
- George Orwell
“Most adjectives are also unnecessary. Like adverbs, they are sprinkled into sentences by writers who don’t stop to think that the concept is already in the noun.”
- William Zissner
// from nevver
Treat cargo shorts as Stalin treated his enemies: forgotten forever; removed from history.
// from putthison
“Yes, inevitably reading is a conversation between an author and a reader, but give yourself some power in that conversation, reader. Go out there and make a world!”
— John Green
Six reasons you should never eat Papa John’s pizza
1) The pizza is terrible. 2) The guy above wants to raise prices and cut worker hours as a result of Obamacare. 3) They mass-text-spammed people in the middle of the night, leading to a $250 million class-action lawsuit. 4) “Papa John” Schnatter owns this house. 5) They don’t have lava cakes. 6) Namesake competitor Jimmy John’s is bringing back sprouts soon, and they deliver, too. (EDIT: Though, as it turns out, #2 applies to Jimmy John as well.)
(see in high-res)
// from shortformblog
Sigh of relief
If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody.
Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.
Anthony Bourdain’s last words on the series finale of No Reservations. (via travelchannel)
// from travelchannel
