I live!

I made good on my threat to buy a domain. Come see me at http://readwriterachel.com. For now, the focus is more on cataloguing my clips than blogging for its own sake, but I do have a separate ‘blog’ category, here (and it has its own RSS feed though of course I’d rather you subscribe to the full feed)

As I figure out how to remake that space, watch for “Like Affair With Words”-esque posts about books and strange words. I don’t think we’ll ever have good times as good as they were, friends, but let’s have a go at it anyway, shall we?

Here, but not the now

My apologies, readers (all four of you, anyway).

Life, The Universe, and all that are conspiring to put this blog on ice for the time being. As much fun as it is to write, I just don’t have the time…Also, I really want to take some time to seriously think about what I want this blog to do. The formula is lacking something.

With this post I say farewell and goodbye–farewell, of course, meaning simply that I wish you all fare well in my temporary absence, and goodbye being a contracted form of “God be with ye,” but in this case you can take that deity with or without a capital G, as you see fit.

In short, this is not the end. I’ll be back.

Poetry: The Owl and the Pussycat

I.
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

II.

Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
III.

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon. [Edward Lear. via]

A plug

I meant to do this last month, but please visit Life In A Bubble, the blog of a fellow former Minnesotan trying to break into journalism here in DC. I met Jessica at a women-only career seminar and totally understand how hard it is to do what she’s doing. So in the name of chicks supporting other chicks, check her out (even if you’re not a chick). Ta-da!

*groan*

The student editors of a University of Colorado newspaper were wrong to publish an opinion column written earlier this week that said all Asians hate white people and should be captured and “hog-tied,” CU officials said Wednesday. [DUH] [Original Column]

Yeah, yeah, first amendment rights and freedom of speech…but I’ve always held the opinion that if you’re going to make racist jokes, sexist jokes, whatever, your jokes had damn well better be funny. In other words, bad jokes are just bad jokes unless they’re bad hateful jokes, in which case the “but I was trying to be funny!” excuse doesn’t really cut it.