Palin Book Titles

We know it's coming, but what will it be called?

My pick is "As I Say, Lying."  What do you think?

The Value of Literature

Many people have asked me*, "Jimmy, why do you plan on leaving such a brilliant career in unrecognized comedy writing to teach English to high school students?" I firmly believe that the value of literature is that it helps us to understand ourselves and the world around us. In addition, studying literature involves developing skills like empathy that help us better ourselves.

The Sad State of Writing, Volume 2 - or "there's no excuse for mixing 'an' and 'and"

Today's common writing error is the most baffling to me, because I see no logical reason for anyone to use "and" when they mean "an." I continue to see people write sentences such as, "I am and adult!" Does anyone have a theory about why people do this?

That's all for now. I have to read a Henry James story, "The Beast in the Jungle," for my American Literature class. I don't trust anyone with two first names, especially when both of those names are English monarchs.

UPDATE: I finished the story. Surprisingly, it wasn't about a man with a ridiculously thick swath of pubic hair.

Carlin and Orwell

While most people know George Carlin as the guy from the "7 words" bit, I believe that he was much more than that. I see him as an Orwell-like defender of language, and for that we should be eternally grateful. Very near the top of my list of Orwell's important works is his essay "Politics and the English Language," which, among other topics, discusses the abundance of euphemistic language, and its damaging effect on writing.

Carlin's bit, "Euphemisms," addresses the same issue, and even more clearly shows the effect of euphemistic language on discourse, and, even more importantly, thought. Since language is the concrete instrument by which we convey abstract ideas, the language we use has a monumental impact on thought. In the bit, Carlin traced the history of the concept initially labeled "shell shock" to its present day incarnation of "post-traumatic stress disorder." Most important is the end, where he says "I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it Shell Shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll betcha. I'll betcha."