Fan of smileys? 🙂 We are. That’s why we just redesigned them to be cleaner, simpler, bigger, more expressive, and modern.

😉 😀

These new smileys are actually vector graphics, so they’ll stay crisp if you zoom in on your page. They’ll also stay sharp on high-resolution mobile displays.

😎 ⭐

To find out how to use an emoticon appearing in this post, just hover over it and you’ll see which characters produce it. We’re working on expanding our collection, so stay tuned for more smiley fun.

XD 😦 😥 😐 😮 😛 😡 ❤

If you’re not a fan of smileys, that’s okay! You can always turn them off and on in your dasbhoard under Settings → Writing. We hope you’ll have fun with these. Smile!

Bonus: We also created a few secret emoticons for you to discover. Good luck finding them! 😉

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Dear woman behind me in line at the grocery store,

You don’t know me. You have no clue what my life has been like since October 1, 2013. You have no clue that my family has gone through the wringer. You have no clue that we have faced unbelievable hardship. You have no clue we have been humiliated, humbled, destitute.
You have no clue I have cried more days than not; that I fight against bitterness taking control of my heart. You have no clue that my husband’s pride was shattered. You have no clue my kids have had the worries of an adult on their shoulders. You have no clue their innocence was snatched from them for no good reason. You know none of this.

What you do know is I tried to buy my kids some food and that the EBT machine was down so I couldn’t buy…

So, you are a poet. You know this because cryptic, symbolic, and interesting language seems to tap out of your fingers. It impresses your friends, bores your family, but you are hooked. You want to make more and to become better at it.
“How do I improve my poem?” You wonder.

Critique is helpful, sometimes only to shake your head at. It is easy for a reader or teacher or colleague to suggest revision, but how do you do it? It is like that infernal commentary “You have to get out of your box, leave your comfort zone.”
You aren’t afraid of hard work nor are you opposed to revision, it is just that getting started is hard. How do we leave our boxes?

First, write your poem or type it, get the entire thing out of your head where you can look at it. Then copy and paste it…

This little sketch is a parody (in both the widely-used and technical sense of the word) of the SIIA’s “Don’t Copy That Floppy” video from the 1990s.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly averse to some forms of artistic “cheating”. But, a week or two ago, I was watching an old Youtube video by an absolutely excellent drawing teacher called Shoo Rayner and he started to talk about tracing.

He was quite emphatic that tracing isn’t cheating and he provided some fairly interesting arguments to back up his ideas (and he has another, more interesting video about tracing here). It’s worth watching these videos just to hear his views on the subject and to make up your own mind. Even so, I have to disagree very strongly about this whole subject.

I believe that tracing is one of the worst ways that an artist can cheat herself…

Yesterday’s post ended with a bond.  James Bond.

There are many different types of Bonds, aren’t there?

(I found that image here.)

THIS post, however, is about Interpersonal Bonds, which I observed, last night, forming in a room.

While regular readers of this blog might imagine those bonds forming among people in a  group therapy room, they were actually created …

… at a restaurant.

Here’s what happened.

Last night, Michael and I went out to dinner, at a restaurant I like very much. We had to wait, a little while, for a table.

Once they seated us, our relief quickly turned to other feelings, because the people sitting next to us were loud. REALLY loud.

To use two words from yesterday’s post — Double O — one person, especially, seemed obstreperous and obnoxious.

And I noticed many people bonding, because of this.  Michael and I immediately bonded with our…

Italo Calvino said: The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts. Describe the ghosts that live in this house: Image credit: “love Don’t live here anymore…” – © 2009 Robb North – made available under Attribution 2.0 Generic

[Inspire me]

They built me by hand.

I am made of brick, wood, blood and Budwieser.

I remember the day that they turned on my electricity and the AC kicked on….

I was almost alive….

All I needed was the people.

Amy showed up in her mama’s belly just before winter that year.

Patty was almost as big as me, at least that’s what Tom had said, laughing when he tried to pick her up and carry her in to me.

I remember how angry she was when he lay on my front porch groaning.

He told her that his back was broke and to leave…

…upcycled flying creatures.

I am delighted to welcome author Alan McDermott to the blog today. Alan is one of those authors that I am in awe of – he writes great books while holding down a full time job, and has twin girls at home too. This is how a normal day for him goes. Amazing!

Being an author is fantastic!  The money, the fame, being able to get up whenever you want, write a couple of thousand words and then play a round of golf or go for a spin in the Lamborghini…

Today marks an important day for word users and language speakers everywhere. It’s National Grammar Day! There are all kinds of ways to celebrate this special occasion: Proofread an e-mail message before you hit “send.” Show some Facebook friends you care by correcting their grammatical mistakes in the comments section of their posts. Read a grammatical page-turner, like Woe Is I or Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Try your hand at a quick Facebook editing contest hosted by Grammarly, called “Edit This.” Or, for goodness’ sake, just take care to craft a structurally sound sentence with all your commas and apostrophes in the right places.

In honor of the holiday, here are 10 heartfelt sentiments to send to someone you love. Enjoy!

In honor of the day, tell us—which grammatical mistake makes your skin crawl?

by Benjamin Anastas

I’ll admit it: I have a clickbait problem. When I go online—should I admit how often that is on any given day? No, let’s maintain the illusion that I’m not addled, that I still have plenty of cubic footage left in the reservoir of willpower I built up before I ever opened a web browser—I can resist most clickbait for 80% of the time that I squander there, maybe even 90% or 95% on a good day of voluntary brain stupefaction and compulsive email checking. But then, like one of the demons yanking on St. Anthony’s cloak in Michelangelo’s painting “The Torment of St. Anthony,” the link “Emotional Toddler Loses it Over Her Parents’ Wedding Song” will scroll onto my screen, or a favorite from just yesterday, “Female Penguin Falls in Love with a Man”—and I’m sunk. I’m clickbait fodder. I’m bought and sold in an instant…

Been working on this Think Piece-y essay for awhile. I got a late start watching Season 2 of House of Cards, but after watching it and mulling it over, I think the similarities with West Wing are more striking than many people realize.

Also, thanks to the Twitter-er who pointed out that this needs a SPOILER ALERT for HoC.

___________________________________

House of Cards has already earned its place in history. Even if the series itself were an artistic disaster, the fact that it’s Netflix’s first original series, available for streaming and binging on the viewer’s own terms, signals an important shift in the way we watch and analyze TV. But what’s not new about the show is the way it creates a hermetically sealed D.C. Fantasyland for viewers to lose themselves in. Everything about the show furthers the impression that you’ve stepped into a different universe. The show is heavily…

I Must Die.

That’s all there is to it.

I am kneeling here…in my big rig…preparing for the exit from mortality by my own hand.

 No…hear me out.

When you do, you will see that…yes….it is for the best.

Everything is clear to me now.

I deserve it.

The sun’s rays… through the windows make the dust particles dance appear ghostly…haunted.

It is quiet now.

I have come to grips with the responsibility of dispensing this justice upon myself that I have pronounced…nay…that I have heaped upon other transgressors throughout my life.

I will not be a hypocrite.

I must be true to the laws of nature and man.

The laws that I believe in.   Self discipline.

 My rules…my guidelines.

Pet peeves should be inviolate.

I see the instruments of justice before me.

My release….

My redemption…

The ceremonial jagged piece of glass, the tack hammer, the boiling vat of…

When I was a kid, growing up on a pig farm in South Georgia, our ‘farm’ and home were surrounded by big fields of peanuts, corn, silage and soybeans.

After a good rain, we kids of the white trash persuasion and a few children of darker hue would head out into the fields and look for rain water that would pool up in certain low spots of these fields and go swimming.

Not only were some of these pools 3’ to 4’ deep, but they would also have a slimy purple, pink, gold and silver sheen to them…..

Insecticide….Pesticide….fertilizer….chemical and anal….(Horse poop goofy)

We didn’t know that then….We just thought it made the water pretty.

We’d swim in it all day!

We got it in our eyes… our noses….spit it at each other, probably had pee in it too.

Tusslin’ and fightin’, playin’ Civil War or Indians….Pushing each other down…

Captured quote from Anais Nin.