moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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WRITER'S LINKS
Absolute Write Paypal donation button:

Absolute Write is one of the leading sites for information on writing and publishing, especially the scam versions thereof. It has a broad, deep online community with an enormous message base going back years. Now it needs help. See the details and discussion here
Preditors and Editors
Everything you wanted to know about literary agents
On the getting of agents
Writer Beware
Miss Snark
Writer's Net

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(and my Wish List)

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ArtLex art dictionary

for artists, collectors, students and educators in art production, criticism, history, aesthetics, and education

www.artlex.com/ArtLex/Ho.html#anchor2691104
hooptedoodle - A literary word that, technically, has no place being in this dictionary. Stuff that gets in the way of a story's making progress, it is wordy, unnecessary, space-taking, and, typically, should be edited out. Related to balderdash, folderol, flummery, foolishness, and fill; nonsense, prattle, blather, bombast, and baloney.

Quotes about hooptedoodle:

"I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story."

Spoken by a character in a novel by John Steinbeck (1902-1968), American writer. Sweet Thursday, 1954, as quoted in the New York Times, July 16, 2001 thus,

"What Steinbeck did in Sweet Thursday was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. 'Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts' is one, 'Lousy Wednesday' is another. The third chapter is titled "Hooptedoodle 1" and the 38th chapter 'Hooptedoodle 2' as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: 'Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.'"

Elmore Leonard, American novelist, temporary link New York Times, July 16, 2001.
Also see bad art, banausic, bric-a-brac, brummagem, camp, decoration, decorative, decorative arts, gewgaw, kitsch, ornament, taste, and tchotchke.

Also see the entry below, referring to Making Light's discussion of Elmore Leonard's discussion ... <starting to feel giddy, I'm circling so fast>

[permalink] posted by Mez at 12:49 pm