Day 933: The Thin Red Line Of Being An Offensive Jerk

originally published July 21, 2014 As a writer whose surrounding landscape is the unfiltered cessbucket frontier of the internet, I don’t spend much time worrying about offending my audience. Conversely, as a Canadian awash in synaptic decorum and apologetic genetics (or, apologenetics as we call them here), I feel compelled from the meaty core of […]

Day 905: Slapping Those Words In Their Smarmy Little Faces

originally published June 23, 2014 There is a scene in the Kevin Smith film Clerks 2 in which a character (a very white character) decides he wants to “take back” the term ‘porch-monkey’ so that it can shed its racist connotation and act as a slur against lazy people of all tints and hues. The […]

Day 899: Chanjing Our Speling So It Makes Mor Sens

originally published June 17, 2014 Ask anyone who has had to learn English as something other than their first language if it was difficult to soak in all the illogical rules and quirky exceptions in our spelling and they’ll probably look at you coldly while swearing under their breath in their native tongue. The English […]

Day 892: 8 Obscure Poetry Forms For The Love Of 80s Movies

originally published June 10, 2014 I have a tendency to mistrust my own ambition. One morning I felt the urge to spend that day’s kilograph using however many haikus would be necessary to fill a thousand words (eight-two, apparently). Another day had me wrestling to produce nine Shakespearean sonnets, adhering as closely as possible to […]

Day 839: The Stars Of Our Show – The Alphabet

originally published April 18, 2014 I love playing around with the format of this little experiment and trying to cram as much (seemingly) meaningless trivia into a tiny thousand-word cubicle. To that end I’m going to offer a specific number of trivia slices to spread across your plate of knowledge today, awaiting the fork of […]

Day 821: Schlepping A Thousand Kosher Words To The Page

originally published March 31, 2014 I’m not one to toot my own genetic horn, but I have yet to discover a language more palette-ticklingly entertaining than Yiddish. I may have been raised in a Jewish home whose only strict adherence to the faith involved my father slightly furrowing his brow when I’d order a bacon […]

Day 819: How To Talk Like A Geek, Circa 1993

originally published March 29, 2014 As romantically as it may roll from the tongue, the notion of September, 1993 being referred to as “the Eternal September” is far from the fodder for another Nicholas Sparks melodramatic novel (which he has no doubt penned in the time it has taken me to write this opening sentence). […]

Day 755: I Before E, The Extended 12″ Remix Version

originally published January 24, 2014 Those who know me know that I love mnemonics. I recite them often in an instructional way, which is why those who know me try not to spend a lot of time around me. Mnemonics – in particular those little rhymes that assist in remembering grammar and spelling – should be […]

Day 746: Punctuation – Not Just For Cartoon Speech-Bubble Swears

originally published January 15, 2014 Today I’m going to opt for a markedly insular approach and write about some of the tools I keep scattered about my proverbial writing desk. I’m not talking about my retread and tired metaphors, nor the antiquated pop culture references that pepper my daily prose (though those are just dyn-o-mite!). […]

Day 660: Generational Labels – A Primer For The Young’uns

originally published October 21, 2013 Good morning children. I know what you’re thinking – you’d rather be outside, frolicking in the gumdrop sunshine, knocking a hoop down the street with a stick or catching a picture show at the local nickelodeon, but this will only take a minute. You see, you don’t yet realize that […]