Funny little facts

Three of the top female British authors' names form the pattern AX, BY and XY : Zadie Smith, Monica Ali and Ali Smith.

A word of the day that came up this week forms a Highly Improbable Anagram with another little-known word that I just happened to know. The two words are : neoplasm and pleonasm.

Shelby Foote, Walker Percy and William Faulkner all hailed at various times from the same little Mississippi town - Greeneville.

Remember, remember

I used to think it was cool that my birthday was a holiday in the UK. Then I went to York on a day trip and learned what Guy Fawkes Day is all about. Now, living in the UK, I am in the ridiculous position of looking forward to my birthday (I have always loved birthdays, I don't know why) and yet dreading "Bonfire Night". In fact I dread the whole fortnight starting at about the 29th of October. That's when the neighbours starting playing with fireworks, and "Fraidy-Dog", aka Desmond, starts cowering under the furniture and refusing to go walkies after dark.
Of course, it's really bad on the night. The loud booms are beginning to frighten me now, because they seem to be coming right through the wall about a foot to my right. I never appreciated so much living in places where personal fireworks are illegal until I lived in a place where they're permitted. Just give it a rest, will you?
I am 51 now, by the way. Thanks for the e-card, Joani. Thanks for going out and getting me ice cream, Lewis. And now, if this temporary lull in the noise means that next-door have used up all their exploding toys, I'm off to bed.

Is August truly the cruelest month?

Hywel Williams in "A truly wicked month" argues that it is, and history is on his side:
"This is always a good time to launch a coup, as Mikhail Gorbachev discovered in his dacha in 1991 and Iranians found in 1953 when the CIA toppled their government. Major military aggression also finds its August cue. Whether with cavalry or with artillery and infantry, this was always the high campaigning season in European warfare. The crops are gathered and the ground is hard.
"America in the Vietnam of 1964, Saddam in the Kuwait of 1990, all Europe in 1914 and then 1939: the rollcall of summer military onslaughts, either declared or imminent, is a reminder that August is serious, not silly."

Punctuation Trivia

I used to love creatively "nesting" parentheses in sentences in e-mail. I still do it occasionally. While most people become very terse in e-mail, to me the ease of typing as opposed to writing and the psychological freedom of e-mail can tend to make me even more loquacious than I am verbally. In today's Guardian, the gentle humour column of Smallweed played around with nested quotation marks. I'll just quote the last sentence, but I will not add extra quote marks, so as not to steal Smallweed's thunder:
"Mr Smallweed told me today: 'George Monbiot wrote in today's Guardian, "As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory, 'Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To the captives, 'come out', and to those in darkness, 'be free'. " ' " ' " If newspaper history wasn't made by Monbiot on Tuesday, I trust that it has been now.

Guide to British Folk Rock

I happened upon this guide to British folk rock by an American "child of punk". What no Maddy Prior?