I don’t usually just point readers to another article elsewhere, but Michael Erard’s Escaping One’s Own Shadow over on the New York Times opinion pages strikes me as well worth reading and too complex to really do justice to here.
Continue reading “purging the purple”
Category: writing and writers
tiger, tiger
I thought circuses with exotic animals had been banned.
It seems I must be mistaken, though, as this poor beast was sitting in the heat of the afternoon in a tiny cage just outside the village bull ring today.
There were several other white tigers, two ‘normal’ tan tigers and a lion, in other cages. Most of them were fast asleep, which is hardly surprising given the fact the sun was shining directly onto the metal trailers.
I suppose it will be a bit cooler this evening, when they perform, but I won’t be going to watch.
Continue reading “tiger, tiger”
autumn
Autumn breathes grey mist across the mountain;
he stamps in puddles, then laughs
with sudden sunshine.
the RAE gets a round tuit
I’ve never really understood what the “urgente” refers to in the title of the “Manual de Español Urgente”. If it was a quick guide, surely it would be manual urgente? So, under what circumstances would we be writing “urgent Spanish” and need to check whether we had the details right?
Continue reading “the RAE gets a round tuit”
for the record
I’ve been making some voice recordings over the last week for various projects. There’s been a scripting and voicing of a promo spot for a new online kids’ radio station, a reading for a friend who is setting a Spanish poetry book to music, and also a reading of some of my own work for a soon-to-be-announced e-book (of which, more soon, I hope).
I’m not an expert with sound-recording software, and I’ve been having some problems deciding on the settings to use, particularly with respect to the different effects.
Continue reading “for the record”
don't confuse the narrator 