Grammatically speaking, it is the worst of times, you know?




Let's graduate from Elaine's school of diction today, okay? Image from Wikimedia Commons http://bit.ly/ezQ9XD

 

by Elaine Dunaway

“You know.” Put simply, these two words are destroying the spoken English language. Now, I understand that you may be unwilling to go that far at this precise moment; therefore, I have devised a series of talking points by which I hope to convert you to my way of thinking.

Let us begin with the series of events that brought this to my attention. It seems as though many of the people I spend all day conversing with – people at work, my boyfriend, my mother (please don’t kill me, Mom) etc. – have decided that “you know” is a necessary component of any phrase which passes through their lips. For example, let’s say that my boyfriend (let’s call him Jack) told me this: “Lauren and I went to, you know, get some Girl Scout cookies which are great, you know?” On the phone at work when clients call in, many of the people in our office pepper each sentence with copious amounts of “you know.” This morning in church, the pastor kept up a steady stream of “you know” along with his bible-beating thunder. Even professional radio broadcasters seem unable to refrain from letting this verbal comfort blanket slip: listening to an episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You from howstuffworks.com, while generally extremely enlightening, is like listening to two women vying for the Olympic gold medal in the category of “you know.”

Fistful of Links

Fistful of Links is a weekly catch-all of stories or videos we at FoW think are important or inane and wildly entertaining. From news outlets to personal blogs, our weekly list of links is as varied as our authors. Check in every Saturday to catch up with what we're reading and what you shouldn't miss. Enjoy!

"Oscar's Best Pictures in Legos" by CNN
-Video of a man who builds lego scenes of all the Best Picture Nominees. Odd guy. Cool stuff.

"Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter" by Verne G. Kopytoff / The New York Times
-Facebook and Twitter appear to be pulling many bloggers away from their once-pasttime. This article looks into the future that bloggers can expect to find.

"20 Ways to Burn 200 Calories" / Self
-This is a fun little slideshow describing different ways that one can easily burn 200 calories. A big bonus: most of them enjoy having fun rather than working out.

Inception and The Fighter: Guy Movies or Great Movies?

The cast of Christopher Nolan's Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio making a face.
Image by Craig Grobler via WikiMedia Commons.

By Thomas Hokum

When I heard FoW would be reviewing the Oscar movies, I called Inception with the type of zeal only a fanboy can muster. This movie represents a near perfect translation of an ambiguous idea like “dream stealing” to a work of cinematic mastery that achieves all of its goals through the creation of a paranoid, surreal tone that increases its focus as the movie progresses. The tone builds until the viewer begins to question not only the protagonist but even the movie itself. While Inception is groundbreaking in its attempt tell a new kind of story, The Fighter finds its achievement in perfectly capturing a story older than even Rocky, the story of the comeback fighter.

Winter's Bone and True Grit: Kick Ass Heroines Steal The Show

By: Erica Thomas

Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone

With scenes depicting hill people and squirrel skinning, Winter’s Bone could have quickly sank into predictable melodrama. Instead the film shines thanks to a smart script and the performance of star Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old shouldering the responsibility of caring for her unstable mother and two much younger siblings in a destitute corner of the Ozarks. When her father, Jessup, puts up the family home as bond after a recent arrest and then fails to appear in court, Ree must find her father or their home, the only thing the family has left, will be taken away.

Today's 1000: Fistful of Trent Fox and the Tenants

 Trent Fox and the Tenants  Mess Around EP was released on Kind Turkey Records Tuesday.

by Elaine Dunaway (with input from T.S. Oldman)

In Tuesday's Today's 1000, FoW introduced you to the Milwaukee-based Trent Fox and the Tenants. We gave you a listen to the title track of their debut EP Mess Around. Today, Elaine (with a little help from Oldman) shares her thoughts on the five song album. Enjoy!

New About FoW Page

Just wanted to point out that the new About Fistful of Words page is finally available. The page explains all of our features and our purpose in doing this blog. The page also has short bios with an accompanying picture of each of our writers.

In other news, continuing the Oscar countdown, TS' reviews of Black Swan and The Kids are All Right will be posted midday.

So, click on the link in the right sidebar. We know you've been dying to see what we look like.

Toy Story 3, 127 Hours, & Uncomfortable Truths



Academy Awards Host & 127 Hours star James Fracnco
Image from John Harrison via WikiMedia Commons

 By Christopher Kaye

If, on some odd Friday night, you asked me for a movie suggestion, I would not recommend either of the films I am reviewing today. Both are well worth watching and artistically accomplished – deserving of the nominations, in my opinion. However, neither Toy Story 3 nor 127 Hours are films that most post-college twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings would simply decide to go see. One is a Pixar animation whose trilogy made its cinematic debut when most of us were past the age of child-like wonderment (1995). The other film is a recounting of the personal experience of a man with the presence of mind and the will to survive when nature offered a seeming impassable obstacle. In their own way, each movie brings to the big screen a truth many of us overlook in our repetitious actions of life - the uncomfortable reality that who we want to become and what we want to accomplish with our lives doesn’t always line up with our day-to-day experiences. In varying degrees, you leave both movies reflective about yourself, your life, and the people you love while also being inspired by the notion that every day is a chance to begin again or start over. Now, don’t get me wrong, these movies are naturally quite different from one another and teasing out parallels for the sake of a companion review doesn’t change that. For a non-spoiler overview of each film, read on.  

Today's 1000



 Trent Fox and the Tenants  Mess Around EP was released
on Kind Turkey Records today.

Today's 1000 this week will feature the music of the Milwaukee based Trent Fox and the Tenants. The garage, pop-rock group composed of four twenty-somethings has gained traction in the underground basement scene in the Riverwest section of Milwaukee. On Thursday, FoW will share our thoughts on the band's EP, Mess Around, released today on Kind Turkey Records. But for now, let us know what you think of this high energy band that describes their music as "the perfect mix for a warm summer day on the porch with a beer, or that cold winter night where gunshots rain and sirens scream through the snow." (Damn, Wisconsin sounds like a crazy place). You can find the link to stream the title track of the EP after the jump.

Fistful of Words Goes Hollywood: Of Mumbling Monarchs and Prick-ish Programmers

The Academy Awards by Alan Light. Image from Wikimedia Commons http://bit.ly/fyCSIV 

by Elaine Dunaway

To those of you who read last week’s FoW announcement about our change to a weekly posting schedule for most of our staff, the following will come as no surprise. To kick start our weekly endeavors and give motivation/cohesion to the week, FoW is reviewing all ten movies nominated for an Oscar in the Best Picture category. Due to the five days in which we plan to achieve these ten reviews, the five FoW contributing reviewers will do two reviews per day. While I cannot speak for the rest of my colleagues, I plan to do these two reviews in one post, due in part to the interesting parallels of my two movie choices.

The two movies which I plan to bring to your attention today are The King's Speech and The Social Network. While vastly different in almost every way conceivable – visual dynamics, social class depicted, age and fame of actors, etc. – these two movies are extremely similar in at least one regard. You see, while both movies are based on true stories, a good many critics have stepped forward to question the veracity of their depictions. Was King George VI actually the anti-Nazi paragon of virtue that Colin Firth leads us to believe? Is Mark Zuckerberg the intellectual thieff played with asshole-istic aplomb by Jesse Eisenberg? While these questions are certainly interesting to ponder, I plan to focus not on the controversy surrounding the facts of these movies, but rather on the artistic merits of the movies themselves. So, let us now move on to the age-old questions of movie-viewers everywhere: which movie (out of these two) is best and which has the best chance of nabbing the Oscar for best motion picture?

Fistful of Links

Fistful of Links is a weekly catch-all of stories or videos we at FoW think are important or inane and wildly entertaining. From news outlets to personal blogs, our weekly list of links is as varied as our authors. Check in every Saturday to catch up with what we're reading and what you shouldn't miss. Enjoy!

"3D Printing: The printed world" by The Economist
-You know those annoying people who say annoying things like, "It's 2011, where are the flying cars?" Well, this should shut those people up.

"The Annie Hall Coat" by Jane Aldridge / seaofshoes.com
-Oh, Jane, how Elaine envies your wardrobe. Especially your Annie Hall coat. And triple-lace Anne Demeulemeester boots.

"The 21st Century Novel: Jaded Ibis Sees a 'Mashup'" by Michael Humphrey / Forbes.com
-A mind blowing read about experimental writing and the future of publishing, creative writing and art.

"True Contenders" / Vanity Fair Online Gallery
- In anticipation of FoW's week of Oscar reviews, take a moment to look at Vanity Fair's gallery of Oscar nominees.

Fistful of Reviews: Hater by David Moody

By Thomas Hokum

In yesterday’s post Guillermo Del Toro was mentioned in regards to Pan’s Labyrinth, and it’s that same weird director who led me to Hater by David Moody. Originally, I was looking for a zombie novel because I’d never read one (not counting The Walking Dead graphic novels) and my love for all things zombie has been well chronicled on this site. I recently finished The Fall by del Toro and Chuck Hogan (the guy who wrote the novel The Town which inspired the Ben Affleck movie), a new age take on a world wide vampire outbreak that is more Michael Crichton than Bram Stoker and I read somewhere that del Toro purchased the movie rights to Hater. So I picked it up and here we are.

Hater by David Moody is not a zombie novel. However, the elements are very similar in that it gives a first person narrative of someone trying to survive a sudden and bizarre epidemic of apocalyptic proportions. In Moody’s take on this theme, people don’t turn into zombies, but rather “haters.” It took awhile before I couldn’t laugh at that phrasing with all the hip/hop connotations I associate with that word. At this point, it would be good to mention the novel is set in London and so I’m guessing they don’t have the same associations.

A “hater” is a normal person, i.e. your boss, the postman, your grandma, who suddenly and without reason develops an instantaneous and uncontrollable urge to kill another person with extreme violence. When it happens, and it can happen to anyone at anytime, the person focuses their violence on a single person until that person is dead.

Today's 1000: Guest Contributor

Find more work from Lakeca's collection at Lakeca Fashion Illustrations

Today, we are again featuring the work of fashion illustrator Lakeca. Inspired by Gothic art and fashion, Lakeca recently asked her readers on her own blog whether or not her work resembled that of Tim Burton. While I enjoy Burton's work, the famous director's illustrations are decidedly more cartoonish in nature. In my opinion, Lakeca's use of vibrant colors and attention to human form is more akin to the artistry of the famed director of Pan's Labyrinth, Gulliermo del Toro. The two works showcased today (another illustration can be seen after the break) incorporate flowing lines and floral images with the female form.

FoW Announcement

A little less than six months ago, we launched FoW, promising to avoid being part of the 95% of blogs that are abandoned in a short period of time. Our goal has always been to develop informed opinions about a wide range of topics and publish enjoyable articles about said topics. While we've certainly had hiccups along the way (TS has nearly thrown his laptop in anger several times while 'messing' with the Blogger Editor), we have enjoyed sharing our work with you.

Thus, we are excited to let you know that beginning next week the majority of FoW writers will start posting weekly. Elaine, TS, Erica, and Hokum will publish articles Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, respectively. While Liam and CK will still alternate weeks, publishing every other Tuesday; Today's 1000 will remain a bi-weekly feature on Tuesday and Thursday. Also, FoW will continue to showcase original artwork, music, and writing by talented guest contributors on a regular basis.

To kick-off our commitment to more regular posting on Monday the 22nd, we will begin an Oscar themed week. Each day, FoW will provide two non-spoiler reviews of all Best Picture Nominees. What's more, FoW will debut an About Us page where you can see our lovely faces and learn a bit about each writer. And lastly, in the near future (not next week, but soon) we will be adding an actual masthead to liven up the site.

To all our readers these past few months, we appreciate all of your clicks, comments, and interest. 

Thanks, and as always... Happy reading.

Today's 1000: Guest Contributor

Find more work from Lakeca's collection at Lakeca Fashion Illustrations

FoW would like to welcome another guest contributor to our site. Today and Thursday, we will be featuring the fascinating work of fashion illustrator Lakeca. A resident of West Midlands, England, Lakeca creates her illustrations in photoshop using ink and collage methods. For Lakeca, her work is an expression of "Magic. Freedom. And inner feelings beyond imaginations." Both works showcased today (a second illustration is featured after the break) use vibrant colors, patterned images, and distinct skull images.

FoW Readers: The Happiest People Ever!

Every day is fun and games for FoW readers.

On Friday, I posted a contest for the worst breakup stories. There was a really good prize(s)! Well, we did not get one single response.

Not one.

We at FoW headquarters are pleased to know our readers are the happiest, most coupled up, blissfully in love readers who never, ever have hilarious, embarrassing, soul crushing breakup hi-jinx. Because we totally don't have any stories like that either. We will just eat, drink and spend the prizes ourselves while we sit at home watching The Bachelor go out and have fun like the cool people we are. Happy Valentine's Day.

Fistful of Links

Fistful of Links is a weekly catch-all of stories or videos we at FoW think are important or inane and wildly entertaining. From news outlets to personal blogs, our weekly list of links is as varied as our authors. Check in every Saturday to catch up with what we're reading and what you shouldn't miss. Enjoy!


"Debunking the Myth of the Slippery Bachelor" by Belinda Luscombe / Time
- I can't reconcile what is more impressive in this article: The finiding that single men are as likely to want to get married as single women or the fact that Match.com funded a study.

"Safe as Mouses" by The Economist Gulliver blog
-Mice to sniff out explosives?! With the full body scanners, security cameras, intrusive cavity searches, and now sniffing mice, the airport is slowly becomming like a weird sexual fetish studio/webiste.

"Glee S2E11: The Sue Sylvester Shuffle" by Tom and Lorenzo / projectrungay.com
- OMGLEE! It's back! It's really, really back! (And that Chevrolet commercial is the best television advertisement I've seen in years.)

Valentine's Day: We Want Your Soul Crushing Break Up Stories

A Contest By: Erica Thomas

Ahh....Valentine's Day. Nothing like being forced to celebrate lovey dovey ooey goodness to remind one of some of the messier moments in life. Break Ups. They are often inevitable, rarely mutual and sometimes very, very bad. And we want to hear all about them! The best (worst!) breakup story wins a prize which I'll announce on V-Day. So leave those tales of heartache in the comments section.

This is time to spill your guts about the girlfriend who dumped you just after you gave her that really expensive present...you know, the one funded by months of blood plasma and sperm donations. Or that time you found out your unbalanced boyfriend lied to you about his ex dying to elicit sympathy. (She's alive! And living in New Jersey!)

Bonus points for concise, well written and funny tales of horror. Because being able to laugh about it makes it okay, right? Contest ends on Valentine's Day (that's Monday, 2/14 for those of you who "forget" about holidays where presents are traditionally exchanged/expected) at 12 pm eastern.

A 21st Century Arabic Revolution Part II: Hyperbole Over Facebook and Twitter Blocking Real Stories

Picture by Essam Sharaf via WikiMedia Commons

By T.S. Oldman

In Part I, TS shared his hopes for the outcome in Egypt and America's role in the region.

"People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place." -Malcolm Gladwell / "Does Egypt Need Twitter?" / The New Yorker

"In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through the car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame." -Robert M. Pirsig / Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Although Facebook and Twitter have become commonplace in the world of entertainment, sports, and culture in general, I find it odd that they have been such large tenets of the stories about the developing revolutions throughout the Middle East. I'm not surprised that these online networks are being used. There's no reason to believe that the youth in the Middle East are less likely to mirror the youth throughout the rest of the world in their familiarity with social media. No, I'm more surprised that the use of these tools has received so much media attention that reports have used the term cyber revolution or social media enabled revolution, as if online media in and of itself is the driving force behind these uprisings.

While retrospectives and stories about rapid innovations, like Google's text-to-tweet solution, are fine, the hyperbole about Facebook and Twitter feels like news reports from the Revolutionary War in which the author lauded the use of letter carriers and newspapers as being the driving organizing force. People involved in political uprisings communicate. And throughout history, they've used the most current communication innovations to their advantage. Why are we making such a big deal out of the current methods of communication?
 
In other words, lost in the reports about the new tools of activism, we forget that people are actually standing against tyranny. People are upset with the lack of economic opportunities. People are no longer tolerating brutality from their government. People, real people, are occupying Tahrir Square. And in a region of the world where political statements are made by men with bombs strapped to their chests or by ruthless dictators willing to wage war on their own citizens, why are we talking about social media? And what are we ignoring instead?

Today's 1000

Last month, T.S. Oldman reviewed Lelia Broussard's excellent album Masquerade. As our Today's 1000, we offer you a look at Lelia's new video for the catchy track "Satellite." You can find out more about Lelia's music at http://leliabroussard.com/. Enjoy!

Guest Contributor: World of Wordcraft

Stanley Fish, level 70 word mage. Image from http://bit.ly/g9PXkd

The following article is brought to you by a new collaborator with Fistful of Words, Miss Julianna Bixby. Please enjoy her first contribution to the site!

by Julianna Bixby

Dear Interwebs, it can be hard out here for a blogger. Even the illustrious staff of FoW need some downtime occasionally. This is where I step in.

Who am I? Julianna Bixby, English grad student by day, fellow FoW reader and current guest-blogger by...whenever I have some free time.

Anyway! The great folks at Fistful of Words offered me the chance to write a guest blog, and in true English grad student fashion, I have chosen a semi-obscure, more-than-semi-pretentious topic with which to begin.

In any of you FoW readers also hang around on Slate.com, you may be aware that Stanley Fish, a famous literary critic and columnist for the New York Times, has a new book coming out about how to construct and read sentences better, and in celebration, he's made a list of his Top Five Sentences. He also solicited reader submissions and then picked his favorites of those.

Fish's article caught my eye for a couple of reasons: One, it's kind of a cool topic, and two, last semester I was assigned to read (translation: did not read) his book Professional Correctness for a class on research and bibliography. Darlings, it is not often that I see names I read (hypothetically) for criticism classes pop up in the real world, even the real world of the internet, and so I took notice.

Five Fictional People I'd Love to Be

Did I mention that Anne is the snappiest of snappy dressers? Image from http://bit.ly/epaGOF

by Elaine Dunaway

I’ve often had trouble separating fantasy from reality. Not in an “I’m legitimately crazy and think fictional characters are real” kind of way, but an “I am so in love with this fictional world that I spend hours daydreaming about fantasy worlds and what it would be like to join them” kind of way. Thinking about this has given me the inspiration to share with you, dear reader, the five fictional characters I would most like to be (as well as a few bonus characters who didn’t quite make the list) and the reasons why I want to join their worlds.

1.      Anne Shirley from the Anne of Green Gables series. Few characters have shaped my imaginations in quite the same way as Anne. From roughly age eight, I modeled my life after her – wishing to be feisty, intelligent, plucky, and interesting – wholeheartedly convinced by Anne that smart trumps pretty any day. Besides, Anne ends up being pretty and having the enduring devotion of the best guy in Avonlea. (I simply cannot fathom a world in which Gilbert is not seen as the perfect man.)

You may ask yourself, why do you even need to join Anne’s world? It’s really just early 1900’s-era Canada, after all – there are no special powers or fantastical mythology – just normal people living out their lives. I guess that’s the appeal for me: Anne’s world actually is something I could relate to. I could become Anne with very little difficulty: she has enough books to keep me interested, friends to keep me company, and family to have adventures. Hers, however, is one variant of the life I would have liked, one on a farm in a tight-knit community, where modern-day complications such as cell phones do not exist. Not to mention she gets to marry her best friend and live happily ever after with seemingly little strife or angst regarding her future.

Fistful of Links

Fistful of Links is a weekly catch-all of stories or videos we at FoW think are important or inane and wildly entertaining. From news outlets to personal blogs, this weekly list of links is as varied as our authors. Check in every Saturday to catch up with what we're reading and what you shouldn't miss. Enjoy!

"A Chicken Chain’s Corporate Ethos Is Questioned by Gay Rights Advocates" by Kim Severson / The New York Times
- Chick-fil-A vs. Gay Rights. What will win out in the public consciousness -- great chicken or social activism?

"The 8 Most Awkard Sexual Moments in Comic Book History" by D. McCallum / Cracked.com
-Even for a non-comic book fan, this is a hilarious read about some strange superhero plotlines.

Hokum Grab Bag: Winter Weather, Super Bowl, Egypt, Pandora Radio, and Charlie Sheen

By Thomas Hokum

Welcome back FoW’ers. I missed my post last time for my birthday so I’m going grab bag style today, touching on a couple of topics that run the gamut from Egypt to Charlie Sheen… although I’m not sure the two are completely unrelated. Does Egypt get Two and A Half Men? If not, there might be auxiliary causes to the marching that should be explored, but I digress…

Winter Weather / Global Warming

If you have yet to experience problems dealing with winter weather in 2011, then congratulations to you, and I hope your Arizona townhouse is quite cozy. For the rest of us, let me tell you how I spent my Thursday afternoon yesterday.

A 21st Century Arabic Revolution: An American at Home, Hoping for Abroad

Egyptian protesters sitting on tank in Tahrir Square.
Picture by Ramy Raoof via WikiMedia Commons.

This is Part I of TS Oldman’s take on the growing protests throughout the Arabic world. In this short essay TS presents his personal reaction to the developing story as well as his hope for the movement. Part II will focus on the social implications for the technological tools used to drive this revolution.

By TS Oldman 

With over one million Egyptian citizens gathering in Tahrir square today, I no longer know what to make of my news reports.

Crowds shouting in Arabic are no longer fanatical masses celebrating some economic or military triumph over the West. Instead, they are Egyptian citizens banding together to fight for democratic freedoms and economic opportunity. Stories of sprawling Islamic networks are no longer terrorist operatives sharing information. They are reports of young people throughout Tunisia and Egypt using social networking sites to coordinate a movement of dissent. Even videos of Arabic men shouting angry messages are no longer religious leaders reigning down tirades of vitriol about the decadence of the West. They are a rap video by Arabic rapper named El General decrying the injustice of the Tunisian government with the same anger as NWA’s “Fuck the Police.”