(a poem by Gabrielle Koetsier, age 10)
Children sitting, solemn, silent.
Bell rings! Screaming, yelling, violent!
Running, rushing, up the stairs.
“Children, wait!” nobody cares.
School’s out! It’s summer! Time to play!
No more teachers! Run away!
We are going to the pool.
Perfect way to keep us cool.
Let’s go buy some lemonade!
We will drink it in the shade.
Our skin is brown, our […]

I love well-constructed and vivid language. Here’s a snippet I ran across today that inspired some memories:

A few years back, I was struggling to liberate a new Barbie doll from the almost invincible packaging that imprisoned her …

(Seen in an email newsletter from Character Counts … written by Michael Josephson.)
Tags: language, john koetsier, […]

OK, maybe not lots. But some - Google proves it. (Yes, this is about a recent post.)
Google has 509 results for “snaining.” And the urban dictionary, bless it’s electronic little heart, has an entry for snaining.

That horrible combination of rain that is not quite snow…but soon will be.
Basically, it’s airborne precipitation that fluctuates mid-drop, and […]

… and I hate the English language!
For every question, there is an answer. Just don’t think that you’ll necessarily like that answer. For example, I wanted to know if bi-monthly meant twice a month or every two months.
Unfortunately, it means both. As AskOxford says:

I’m afraid it means both! But in the publishing industry, it […]

Doing groceries as a family, approaching the sea food area with live lobsters, crabs, oysters, and more …
Aidan pipes up: “Want to see the crabsters!”
Me, silently to myself: can I freeze this moment in time?

From Ethan’s mouth, today, to Teresa:

Mommy, if you split the word bumpy in two, you’d have two bad words.

Tonight we’re in Woodland, California - just outside of Sacramento. Two more nights and we’ll be home and sleeping in our own beds.

I recently picked up a book from the library that completely blew my mind. I was going to start a review of it like this:

Some books are from the literary catch-and-release program: you read ‘em, return ‘em, and remember them no more.
Others are like great bloody axes crashing through your brain like some cosmic sword […]

What we often forget about good old Winnie is that he wasn’t just a politician, statesman, and leading figure of the 20th Century. He was also a prolific writer with more than 43 books in 72 volumes.
In those books - as well as in his speeches - Churchill has dozens, hundreds, even thousands of pithy, […]

I am so tired of Americans talking about how horrible “clicks” are.
A click is a small noise, often caused by something hard tapping on, hitting, or sliding past something else that is also hard. A clique, on the other hand, is a small, inward-focused, exclusionary group of people.
The two words do not rhyme … the […]

I recently participated in a training session led by some fairly top-notch consultants. Besides the actual training that you get, it’s always interesting to hear the new jargon.
Consultants, of course, are always up on all the latest jargon. And even if it isn’t new, it may be new to you.
Here’s two I enjoyed:

BBQ: Big Burning […]

Tonight I heard the one of the best definitions of leadership I’ve ever encountered:
“Leadership is the ability to achieve your goals through the efforts of others.”
- Pastor Elisha (a Vietnamese pastor)
It’s perhaps a bit one-sided … and you’d have to be careful that this kind of leadership wouldn’t deteriorate into manipulation, but it’s a […]

New word: PodSwitching. Or phrase: pod switching.
The scenario: two people on a airplane, both pull out their iPods, and exchange them so they can check out each other’s music.

This is absolutely huge. Somebody buy it, quick.
I’m talking about Podscope.
This is a search engine for podcasts, and if the technology they are building actually works, it will be enormous. I’ve tried searching on Podscope for a variety of topics, and have been getting very good results.
Software that automates spoken language transcription to text quite […]

Somehow, somewhere, today I ran across the longest domain name on the internet:
wiemenschlichmenschensindzeigtihrumgangmitdermuttersprachefrsch.de
And that’s with the “http://www” taken out! Anyone who can pronounce, spell, or even read that: you deserve a medal.
Naturally, it’s in German. Everything is longer in German.

sparkplug9.com and Sparkplug 9 would like to congratulate Gabrielle Renee Koetsier, age 8, on winning the prestigious Scholastic Canada Lucky’s Magic Treehouse Be An Author Contest!
One of only 10 recipients in Canada, Gabrielle (who recently turned 9) received a Magic Tree House Bookshelf Collection—complete with 28 books from this favourite series and a treehouse bookshelf […]

BBC is usually very clueful, which makes it even more annoying to see unmitigated drivel like this.
A brief quote, from the sub-lead:

Deafblind people find technology difficult and frustrating to use, a survey has found.

Who woulda guessed!
Note:
The other reason I’m blogging this is because this is the first time I’ve seen the word deafblind. What on […]

I hate, hate I say, the currently fashionable use of the word ‘graduate’ as a transitive verb.
In other words, you will hear: “Harold graduated high school last year,” or “Junie will graduate college next year” and so on. When phrased this way, what this is really saying is that Harold did something to the school […]

I’ve recently met and starting working with a rather amazing individual.
Typically, most people are pretty impressed to find out that someone is bilingual. Trilingual, three languages, is amazing. Four starts to approach the realm of the unbelievable, or the savant.
But Steve Kaufman, a former Canadian diplomat, speaks and reads in 9, yes, 9, that is […]

OK, I’m at a complete and utter loss.
Has the advertising industry totally and completely lost any remants of any vestige of creativity? Apparently it has - at least the portion of it that works at or for CNN.com.
What’s wrong with the picture below? (It’s a screen capture from CNN.com, taken April 12, 2005.)