SPIRITS
Shaenon: As you may or may not know, every six months my cartooning group, the Couscous Collective, puts out an anthology, and I always contribute either a Narbonic story or a Skin Horse story. Here’s the cover for the upcoming new anthology, SPIRITS, drawn by new member Karen Luk.
SPIRITS will feature a Narbonic story called “Noise Complaint,” fulfilling my long-held dream to do a story about Seth the demon hunter and Caliban the demon sharing an apartment. Also selections from my wine log. I am excellent at reviewing wine. I don’t want to put down the previous anthologies or anything, but this may be the most solid volume yet.
As for those previous anthologies, the first three–FOREST, SPACE, and OCEAN–are sold out, although the Collective is planning to put out an omnibus edition. The most recent anthologies, BEARDS (with Narbonic story) and KITTIES (with Skin Horse story), are available at the Couscous Store. SPIRITS will be up on the store soon. I’ll keep yinz posted.
Channing: Very much looking forward to the new Narbonic story, about which I am as in the dark as any other reader. You may think that this whole “Skin Horse” thing puts me hells of on the inside track, but when it comes to Narbonic, I get to wait with bated breath right along with all y’all’s.
I keep reading the phrase “about which I am as in the dark as any other reader” over and over again and it just looks wrong. This is my desperation to avoid ending a sentence in a preposition hitting new heights of strangeness.
Jeff: This is my favorite joke, which I’m paraphrasing from Designing Women:
A Southern woman find herself seated next to a Northern woman.
Southern woman: “So! Where’re y’all from?”
Northern woman: “I’m from a place where we know better than to end our sentences with a preposition.”
Southern woman: “Oh. . . . So! Where’re y’all from . . . bitch?”
(TUNE: “The Age Of Aquarius”, The Fifth Dimension)
When a group of clever cartoon folks
Combine their skills, then goodness knows,
They’ll ditch their illustrated jokes
And sti-ick to plain ol’ prose!
Another fine Couscous
Collective anthology!
Collective anthology!
Anthologyyyyyyyyyyy …
An-th-lo-gy!
Caliban and Seth are stating
They don’t like cohabita-a-a-ting!
Acting like those silly sitcoms,
See how easily the wit comes!
“Spirits”, what the authors call it,
So go on and get your wa-al-let …
Anthology-yy-yyy-yyyy …
An-th-lo-gy!
This is the sort of nonsense of with which I will not put–attributed to Winston Churchill
“…up with which I will not put.” He did not wish to put up with that nonsense.
I think if you don’t end that sentence with a preposition (or rather, put it in the middle: “which I am as in the dark about as any other reader”), it violates subjacency. But I don’t know, because I don’t actually understand any of that stuff.
Also, having trouble believing that something named “KITTIES” is not the best one of whatever it is one of.
a) break into two sentences: “Looking forward to the new Narbonic story. I am in the dark about it too.”
b) no problemo: if you end a sentence with one o’ them thingies, it becomes a postposition. There are no rules about postpositions.
c) geek out: write in perl, or Forth. (APL is going too far.)
The first real business (more than 2 people) that I worked for in ’85, APL was their bread and butter: actuarial and pension planning. I was a database man, so I fortunately never touched the stuff (though I was really interested).
Python and PostreSQL are my current studies. I do speak a little perl, but my programs are probably pretty eclectic rubbish when you list them.
Any word on when the store will be selling E-books again?
Once we get the new store up and running correctly, we should have ebooks. I don’t know whether we’ll have an ebook version of SPIRITS right away, though.
There is no such rule.
http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/terminalprepositionmyth.htm
So write what sounds natural, and tell the fake grammarians that _Spirits_, not some ghost story, is the book that you want to be read to out of.
If one of the stories is set in Australia, then it’s the book that you want to be read to out of about Down Under.
Ah, so if someone mentions the ghost story book instead, Jeff should say, “What did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of about Down Under up for?”
And that exact sentence is mentioned favorably on numerous linguistics web sites!