Apparently, the Indian government has asked ISPs to block blogspot.com sites. I can post entries, but can’t view them if I type the actual blog address on my browser. I can still see the blog, though, by taking a detour. More on the government action here, here, and here.
Category: General
I never knew…
That our blogs had a dual, in some cases even a dubious identity. Presenting an anagarammatic version of the blogs listed on At Home, Writing. Enjoy the wacky, inane, intelligtent, perfect, outrageous second identities. I hope I covered all blogs linked here. Sorry if I missed any. Oh wait, maybe you are happy I missed yours!
webuser: At Home, Writing
sternest: Now irate might.
webuser: Of Chapters and Reels
sternest: Sharp, saner cold feet.
webuser: Hard to Want
sternest: To and wrath.
webuser: Musings
sternest: Smug sin.
webuser: While I am thinking of it
sternest: I’m a white-hot if inkling.
webuser: The Clarity of Night
sternest: Fetching, throatily.
webuser: Tales at Twilight
sternest: Little aghast wit.
webuser: An Innocent A Blog
sternest: Not. Cannibal gone.
webuser: Flash Flood
sternest: Shod of fall.
webuser: The Prose Nest
sternest: Sternest hope.
webuser: And nothing else matters
sternest: Handiest angel torments.
webuser: A reader’s words
sternest: Swearers or add.
webuser: The Write thing
sternest: The tighter win.
webuser: Heaven tree
sternest: Veneer hate.
webuser: Kappa no he
sternest: Happen oak.
webuser: Lotus Reads
sternest: Lust adores.
webuser: Midnight Writings
sternest: Trim singing width.
webuser: Southern Expressions
sternest: Oh No! Sexiest spurners.
webuser: Peregrinas
sternest: Paris green.
webuser: Writer’s Edge
sternest: Sweeter grid.
webuser: Fireflies in the cloud
sternest: Chief, fluent idoliser.
webuser: Jamieford.com
sternest: Major of medic.
webuser: John Baker’s Blog
sternest: Blob gnash joker.
webuser: So you want to be a writer
sternest: Beauty! Traitors owe now.
webuser: Remaindered Random Musings
sternest: Domineering and mass-murder.
webuser: Blogdangit
sternest: It gang bold.
webuser: No rules. Just write.
sternest: Slow injure truest.
webuser: Enter the laughter
sternest: The gentle urethra.
webuser: A newbie’s guide to publishing
sternest: Dubious weighting plebeians.
webuser: Bengali Literature
sternest: Alert able intrigue.
webuser: Cancer Mom
sternest: Corn cam me.
webuser: Abhinav Aima Rants
sternest: Aha! Vibrant manias.
webuser: In the Middle
sternest: The idle mind.
webuser: Benjamin Solah’s Blog
sternest: Jam on slobbish angel.
webuser: Life as it happens
sternest: In filth appeases.
webuser: No rules. Just write
sternest: Slow injure truest.
webuser: Terrorism News
sternest: Sworn, merriest.
webuser: The empire falls
sternest: Fill sheep-tamer.
webuser: Stones in the field
sternest: Not idle heftiness.
webuser: Hot Diggity
sternest: Hog tidy git.
webuser: Outside my window
sternest: O My! Is wounded wit.
webuser: Shameless words
sternest: Wordless shames.
webuser: Writing after dark
sternest: Tawdrier king fart.
webuser: Writings and musings of Paul West
sternest: Satanists win powerful smudging.
webuser: NVNC ID VIDE, NVNC NE VIDES
sternest: Vend ‘n’ scenic ‘n’ vivid vend.
webuser: Blue Speckled eggs
sternest: Speckles leg debug.
webuser: Liv’s life
sternest: I’ve fills.
webuser: Loving Twilight
sternest: Vigil light town.
webuser: Lima Beans and Delhi Chaat
sternest: Am headiest ball and chain.
And just in case you are wondering if I’ve had too much time on my hands lately, no, that’s not the case. I am no anagram champion either. I was introduced to these hidden identities of our blogs here. So you see, I am not to blame!
Connecting the Dots
Jason’s Midnight Road contest–a marvelous feast of flash fiction–came to an end last Friday. Elisha Bridges bagged the top honours for the supernal entry, Jimmy Crick. There were four other winners, with excellent pieces to their credit. Congratulations to all the winners and runners up!
Be sure to check out the newest blogger interview at FlashFlood this Monday. It’s the turn of Fringes, the author of the blog Life As A Sarcastic Fringehead, on the hot seat this time.
Scott shared his moment of glory a few days back, when he posted the news of his story, Damned Carnival, winning the first prize in a contest from among 80 participants. The win also leads him to his first publishing credit. Don’t forget to applaud Scott on this fabulous accomplishment. Here’s hoping this is the first in the line of many more publishing victories, Scott 🙂
Lisa’s blog renovation coincided with her great interview of romance writer, Susan May Warren. In this delightful conversation, Warren shares her insights as a writer with a strong connection to Christian principles.
Happy weekend!
At Home and Beyond
A nice little review of this blog greeted me as I opened my inbox this morning. Helena Jeffrey said in her review at RealBook.com:While surfing through author blogs this one caught my eye simply because of the beautiful blooming sunflower up in the corner. It made me turn my head and look out into my garden and appreciate the amazing colorful flowers blooming so far this summer. The blog in question is the blog of Bhaswati Ghosh, a published non-fiction writer from New Delhi, India.
Bhaswati gives us a taste of another world in her blog as she writes about different culture issues such as Indian culture, Latin American culture and FOOD. Yes, that’s right folks. Food. Seeing the delicious food Bhaswati posted about on June 1st is making my mouth water. For now, I’m off to get some lunch, but I urge you all to check out the blog of Bhaswati called At Home Writing on blogspot.
Thanks for the kind words and the mention, Helena. It’s a moment of joy for At Home, Writing.
Contest News: The Midnight Road
Jason is back at it. At hosting another great photo-inspired contest, I mean. Head over to The Clarity of Night to see the contest rules and prize details. There are as many as five to be won, so get writing.The deadline is Midnight, EST, June 28.
An AW Project and a Horror Mag
This post is part of an Absolute Write (AW) project, where certain AW members who signed up for the project are linked together in a chain. Every blogger in the chain takes a cue from the previous participant and writes a new post. Find more on this interesting event here.
My predecessor, Forbidden Snowflake, mentioned a fascination for horror films. Since the subject has come up, I thought I should introduce you to a terrific horror magazine that’s receving rave reviews from critics and readers alike. It’s Surreal I am talking about. This quarterly magazine is engrossing mind candy for those interested in dark tales. It features top notch fiction, incisive non-fiction, and is even publishing a serialised story in comic format for the past two issues now. Despite being new, Surreal has set high standards for itself and its peers when it comes to content.
Surreal isn’t limited to being just a print magazine, though. It has two websites, one that gives you information about the magazine, authors guidelines, and advertising information; and another one called Surreal Interactive that gives you a peek into future issues, what with flash-powered trailers and minisites. Surreal has grown a dedicated community for itself, too, as can be inferred from the vibrant discussions on its forums, which even give you the chance to interact with the magazine’s editors directly. I find that rather cool.
This year, Surreal goes a step further with the launch of Shadow Regions, an anthology of stories that reflect the supernatural. These 20 stories promise to be rivetting reads, as they throw a perfectly normal scheme of things out of order with the invasion of something weirdly extraordinary. The anthology even features a story by the horror maestro, Gary A. Braunbeck. Find more on this potentially gripping anthology here. Beware, it’s due out very soon.
So what’s stopping you from getting Surreal?
It Arrived
Wasn’t it only yesterday when I posted a comment to Bernita’s blog entry on the awaited, coveted call–of acceptance? Bernita talks about the occassions and ways in which she’s reacted to this phenomenon and asked other writers how they would react. I told her I really can’t say since I am yet to hear the call. Well, lady luck must have been evesdropping when we were talking. Just this morning my inbox greeted me with, what else? The call!Translation of above obscurity:
My submission to Letters to My Mother, an anthology of true letters dedicated to mothers, has been accepted. I received the contract today. How did I react? Well, the heartbeat and pulse rate are still normal, my vocal cords haven’t been injured yet, and no, I didn’t send a large batch of emails to friends. I did post the news on the message board of a writing forum I visit, though.
And
I am here, sharing the moment with you all 🙂
Post Script: It would be inaccurate to say I didn’t celebrate this news with any measure of oddness. I did clean my computer table with a liquid cleaner, extracting sedimented heaps of dust. The spotless marvel looks barely recognisable to my eyes.
Of Food, Writing, and the Twain Together
Today is the first birthday of the food blog I write with my Peruvian buddy, Cesar. Admittedly, the blog taught me cooking. Really, it did. I had little interest in kitchen activities before we started the food blog. But once I connected with other, creative food bloggers, I was inspired. Soon enough, this uninterested yet curious neophyte was pulled inside the kitchen premises to try out fellow bloggers’ recipes. Before I knew, I was hooked. In a year’s time, I have grown from a novice to someone who can cook. Worry not; all my creations have been edible so far. Some even tasted scrumptious.
Have you ever pondered how similar the acts of writing and cooking are? It struck me one day as I dropped chopped onions and other ingredients into hot oil for frying. First you get all the ingredients together—the vegetables, the spices, the seasoning. The characters, the plot, the setting/s. Then you proceed to chopping and churning. Character style sheets, plot outlines (for those who do), setting details. And finally you begin cooking. The writing ensues. All this while, as the stew simmers and as the words flow off the keyboard, you are anticipating with anxiousness something good would emerge out of your efforts. Yet, you remain unaware of the final outcome. It is creative uncertainty at its nervous best, and for me, it’s a childlike joy to go through the process. Finally, when your dish is ready and the story’s last word is typed, there’s a sense of relief. A breath of contentment at having created something from scattered, raw ingredients.
Next comes the critiques and tips from the experienced. Like when Lisa shared with me her trick to cooking al-dente pasta. “Just drop a strand on a plate and taste it. Don’t use a timer.” You bet, it’s been working for me! Or when Cesar would suggest tweaks for my stories that rendered them smoother.
I guess the process is same for all creative pursuits. Food attracts me because of personal inclination, that’s all. And while we are at it, I will skip onto another note, while staying on the same octave. Food, being as vital a part of any culture as music or arts, has often found delicious expression in the words of writers. I would even go on to say that is one of the hallmarks of great writers—to successfully transfer the experience of the taste buds onto the writing page. I find that challenging myself, yet very inclined to attempt, too. For now, let’s savour some masterly literary relishes:
“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
—Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
“Bread, milk and butter are of venerable antiquity. They taste of the morning of the world.”
—Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), The Seer
“…and every Saturday we’d get a case of beer and fry up some fish. We’d fry it in meal and egg batter, you know, and when it was all brown and crisp — not hard, though — we’d break open that cold beer…” Marie’s eyes went soft as the memory of just such a meal sometime, somewhere transfixed her.
—Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
“Well loved he garleek, oynons, and eek lekes. And for to drinken strong wyn, reed as blood.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
“Huge lemons, cut in slices, would sink like setting suns into the dusky sea, softly illuminating it with their radiating membranes, and its clear, smooth surface aquiver from the rising bitter essence.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
food writing, food in literature
10 Books to Save
Honest confession: I am an ill-read person, if you count the number of books I have read. But as you can probably tell from the title, I have read at least ten books so far. Well, yes, I have read more than that. These are the ones I would be desperate to save if a fire broke out. I came across this interesting exercise on Lotus Reads’ blog.
The books I selected are important to me for different reasons, some purely for the reading pleasure they gave me, others for the emotional value they hold, and yet others for their timeless companionship.
1.
Shonai Shono Rupokotha (Listen to the Fairytale I Tell You) by Amiya Sen:
My grandmother wrote this book. She was a powerful writer, way beyond her times and one with a magician’s ability to play with words. This book of hers has the backdrop of India’s freedom struggle and tells the story of how a bunch of young people of the time did their bit for the country’s independence. A book worth more than all money could buy, for me.
2. Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
3. Sanchaita by Rabindranath Tagore (Tagore’s collected poems)
4. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
5. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
6. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
7. Lipika by Rabindranath Tagore (Brief Writings)
8. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
9. Carry Me Home by Sandra Kring
10. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Now, that list is in no particular order, for, I feel it’s unfair to compare any two books of fiction. They all gave me tremendous satisfaction as a reader, and like I said, some of them have become lifelong friends.
Which ten books will you save?
BTW, CYFT?
It’s been about three years since I became an active Internet user. From the moment I began exploring the cyberspace, I was enchanted. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. Seriously.
No, I am not referring to any experiences of stumbling upon infamous nooks and crannies of the World Wide Web. Thankfully, I’ve had few of those. It is the initiation into a new language that had me stumped from almost the moment I began interacting with fellow cyber explorers. One of my earliest Internet friends would often suffix her instant messages (oops, that would be IM) with an indecipherable LOL. I tried to figure that out for a long while, and when I saw she would use that word alike to say “I am having a bad hair day. Lol”, and “My son stole a cookie and wasn’t happy when we penalized him. Lol,” I decided it was time for me to put aside my embarrassment of coming across as a dipstick and ask her what exactly LOL stood for. She just typed LOL once more in response to my question. How frustrating. And no, it wasn’t funny at all.
She gave me the expanded version soon though. Those familiar with Internet jargon will know it for sure–it’s Laugh Out Loud. Aha! How enlightened I felt when I finally learned the words behind the ever so enigmatic LOL, which seemed to fit into every life situation for my LOL-loving friend.
That was only the start. Soon, I came upon one Internet acronym after another, until it was almost a whole heap of them. At times I would be overwhelmed by this strange new lingo everyone in the writer’s chat room I used to visit seemed to perfectly understand. Everyone, but poor, ignorant me. With time, I grew out of my what-if-they-laugh-at-my-dumbness self-conscious mode and started pestering my more learned friends for every acronym I couldn’t figure out on my own (yes, I did decipher a few; I am not that dumb, you know).
It was as if a whole new code language of communication had opened up before me. And once I started making sense of BRBs and BBSs; AFKs and AYTs; LOLs and LMAOs and ROFLs; IMOs, and IMHOs; and WBs and TYs, I was just as suave in using them as my other internet-smart friends.
As much as I thought I had mastered this cutting-edge lingo, I was shaken out of my naive arrogance by a fellow food blogger, who, in a comment in our (I write it jointly with a Peruvian friend) food blog, gave me a few tips, following them with HTH. I racked my brains to unravel the words behind that cryptic trinity of letters, but when I had spent enough minutes without getting a suitable answer from my brain, I wrote back to my blogger friend, saying “Thanks for your tips. BTW, what does HTH mean?” She told me it stood for Hope That/This Helps. Duh me; why couldn’t I guess that? Anyway, along with educating me on HTH, my friend also told me of a new one I had never before seen or heard anywhere. It was POS. Can you guess what it could be? If you are parenting a teenager, you possibly can. In case you are parenting a teen and still don’t know, watch out the next time you hear your kid saying that to his or her friends. POS stands for Parent Over Shoulder. Ouch! I bet that one is a student coinage.
So as I pondered about my still incomplete education in this wacky new language, I joked to my publisher that maybe I should write a sequel to Making Out in America, based on Internet acronyms. She spontaneously said…well, “LOL,” what else? And followed it up by saying it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Just in case you haven’t figured out some of the acronyms I mentioned but never expanded in this post, I got this terrific resource for you. Beware: It includes some less-than-decent expressions; but it’s a great compilation overall.
HTH.
P.S. The title of this post is: By the way, Can You Figure This? The latter of the two acronyms is a new creation. The creator? Yours truly 😉
Bhaswati Ghosh 