• Byshyp.com
  • Blog, pix, and interactive Choose Your Own Adventure!
  • The Sneeze
  • Half zine. Half blog. Half not good with fractions.
  • Oddio Overplay
  • A great compendium of strange and wonderful music sites all over the Web... also offers a few free MP3s.
  • Fingertips
  • The intelligent guide to free & legal music on the Web.
  • Fa La La La La
  • Preserving memories of Christmas vinyl past. They post a new seasonal song every day from Dec. 1 until Xmas Day.
  • WMFU's Beware of the Blog
  • The blog of the freeform radio station of the nation. Amazing MP3s & videos to be had here.
  • E.C. Brown MP3 Links Archive
  • A comprehensive guide to sites which offer free & legal audio for download.
  • Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else
  • Lotsa great old blues and big band MP3s here, plus a few surprises.
  • Spoilt Victorian Child
  • Interesting indie bands featured here.
  • Bubblegum Machine
  • If it features hand claps, cow bells, syrupy orchestration, walls of sound, wrecking crews, sha-la-las, toothy teen idols, candy-based metaphors for carnal acts or lyrics about hugging, squeezing and rocking all night long, it's in.
  • Talking History
  • A weekly broadcast/internet radio program that focuses on all aspects of history.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

The Anoiconometon of Homer

For centuries, rhetoricians have used quotes from the classics to illustrate how the masters used the tools of language to persuade, inflame, and thrill their audience. Exemplars of the art of rhetoric are such immortals as Plato, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, and, of course, Homer. No, not the blind dude... Homer Simpson, the bard of the third millennium!

Yes -- It Figures, the Web site of modern-day rhetorician Figaro (a.k.a. Jay Heinrichs), uses quotes from "The Simpsons" to help teach readers about figures of speech. For instance, when Homer says: "Homer no function beer well without," that's an example of anoiconometon: a jumbled-up figure, in which the words are grotesquely out of order. And when he says: "Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try, " that's diatyposis: recommending useful precepts or rules of conduct to someone. There are other "Simpsons" quote sites out there, but few quite so darned educational.

Just think... by sitting on your can, watching an animated sitcom, you can learn all sorts of impressive things about language arts. But be careful. As Homer says: "Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?"*

It Figures is at http://www.figarospeech.com/homerisms/

*Martyria: A figure that recalls the speaker’s own experience.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Adding New Stuff...

I've added a "Boing Boing" RSS feed script to this blog template so that the updated story links appear on the right hand column. Neat, huh?