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Women’s sexuality in the Muslim context. With no shame.

Launching a new blog together with my partner in masti, check us out!

#shezaadi #fempower #muslimgirls #goodmuslimbadmuslim #loveinshallah

Guess I signed up for this when I chose to own a vagina..

#badenglish #badeverything #tindernightmares #fuckonlinedating

oh dear.. :/ :/

#badgrammar #badwriting

eat yer verts :)

#hangoversundays #lesigh

An intimate evening in bed with… Inversion

“There but for the grace of god go I."

Such is the fun of inversion in the English grammar that it flexes a normal expression into a more agile and artful one. And yet how neglected is she, this fine beast of the civilised tongue. Look you here, say I, at several cases of the verb preceding the subject, common and non, correct and non, of what call we… Inversion.

Question forms:

Have you got a minute?

Do you really need another one? Do you though?

Negative forms:

Not for a second did you stop and think!

Demonstration:

Here comes Charlie.

Restrictive adverbials:

Never have I ever had sex in a public restroom.

Only at times do I have sex in a public restroom.

By no means should you have sex in a public restroom.

Only after 1 AM do I have sex in a public restroom.

Conditional:

Had you told me not to, I wouldn’t have had sex in a public restroom. (Will stop with this now, sorry)

Rhetorical:

Not only have I seen the show tens of times, but I know the whole routine.

So handsome was he that I had to stop and look.

Such was her reaction to my response that I didn’t dare go on.

Little did I know you’d be in the same class as me.

Responsive: “I really want to check out The Book of Mormon.” "As/so do I.”

“I don’t care about Beyonce.” “Neither do I."

“Do you know that band The Pretenders?" “Do I!”

Extreme comparative:

So much taller was he in real life that I almost broke my neck trying to see to the top of him.

Narrating:

“Tell me more,” said he.

Position or sequence adverbials:

In third place is Lady Garden.

Shortly behind is Somnambulist.

NEVER USE THESE FORMS OF INVERSION FOR THEY WILL CURSE YOU AND YOUR GENEALOGY FOR ALL OF TIME:

Location adverbials:

Down the road came we, laughing and skipping along.

Round the bend we peered.

Frequency adverbials:

Twice a week do I watch Bollywood movies at home.

Seldom has a woman been minister.

Comparative:

Larger than Portland is San Francisco.

Adjectival phrases:

Closely following was Copernicus to Desert Queen.

Well-kept and trim was his beard.

Soft was his smile and friendly his gaze.

Now there have you a by no means exhaustive account of inversion in English. With due attention, go forth and invert!

Words I can never spell

Occasion, accommodation, counselling, anaesthetist, separate, imminent, commission, relevant, trouble (I always write it with a p)

12 Wonderful books on the art of being alone (but not alone)

(a list in progress)

Walden - Thoreau

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

Istanbul - Orhan Pamuk

An Area of Darkness - V.S. Naipaul

Rumi

In Search of Lost Time - Proust

Blindness - Jose Saramago

W - Georges Perec

Antigone

Tales of the Alhambra - Washington Irving

Kim - Kipling

Macbeth

Writing done right: Wired for Light

Here at BWB we like to on occasion bring you examples of writing that just works. It’s good to shake things up, otherwise this would be a dead pessimistic blog.

The greatest writing advice to be given is to write how you speak. If you are very confident uttering the word “malapropism” out loud to your peers, then by all means do. If you are very confident pouring forth a stream of consciousness to your significant other on the phone in the deadest hour of the night, then do bring it to the page. Creative license is wonderful, but not something to quit your day job over.

These are the lyrics to a lovely song by School of Seven Bells called “Wired for Light”. They are beautiful and flowy, and the heavy, philosophical bits intersperse the short, easy bits. I have no trouble buying that the singer speaks like this always.

---

I'm sleeping to develop my dreaming skill I'm going to build, I'm going to build If the space is malleable the contrast must be too It changes shape with you, it changes shape with you Wishes turn out orphans, skip on the surface of the sky and sink, sky and sink They break into the air with little faith and heap a desert full of dunes, a desert full of dunes The space is wired for light Light for gaze, gaze for intent The space is wired for light Light for gaze, gaze for intention A body disassembled still assembles its memory as a whole Recognition renders composition Intention begins resurrection

Andy's test

Andy Silva comes from Sao Paolo. Andy Silva came with great recommendation into my class. Andy Silva scored very well on his level test. Andy Silva performed very well in his previous class. Andy Silva exceeded expectation. Andy Silva knew he wasn't perfect but appreciated being corrected.

Andy Silva's tests betrayed him. Andy Silva's previous teacher had no idea what she was on about when she graded his progress test like this:

---

Directions: Unscramble the letters and write a sentence for each word.

1. spintpoi - I couldn’t understand the situation until you showed me the pinpoints.

2. vingevol - I’d wait and see how the situation would pan out but since nothing is evolving I’ll go home.

3. financditieloty - I’d trust Martin as far as I could throw him, it’s a question of confidentiality.

---

All these were marked correct. All these are wrong.

1. Pinpoints cannot be used here to indicate an exact locale; use it as a verb.

2. Evolve indicates a final product resulting from gradual process. Situations can either devolve or evolve from A to B (larvae to pupae); must specify a context.

3. Confidentiality means discretion, privacy. Could theoretically make sense but not how I know Andy understood it. Use confidence.

Poor little teacher, so tired, so disaffected. Poorer little Andy silva.

Gloriously atrocious writing

Greengrocer’s Apostrophe (mmm, kindred spirit)

Gothamist

NYTimes (want to tear the drapes down)

Cosmo (women are its targets. sho nuff.)

Daily Beast

AM New York

Politico

Fox News

The White House

Buzzfeed

Guardian Comment is Free

Rolling Stone

Timeout NY

The British Monarchy

ESPN

Nylon

W Magazine

All film and music, TV, Broadway, restaurant, and what have you critics

All who twat

All late night TV

- sorry. xx

metaphors that metastasize: a poem

I feel like a frustrated… what’s the word? Writer? Young urban professional? Millennial? Soul?

I feel like a scalding hot coffee spilled on a hipster’s pants

I feel like a cracked heel that won’t be scrubbed smooth

I feel like that dried brown stain. You know the one

I feel like the rumbler siren shaking your bowels

I feel like a metaphor pried hard from the calloused hands of a mental patient, no longer your object of victory

I feel like a weak conclusion that has given up caring and just restates all the lines

over

and over

again.

Spotted this tee designed for gym rats on the subway, no less.

Blew my metaphysical mind.

http://www.lookhuman.com/design/10487-get-out-of-the-mirror

my mission statement

Screens will kill you. iPhones will kill you. Banks will kill you. But no one ever talks about how bad writing will kill you.

Bad writing is like a kelpy mass in the water. The first time it tickles past you think it's rather charming and humanizing, like the ocean wants you to acknowledge that it too grows. Then you're caught in a bloated thicket and think, "Well, this isn't how I imagined it, but I guess it doesn’t inconvenience me personally.” A particularly naughty stripe of beady kelp slithers around your body, thickly, hotly, wetly, around your nether regions. Your world turns suddenly black and you want to drain the sea dry.

I am a writer turned teacher turned editor. The difference between the first and the last? An editor has got no thoughts; she attaches herself like a barnacle to the first, eating nauseating amounts of cheese snacks, belching, stinking, going, "Nah, don't like that there, or that, and this bit I don't get so could you change it, and what is meant by this bit because it makes me think of this and I'm not sure I want you to think I think of this, and this bit I think I like but I'm not sure, and do me a favor and get this itch for me right here would you."

I thought I had thoughts, then realized I didn't have thoughts, so I got sad about not having the thoughts, then angry, then jaded, then bored by the not having of the thoughts, all until I realized suddenly that I'm great at watching other people have thoughts, great at thinking at their thoughts till this becomes a great big to do in itself. So, welcome.

(Another teaser while I try to figure out the candy-colored millenial wonderland of tumblr.)

You love how colloquial it sounds with such driven down home second person, non-imperative. You see how completing sentences sounds far more imperial, directive, and unrelenting than reduced clauses. You sit down and you cry.

hello. welcome again. (re-welcome?) to my. editing blog.

your invited to this a re-unveiling of where once there was a travel blog into an editing and critique. here i discuss what i know best; bad writing. join me. in excavating tunnels on tunnels of steamy live excreta (great word).

a teaser, from my favorite spam emailer:

----

Hello Sabeen. Hopefully folx & things & more be good on your end. Here I gots one snoozing Chihuahua, Aerosmith singing about some dude who looks like a lady & a hankerin' for some bacon wrapped sausage with a scoopuh' cole slaw on the side but I'll hold off. It's 3:30 in the morning & it's gonna be a sunny Sunday morning then cloudier & cloudier as the day goes on. I'm gonna do a few dishes & hit the hay butt-first . . . a quick extended peek at some ticket stubs which fell out of the Waybackwhen machine I just disembarked from. (The Customs agents manning the Intertemporal Layover Checkpoints/Weigh Stations are rude bastards this time of the decade - shift change.) Nov. 25, 1987 - Rush at the Omni in Atlanta Billy Squier on Friday, November 02, 1984(Wait! I went to see Ratt open for 'em! Warren DiMartini was doggone good. It's actually cool to see him finger tapping the fretboard unlike a lot of the others.) Bela Fleck & the Flecktones at Down Home in Johnson City, TN - Give "The Sinister Minister" the library book treatment. Bob Dylan on Saturday, April 17, 1993 at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium - a small hall with consistently warm solid sound, especially good with non-amplified, non-lecktrickuhfied instruments. Owbouttiss? -- Yanni at Thompson / Boling Arena. I call it The Big Beige Bolt because that's what it loox like screwed into the Tennessee Riverbank's North side. The acoustics inhale vacuously in that concrete cavern with metal walls but the big, black retractable curtains they hung in there improved things some. The old clock on the wall sez I oughtta be sleeping so I'm gonna I'm give it a try. If I can't I'll just practice my waltz in the backyard while eating real blueberry pancakes barely burnt. Give a holler anytime you would like & please be safe. Greg.

---

Ahh yes, the optimist in you wants to believe it waxes a touch poetic, no? Well, sit down. It's pure, unadulterated, beautiful, steamy shite. Let it slosh around in your mouth, don't spit it out yet, the sting is good for you. Kills germs.

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