Maybe a new...umm... blog service?

I might be moving this blog to a new "blog service". It won't be happening for a few weeks, if it happens at all. I'm currently working on a few things. So this is going to be the last post for a while. It will be like when your cat goes missing for a few days and then comes home with lots of stories about his adventures. Except your cat won't tell you his stories... and presumably, I will.

"Word" of the day: Aging gracefully.

This is not really a "word of the day", more like a "phrase of the day": aging gracefully -- anyone know what that phrase means? OK class, it goes like this (perhaps this is too many semicolons -- or parentheses or dashes-- already, but anyway...) : once upon a time when I was little and you were not born yet, or you were also little and you know exactly what I mean by what I am going to say next, or you were big and remember what it was like before computers were portable (although I also remember that)... there was, say, a woman, such as, your Aunt Mavis, who became as wrinkly as a Shar-Pei puppy as time marched on... and on... and on. And her teeth became longer and more protruding until they fell out entirely. To protect her thinning hair, which became so white some strands were transparent, she wore a scarf. On Fridays she bent over her walker and hobbled slowly to the bus stop and slowly onto the bus and slowly to Bingo. Aunt Mavis was, say, seventy-nine-years-old. She gave up short skirts thirty years ago and never dyed her hair. She is the type of lady that one used to say was "aging gracefully", that means she accepted the aging process with dignity. She doesn't pretend to know what an X-Box is and she doesn't get botox injections. But... recently I saw a newspaper article that described a woman "aging gracefully" as one that looked like a Hollywood film star. This, I think, is a mistake on the part of the author. Perhaps the author did not know the meaning of the term. Hollywood film stars are the most "disgraceful" agers on earth.

The 2009 Booker Prize Long List.

This is a quote from an article in The Age (link).

"Byatt, who took the award in 1990 for Possession, has been nominated for his portrait of childhood at the end of the Victorian era."

Antonia Susan Byatt is female, so that sentence ought to say "Byatt, who took the award in 1990 for Possession, has been nominated for her portrait of childhood at the end of the Victorian era."

Here is the long list (taken from the article):

Booker Prize 2009 longlist:

AS Byatt "The Children's Book"

J M Coetzee "Summertime"

Adam Foulds "The Quickening Maze"

Sarah Hall "How to paint a dead man"

Samantha Harvey "The Wilderness"

James Lever "Me Cheeta"

Hilary Mantel "Wolf Hall"

Simon Mawer "The Glass Room"

Ed O'Loughlin "Not Untrue & Not Unkind"

James Scudamore "Heliopolis"

Colm Toibin "Brooklyn"

William Trevor "Love and Summer"

Sarah Waters "The Little Stranger"

‘Angela’s Ashes’ author McCourt dies at 78.

Pulitzer Prize-winner had been ill with meningitis, treated for melanoma

NEW YORK - Frank McCourt, the beloved raconteur and former public school teacher who enjoyed post-retirement fame as the author of "Angela's Ashes," the Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of woe about his impoverished Irish childhood, died Sunday of cancer at age 78.

McCourt had been gravely ill with meningitis and recently was treated for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. He died at a Manhattan hospice, his brother Malachy McCourt said.

[...]

"F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. I think I've proven him wrong," McCourt later explained. "And all because I refused to settle for a one-act existence, the 30 years I taught English in various New York City high schools."

Full article here: Click.

Academic "Idyll".

"The world is different now," explains Clews, an experienced arts manager and writer, who guides the young hopefuls through the process. "The olden days when you climbed the academic ladder and never went out of the academy are gone. There aren't many lectureships around any more, so you have to have a multi-stranded career."

Melbourne University, among other institutions, exhorts its brightest graduates to publish (or produce, or perform, or exhibit) or perish. "Knowledge transfer", the spreading of expertise far and wide, has become a cherished mantra of university chiefs.

Excerpt from: Academic Idyll by Julie Szego in TheAge.

What's a name?

Recently in Australia, there have been a few news reports of racist incidents. Although I could write in length about any of those reports, this post is going to be about a study by the Australian National University. In the study it was found that job applicants with Anglo Saxon sounding names were more likely to be selected for interviews compared to applicants who did not have Anglo Saxon sounding names. It was found that only 21% of "Asian" named applicants were called in for interviews. Also on SBS news there was a report saying that job applicants with "Asian" sounding names have to send 68% more applications than those with Anglo Saxon sounding names in order to secure an interview. I have put quotation marks around the word Asian because the study distinguishes between Asian and Indian (East Indian) sounding names -- Indian sounding names are statistically more likely to get called in for interviews than other "Asian" sounding names. I am going to put the seriousness of this study into perspective. Consider this statistic: applicants with Australian Aboriginal sounding names have to send 12% more applications than those with Anglo Saxon sounding names. I can not vouch for the accuracy of the study, but even if the study were inaccurate by a few percentages, anything in the 60% range is a big number, don't you think?

But this is what really bothers me about the report: on SBS it was "reported" that people with "Asian" or non-Anglo Saxon sounding names could increase their chances of employment by anglicising their names. I have put quotation marks around "reported" because when I heard the report, at the time it seemed more like a "suggestion" than an actual report of... facts, meaning it was suggested that Asians anglicise their names in order to find employment.

I call this bullshit. I have never anglicised my name, will never anglicise my name, and think that the anglicisation of non-Asian names perpetuates racism. And because this blog is about writing writing writing, I must remind the reader that female writers in the past have changed their names in order to seem more credible, and the anglicising of Asian names seems to be of the same nature. In the past, female writers changed their names because it allowed them to get the attention of publishers and to have their published work taken seriously by the public. Mary Ann Evans wrote under the pen name George Eliot. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë were published under the names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell respectively. Even today, Joanne Rowling became J.K. Rowling when the initials J.K. were suggested to her by her publisher. If a writer named E.S. Liew were to change her name to E.S. Lewis, this would be exactly the same as when Mary Ann Evans became George Eliot. Not to mention that E.S. Lewis looks like C.S. Lewis and Lewis is just an anagram of Liew with an extra "S" - how confusing.

I do not have an anglicised name. I never have, never will. In the event that I do change my name is it because: 1) I might be using a pseudonym that is personally meaningful, for example, I might publish under an anagram of my original non-anglicised name or I might use my mother’s maiden name, my mother-in-law’s maiden name, the name of a deceased family pet… etc; 2) I might have married and hyphenated my name in order to ease some “old-fashioned” (re: sexist) bureaucratic practices; 3) actually, my name is already written using the Roman alphabet and not in Chinese characters... and that in itself is a type of "anglicisation"... and isn't that enough already, geez?!

Eunice is my first name. It is not two Chinese syllables tacked together to produce an English phonetic variant of the Chinese name. Similarily, my middle name really starts with an "S" and is not and never was a Chinese name.

Eunice (pronounced "you-niece" with the stress on the first syllable) is a Biblical name, from the New Testament. In the Bible Eunice was the mother of Timothy. In Islam, Eunice is the prophet known as "Yunus" or "The One With the Whale" (Jonah, in the Bible). The full story of the prophet Jonah is recounted in the Qur'an in Sura 37, verses 139-149. The following text was lifted from Wikipedia:

Like many important Biblical characters, Jonah is also important in Islam as a prophet who is faithful to God (Allah) and delivers His messages. He is known to Muslims by his Arabic name, Yunus "Arabic: يونس", and also as (The One with the Whale "Arabic: ذو النون").The full story of Prophet Jonah is recounted in Sura 37, verses 139-149:

• 37:139 So also was Jonah among those sent (by Us).
• 37:140 When he ran away (like a slave from captivity) to the ship (fully) laden,
• 37:141 He (agreed to) cast lots, and he was condemned:
• 37:142 Then the whale did swallow him, and he had done acts worthy of blame.
• 37:143 Had it not been that he (repented and) glorified God,
• 37:144 He would certainly have remained inside the belly of the whale till the Day of Resurrection.
• 37:145 But We cast him forth on the naked shore in a state of sickness,
• 37:146 And We caused to grow, over him, a spreading plant of the gourd kind.
• 37:147 And We sent him (with the message) to a hundred thousand (men) or more.
• 37:148 And they believed; so We permitted them to enjoy (their life) for a while.
• 37:149 Now ask them their opinion: Is it that thy Lord has (only) daughters, and they have sons?

[Jonah is also a name in the Jewish Torah.]

The book of Jonah (Yonah יונה) is one of the 12 minor prophets included in the Jewish Bible. According to tradition Jonah was the boy brought back to life by Elijah the prophet, and hence shares many of his characteristics (particularly his desire for 'strict judgment'). The book of Jonah is read every year, in its original Hebrew, on Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement.

Thus ends the text lifted from Wikipedia.

So yeah, I have a dude's name. But he was a prophet. It might also interest you to know that my surname is an ancient Chinese character that means "sword". I guess that means I'm a prophet with a sword. Also the previous line sounded like a lyric from an album by the love-child (if they could have one) of Meatloaf and Lou Reed. Why would anyone with a name like that want to change it?

.... Unless that line was a Gangsta Boo lyric. And I don't know how I feel about Gangsta Boo....

Thomas Nashe's Pierce Penniless.

"Having spent many yeeres in studying how to live, and liv'd a long time without money: having tired my youth with follie, and surfetted my minde with vanitie, I began at length to looke backe to repentaunce, & addresse my endevors to prosperitie: But all in vaine, I sate up late, and rose eraely [sic], contented with the colde, and conversed with scarcitie: for all my labours turned to losse, my vulgar Muse was despised & neglected, my paines not regarded or slightly rewarded, and I my selfe (in prime of my best wit) laid open to povertie."