Arika Okrent gives us the lowdown on “words in English that seem to be formed from two parts, but one of the parts is obscure. Wonder no more at where these parts come from. ”
What? You have no idea what that means? Neither do we. Good thing we have this to turn to:
Produced for Mental Floss
As you may have heard, Netflix is cancelling Sense8. Netflix bid them a fond farewell and sent a show with lots of LGBT and people of color packing right at the start of Pride Month.
Hey, Netflix: I know you probably didn’t do that on purpose, but not great timing guys. Just saying.
This is a good, solid breakdown of useful info for fledgling TV writers. Especially for those who haven’t yet read TVWriter™’s own Writers’ Bulletins and The Basics of TV Writing right here on this site.
Oh hell, read ’em all! Learn everything you can! And then don’t forget, ahem, THIS.
Anyway:
EDITOR’S NOTE: What is Cargo 3120? We’ve written about this project many times over the past couple of years, but the best place to go to understand what Aaron Walker Sr. is up to is HERE.
And now that that’s settled:
Whew! It’s been quite a while, but book 2 is finally done! It was a long and hard road that I outlined in our last two blogs. Check them out (read update 1 here and update 2 here).
So, Bill Maher crossed the line and got himself into hot water. Given the nature of his HBO show, Real Time, and his own proclivities as a satirist, maybe he should just have a hot tub on stage instead of a desk. It would suit him in many ways.
Recently, as part of an interview, Maher jokingly referred to himself as a “house ‘N’ word.” No, I’m not repeating the actual word here for a few reasons. A) I don’t want to pull a Maher; B) I don’t like the word. I won’t pretend I’ve never used it; I threw it around a bit as a kid in 1950s Chicago along with the “c” word, the “f” word, the “mf” and others of that ilk because I knew they were bad words, naughty words, and I was trying at those moments to pass myself off to my self and my friends as a naughty boy, as a bad boy. Didn’t use those words around my family, my parents, or the nuns; I would have been a dead boy if I had. I haven’t used the “n” word as an adult; not since I learned the history of the word, the harm in it.
I know that the “n” word is used by African-Americans and I know that’s different; there’s a cultural aspect to the use that doesn’t work with someone who is white. There’s a menace when that happens; a whole history of racism and bigotry packed into it.