Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

“It’s something when a unicorn thinks the butterfly names are too poetic.”

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:15:46 GMT

Chinese has a lot of suspiciously specific characters, most of them obscure, though in many cases the suspicion is because they’re the name of an object that’s no longer used, such as 铃, pronounced líng, which is a sort of bell used only for decorating an imperial carriage. And then there’s ones like my favorite: 虯, pronounced qiú, meaning a young dragon old enough to have grown horns.

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“and he said to the man running the stand / ‘hey! (pom pom pom) got any grapes?’”

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 18:59:51 GMT

Meanwhile, in the annals of contemporary linguistics, I’ve become fascinated with the adverbial use by certain Gen-Alphas of low-key. It also has the same adjectival uses that have been around for a while, but when used as an adverb, it’s a mild intensifier, roughly comparable to rather, so slightly stronger than kinda but weaker than very. (I’ve heard someone use kinda then correct themselves to low-key to strengthen the statement.)

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“Iambics march from short to long; / With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng”

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 17:56:06 GMT

(Tangentially sparked by the previous post.) As a professional copy editor, I have a decent grasp of English grammar and syntax, but this one has me stumped.

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“i said ‘you’re holding back’ / she said ‘shut up and dance with me’ / this woman is my destiny”

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 14:37:54 GMT

I’m sure there’s a theme to these links beyond making me go “cool!” but I can’t think of one:

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“Frank debonair / Smiles of deep-bosomed women! Loves that seize / Man’s soul, and waft her on!”

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 15:10:15 GMT

Not much of a theme here—just, yanno, some links:

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“i ain’t worried doing me tonight / a little sweat ain't never hurt nobody”

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 17:47:18 GMT

Let’s talk about links, ba-bee / Let’s talk about you and mee / All the good things / And the bad things that may-bee:

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“There’s midnight all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, / And evening full of the linnet’s wings”

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 15:34:35 GMT

A few links about this and that—mostly that:

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“allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters, trash compactors, juice extractors”

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 14:24:27 GMT

A few links from hither and yon:

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“and when she passes, he smiles / but she doesn’t see / she just doesn’t see”

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 14:22:48 GMT

Links to share, two joyful and one annoying. You get to guess:

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“you think i’ll apologize for things i left behind/ but you got it wrong/ i’m as sane as i ever was”

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 14:35:24 GMT

Words, words, words, says Hamlet. Or in this case, words, words, music:

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“but time is on your side / it’s on your side now / not pushing you down and all around”

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 15:56:56 GMT

I’m sure there’s a sufficiently clever through-line tying these together that’s more substantial than links I want to point to and say, “Look! So cool! This!”, but I cannot discern it.

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“the poet’s pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name”

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:15:30 GMT

A small post on Chinese poetics.

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“feather moon, scarlet sky / i love you endlessly not knowing why / breath in, breath out”

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 20:02:52 GMT

Links — two wordy, one wordless:

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“i’m burnin’ through the sky / 200 degrees / that’s why they call me mister fahrenheit”

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 16:33:52 GMT

A few links or so:

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“i have nothing to show you / i have nothing to hold you down / it’s killing me to walk away”

Thu, 06 May 2021 15:04:34 GMT

A few more random links of interest:

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“The first world-sound that fell upon my ear / Was that of the great winds along the coast”

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 16:22:17 GMT

A vid for Pygmalion (1938) set to “No Scrubs” covered by Bastille ft. Ella Eyre. (via)

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“gimme one two three four / but if you love me more / gimme five”

Fri, 01 May 2020 17:51:38 GMT

Thinking out loud -- well, on screen -- about a slow realization about Chinese translations.

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“i need a light to tell the time / i’m sure the sky wants its black back”

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 16:45:29 GMT

Eaglet’s Chinese name has surprisingly a complicated history. Their records use two spellings: 冰璇 and 冰旋, both read as Bīngxuán in Mandarin.* Given they are both acceptable as personal names,** one can see how the former with its uncommon character (which was intended by their namers***) got typo’d as the latter (which is on the official IDs). Lemme blow those up a bit:

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“just say when and i’ll take you to my tardis / who’s the hardest, who’s the hardest”

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 22:44:19 GMT

Circling back to Chinese pronunciation shifts, an example thanks to the Chinese Text Project’s pretty cool dictionary lookup tools. An example reconstruction using, as always, Wang Wei’s “Deer Enclosure.”

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“His intimate friends called him ‘Candle-ends,’ / And his enemies ‘Toasted-cheese.’”

Tue, 28 May 2019 18:46:11 GMT

Words, words, words:

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“when i wasn’t too busy feeling lonely / i’d stare over his shoulder at a map of the world”

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:46:49 GMT

A history here, a history there -- pretty soon it adds up to real people:

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“i know it, it always ends too soon / in between the light of dream and some anemic moon”

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 22:02:19 GMT

Two vids and a pome:

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“The hero turned/ And thru his gold hair still the sunset burned/ But half his shaded face was grey”

Fri, 07 Dec 2018 16:20:29 GMT

A bit here, a piece here, and pretty soon it starts adding up to real linkage.

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“where our water isn’t hidden / we can burn and be forgiven / where our hands hurt from healing”

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 17:05:19 GMT

Four rules of English it's good to be aware of. As in, rules native speakers are rarely conscious of. (via)

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“The moan of doves in immemorial elms, / And murmuring of innumerable bees.”

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 15:59:58 GMT

A few stripy links:

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