Websites supposedly offering FREE books

Let it be known that I have no sympathy for people who deliberately attempt to download free books from dubious websites, while suspecting they are allegedly stolen, and download a virus. In fact, I hope you do download a virus. Perhaps you might realise that you should have paid the dollar or two instead of being complicit in the theft of intellectual rights and copyrighted material. Anybody who does this is only supporting these illegal enterprises, so probably deserve whatever badness they get.

Strange book titles

Strange book titles:
Experiments on the spoilage of tomato ketchup
Old age, its cause and prevention
People who don’t know they’re dead
Cheese rolling in Gloucester
How to survive a robot uprising
Teleportation - a how-to guide
Natural bust enlargement with total mind power
Teach your wife to be a widow
How to poo on a date: the lover’s guide to toilet etiquette
Wildlife contraception

Malapropisms

Malapropisms are the misuse of words, usually due to substituting words that resemble the ones that should have been used. The word itself derives from the character Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s ‘The Rivals’. Other people have produced similar word errors, and have called this by their own name. Some English exams use malapropisms that need correcting.
Example: "Did you read the epithet on late Mr Greenses headstone." Should be "Did you read the epitaph on late Mr Green’s headstone?"
Or: "The allusion caused by the mural was extraordinary." Should be "The illusion caused by the mirage was extraordinary."

The Goons - and an MP

Anyone want to substitute Eccles’ name in the Goon show?
Eccles: I resign! You speak to my secretary! You can't talk to a government minister like that! I won't be out of work long, you'll see! I'll get that Ministry of Fisheries job! You watch! I've kept goldfish!
Mr. Eccles, we are not for one moment doubting your sincerity. It's just your intelligence that's in question.
Eccles: Well, I accept your apology.

Incredibly Incredible

Use of incredible or incredulous can sometimes be confused.
Incredulous shows disbelief, as in: his explanation left her with an incredulous look on her face.
Incredible properly means unbelievable, as in: he gave an incredible alibi. However, it can also be used as an adjective with the meaning of wonderful, as in: the meal was incredible.
His incredibly incredible story left them looking incredulous? 

Divers and Diverse

Old documents always use the word ‘divers’, which is still sometimes used instead of ‘diverse’. However, they do have different meanings. Divers means several of, or a certain number of, whereas diverse means of different natures. So, we might say ‘the navy contains diverse ships’, meaning they have aircraft carriers, destroyers, battleships and cruisers. To say: ‘the man had diverse children’ infers several sexes, or they were all different in some way, but ‘the man had divers children’ would mean he had a large family. Who still uses ‘divers’ in this way? At least you now know what is meant in old documents rather than believing they had people who could swim underwater for long periods.

Movies you would change?

Do you feel that a scene in some movies ruin the effect? Some movies seem to be made up of ‘blocks’, one of which always deters one from viewing the movie again. For instance, National Treasure 2, where Nicholas Cage does his usual overacting in the ridiculous and embarrassing scene in Buckingham Palace. Yes, he has to be arrested, but anyone would normally be taken straight away, I would have thought. The later scene of running a red light to get a picture of the wood block is unbelievable in that they download a copy immediately, and it is clear and does not pixilate when zoomed. Annoying and distracting effects include the recent need to move the camera in circles around a talking pair, or shaking the camera to give ‘immediacy’. Years ago, the camera was not allowed to become noticeable. Now, they just don’t care. At least the music has improved unless it overpowers any speech, yet they still insist on loud ‘da-da-da’ full orchestra in horror and thriller movies whenever anybody opens a door or cupboard, even if nothing happens. Man on Fire would probably be good, but the camera work just makes me dizzy and is unwatchable. All in all, this leaves few ‘perfect’ movies.

YouTube Problem

I'm staying off YouTube until they can delete the upload or advert that is flooding the antivirus with redirected websites. Don't they check uploads to discover these for themselves? This was simply going to the homepage. Once the AV started chiming within seconds, I closed the browser. 28 warnings! #YouTube

Dragon Blade movie

Starring Jackie Chan, John Cusack and Adrien Brody (The Pianist). Amazon show the time as 127 minutes, but the box shows 99 minutes. The cuts are obvious, and I guess this has resulted in somebody cutting and pasting short explanatory scenes all over the place. Also, some scenes are simply "what's happening? How did they get there". Still, it is fairly understandable and viewable, although it tends to dwell on emotion, some of which would have been better to cut shorter rather than the story line. Overall, not bad, however, the explanatory notes at beginning and end need 20/20 vision and a huge screen to read. The story is about a Roman general escaping with the young brother of a Consul's son who wants to kill the brother and take over the Silk Road. Jackie Chan is the protector of the silk road, but the Brody's scheming has left him disgraced.

A recipe for money

A receipt is a written or printed acknowledgement usually for money but could be for goods or services, or of the actual receiving of something, i.e. I am in receipt of your receipt for the money I sent you.
However, it is an archaic form of the cookery word recipe. Receipt is still sometimes used instead of the word recipe in the USA, but is falling out of use.

Wide Holes

What is the difference between a crevice and a crevasse?
A crevice is a small fissure or cleft, and mining a crevice means a fissure in which ore or metal is found.
A crevasse is a fissure, but is usually wide and/or deep and found in ice or a glacier. In the USA, this can also mean a breach in a river bank or levee.

Advertisers need writers

Some advertisements may have not been meant the way they sound.
"Don’t sleep with a drip - Call your plumber."
"Tattoos done while you wait."
"Wanted - unmarried girls to pick fresh fruit and produce at night."
"Fine foods expertly served by waitresses in appetising forms."
And, of course, all those boards that apparently boast of cannibalism:
"Sunday roast children £2.50."
"Beef - £3.00 Chicken - £2.50 Children - £2.00"

Which Spelling to Choose?

Archaic words and spellings are difficult to judge. For instance, I was taught to write ‘aging’, which the Oxford dictionary says is fine. However, younger readers insist this should be ‘ageing’, which is also fine. So, which spelling should a writer use?

Editing

Professional editing is an additional cost for indie authors, and may not be perfect going by the number of errors in the ‘big name’ published books. I can go through a ms a dozen times until believing it is perfect. When I get somebody else to read it, they find a few more errors and poorly constructed sentences. After this, I will transfer to my kindle and read it again, and note down more problems. Then publish on kindle, and sometimes get comments that it has not been edited! Using Createspace to produce a printed version, I read the proof copy and find more errors. After making these changes to the printed and kindle versions, I hope to have an acceptable ms. Unfortunately, few people review the books on Amazon, and some comments are either unhelpful or do not match the content. One person may say ‘not enough detail’, while another will say ‘too much detail’. You can’t please all of the people all of the time.

SciFi reads

Just read a short sf story written about 1960, probably in response to fresh medical evidence linking smoking with cancer. I guessed where it was heading about halfway through, but it was still a good read, and available from Project Gutenberg. The story is about labs around the world struggling to find a cure for a new lethal virus that was produced accidentally. All children, some ethnic groups and about fifty percent of the rest of the world had already died or were dying. The cure? Smoke like crazy! Can just imagine if something like this happened for real. "Smoking only" public venues and shops everywhere.