By Daniel Rigney

primates ->hunt/gathering -> hortagrarian -> industrial/modern/colonial -> information/postmodern -> global  integration/disintegration ->?

 @danagram Read full post »

 By Daniel Rigney

Christie Claus, daughter of Xmas Inc¹ founder, chairman and  CEO Santa Claus, called an unexpected news conference today in Hong Kong to announce the company's plan to move its global headquarters to China in 2015. Most of Xmas Inc’s far-flung manufacturing operation… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney

This  just  in. We’re told that Craig’s List in Chicago reports the following items lost and found in the Chicagoland area over the last 48 hours. These entries are real, though lightly edited. You can look them up.  More from WGN News at noon.  And f… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney with wordle.com

Here is a tribute to one of my favorite artists, Piet Mondrian, brought to you by Pepsi, the drink that does whatever Pepsi does now.

 

  Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney and wordle.com

Today's column reports on my continuing thought experiment with wordclouding (or cloudword puzzles, or whatever we call them) as first reported yesterday in "Taste Test" and "Real NYRB Personals" (May 10, 2011).

Here once again I'm looking at anonymous personal ads a… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney and wordle.com

Foodies love food, and wordies love words. I confess: I'm a wordie -- not a wordy one, I hope, but a genuine one. I love to tinker with words. They're my tinker toys. [rimshot]

Today I'm reporting another in a series of conceptual experiments in… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney and wordle.com

This is a test. This is only a test. I'm testing a program called Wordle that allows us all to make homemade word clouds (or cloud poems) and share them with friends. I've been living in a cloud of words all my life, and I quite… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney

 New York Review Personals

Painfully shy male philosophy graduate student in Chicago, 24, seeks brainy, introverted woman, any field, for awkward conversation. Emily Dickinson types preferred. Object: eventual touching.

RFP: Voluptuous scientist, djf, interested in the biolog… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney

We’re in Louisville this May 5, 2012, for the 138^th  running of the Kentucky Derby. With the 2012 race just moments away, it isn’t too early to begin previewing the 2013 Run for the Roses^®. Here are some tips on next year’s ponies. Tuck these away discreet… Read full post »

 by Daniel Rigney

 

Row Your Blog (Haiku)

Row, row, row your boat     

gently through the fog.  Merely⁴   

life is but a blog.*                     ^&nb… Read full post »

        TO:  Fox News

FROM:  MidnightMediaConsultants, LLC

       RE:  How to Play Bin Laden’s Death

As your media consultants, we’ve been up all night working on ways you might want to play your coverage of Bin Laden&…

Read full post »

It's 10:48 p.m. CST/USA, two minutes after the conclusion of President Obama’s words to the nation and the world confirming the death of Osama bin Laden.  Bin Laden’s death was announced by news organizations about an hour ago.

If journalism is the first draft of history, as the sa… Read full post »

On Becoming a First Class Noticer

By Daniel Rigney

I have a mortifying confession to make. Since my student days  I’ve read  little fiction. It’s one of my secret shames, like the fact that I never took calculus.

Don't misunderstand. I consume lots of fiction. But if you&rsquo… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney

What’s the breaking story this Thursday morning, April 29, at 1:15 a.m. CST?  Is it the startling news that Barack Obama was born in the United States? That's yesterday's headline.  It's so April 28.

Is it the growing excitement over the royal wedding, which is just… Read full post »

 By Daniel Rigney

Dear Open Salon Readers:

I need your help. My son just called from college asking me to send a copy of his Social Security card and birth certificate, which he needed to complete a work application. After looking for an hour I couldn't find either of… Read full post »

This is a found poem, a form of found art in which words encountered in the world of everyday life are then arranged in verse (usually freeform) to create new meanings.  A found poem may be untreated (presented exactly as found) or treated (altered in spacing, line, punctuation and the like)/… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney

In today’s column we’ll consider some fresh and creative ways to euphemize the cultural shame of retiring a little early in American society.  This is a subject I know something about.

My wife and I are academicians with a newly-empty nest.  I have more than… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney 

Billionaire and prospective presidential candidate Donald Trump took the financial world by surprise this morning when he announced that he had acquired full rights to the popular AynRand® product line, including books and other paraphernalia currently owned by heirs to… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney

 Who was the comedian – I think I first heard him on an old vinyl comedy album –  who used the catch phrase “That’s true! I heard that!”?  I’d like to add this nugget to my own personal collection of catch phrases  but  --… Read full post »

 By Daniel Rigney

I am a Webster, a user of the world-wide web, and I've been assigned by my English teacher to write a research paper about owl symbolism. Here goes.

According to Webster’s Wikipedia -- the leading authority among many high school students like me who are assigned to… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney

Scientists tell us that when a person believes something firmly and sincerely, it becomes more true. Here are some things I firmly and sincerely believe:

I firmly and sincerely believe¹ that Barack Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia or some other foreign and… Read full post »

The op-ed pages exploded like a tantrum on Sunday (April 10, 2011) over the behavior of opposing sides in the ongoing budget debate in Congress. Fox News and MSNBC quickly joined the fray.  Those on each side of the fight accused the other of behaving like a bratty child, and each… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney

Does hypochondria run in your family?  All the more reason to subscribe today to Hypochondria Digest! 

HD!  brings you the very latest in research and urban legend from the frontiers of medical science, giving you information you can use and spread to others. Find o… Read full post »

When Mobil and Exxon married in 1999, they decided to share the name ExxonMobil.  Since then more and more companies seem to be naming themselves with compound nouns. Onscreen I like to call these constructions "CompoundNouns" to indicate visually that the space between words is collapsed URL-st… Read full post »

By Daniel Rigney et al.

An aphorism a day keeps the doctor away. Here are a few of my own home-baked aphorisms and mutated cliches. After recording these I did a quick search to see whether I had been scooped by previous phrasemakers. In some instances other aphorists seem to… Read full post »