This blog is a rhizome of story growth. "This image is a representation of a rhizome. There is no center, but each node can link to an infinite number of other nodes (From 'Library Student Journal,' the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York)."
ar·cha·ism, /ˈɑrkiˌɪzəm, -keɪ-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ahr-kee-iz-uhm], noun.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaism: "In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately (to achieve a specific effect) or as part of a specific jargon (for example in law) or formula (for example in religious contexts). Many nursery rhymes contain archaisms. Archaic elements that only occur in certain fixed expressions (for example 'be that as it may') are not considered to be archaisms."
Writing in his column, "On Language," William Safire wrote, "When nobody answers the cellphone, you can leave a message on what used to be called voice mail, faster than e-mail and infinitely faster than the aforementioned retronymic snail mail or postal mail. However, the unmodified noun message, by virtue of its unspoken method of communication, has forced the creation of the retronym text message, often blasted out by those long scorned as 'textual deviates.'"
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From "Notes on Life and Letters," by Joseph Conrad: "SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC--1912." It is with a certain bitterness that one must admit to oneself that the late S.S. Titanic had a "good press." It is perhaps because I have no great practice of daily newspapers (I have never seen so many of them together lying about my room) that the white spaces and the big lettering of the headlines have an incongruously festive air to my eyes, a disagreeable effect of a feverish exploitation of a sensational God-send. And if ever a loss at sea fell under the definition, in the terms of a bill of lading, of Act of God, this one does, in its magnitude, suddenness and severity; and in the chastening influence it should have on the self-confidence of mankind.
"But all this has its moral. And that other sinking which I have related here and to the memory of which a seaman turns with relief and thankfulness has its moral too. Yes, material may fail, and men, too, may fail sometimes; but more often men, when they are given the chance, will prove themselves truer than steel, that wonderful thin steel from which the sides and the bulkheads of our modern sea-leviathans are made."
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"Only once in all that time he had again the glimpse of the earnestness in the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people might think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention- that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary- the sunshine, the memories, the future,- which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life."
-Conrad, "Lord Jim" (1900)