Wordplay

I have Roger Ebert to thank for sharing this brilliant, dark, spoken word piece called Death By Scrabble:

The title alone made me click but the words made me continue watching. It’s almost ten minutes long, but worth the time. Almost daily, I play one of the Scrabble-like games on Facebook, Lexulous (which you can also play outside of Facebook) and I can certainly relate to the loathing this man feels on looking at tiles that spell “MIHZPA” plus a U, especially after one’s opponent has used all their tiles or made a fantastic move with a J or a Q on a double letter space.

I like playing Scrabble and similar games because they keep me focused on language — I get to use some of the weird words that I know but never get to use in a sentence in real life. The games also challenge me to work with minimal resources.

One thing it doesn’t do is stop me from fighting to recall the right word as I am writing or, worse, speaking. Recently, however, I did find Tip of My Tongue which allows you to put in some variables — starts with, includes the letter, sounds like, means, and so on — and offers suggestions of the word you might be looking for. Bookmarked!

Last night I was trying to write — I had a bunch of windows open, working on a short story in Google Docs and a restaurant review for my Unofficial Guide to Victoria. I wasn’t making much headway on either one and eventually gave up on the restaurant review; I’ll start it again later. The short story is still open. I’m still sketching out the plot of it but I do have a head start as it is intended for a contest that requires a half dozen specific elements. I’ll be sure to share it with you if I actually manage to finish it.  In addition to the restaurant review, I have to get another Garden History post done and gather some fodder for FrugalVictoria plus I started a piece for Medianook, too. Damn, guess I should earmark more time for writing and less time for websurfing.