“Is that her with the ponytail?” asked Karen.

“That might be her,” said Chris.

Welcome to Do You Need a Ride?, one of my favorite podcasts, hosted by comedians Karen Kilgariff and Chris Fairbanks. The show’s schtick is that Karen and Chris provide a sort of taxi service for their comedian friends, driving them to or from the airport or other places and engaging in hilarious conversation in the car.

The snippet of dialogue above happened when Karen and Chris were picking up comedian Sara Schaefer. And technically, both Karen and Chris made a mistake. If they wanted to be grammatically proper, they would have said:

“Is that she with the ponytail?”

“That might be she.”

Record-scratch. Yuckola! That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Snooty. Antiquated. Ridiculous.

Here’s why it’s (again, technically) correct, though. In English, the pronoun she serves as a subject, while the pronoun her serves as an object.

She published her manifesto. (She is the subject.)

The FBI called her in for questioning. (Her is the object.)

She wore her mink overalls to the Oscars. (She is the subject.)
​
PETA has been giving her a lot of unwelcome attention. (Her is an object.)

The sentences spoken by Karen and Chris include what’s called a linking verb, which works like an equal sign in an equation:

She is a ventriloquist.

He is a scoundrel.

You are a nightmare.

We are taxidermists.
​
They are flat-earthers.

Similarly, Karen and Chris were essentially expressing this equation:

that (person) = Sara Schaefer

If we reduce that equation properly we get:

that = Sara
        ⬇
that = she
        ⬇
That is she.

The sentence is simply stating [Subject] equals [something]. There’s no object, so there’s no need for the object pronoun her. The correct pronoun is she.

Similarly, back in the days when we would actually answer telephones, if a caller asked for us by name, we might respond, “This is she” or “This is he.” Pompous, but proper.

But some rules just need to be broken, and Karen and Chris did exactly what they should have done. They threw the pretentious That is she construction out the car window and went with the perfectly acceptable (preferable, really​) That is her approach instead.

And you can too. As with all speaking and writing, you should consider your audience, your circumstances, the medium, and the mood. You can always break the rules in English, but it’s good to know you’re breaking them.

I recently discovered that if you’re an Audible member (as I have been for more than 20 years), you can get a whole bunch of Lorrie Moore audiobooks for free.

Whee! I love Lorrie Moore.

I’m listening to her story collection called Self-Help right now, and I’m thoroughly enjoying and admiring it.

Most of the stories put the reader in the center of the action. (That’s de rigueur for copywriting, but an unconventional approach for fiction.) The author will tell you “How to Be an Other Woman” or give you “The Kid's Guide to Divorce,” colorfully spelling out what actions you might go through, what observations you might make, what emotions you might feel. It’s so intriguing, so effective, and so creative.

Also creative is the way the story “How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)” moves backward, one year at a time. That sounds like it might feel annoying or confusing, but it works beautifully and really tugged my heart every which way.

Here’s a tidbit from it:

The hum, rush, clack of things in the kitchen. These are some of the sounds that organize your life. The clink of the silverware inside the drawer, piled like bones in a mass grave. Your similes grow grim, grow tired.

I could hear, see, and feel that kitchen drawer. And I appreciated how Moore poked fun of her own description.

There’s humor sprinkled throughout these tales. Here’s a cat cleaning herself in “Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love”:

She sees you watching, freezes, blinks at you, then busies herself again, her face in her belly, one leg up at a time, an intent ballerina in a hairy body stocking.

Amidst all this entertaining, evocative writing, the thing that really stopped me in my tracks, that made me want to blog about this author and this book, is a device called a zeugma. (Great to know for Words with Friends or Scrabble. That Z alone is worth 10 points!)

A zeugma, as Merriam-Webster explains, is

the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words usually in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense or makes sense with only one (as in “opened the door and her heart to the homeless boy”).

So. In the story entitled “How,” Moore writes:
​
But I love you, he will say in his soft, bewildered way, stirring the spaghetti sauce but not you, staring into the pan as if waiting for something, a magic fish, to rise from it…

Stirring the spaghetti sauce but not you. I love it.

If you look up “zeugma” on Wikipedia, you will find yourself in a complex hamster Habitrail® of rhetorical devices. But for regular people like me, zeugmas are typically just unexpected, playful, and fun. Wordplay, as they say.

(Side note: The etymology of zeugma has to do with connecting, linking, or yoking. The ancient city of Zeugma is so called because of a local bridge of connected boats that crossed the Euphrates.)
​
Here are some literary zeugma examples that I found on this Your Dictionary page:

Yet time and her aunt moved slowly—and her patience and her ideas were nearly worn out before the tête-à-tête was over. – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

He was alternately cudgeling his brains and his donkey. – Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

They tugged and tore at each other's hair and clothes, punched and scratched each other’s nose, and covered themselves with dust and glory. – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
​
I’ll tell you this much: Zeugmas are tricky to write. I don’t even want to admit how much time I spent on the title of this blog.

Give it a try. Write a zeugma. See how it goes—and why these things aren’t more common.

​
PS: The book link above is an affiliate link. So I can keep rolling in the pennies.

The good news is that I've been busy lately.

The bad news is that I haven't had time to do all the stuff I love to do, including writing for me. I've started a LinkedIn article called "Don't Write Like a Psychopath" that I can't wait to finish. I've been invited to write a blog for the fine folks at CreativePro.com but haven't had a chance to do it just yet. And I want to put together the Ignite talk I'm giving at CreativePro Week in June, but that's not happening just yet.

But dangit, I'm going to write a blog right now, and everything else can wait. I'm going to make this quick—and hopefully compelling and/or informative.

• I attended Crop last week in Baton Rouge, and it was FABulous. I'm so glad I went. In addition to learning from and meeting some amazing designers, I got to spend several hours in New Orleans eating a great meal at Atchafalaya and walking up and down Magazine Street.
• I've been binge-listening to My Favorite Murder, the wildly popular true-crime comedy podcast. I'm not sure I'm ready to call myself a murderino, but I may be getting there.
• I've gotten involved with a great freelancing group in Denver. We're going to host Freelance Business Week in Denver September 30–October 4, 2019, should anyone want to speak, attend, or volunteer.
• I got help from Drew Hornbein and I now have sign-up pages for two emails I send out. One is a listing of events in the Denver-Boulder area that freelancers, graphic designers, and other creative types might appreciate; the other is an email that includes the little grammar/spelling lessons I've been sharing on social media. Feel free to sign up!
• I attended the Ad Club Freelancer Fling this week, and it was a great opportunity to share my wonderful new business cards, designed by my friend Michael Reardon. Each card has a different fun word and definition on the back, including "sesquipedalian," "collywobbles," and "hornswoggle."
• I've been volunteering a lot lately, not only for the aforementioned freelancers group but for the wonderful Sister Carmen Food Bank, AIGA Colorado, and The One Club for Creativity Denver. 
• This weekend, I'm getting together with 11 of my friends from college--an event I look forward to every year.

​
Those are the highlights. Consider this weblog updated!

I'm so sorry, whoever you were.

I suspect it happened during a game of Spin the Bottle at somebody's bar mitzvah. I'm sure it involved insecurity and mortification on my part. I'm certain it was a boy I kissed. But honestly, that's about all I can report.

My childhood memories are... spotty. I can remember the physical layout of my childhood home in great detail, inside and out. I remember the name I gave a cactus that sat on my bathroom windowsill (Horatio), probably because I labeled it with a machine like the one shown here. ​I'll never forget the aroma of the disinfectant powder that got sprinkled on kids' vomit at school. I remember my friend Amy's port wine stain birthmark and my friend Stephanie's phone number. I remember a time I saw a huge white rat in our backyard that turned out to be a possum. There are scenarios and personalities and happenings I can pull up, vaguely. But as for recalling exact sequences of events? No way.

So now, when I read (or listen to) memoirs, as I often do, I am just *astonished* by authors' abilities to recall precisely what they lived through. Currently, I'm listening to Small Fry, by Steve Jobs' daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. She recounts in great detail specific conversations she had, when and where she had them, and what each of the interlocutors was wearing. How? How?

Well, she kept journals, which can certainly help. If you read David Sedaris's Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977–2002, you can see that his meticulous (obsessive?) record-keeping is a big part of his skill as a memoirist and raconteur.

I do have a box of old diaries, so I suppose I might be able to jog my memory and recreate a few series of events. But for now, I'm just going to keep enjoying—and marveling at—other people's stories.

P.S. If you love good memoirs as much as I do, let me know your favorites. Some of mine are The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner, and The World's Strongest Librarian: A Book Lover's Adventures by Josh Hanagarne (about growing up with Tourette Syndrome in a Mormon family). Oh, and of course Educated by Tara Westover is great. And all these memoirs by comedians. And so many more.

It was just over a year ago that I blogged here about how much I love The Jackie & Laurie Show podcast, hosted by comedians Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin​. Well, my opinion hasn't changed a bit—I've listened to every single podcast episode since I posted that blog. 

Also over the past year, I've continued to work at learning Adobe Suite—Illustrator and InDesign in particular. I've taken Lynda classes (which, chances are, you can access through your public library!) as well as SkillShare classes. (If you'd like two free months of SkillShare Premium, which is terrific, you can use this link.) I certainly haven't *mastered* these complex programs, but I can honestly say that I've learned a lot and have significantly more capabilities than I used to.

So, to kill two cravings with one stone, I volunteered to typeset something for The Jackie and Laurie Show: a list of their "Comics of the Week"—female comedians they think are particularly wonderful.

Quick aside: The comedy world continues to be grossly imbalanced, gender-wise. Women comedians still get less credit and fewer opportunities, and are simply less well known than their male counterparts. Therefore,  the "Comic of the Week" is a great vehicle for improving women comedians' visibility, attendance, bookings, and success.

So about a year ago, I took all of Jackie and Laurie's Comics of the Week and used Adobe InDesign to arrange them into a shareworthy list entitled, "Laugh More in 2018." And recently, since the list of comedians had grown to 150, I laid out a new list. And here it is! Give it a good look, and then check out these great comedians. Watch their videos. Listen to their albums. And go see them live—you'll be glad you did, and so will they.

Yesterday, early in the morning, my boss told me to take the day off.

My boss, of course, is me.

I decided I would do three things:

• Enjoy the wonderful weather.
• Get some exercise by taking a long walk.
• Figure out how to use the regional bus system to get to and from Denver (22 miles from my home).

Since I have a membership at the Denver Art Museum, I made that my destination. They have a fabulous exhibition of Rembrandt's prints right now. And although I'd been to it, I hadn't been able to see it all during my first visit.

​And so, using three different apps, I managed to get down to Union Station using public transportation. (Yes, I did get on the wrong bus initially, but it all worked out.) I took a nice long walk from the station to the museum. Ahhh—just what I wanted.

The museum has a studio where you can make your own prints right now—to complement the Rembrandt exhibit. Printmaking is something I've always wanted to explore, as I've found the whole process sort of mysterious and confusing. The previous time I'd been at the museum, I'd made this print using just a sheet of styrofoam and the tip of a pencil. (Hold your applause.)

Yesterday, when I returned to the museum, I ended up going straight back into the studio. Rembrandt can wait, I thought. I'm going to carve a linoleum print.

I was the first studio visitor of the day, and I got right to work. Again, I drew a simple bird surrounded by foliage. But unlike the styrofoam print, this time, I would need to carve out everything I did *not* want to make an imprint on the paper. And so began a remarkably tricky and time-consuming process of carving linoleum.

I don't think I raised my head once while I worked.

I heard mothers and small children and teenagers and senior citizens come in, make projects, and leave. I heard a tiny person demonstrate her fatigue with several tantrums. I heard a young girl talk about her tricky science project, involving planets and styrofoam spheres. I kept working.

Even though I overheard several warnings about the sharpness of the carving tools. I started to find them insufficiently sharp. Sometimes they seemed to be tearing the linoleum more than cutting it. But I persevered.

I heard people talk about getting lunch. I knew I should eat something. But I couldn't stop.

At long, long last, I felt like my carving was complete. I chose a paint color, applied it to my linoleum, and made a few prints. I hung one up to dry. I looked at the time—I'd been at it for FOUR HOURS.

It was the wonderful David Rakoff who taught me about this phenomenon of unbroken focus in a piece he did for This American Life called "Martha, My Dear." He introduced me to ​Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the concept of "flow." Flow is that sensation that's part absorption, part determination, and part hypnosis. It's when you're exactly where you want to be, doing precisely what you want to be doing. And happily, it's how I spent my day off.

​To leave or read comments, just click on the red "comments" link at the top of this post.

I don't mean the horror franchise. Rather, I love it when the 13th day of the month falls on a Friday. Because I am consciously, pointedly, relentlessly un-superstitious. I'm comfortable spilling salt. I have no trouble with the number 666. I've even opened an umbrella indoors within the past week.

I identify as a skeptic. I value facts and science, peer-reviewed studies and reproducible results. I fact-check on Snopes. I question authority. When I lived in Sarasota, I happily fraternized with the Suncoast Skeptics. I appreciate science-based medicine—both the concept and the website founded by Steven P. Novella. And I love the podcast he hosts: The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. And though I like to consider myself a critical thinker, I also know how susceptible all humans are to a multitude of rhetorical and logical fallacies.

So I diligently resist being swayed by myths and mysticism, and instead focus on and embrace reality. Consequently, I live a life free of paraskevidekatriaphobia. So: Happy Friday the 13th, everybody!

​

• This is the audiobook I'm listening to right now. And it is. So. Good.

As discussed in a previous post, I am an audiobook fiend. Also, a great fan of stand-up comedy. So it's no surprise that I adore comedians' memoirs. Following are a few that I have greatly enjoyed (in alphabetical order by the authors' last names). And because they are all in my Audible library, I can send you any one of them for free! Let me know if you'd like me to shoot one to you by text or email—it's very easy to do. And you won't be sorry. (If you click on the titles, you can listen to a sample.)
​

• If at Birth You Don't Succeed: My Adventures with Disaster and Destiny, Zach Anner
• Nothing's Sacred, Lewis Black
• Drunk with Power, Margaret Cho
• Girl Walks into a Bar...: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle, Rachel Dratch
• Bossypants, Tina Fey
• Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons (The Audiobook), Greg Fitzsimmons
• A Bad Idea I'm About to Do: True Tales of Seriously Poor Judgment and Stunningly Awkward Adventure, Chris Gethard
• I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons, Kevin Hart
• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), by Mindy Kaling
• Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16, Moshe Kasher
• I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales from a Happy Life Without Kids, Jen Kirkman
• I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction, Jen Kirkman
• You'll Grow Out of It, Jessi Klein
• Attempting Normal, Mark Maron
• Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, Steve Martin
• Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah
• Yes Please, Amy Poehler
• You Can't Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain, Phoebe Robinson
• The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, Sarah Silverman

Some of the above may not be pure memoirs, and there are countless funny memoirs by the likes of David Sedaris, Julia Sweeney, Jonathan Ames, and others that aren't included because the authors aren't really stand-up comedians. But it's a solid list, and I'd be happy to share any one of the titles with you. (You can contact me directly here.)

I am a member of a meetup of podcast enthusiasts. At our last gathering, I was asked if I'd like to choose my all-time favorite podcast episode for the group to listen to and discuss. It was difficult to choose, but I came up with two favorites. May I highly recommend them both to you, because I predict that they will rock your world.

The first is an episode of Invisibilia called "Entanglement," and specifically a segment called "Mirror Touch." It's about a woman who has a type of synesthesia that causes her to literally feel what other people feel. So, for example, if she were to see someone stub his toe, she would experience a very real pain in her own toe. It has made her life very difficult, and affected her family in profound ways. Listen here.

My other favorite podcast episode is from This American Life, called "If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS." There is a segment wherein author Lindy West is hounded online by a viciously cruel troll. And she ends up having a conversation with him. Listen here.

I'd love to hear what you think of these episodes, or if you have favorite podcasts of your own. Do tell!

Much to my husband's annoyance, I am almost always wearing headphones. If I'm not working at my computer or sleeping, chances are excellent that I'm listening to an audiobook or a podcast. The following scenario has happened approximately 2.3 zillion times:

So sue me: I love listening to things. I've been a member of Audible for close to 20 years and have accumulated 321 titles in my library. Here is a sampling of the podcasts I enjoy listening to. Additionally, I listen to programs like Hold On with Eugene Mirman that are technically Audible channels. Oh, and I also have the Audm app, which enables me to listen to great articles from magazines like The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

Why do I love audio so much? For one thing, if I sit down to read a "real" book or magazine, my mind is likely to a) wander, or b) go to sleep. But beyond that, I love listening to voices—the emotion of them, the timbre, the humanness and intimacy. And when you listen to podcasts, there's the fabulous nuance added by thoughtful production: sound effects, audio engineering, conversations, audience reactions, etc. Good podcasts are magnetic.

Earlier in my long advertising career, I got to write and produce many radio commercials, and that was wonderful. I maintain that radio is the most visual medium, because when it's done well, it makes listeners watch stories right in their heads.

So imagine my delight when 99% Invisible, one of the best podcasts out there (and a must-listen for anyone even remotely interested in design), shared this wonderful tale about Clive Desmond's personal history with radio advertising. The episode is called "A 700 Foot Mountain of Whipped Cream," and that evocative title is a testament to the visual power of audio.

If you are interested in advertising or psychology, if you enjoyed Mad Men, or if you just have a strong recollection of the ads of yesteryear, I highly recommend that you listen to this podcast episode. And try not to let anyone interrupt you.