Around the Blogosphere

Cathy's new blog design is up! Cathy is my "ringmate" (pretty sure that's not actually a word) from the Slinging Ink writers' webring, and she's actually had this layout in her head for some time; she just didn't know how to implement it. So she emailed Your Friendly Neighborhood Me, and voila! Here's a brand-new blog design I'd probably never have come up with myself (because pink as a primary part of the color scheme wouldn't occur to me), but it came out pretty nifty: feminine, elegant, breezy. I'd actually been wanting to do a blog basically defined by typography for some time, and Cathy provided the perfect opportunity to try it. She also paid me, like, two minutes after I told her I was done, and was thoroughly a gem to work with in every way. Thanks, Cathy!

I've added a couple of blogs to my links list, having managed to track down two of the new friends Dean and I made at the Palanca awards. Alvin shared our table (and lots of laughs) that evening, while we bonded with Lilit over cigarettes and my envious admiration of his kickass coat. In particular, you must read Lilit's post, "Tagalog Unleashed", which is like a love song of sorts to the Filipino language, and which really makes me wish I could both speak and understand it better. To me, it's just words, sometimes even just syllables I have to struggle to make sense of--to him, it's music:

Kumikinang, kumukuti-kutitap, bumubusi-busilak" Shining, glittering cacophony of phonetics. How lovely the Filipino language can be. Every consonant and a generous usage of vowels make the language have an inherent meter, melody, and most of all, audio-visual imagery. Think "sumasagitsit" or "kumakalansing" or "lumalangitngit". No amount of sound effect can capture these audal references successfully communicated with a word.

Imagine spherical objects like "betlog" or "itlog," ending your mouth formation and tongue movement with a solid circular thud. Titillate with syllables to make copulation more vulgar and graphic. Your mouth should churn out "kumakantot," "kinakasta" or add another dimension of opportunism by saying "kinakana."

Emphasize with repetition, then you have the lilting effect of "nagmumuni-muni", or for trying to say intermittent to describe the rain... then it's "manaka-naka"... as if the rains have invited the frogs to come out with that word.

Is that cool or what? And isn't it tragic that I understood barely half of the words he was exalting? Even so (and despite the fact that--ugh--frogs are mentioned), you should read the whole post here.

Over at Slap Happy, Anton is celebrating his blog's first-year anniversary. If you visit my blog looking for a laugh, then drop by Anton's to say congratulations, then stick around for a chortle or two.

And lastly but mostly, Vin has put out an open call for his dragon anthology. Vin is a multi-awarded writer/editor/publisher who is, somewhat perplexingly, also one of the nicest guys in the known universe; so if you'd like to throw your hat in the draconic ring (I will, assuming I can find the time...), check out the brief here. (Making puppy eyes at him may help your chances of acceptance; heck, it always works when I want a discount on comic books!)