Effing hate the passive voice rule. Sometimes, there's no choice BUT passive voice.

Sometimes, but it's death to evocative writing. It's the number one thing I edit in my own writing. Passive voice is for dissembling politicians and watery/domestic bureaucrats.

The other basic 80/20 rule in writing is lay off the adverbs.

Adverbs are the crack of writing. Sure, sometimes you want a hit off the crack pipe, but you've got to keep it under control! (He said, furtively.)

Also, either my swimsuit is suffering from fatigue after not even 3 weeks (and it is a performance suit I've been babying) or my ass is shrinking. Which most would welcome, but I have no ass to begin with!

TJs shrimp tempura are really yummy.

One of my co-workers goes to the rehearsal of the Thursday SNL almost every week - it's dead easy to get into because most people want to be at the show, not the rehearsal, and almost no tourists realize that a Thursday SNL is even an option. (She likes going to the rehearsal because there's usually at least one extra sketch, and she likes to see what they change.)

There you go, then. Sue, you missed out!

I did realized as she walked down the way offering tickets that there was a Thursday show...but whatever. I think I forgot where I was. The Ethiopian food we had for supper was delicious!

Flash forward was good! I don't need a new show though, especially one on Thursday.

Adverbs are the crack of writing.

No kidding. It's so tempting to use an adverb and a weak word than to hunt down the right word to use. I know I'll be having to hunt them down in my next revision.

Wow. it's been a while since I checked in here. 240 posts to go through.

Now I have to figure out a way to break it to my boobies.

Don't break it to your gallstones
Don't break it to your shinbones
Don't break it to your thyroid
Break it to your boobies

According to this, Utah has one of the highest median incomes in the country, which I take to mean as "We have an assload of millionaires in this state."

Median income isn't particularly affected by the super-rich - they have no more impact than the comfortably well-off. It's the average income that gets pushed up by a skewed distribution.

I found the US census info very interesting. Apparently 12.5% of the US population was born overseas. (In Australia the overseas-born proportion is about double that.)

I've had to do a lot of passive voice killing in my writing.

In Chinese, the passive voice is often saved for describing an unfortunate situation. I guess it softens the impact, and feels less accusatory.

The author of this post concludes you are correct.

Now watch this drive.

As part of some kind of NASA-sponsored project, we had to design a space station.

I did that. I don't recall what the contest was all about, but it was some state-wide thing. I won third place from the Air Force. My teacher wouldn't let me stay to collect my trophy because no one else in the class won anything and everyone else wanted to go home. I'm still bitter. I also still have the blueprints I drew up.

I was easily humiliated as a kid, and my third-grade teacher is the reason I can't do math. She hated my mom and took it out on me. Not to say anything about the sitch under discussion, really, because I don't know - I hated most of my teachers and most of my classmates, so I don't know who to side with. And that "dumb bell" thing? I would never have had the courage to speak a word in that class.

I mean, WTF? I know every boy in class had a marshmallow space station with eleven prow-lasers already in their mind, but I was TWELVE. I know fuck-all about drawing, let alone space stations. I still remember the frustration of trying to figure out what you could need in a space station. At TWELVE. I couldn't do it NOW. And it was a competition. And we had to work in groups. STILL MAD.

Bon, you can be in my group. I loved that shit.

My friend Rand and I once had a fun time with our guidance counselor because we had to design a space station for our G&T group. It ran on dead bodies, specifically the methane from dead bodies. We tried to find a power source that was either renewable or wouldn't run out. We figured that people would always die. Special time with the counselor. Fun!