I wish I had never heard about Macmillan Readers. Under the guise of teaching people about the English language, they are destroying its great works of literature.

Take, as an example, The Great Gatsby. Macmillan thinks that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words somehow make reading less compelling and destroy one’s ability to appreciate the language. So they have had it rewritten — if you can call it that — by Margaret Tanner.

You can see why. Who would want to read this?

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes–a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—-

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

When you can instead, read this marvelous prose:

Gatsby had believed in his dream. He had followed it and nearly made it come true.

Everybody has a dream. And, like Gatsby, we must all follow our dream wherever it takes us.

Some unpleasant people became part of Gatsby’s dream. But he cannot be blamed for that. Gatsby was a success, in the end, wasn’t he?

I would describe myself as “aghast”, but that doesn’t seem to cover it. Re-reading the last few paragraphs by Fitzgerald makes me want to pop over to Amazon and pick up the book right now. Reading the end of Tanner’s rewrite makes me want to buy a gun and go Tanner hunting.

Maybe that’s just me.

Photo from the Hulton-Deutsch Collection, via hastingsgraham.
Webcomic is Cheer up, Emo kid.

Last week we had Birds with Birds, in which we saw a couple of bird-related photographs of women.

This week, we are seeing lots of ladies with/on ladders. We assume that it is some sort of Internet Spring Ritual. So, Internet, in order to respect your (quite frankly bizarre) spiritual beliefs, we present to you Ladies With Ladders:

Top photo: Du Juan, by Paolo Roversi. Published in W Magazine in 2006.
Middle photo: Unknown origin. Found here.
Bottom photo: By (and from) Ira Chernova.

There are all sorts of amusing Britishisms that cannot, perhaps, be appreciated without living here as an ex-pat.

Some are horrific, like the ridiculous British version of Trivial Pursuit, in which all questions are Entertainment questions in disguise.

Some are designed to induce embarrassment in the unsuspecting North American, like the use of “pants” to mean “underpants”, rather than “trousers”. Or that “double fisting” does not indicate having a beer in each hand.

But most are harmless. One of these harmless ones is the tendency to refer to women as “birds”. Luckily, birds are also called “birds”, so there is no pants-like embarrassment that might occur when heading out to the park with binoculars. And when I stumbled across the two following images one after another the other day, I thought to myself.

Hmmm …. birds with birds.

So here we are.

Top photo by Mario Zanaria.
Bottom photo apparently from Elle magazine. Found here.

For nearly two years now, the vast majority of your morning coffees have looked the same.

Link #1.
Photo.
Link #2.
Link #3.
Webcomic.

Well, today we are starting a new chapter in morning coffee history, and changing the design a bit. It means less links, yes, but will hopefully encourage me to write a bit more as part of the morning coffee. It will also mean a few more links being tweeted, most likely.

Here’s what it looks like:

John Dvorak has made an interesting comparison between Facebook and AOL. The basic argument is that Facebook is little more than AOL-done-right — an online destination for people who are a little bit less than tech savvy.

It’s hard to argue with the premise. The only thing I use Facebook for is to see what Facebook users are doing, and sometimes leave comments regarding their activity. Seriously. Anything you see by me on there is actually from here. Or Twitter. Or Flickr.

Still, Facebook’s market share is tremendous. It’s hard to see it the way I remember AOL being. I absolutely hated the AOL corner of the Internet with a passion Facebook doesn’t elicit. Facebook is to connect with people that I would be unable to connect with otherwise. AOL never had anything like that.

Nevertheless, I love the comparison, and will be using it in real life as often as possible.

Photo: Gannets above Boreray, by Coinneach Morrison.

Webcomic: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weiner.

——-

So, internet friends … what do you think? A bit more commentary, a bit less link. It feels better to write it this way, if that’s any consideration.

I also feel like I should try harder to link up the content of the image, article and webcomic in the coffee, now that there’s less content. Today is very disjointed. Hopefully that will improve.