Calculating Words

Wow! I thought calculatingwords.blogspot.com would be too general to be available. Here it is, and I like the title... "countingwords" was taken, but I think I like this better. Either way, it's here to stay.

Hi, my name's Dan Bowen and I'm a data analyst for BookLamp.org, hence... Calculating Words. I also find that when I mean to express something in writing, I'm finicky about how it reads - for sure, I'm not alone... and not always perfect about it. I use every character I can think of, no matter how obscure to get the feeling I'm looking for... elipses, double-elipses, double-dash (thanks Paul), dashes, ampersands, carrots, semicolons, pipes, tildes, etc. ... and often. Sometimes I feel like there's an order of operations for punctuation, or the intended pause isn't long enough, or maybe a certain %haracter pops into my head that I just want to use.

I can think of times when I've spent hours writing something up and just scraped it as a lost cause, even though I still really want to get the idea out - again, I can't be alone here. Anyway, I calculate words for a living, and my own as an exercise.

Nuff with the intro, my this first post (below) is something I plan to keep up on a weekly basis. Aptly named, "Pick of the Week." Thanks to my friend Austin's BlahBlahBlog for inspiring this. I'm going to try to keep these as generally "acceptable" as possible. So, I'll do my best to steer clear of all-out weedles, or straight up death metal. But, I'm not sure how long that's gonna last.

The pick of the week is: (... drumroll ...)

"Desert of Song" by Between the Buried and Me on The Great Misdirect