Amusing Things to Do

For reading material, try Bartleby, Online Books, Digital Book Index, Project Gutenberg, Glashan's Library, eBooks@Adelaide, Poets' Corner, Representative Poetry, Japanese Text Initiative, Aozora Bunko, Perseus, Bibliotheca Augustana, Medieval & Classical Library, Medieval Texts, TEAMS, Renascence Editions, Luminarium, European Literature, or Logos Library. These can be translated by Google, Babel Fish, Multibabel, Im Translator, InterTran, WorldLingo, Word Reference, or other ways: dialectized, crapolized, piratized, Britishized, Malkoviched, flangitized, smurfed, ubbi-dubbified, vocabulated, versified, Shannonized, disemvoweled, scrambled, shredded, eaten, binarized, binarized, SMSified, AOLered, lAM3riz3d, figletted, regendered, alphabetized, anagrammed, madame rang, rot13ed, or even put into words of one beat. Yow!

Some things are better off at random: a slogan, proposal, corpspeak, corporate bs, anarchist receipe, postmodernism, text, text block, lipsum text, blippity fling-flang, homespun analogy, compliment, complaint, insult, Shakespeare insult, evil plan, buzzword bingo, startup pitch, koan, Bonnerism, tarot reading, hexagram, excuse, joke, crank, urban legend, superhero, planet, erotica, euphemism, emojicons, shoujo title, challenge, story, cool story bits, trope, fairytale, book, ebook, plot, plot, movie plot, cam, search, site, useless site, page, LiveJournal, euh?, symbol, picture, photo, postcard, castle, frog, species, organism, name, name, name, names, names, fantasy name, operation name, evil name, knowledge, quote, query, newspaper, article, fact, buzzword, Engrish, medical term, foreign word, word, word, words, word of the day, sentence, haiku, haiku, haiku, haiku, sonnet, sonnet, doggerel, poem, poem, poem, poem, poem, poem, poem, poem, poem, verse, verse, poet, country song, music, Pythagorean triplet, coin flip, number fact, math fact, maze, knot, kitty, kitten, cat, cute, and much more.

If the way the internet generates bad verse makes you hurl things, then write your own, here or there or elsewhere, in any form. For help with vocabulary, synonyms, and rhymes, use the Webster's, Wordsmith, worthless, Wordnik, Wiktionary, Dr Goodword's, OneLook, Dictionary.com, Pretty Good, Stedman's, Scrabble, Vocab Vitamin, Times, yourDictionary, and TravLang words of the day, not to mention these weird, wordcrafty, nifty, fun, rare, obscure, difficult, double-toungued, logoleptic, logorrheatic, lexpionaged, and grandiloquent words. For help with markets, Ralan, Speculations, Duotrope, and Story Pilot can all help. Don't forget to pay homage to Austen, Carroll, Chaucer, Shakespeare, McGonagall, and Bulwer-Lytton.

For offline reading, buy books from IndieBound, ABE, or (if you must) Amazon—after comparing prices at BookFinder, AddALL, and ISBN.nu. Which Book?, Literature Map, or the Rating Zone can make recommendations.

Learn Latin: Latin Grammar by Allen & Greenough or Wheelock (with a study guide, answers to same, tools, and other help); the Wikibooks course; a grammar or two or three or more; morphology, conjugation, and case ending aids; more tools; tutorial, drill, drill, drill, parsing, and other softwares; lists of online resources and materials; plus a dictionary or two or three, helpful phrases, and dirty words others may omit (but found, for example, in the Priapeia). Practice with weekly news, a magazine, or a couple easy readers, and then write some poetry. If it's a good day, you can visit a Mithraeum, play Roman board or ball games, play music, cook a Roman meal, write for Roman computers, or (given that it's dead) recreate Roman culture online. More is available from Diotima and Apollo Loxias (including an oracle). Don't forget texts from Perseus, IntraText, Bibliotheca Augustana, Forum Romanum, or Labyrinth!

Catch some sun; head south (not north) to Mawson, Casey, Macquarie, Davis, Scott, Mount Erebus, Dry Valley, Neumayer, O'Higgins (with penguins), and Amundsen-Scott stations (check the weather and local radio; or just voyeur with Outdoor Webcams or EarthCam. For static art (not in plain brown wrappers) stroll through the National Gallery, Tate, or other museums. While you watch, listen to music: streaming from KUAT-FM, SomaFM, Last.FM, Pandora, WarpRadio, Digitally Imported Radio, Radioio, Radio Paradise, Ríkisútvarpið, Live365, LaunchCast, Shoutcast, StreamAudio, or the portals of Radio-Locator, Public Radio Fan, and Radio Station World; otherwise from MP3.com, iRate Radio, Bach works, Wax cylinder recordings, or the Acoustic Cafe. Oh, and John Sankey, harpsichordist to the internet.