Welcome to what is widely regarded as the least productive workday of the year, the day after the Super Bowl.  We like to buck trends with a newsletter filled with curious thoughts, links to the fun stuff, and a spotlight or two on fascinating people.  Finish your day with Music Notes and tunes from a new music artist.  Hit the week running!

Did you know that Thesaurus is from the Greek word Thesaurus, meaning treasure?  Word treasures; only a writer would love that.  In his latest post, Austin Kleon writes about Roget’s Thesaurus.  After admitting, like most of us, Kleon uses a thesaurus to find words, he went deeper into Roget's version.  One of Roget's biographers, Joshua Kendell, says Roget's Thesaurus is a reverse dictionary, and you can go to it with an idea and find words to go with it.

Dictionaries address books, filing systems, and many other systems are arranged alphabetically for speed searching.  There may be more efficient ways for a person looking for ideas.  Reading a few sample pages in Kleon's post gives you a sense of what Roget was trying to do.

Where do ideas come from?  Where do you get some of your best ideas?  On a walk, at the gym, while reading, in the middle of the night while sleeping?  Makes you wonder what Roget was dreaming about.  If you are interested in seeing how the 1911 version of Roget's Thesaurus looked, you can search online for an original hardbound copy we did – they are hard to find and expensive.  Or go to Project Gutenberg to see the copyright-free edition online. 

The Guardian interviewed Minnie Driver, who came on our radar with her role in Good Will Hunting in the 90s.  Since then, she has been in movies and television with a well-rounded body of work.  Driver also has a podcast called Minnie Questions.  The Guardian interview asked many provocative questions, making for a fun read, and a few items that may surprise you. 

The article took the most suggestive of Driver's answers and used it as the headline.  The Guardian asked about her most embarrassing moment, and it turned out it was being forced to fake an orgasm in an audition for a chocolate bar ad.  It's funny to imagine Driver saying it, in her best British deadpan response, and sad it was a thing. 

Several other questions are more fun, like why Driver has sex when the washing machine and dryer are both running.  Some questions reveal vulnerability and go to why Driver is a presence on screen; when asked what she would edit about her past, she responded:

We reported on some of the Super Bowl ads released early last week.  The big day came and went, and The Chiefs were the victors on the gridiron, and the rest of the ads were ready for the big game.  Several ads made us chuckle, especially those you could only figure out what they were or were advertising halfway into the ad.  Our favorite was the ad for Tubi.  In the first 30 seconds of the ad, you see a scary rabbit and think, is this an Easter ad or an Easter horror movie ad?  It is when you see the hole that it makes sense.  There you go, Tubi; far as we can tell, you are trying to get out of a hole; your ad worked on us, and we plan to check you out.  Here's the ad:

[Music Notes]

Travis Barker practices too hard and the world tour is one month away. Spotify announces a new way to exclude songs from playlists, and U2 announces The Sphere at the 2023 Super Bowl.

New Muse.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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