Mail early in the day, today
Or deliver it in person.
Orange Crate Art
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Oxymoronic appliance.”
Four panels, “some rocks”
A Bliss cartoon.
The death tour
USA Today: "The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA Today analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following counties: Blue Earth, Minnesota; Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Marathon, Wisconsin; Dauphin, Pennsylvania; and Beltrami, Minnesota."
Masks, freedom, and toxic masculinity
From a brief interview with Anand Giridharadas about the American aversion to masks.
On the crisis in the humanities
Jon Baskin and Anastasia Berg, writing in The New York Times.
How to improve writing (no. 89)
Two identical twins?
Shudder
Any parent — any person — should shudder at this president’s utter lack of empathy.
Lordy
Donald Trump*, interviewed by Lesley Stahl for 60 Minutes: “When I finish, this country will be in a position like it hasn’t been maybe ever.” Yes, exactly.
“What should I do until then?”
Today’s Zippy poses an urgent question.
A Langston Hughes Zoom event
Mystery recordings, found in a box in the University of Illinois Archives, of Hughes reading his work for a live audience.
“What? What?”
Barack Obama, a few minutes ago at a drive-in rally in Philadelphia: “You’ll be able to go about your lives knowing that the president is not going to retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world or that Navy SEALs didn’t actually kill Bin Laden. Think about that. The president of the United States retweeted that. Imagine. What? What?”
A repurposed caption
I thought it might be fun to repurpose the caption from a recent New Yorker cartoon by Teresa Burns Parkhurst.
“Fellows”
Pierce from Zits sounds like Mark Trail.
The Old Landmark
At 4th and Bowery in Naked City.
Thank you, Brian and Al
Brian Wilson and Al Jardine disavow a Donald Trump* benefit put on by Mike Love’s touring version of the Beach Boys.
Lighting and me
I finally realized why I get so much spam mail about lighting fixtures.
Jeffrey Toobin, exposed
“I thought I was off-camera” is a pretty limp excuse.
“Orange Crate Shark”
Hum for the Google app and it returns the wrong song.
In Wisconsin
My dreams during the Great Pause have veered from the mundane (buying groceries) to the bizarre (a talking squirrel). This dream seems too much drawn from waking life.
“This is not normal”
From The Washington Post, Amy Siskind’s select list of norms Donald Trump* and his administration have violated, week by week by week.
A message to Senator Doodyhead
I left a message for David Perdue (R-GA), who was in the news this week for making fun of Kamala Harris’s name.
Nancy and Japan
Olivia Jaimes offers a performative commentary on Japanese comics.
Ed Benguiat (1927–2020)
“What is graphic design? Placing things in their proper order so they’re pleasing to the eye.”
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Secret thing since the ’50s.”
Biden–Simone
A Joe Biden ad with a Nina Simone recording.
Sally Foster Wallace (1938–2020)
Sally Foster Wallace’s Practically Painless English (1980) is a textbook noteworthy for the loopy humor of its sample sentences.
“End Our National Crisis”
The New York Times today has published a special Opinion section, “End Our National Crisis: The Case Against Donald Trump.”
Naked City playground
Mid-century swings, seesaws, and slide.
I’ll say!
Life vs. getting a Ph.D. From Robertson Davies’s The Rebel Angels.