Nancy, blogger
Consistently post!
Orange Crate Art
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Words of the year, now with “cancel culture .”
Recently updated
Words of the year, now with “existential .”
The Apostrophe Protection Society
The Apostrophe Protection Society throw’s in the towel.
A joke in the traditional manner
How do ghosts hide their wrinkles?
The TLL continues
The work of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae is ongoing. The New York Times has a report, with photographs.
The prodigal failson
Last year the word “failsonry” had me stumped. The word I really needed to look up: “failson.”
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Another word of the year: “upcycling.”
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Stumpery clue for ‘broom.’”
Margaret Atwood on Little Lulu
In The New Yorker, Margaret Atwood writes about “The Life Lessons of Little Lulu.”
The age of “40”
Wal-Mart signage.
Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind
Here’s the latest installment of WGBH’s The Rewind, “A Vegetarian Thanksgiving.”
Thanksgiving 1919
Nuts, a 1919 advertisement.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
For impeachment, or the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or a resignation for “medical reasons,” none of which T.S. Eliot had in mind.
Sailing out of Walden Pond
So many wonderful bits of phrasing in this passage from Franny and Zooey.
Warfighter on The Late Show
On The Late Show last night, Stephen Colbert commented on the appearance of the word warfighters in a presidential tweet.
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Barrett Watten has been removed from teaching and advising at Wayne State University.
The ubiquitous warfighter
To my ear, warfighter has something of the sound of a kenning. As spoken by our president, it sounds like a sanction for war crimes. A service member belongs to a community with norms and values; a warfighter is an independent agent. A warfighter: so anything goes.
Pallet pencils
Making 1,000 pencils from pallet wood.
Projecting
The overhead projector of classrooms past: “As a professor, I would notice the overhead projector stashed on the wall convector, next to lost scarves and notebooks and a little box or two of spare bulbs. A sad, neglected projector in every classroom.”
The vanishing hardware store
Worth reading: a New York Times opinion piece, “The Life and Death of the Local Hardware Store.” The killers: Amazon and high rent.
“O.K.,” “K,” “kk”
In The New York Times, a Q & A column about workplaces covers “kk,” which some younger people apparently prefer to “OK” or “K” in e-mail and texts.
James Brown and Mutts
Today’s Mutts lets us know that Patrick McDonnell is a fan. The title panel for today’s strip is a bonus.
Stooges as amigos
The Three Stooges — Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Curly Howard — will star as Gordon Sondland, Rick Perry, and Kurt Volker in the forthcoming release The Three Amigos. Talk about straight out of Central Casting.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Rattling adders.”
“Hello? Is this 1973?”
In today’s Zippy, pay phones, postcards, and letters. The post title is Zippy speaking into a broken pay phone.
Gahan Wilson (1930–2019)
The New York Times has an obituary and a sampler of his work. The New Yorker has a reminiscence from fellow cartoonist Michael Maslin, with more Wilson cartoons.
“I love a good calendar graphic”
From the PBS NewsHour.
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Words of the year: now with climate emergency.
Joe Biden’s stutter
Worth reading: John Hendrickson’s “Joe Biden’s Stutter, and Mine” (The Atlantic ).