In it and of it?
“Do you have any pens that need filled?”
Orange Crate Art
Block that metaphor
Cutting loose a hot potato.
How I write certain of my blog posts
I’m always interested in seeing the materials of writing, so I thought it’d be interesting to show the materials that went into a post about Anne Curzan’s Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares about Words. Why not? A notebook, gel pen, blue pencil, legal pad, fountain pen, and text editor.
The tells
A scam. How many tells can you tell?
Wild strawberries
I think I have finally figured out what interests the deer who visit the back of our backyard: Fragaria vesca, or wild strawberries. They’re why the deer appear so choosy as they browse the ground.
Memorial Day
A photograph by Esther Bubley
Sunday in the park with geese
After Seurat.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Grammy’s British equivalent.”
FART
An Infinite Jest-worthy acronym.
&udm=14
An AI-free Google search.
A font for jokes
From Hacks: “I put the jokes in Comic Sans so you know they’re supposed to be funny.”
Recently updated
Another “Happy Reunion.”
From Sonny Rollins’s notebooks
No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.
Revised cosmology
It’s cicadas all the way down.
Another Alito flag
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A review: Anne Curzan, Says Who?
Again and again I found myself at odds with her perspective. Part of what put me off, wrongly or rightly, is the book's relentless cheeriness: the “kinder, funner ” of the title, the too-frequent use of exclamation points. A larger problem is Curzan’s division of the individual psyche into “grammando” and “wordie,” both a matter not of a speaker/writer but of a listener/reader responding to other people’s words.
“Mad Hot Cicada Spring”
Elaine wrote a short piece for piccolo and violin, “Mad Hot Cicada Spring.”
Mystery actor
I’m always slightly amazed at the way women in older movies appear to time-travel when their hair is wet. They lose their 1930s- or ’40s-ness and suddenly show up in the world of tomorrow. As is the case here
Orange Crate Art: Planet of the monkey house
In Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, a Kurt Vonnegut book is visible on a table in what appears to be the residence of a human serving the apes. The cover isn’t readable, but it’s easy to guess what that book must be.
Mary Miller, shilling
East-central Illinois’s Mary Miller (IL-15) was one of the faithful yelling outside the courthouse today.
EXchange names fill the screen
From Larceny (dir. George Sherman, 1948). The page fills the screen; otherwise, you might not believe that someone is really looking at a telephone directory.
Twelve movies
Fallen Leaves and others.
Shopping
I like this photograph because it captures one way people used to do the marketing: with their own two arms carrying a bag of groceries.
Someone wrote a letter
In the second episode of the Shrinking Trump podcast, someone suggests that this passage from a May 15 interview with Hugh Hewitt should be shared widely as evidence that Donald Trump cannot formulate ideas cognitively.
Orange Crate Art: Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Antique letter opener.”
What is a “bottle episode”?
I asked those who would know if there’s a name for a television episode with two characters stuck in, say, an elevator or a basement, talking about whatever until they get free. There is, and Merriam-Webster has it.
Orange Crate Art: Desert Island Discs : Keith Richards
From BBC Radio 4: the Keith Richards episode of Desert Island Discs.
John McWhorter’s apostrophes
If John McWhorter really wants to eliminate most apostrophes, he had better seek alternative publishers, no?
Weevil- and hyphen-free
A slip amid the sweet potatoes, still without a hyphen.
Perhaps the best words I’ll read today
“MOUSE CAUGHT”: on the side of a Tomcat Kill & Contain Mouse Trap.