“O tell me where is fancy bread?”
From the “Eumaeus” episode.
Orange Crate Art
Recently updated
How to improve writing (no. 104), now with more improvement.
A petard
A nice way to illustrate the idea of poetic justice. Also the idea of being hoist with one’s own petard.
How to improve writing (no. 104)
“One man stood on the bridge, which crosses the Intracoastal Waterway, holding the American flag upside down — widely recognized as a symbol of his belief that the country is in distress.” Needs rewriting.
Raymond Briggs (1934–2022)
Writer and illustrator of The Snowman (1978), among many other books.
“That’s our slogan”
A great line from from the Only Murders in the Building episode “Hello, Darkness.”
At the REC
At the last Remote Encoding Center: How the USPS reads terrible handwriting.
After Willa Cather’s birthday
“I think you make a very usual mistake, however, in defining a writer geographically. Myself, I read a man (or a woman) for the climate of his mind, not for the climates in which he has happened to live.”
Drawing ability
I admire Bill Griffith’s curmudgeonly insistence on genuine artistry in comics.
Mar-a-Lago “under siege”!
Well, if you had a safe and also had things you wanted to hide, where else would you keep them?
After Louis Armstrong’s birthday
Better late than never: here’s one of my favorite later Armstrong performances: “Azalea,” recorded on April 4, 1961. It’s a Duke Ellington composition, which Ellington wrote years before with Armstrong in mind.
Dream chords
I was showing my friend Rob Zseleczky a beautiful set of chord changes: the chorus of “California Girls.” It’s a simple pattern up and down the neck of the guitar. I like the first chord for each vocal line as a major seventh. It’s not that way in the original. I don’t care.
What commas don’t fix
There’s a mistaken clue in Evan Birnholz’s Washington Post Sunday crossword: 102-D, six letters, “What commas may fix.” The answer: RUNONS. But no number of commas can fix a run-on sentence.
IRA = BFD
IRA: the Inflation Reduction Act. BFD: Self-explanatory, I hope. If not, ask Joe Biden.
Along came Mary, and a bookstore
Hamburger Mary and the Liveright Bookshop.
The Vignelli map
From the New York Transit Museum: Towards a Better Way: The “Vignelli” Map at 50.
Rats in cars
A tip our Toyota dealer offered: set the ventilation to recirculate if you’re leaving a car parked for any length of time — say in an airport parking lot. Doing so keeps at least some of the innards off-limits to critters.
The sound of the Senate
As voting remains open on whether to begin debate on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the sound of the Senate is extremely odd. It suggests to me a cross between a laundromat and a gathering of chanting ghosts, led perhaps by Diane Feinstein and Charles Grassley.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Baker of artisanal breads.”
Dad, i.m.
I’ll listen to one or more of his CDs today — maybe Ethel Waters, maybe Lee Wiley.
The new Bloomusalem
From the “Circe” episode.
Nancy meta
Ernie Bushmiller broke his glasses.
Recently updated
The Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, now with new links, an opening date, and a statement from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
“Strange fishes withouten heads”
From the “Oxen of the Sun” episode.
Freddish
A way of talking to children.
“Longest way round”
From the “Nausicaa” episode.
4:17?
“I am doing what is called lecturing,” I said, and I was doing quite well.
In Kansas
The voters spoke.
A catalogue
From the “Cyclops” episode.
A genuine misunderstanding
Watching Adventures of Superman on WPIX (“channel 11”), I thought that the bad guys and crooks were real bad guys and crooks playing versions of themselves.