"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
In the news
Two things. One, this post is going to go all over the map because I’m still in shock, angry and incoherent. Two, what I have to say is mostly personal, not meant to be a recap of news you’ve already heard elsewhere. We all know what happened in Tucson this Saturday was political. Politicians and […]
While I was out riding my bicycle this morning, someone shot our congresswoman, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, at an open meeting in northwest Tucson. As I post this, news reports differ on whether she was killed or is still alive at a local hospital. She is, I suspect, dead; reports are that the gunman shot her […]
The captain of the US Navy carrier Enterprise who made raunchy videos and showed them to his sailors? I feel sorry for the guy. Oh, he did a dumbass thing and totally deserves to lose his command, but I’ll bet that until the shit hit the fan he had no idea he was doing anything […]
This is Sinterklaas, the Dutch Santa. Formerly the Archbishop of Turkey, Sint Nicolaas, Sinterklaas is shown with two of his Zwarte Pieten (there are six to eight Zwarte Pieten — “Black Petes” — originally Moorish slaves, but today more gently described as servants or even companions). Sinterklaas arrives in The Netherlands each November by steamboat […]
Two days under the weather. Diarrhea, vomiting . . . yuck, who wants to hear about that? TMI! TMI! I only mention it because I’m so damn happy it’s over. At last, I can get back to stressing over more important things than the distance to the nearest bathroom. Things like Christmas. I sent out […]
The difficulty of getting at the truth of a story was increased today by Wonkette, an influential political blog, then multiplied by Fox News, a conservative propaganda outlet. Starting with the onion’s outer layer, here’s the headline and blurb from Wonkette: An American state has decided to promote illiteracy? What, are they shutting down schools? […]
A zippier title for this post would be State Secrets & Shit Lists, but I’ll refrain. The way the authoritarians in our midst are calling for Julian Assange’s assassination, I can’t help thinking of Orwell’s 1984, where the citizens of Oceania turned to their viewscreens once a day for the Two Minutes Hate directed against […]
My Nook e-reader came with a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although prudishly Edwardian, it’s still a great read, full of fascinating vampire lore. I thought I knew all that stuff from movies I’d watched as a kid, but after reading the original, I realize the movies got a lot of it wrong. Since reading […]