"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
In December, after the death of hereditary dictator Kim Jong-Il, network and cable TV news programs replayed videos of North Korean citizens publicly weeping and wailing in mourning for the Dear Leader. Many Americans, starting with but not confined to news reporters, made fun of the North Koreans. I wrote a blog entry at the […]
A friend posted this to Facebook yesterday: My drinking friends are always forwarding stories like this. Sure, booze is good for you. What the hell, if it makes you feel better about your drinking, you have my permission to believe whatever bogus “study” the liquor industry wants you to believe. Bottoms up! But it isn’t […]
“If you speak of this, you and your parents will be killed.” — Glynn Turman as Dr. Woodward in Super 8 Bridesmaids (2011, USA) One of my buds watched Bridesmaids with his wife and hated it. I thought, apart from a few flat spots, it was pretty funny. It’s basically a guy flick turned into […]
My experience with new year’s resolutions has been generally unsatisfactory. With me … and with almost everyone I know … resolutions are prescriptions for self-induced stress, ultimate failure, and consequent depression. They suck. That’s not to say I haven’t made deals with myself and stuck to them: I successfully quit smoking years ago and more […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books. “What is the criteria for banning a book? Who gets to make that decision? Is it one person’s opinion? Everyone sees things differently; where will it stop?” Ignoring district procedures for making decisions about restricting student access to books, school superintendent […]
“It’s not me but the world that’s deranged. At some point in time, the world I knew either vanished or withdrew, and another world came to take its place. Like the switching of a track. In other words, my mind, here and now, belongs to the world that was, but the world itself has already […]
2011 went out with a bang; 2012 came in with a boeuf … Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon. And if you think that sounds tortured, you should have seen me in the kitchen trying to make sense of the recipe! Three Christmases back I gave Donna a copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French […]
The year, that would be. Out with a bang. Shot right through the brain. This Christmas we added a compact 9mm pistol to our arsenal, so Polly and I took it and its big brother (a .357 revolver) to an indoor range this morning. I wanted to get the feel of the new pistol, and […]