4.30.2001

Yeah, so my e-mail's not working for reasons I fail to comprehend. If you sent me an e-mail after 8 PM last night, I didn't receive it.

UPDATE: My e-mail is working again. Send me something if you don't believe me...
..:.:10:40 AM:.:..

4.28.2001

If someone started a magazine called, "O Canada", would Oprah sue?
..:.:5:30 PM:.:..

4.27.2001

A list of related words, followed by an etymologically unrelated homophonous word:

pogonia n. a type of orchid (Gk. pogon = beard, referring to the bearded crest on the lip)
pogonology n. a treatise or book on beards
pogonophobia n. morbid fear of beards
pogonotomy n. cutting of the beard; shaving
pogonotrophy n. growing of a beard

pogonip n. an icy winter fog, peculiar to the Sierra Nevadas in the West. (from Shoshone pakenappeh)
..:.:11:45 AM:.:..

4.26.2001

You know that scene in She's All That where the Freddie Prinze Jr. character has the JV soccer team come over to the Rachel Leigh Cook character's house to clean because she says that she can't go to the dance as she has to clean the house? While the JV soccer team is cleaning, the Rachel Leigh Cook character's father is watching Jeopardy. He keeps answering out loud and getting the questions horribly, horribly wrong. Then a member of the JV soccer team answers one of the questions right and the father looks up and, noticing the people in his house for the first time, says, "Who are you people?" or something like that.

Did you ever have a day like that? I'm having one.

(I tried to find the exact Jeopardy wrong answer quote on the web. I found some She's All That quote pages, but none of them had the one I was looking for. I did find this gem about which I'd completely forgotten:

Zack (Freddie Prinze Jr.): You can't keep ignoring me. Like the other night. What was that? You were wiggin'.
Laney (Rachel Leigh Cook): Excuse me, I did not wig.
Zack: Oh, there was major wiggage.)

So here's the point where I'm supposed tell some story about how I got roped into watching She's All That and I didn't really like it and give-me-Princess-Mononoke-any-day-over-some-stupid-teen-flick, but I can't do that because I've watched it three times of my own volition and cried at the end every time. You know, these last two posts make me look like a real wuss. I'll try to redeem myself here: I also watch sports. In fact, I cried last night when the Red Sox lost. That's not much better, is it?
..:.:2:43 PM:.:..

4.25.2001

I like to think of myself as brave. I really do. I don't get scared at "scary" movies. I can handle haunted houses. Spider, snakes, lizards: No problem.

On occasion, however, I've been known to do a pretty good Little Miss Muffet impersonation:

Last night, driving home from the Red Sox game, I noticed that something odd was going on in Somerville. At first, I couldn't figure out what it was. It seemed quieter, more serene and calm, than usual. Finally it dawned on me: No power. There were no street lights, most houses were completely dark. It was a little eery, like the city had been turned into the country.

I got home and fumbled my way into my apartment. I found a candle, lit it and sat in the flickering light in the middle of my living room.

That's when I heard the whistling. My neighborhood was quiet, but that quiet was broken every fifteen or twenty seconds by a distant, melancholy, low whistle. Answering, there was a higher whistle from across the street.

I listened to this odd, creepy call-and-response for five or ten minutes. I then got up, locked every window in the house, made sure both of my doors were dead-bolted and hid under the covers, wishing for daylight.
..:.:11:59 AM:.:..

Fenway Park at sunset.

Click here for some more pictures. Go Sox!
..:.:12:11 AM:.:..

4.24.2001

I just had this insight while I was reading something. I thought: "Gee, it's kind of weird that founder and flounder (v.) mean roughly the same thing."

Then I looked them up and it turns out that they both (probably) have the same derivation. Duh. No wonder they sound alike. I'm really smart today.

(Did you know that founder is also a horse-hoof disease?)
..:.:12:48 PM:.:..

My favorite magazine is Lingua Franca and my favorite thing in my favorite magazine is Jim Holt's Hypotheses column. The current issue's column is just so good. So. darn. good:

LATE LAST FALL, FRANCE'S highest court handed down a ruling of great moral and even metaphysical interest. The court declared that a seventeen-year-old boy was entitled to compensation for being born. Because he contracted German measles from his mother while she was pregnant with him—both a doctor and a laboratory failed to diagnose her illness—the boy is deaf, mentally retarded, and nearly blind.

...

The very idea of judging one's life better or worse than nonexistence strikes some philosophers as absurd. Bernard Williams, for example, has argued that a person simply "cannot think egoistically of what it would be for him never to have existed." Others, like Derek Parfit, contend that it at least makes sense to say of a life that it is worth living or not worth living. If the former, that life is better than nothing; if the latter, it is worse than nothing. Yet even Parfit shrinks from the implication that a person whose life is not worth living would have been better off if he or she had never existed.

It is quite a skill that Jim Holt has: the ability to approach a seemingly-talked-to-death issue from a totally new perspective.
..:.:12:26 PM:.:..

4.23.2001

This is a little odd: Yesterday was Earth Day (I think), but I had no idea because I was out hiking all day. If I had been doing nothing -- you know, inside, watching TV, listening to the radio, (read: what I'm usually doing on a Sunday afternoon) -- I would have been aware that it was Earth Day and given the day the respect it deserved. Instead, I was outside communing with nature and had no idea it was Earth Day, thus dissing the whole thing. It's a real catch-22. Seriously, though, isn't the whole idea of a media-driven "Earth Day" kind of contradictory?

We went to the Blue Hills in Milton. It was hot yesterday. It was very HOT. It was eighty-five degrees hot. It was beautiful. We were out there for a long time. I'm tired today. This paragraph is composed entirely of simple, declarative sentences of which I am currently enamored. I blew it there.
..:.:1:32 PM:.:..

4.22.2001

I saw Alan Keyes speak yesterday.

Yup. You read that right. I saw Alan "insanely conservative two-time unsuccessful presidential candidate" Keyes speak yesterday.

I ran an errand in Harvard Square yesterday afternoon. On my way back to my car, I cut through Harvard Yard. When I walked past the Harvard Univ. science center, I saw a flyer saying something to this effect: "The Harvard Republican club presents Alan Keyes. He will speak to pre-frosh in Science Building Hall D at 6:00 on Saturday, April 21st."

I looked down at my watch and it was 5:59. I wasn't doing anything for the next hour.

"Why not?" I asked myself. So I went in and saw Alan Keyes speak.

I could tell you what he said and point out some of the scary and obvious flaws in his logic. I'm not going to do this, however, because I believe Ambassador Keyes might be insane and I've been taught not to make fun of the insane. I do, however, have these three comments:

1. You'd think that at an event for Harvard-accepted high school seniors who had not yet decided to come to Harvard that Keyes would stay away from the more controversial parts of his ideology. You'd be wrong. Keyes spoke at some length about: abortion, guns, minority rights, God. He didn't mention his opposition to the federal income tax, but it was an audience of eighteen-year-olds, so we'll forgive him. (When he talked about abortion, ten people got up and left.)


2. You'd think that the crowd at an event sponsored by the Republican club at Harvard would be, how should I say this -- oh what the hell, as lily-white as you could possible imagine a crowd being. You'd be right. My non-scientific count had it at: 400 attendees, 26 minorites.


3. Keyes is really short.

I went home and took a shower.
..:.:10:54 AM:.:..

4.21.2001

Hope is the only commodity I care about.
..:.:1:46 AM:.:..

4.20.2001

When I get to work, the first thing I do is make a pot of coffee. I'm the only in my office who drinks coffee, so I make just enough for myself (enough for two mugs of coffee, which is, oddly, four cups of coffee).

If I were looking to get ISO-9000 certified, here's what the manual would look like for my coffee-making process:

1. Rinse out coffee pot and fill with four cups of water


2. Pour water into coffee-maker


3. Put coffee pot back in coffee maker


4. Take out (OK, I just realized I don't have the vocabulary down for coffee makers -- what do you call the the filter-holding gadget?) the filter-carrying piece


5. Rinse out filter-carrying piece


6. Place new filter in filter-carrying piece


7. Put coffee grounds in filter


8. Put filter-carrying piece back in coffee maker


9. Turn on coffee maker


10. After 10 minutes, pour cup of coffee into mug


11. Get half-and-half out of refrigerator and pour into coffee


12. Spoon a teaspoon of sugar into mug


13. Stir

This is probably the procedure most of you use to make coffee. Fairly standard model, I'm sure.

Today while I was making coffee, I had an idea for stream-lining the process. Why not combine steps seven and twelve. Instead of adding just coffee grounds to the filter, add both the coffee grounds and the sugar. (I wish I could add the half-and-half as well, but I'm pretty sure the heat would do something bad to the cream...)

So I tried it and it worked fine. Mark Anderson: Efficiency Expert.

UPDATE (11:15 am): The second cup did not taste right. The second cup tasted terrible. Like drinking a cup of burned sugar. Actually, I was drinking a cup of burned sugar. People, for the love of everything holy, do not put sugar in with your coffee grounds. Don't worry. I'll keep working on this. As someone posted above the slow-change-dispensing copy-maker in my college library: "Change takes time."
..:.:10:28 AM:.:..

4.19.2001

..:.:3:59 PM:.:..

So I seem to be fixated on stories about animals this week. The natural progression is, of course, to elephant jokes. This was, screw it, this is, my favorite elephant joke. Feel free to judge me:

How many elephants can you fit in a Volkswagen?
Four, 2 in the front, 2 in the back.

How can you tell if there's an elephant in your refrigerator?
1 set of footprints in the butter.

How can you tell if there's 2 elephants in your refrigerator?
2 sets of footprints in the butter.

How can you tell if there's 3 elephants in your refrigerator?
You can't close the door.

How can you tell if there's 4 elephants in your refrigerator?
There's a Volkswagen parked outside.

If that wasn't enough for you:

- How to hunt elephants
- Technical awareness and elephants
- Canonical list of elephant jokes
..:.:3:12 PM:.:..

4.18.2001

It's spring here in Massachusetts, the time when a young squirrel's fancy turns to love. I know this because right outside my window at work, there's a squirrel. I know what you're thinking, squirrels aren't inanimate objects: you can have a tree outside your office window, but not a squirrel. This squirrel, though, is parked outside my office window. He's been on the same branch of the same tree for a couple of hours, chirping away. He's at eye level to me and there's the look of love in his evil black eyes.

Do you know what a squirrel mating call sounds like? Squirrels sound like grackles. Squirrels sound like grackles played at 78 RPM with the sound turned way up. WAY UP. I hate this squirrel. I'd hate this squirrel more, but I'm starting to suspect he's in love with me, which is a little flattering.

My family has a long-running feud with the squirrels of Concord, Massachusetts. (Any squirrel-lovers are not going to like the next part of this story.)

My father had a couple of bird-feeders in the backyard of our house. Squirrels always find a way to empty bird-feeders regardless of the measures you go to to prevent this from happening. You'll see squirrel-proof bird feeders advertised but they never really work. My dad tried some traditional methods of keeping squirrels away: hanging the feeder from a pole, etc. These didn't work, so my father invented his own squirrel-proof bird feeder.

The bird feeder looked roughly like the one to the left. It had a wire frame with a plastic tube inside holding the bird-feed. My father wrapped the frame with two wires. The wires were kept a couple of inches apart and they didn't cross anywhere. The wires led inside into a box my father designed and then into a wall socket.

Are you getting the idea here? My dad's squirrel-proof bird-feeder was designed to deliver a shock to a squirrel. The squirrel climbed onto the feeder and, in doing so, touched both wires, closed the circuit and was zapped. Birds were completely safe as they would never be touching more than one wire. The shock was never enough to hurt the squirrel, just enough to persuade it to go somewhere else.

Now, my dad designed this initially to be on all the time. To turn off the juice, you'd have to unplug the bird-feeder (this is, of course, the first time that the phrase "unplug the bird-feeder" has ever been used). My father didn't think this was enough fun. So, he updated the box inside the house so it had a button to press to zap the squirrel. We'd wait by the sliding-glass door for a squirrel to climb onto the feeder. Then we'd pause a few seconds, you know, to give the squirrel a sense of security. Then we'd press the button and squeal with glee as the squirrel did its best Bobcat Goldthwait impersonation.

The squirrel zapper lasted for a year or two until we lost interest. My father eventually gave up with his attempts to thwart squirrels and just made a platform feeder to let them eat to their hearts' content. For a while there, though, we had some nervous squirrels in our neighborhood.

I take no joy in telling you the above story. Think of it as a cautionary tale: a good man pushed to violence.

(I ripped the squirrel image off from a drawing tutorial.)
..:.:11:46 AM:.:..

4.17.2001

Neil Gaiman on writing a blurb:

Once I was given a book by an editor I liked, by an author I liked. it was the editor's first major book. It was the author's first book in some years. It was a big deal for both of them. I didn't like the book. I wanted to, but I didn't. But I didn't want to let them down. So I wrote "When Thaddeus Q. Bliggins (not his real name) is writing at his best there's no-one in the field that can touch him" and felt that honour was satisfied.

My favourite how to blurb a book you don't like story was one my agent told me, about a writer she had at the start of her career, who was a good friend of A Famous Author, and was confident of his ability to get a blurb for his book -- and certain that with a blurb from a famous author his manuscript would immediately be snapped up by a publisher after a franzied auction. He handed over the manuscript to his friend, and the blurb came in. It was short, effective, enthusiastic... and entirely unusable, this being the early 80s, and the blurb being entirely composed of profanities, as enthusiastic as they were obscene. The book was never published.

A couple of years ago I had some friends over for dinner. I am not a good cook. Let me repeat this: I am not a good cook.

At the end of the meal, when etiquette holds that your guests compliment you on your cooking, one of my friends said, "I can't tell you how much I enjoyed that meal."

I replied, "You liked that? Really?"

He said again, "I can't tell you how much I enjoyed that meal."
..:.:11:08 AM:.:..

4.16.2001

Today, I walked out of my apartment and was confronted with a Paul Revere imitator on a horse. A big horse. On a street in a Somerville, Massachusetts. Clip-clopping past the 7-11. This can mean only one thing: Patriots Day!

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, on Paul Revere:

"That's [Paul Revere's ride] the most famous word-of-mouth epidemic in American history, and we have wrongly assumed that it's all about the message, that anyone could have spread that message, "The British are coming." But in fact, Paul Revere was one of these remarkable individuals who had these extraordinary social gifts. He was on every committee; he knew everybody; everybody knew him. The reason he knew the British were coming was that some kid had overheard a British officer that morning...and of course if you heard some incredible piece of gossip in Colonial Boston, Paul Revere was the person you went to."
..:.:1:55 PM:.:..

4.15.2001

I just got back from Easter* dinner at my mom's house.

My mother, in a fit of holiday zeal, bought little plastic eggs, filled them with some jelly beans and put them inside our wine glasses -- a little extra treat.

My sister and I sat next to each other and almost immediately began playing with these little eggs. We'd try to make them stand on their end, balancing them on the table, on the salt shaker, on the bottle of wine.

Here's roughly how it went:

Me: Shooka-shooka-shooka (this is the sound of me shaking the egg, trying to get the jelly-bean contents to even out so I can balance it).
Someone else I: (Ignoring the egg-shaking sound) I can't believe this Timothy McVeigh execution thing.
My sister: Shooka-shooka-shooka. Clop (this is the sound of the egg falling over).
Someone else II: (Ignoring the egg-shaking and egg-falling sounds) What a country we live in. Do any European countries have the death penalty?
Me: Shooka-shooka-shooka. (Pause. Here's the moment where I realize that I can stick the egg in the butter to make it stand up.) Squish-unk (this is the sound of me sticking the egg in the butter).
My sister: (Sees egg stuck in butter.) Ha ha ha ha.
Me: Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
My sister: Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Everyone else: (Silence.)
Our mother: Honestly, how old are you two?

I think I like Easter dinner.

____________________
*We've never really celebrated Easter. We were raised as UUs, which means that we have a vague idea of this Christ guy, but no idea what happened to him on Christmas or Easter. Mostly, Easter is just an excuse to get a bunch of people together.
..:.:10:50 PM:.:..

4.13.2001

Old maps are really cool. What is it about looking at a 150-year-old representation of a place you visit today that is so fascinating?

Is it the particular oddity of time travel that allows us to record these ephemeral things? Is it the marvel of human achievement, the ability to overcome nature and create a stable city out of a swamp?

Or is it the weird spellings?

(link via MetaFilter)
..:.:4:10 PM:.:..

TiVo decided last week to upgrade its software (now, I know that the little, gray Sony box in my apartment which I call TiVo does not make decisions independent of its mother-ship, but I like to think it does, so don't disabuse me of my quaint (read: scary and luddite) notions). Somehow, this software change made the TiVo recommendations go horribly out-of-whack.

Last night when I got home, the following shows had been recorded and were waiting for me:

- Designing Women (2 episodes)
- a BET news program of some sort
- Golden Girls
- the Joey Lawrence made-for-TV magnum opus Horse Sense

The first three I deleted immediately. Morbid curiosity got the better of me and I watched the first half-hour of Horse Sense. Why, TiVo, why?
..:.:11:59 AM:.:..

4.12.2001

(The next three sentences will be the only proof you'll ever need that I am not qualified to write for Dennis Miller's TV show.)

President Bush, at a baseball game in Greenville, stunned the crowd when he was heard whispering into an open mic to chief-of-staff Andrew Card, "Christ almighty Andy, why didn't you tell me there was a state called East Carolina? I pay you to stay on top of these things. I could have looked like a real idiot out here."

(Photo courtesy AP)
..:.:9:34 PM:.:..

Garelick Farms (a Boston-area dairy company) has a new slogan: "Add Something."

I'm no marketing expert, but it sounds to me like they're saying, "Fill that black, gaping void in your soul...with half-and-half."
..:.:1:55 PM:.:..

4.11.2001

I have access to two of these postal scales:

There's one at my office and, in a manic fit of consumer enthusiasm, I bought one for my apartment two weeks ago. The one in the office is (give or take) five years old. The new one in my apartment is, surprise, new.

The scale in the office gives you everything in ounces. Everything becomes this long division problem with 16 as the denominator. I've gotten very good at dividing by sixteen. It's a small accomplishment but I'm proud of myself.

Last night I was weighing a book on the scale in my apartment and I couldn't figure out why the scale (a five pound maximum scale -- 80 ounces maximum) was telling me the book weighed 113 ounces. First, this didn't pass the common sense test: the book couldn't have been more than a couple of pounds -- I can tell the difference between 7.5 pounds and 2 pounds. Second, just to make sure I wasn't losing my mind, I weighed myself on the bathroom scale with and without the book and, sure enough, there was about a two pound difference.

I stood in my living room, scratching my head. I contemplated returning the defective scale. I tried to think of what I was missing. Then, when I was about to give up, I looked again closely at the scale. Written in little print under the first "1" was the word "pound." The book wieghed 1 pound, 13 ounces. They'd changed the scale in the last five years so you no longer had to do the math in your head.

Innovation can be confusing.
..:.:3:44 PM:.:..

In an effort to alienate as many of you as possible, more sports talk:

I went to the Red Sox-Orioles game last night to see Hideo Nomo pitch. He didn't duplicate last week's no-hitter, but he was strong through six innings (four hits and one run). I was curious to see how loud the applause would be for Nomo when he was introduced and when he went out to the mound. Not that loud, it turned out. The game was a 6:05 start and there were only around 10,000 people in the stadium at game time. This was a little disappointing. I really like those sports moments where it's noisy and raucous and everyone's excited.

A basketball riddle: When does .1% equal 100%? Answer.
..:.:12:37 PM:.:..

4.10.2001

Something's been bothering me about this China-US airplane collision contretemps. I don't like to comment on issues of international diplomacy because I've found that people are jealous of my knowledge and grasp of the subject. So, I've left this question unvoiced. I can't put it off any longer:

China has jets?
..:.:10:49 AM:.:..

4.9.2001

Something I actually said today in a conversation at a local health food store:

"The problem with food that doesn't have preservatives is that it goes bad so quickly."

Tomorrow: More startling insights about the nature of the world.
..:.:9:31 PM:.:..

4.8.2001

Last week we had our computer-technical-guy in the office to complete our DSL changeover from Northpoint/Verio to Mindspring/Earthlink/Covad. He installed our new router and then came up to change the network settings on our computers.

Right before he left, he got his label-maker out of his truck and printed out labels that had our new IP addresses on them and affixed them to our laptops.

While he was completing this last step, I was standing in the corner of my office eying his label-maker, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

He looked at me, went back to working, looked at me, went back to working. Ten seconds later, he looked up again and asked: "Mark, do you want to play with the label-maker?"

I said, "Umm, yeah. Thanks."

It pretty much goes without saying that our computer-technical-guy has two kids between the ages of nine and eleven.
..:.:7:34 PM:.:..

4.7.2001

I'm way behind on my big work project (see below). I've been avoiding it, doing other things that are more interesting/pleasurable (do-it-yourself oral surgery, for example). Well, it's due on Monday, which means this weekend, or what's left of it, is going to be spent working.

The project is a big medical network match. A client is considering switching medical plans and they want to see how much this will affect their employees. So, I have a list of doctors and hospitals the employees use and I have to see if these doctors and hospitals are in BlueCross BlueShield and Cigna. There are a lot of doctors and hospitals and it's really tedious.

The only enjoyment I'm getting from this is chuckling at the funny names some doctors have. This is the funniest thing I've come across yet (it's from the BCBS Maryland directory, page A-131):

Footer, R. DPM
Podiatry

Footer, R. MD
Obstetrics/Gynecology

I don't know if it's funnier to think of a Dr. Footer as a podiatrist or as an OB/GYN. I just don't know.
..:.:11:56 PM:.:..

4.6.2001

I just wrote a letter of recommendation for a professor from college who is up for a teaching award. I gave her the chance to edit the letter beforehand (I can be an idiot and it's just safer for everyone involved this way) and she cut my favorite part. She said it sounded like a joke. This is, I told her, because it was a joke.

Here's the excised part (the context is that I was talking about an essay I'd written on which she had given me feedback):

She also wrote at the end of one version of this essay: “Your sentences often become choppy because you cut them up with your own interjections.” We can agree here, I think, without much doubt, that this is, almost certainly, not true.

Flippant? Yes. Inappropriate? Yes. Comical? No, probably not.
..:.:11:53 AM:.:..

4.5.2001

A conversation I had yesterday with a female friend in which I think I'm being funny. She does not think I'm being funny. You can judge for yourself, but I think you'll take her side. (I should warn you here that my joke could probably be considered offensive to women and the Internal Revenue Service -- fine civil servants, both):

Me: What did you do last weekend?
Her: Well, I went on a date on Saturday with that guy I was telling you about. Then, on Sunday, I did my taxes.
Me: So, what you’re saying is that you got screwed.
Her: (silence)
Me: Get it, it’s a joke. I made a little joke. See, there’ s two meanings. One, you went on your…
Her: I got it.
Me: It’s funny.
Her: Sure. Mark Anderson: Master Comedian.
Me: OK, I’m going to be quiet right … now.
..:.:12:23 PM:.:..

4.4.2001

Hideo Nomo just threw a no-hitter for the Red Sox. The last Red Sox no-hitter was by Dave Morehead in September of 1965 (Nomo has thrown a no-hitter previously, but when he was with the Dodgers). I was born in 1975.

I've never watched a no-hitter from start to finish before. I've seen the final innings of a couple of them (when ESPN breaks in to out-of-town games in the ninth inning). I saw Matt "Sigh" Young pitch what I would consider to be a no-hitter for the Sox sometime in the last decade, but it's not technically considered a no-hitter as he only went eight innings and lost the game (he gave up a couple of runs--walks and errors).

Watching Nomo was pretty exciting.

The Red Sox are so totally going all the way this year. When I say "so totally going all the way," you should understand "so totally going to get to the playoffs and lose in some ignoble fashion."
..:.:10:29 PM:.:..

I work for a small company. I mean small. Really small. Get the idea? Small.

This is good most of the time. It means I get to do more types of things. I have more responsibilities. I have an impressive-sounding title. I have a big, nice office.

I have, however, just begun working on a project which is, at once, monstrously large and unbelievably boring. I mean boring. Really boring. When I think about this project, a wheeze/cry of boredom escapes my chest.

It is, in fact, so boring that if this task were considered for inclusion in a re-make of The Music Man, two things would happen: 1) They would change that “Ya Got Trouble” song so it would be talking about my boring project: "Ya got trouble, folks, right here in River City, with a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'B' and that stands for ‘boring.’” 2) People wouldn’t go to the show. People wouldn’t go the show even if Brian Dennehy played the lead. It’s that boring.

This is the kind of project where, if I were working at a big company, I would get three or four temps to boss around. In a big company, people would pass the conference room where these temps were working and they would laugh to themselves. People would go home at the end of the day and, giggling, tell their spouses about the poor temps and their boring job.

I’ve been laughing at myself all day, but it’s not the same.
..:.:4:57 PM:.:..

The Hermenaut on-line gossip newsletter is hilarious. (Hermenaut is a pop-culture/philosophy magazine published right here in the Boston, MA area -- Jamaica Plain, specifically. Every week they put together a one-paragraph "what's-up-at-Hermenaut" kind of thing.) Today's entry is genius:

Stung by accusations of "naval gazing" [sic] by a subscriber to this newsletter, we've vowed only to write celebrity gossip from now on. This Sunday night, Hermenaut.com's Carrie Ingoglia took her parents—who were visiting from Long Island—to Jamaica Plain's fake authentic Irish pub, James's Gate. (By the way... what kind of person would take her folks to a joint where she sometimes shows up in her pajamas?) While there, Carrie couldn't help noticing that J.P.'s ex-NKOTB Joey McIntyre was making out with a girl, wearing leather pants. (Joey, she means, was wearing leather pants.) Carrie was born, like, not as long ago? as Hermenaut's other editors? So she got all freaked out. Her parents couldn't understand what the hell she was going on about. "He has new kids on his block?" puzzled Eugene Ingoglia, who was distracted by a compulsion to get up every two minutes and check on the status of his car. "What's wrong with leather pants?" Barbara Ingoglia, who was wearing a jacket with a cow print on it, demanded of her daughter. "He's a young man!" Next week: We go back to talking about us.

That rocks.
..:.:3:14 PM:.:..

4.3.2001

I've been spelling consensus incorrectly my whole life. I've also only just recently discovered that misled does not have two different pronunciations (how I used to say it vs. how everyone else says it).

I blame my third-grade teacher, Miss Shumski. (If you think her name is funny now, imagine getting to say it when you were eight.)
..:.:9:35 PM:.:..

4.2.2001

I was going to post something from the Harper's David Foster Wallace piece about American Usage Dictionaries, but I was beaten to it. What are the odds of that? The same exact passage. I even had a story involving hand-gestures and sprachgefuhl. Drat.

Instead, here's my favorite entry from the crappy 1950s Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage:

mutatis mutandis, "with the necessary changes," is a cliche. Latin cliches, now that Latin plays a very small part in the learning of even the best educated, are particularly offensive. They show the speaker to be affectedly unoriginal. He has gone out of his way to be tedious. He has labored to be dull.

Ouch.
..:.:8:42 PM:.:..

4.1.2001

My friend Mike was visiting from Vermont last night and we went to the Bruins game. (Hockey isn't something I'm apt to watch on TV -- it's tough to follow the puck and TV makes everything look so easy, "Between the legs drop-pass to a waiting team-mate, even I can do THAT." Live hockey played by professionals is something else entirely. I spend the first couple of minutes of every game in silent awe of the speed and the finesse and the how-the-heck-did-he-do-that?)

We were on the subway heading back from the game when we noticed, sitting across from us, two guys trying their best to look both casual and belligerent. Having never tried this look myself, I can only imagine how difficult it is.

One of the guys was short, with short dark hair and a leather jacket. His friend was tall, with stringy slicked-back hair, Bono-style sunglasses and pants that were just a little too short. Both of them had, in their right hands, unlit Garcia y Vega cigars, which were still in their plastic wrappers.

When the train stopped at Harvard Square, these two guys got up and hulked their way out of the train. (I don't quite know how to describe the way they walked. It was as if they both had oranges lodged under their arms -- their elbows never came within a foot of their torsos. Very macho-ish.)

The tall guy, exiting the train, managed to misjudge the gap between the car and the platform and stumbled. In an effort to regain his balance, he put his hands out in front of him. His right hand went straight into the back of his friend. With this, he simultaneously righted himself and bent his cigar into a right angle.

Looking down at his hand, you could see the practiced-tough-guy-look drain from his face, replaced slowly with a look of bewilderment and sorrow.

By golly, it was funny.
..:.:5:58 PM:.:..

mark@markand.com
aim: mdanderson45