Do the Yak

My last couple of posts referenced National Blog Posting Month where you post to your blog every single day for the month of November. Apparently the pressure caused a total seize-up of the creative machinery. So now that it's almost a new year, I hope to get back to this a bit more often. So what's happened in the last almost-two-months? Thanksgiving involved a really nice trip to Delaware via Amtrak. Ben's mom was predictably baffled by the trip as she has lost almost all sense of time and place, but it wasn't really a problem. Oh yeah, Ben got a job that started with a two-day orientation trip to Raleigh during Hanukkah, but it was totally fine, especially since so far he really likes the job. And Hanukkah was great -- I gradually bought little things for the kids starting in the summer and so I had time to get them stuff I think they really liked. My stepmother also got them Lego kits, which were even more of a hit than I expected. Ben and I were in a short stage...

I entered this anecdote in a contest sponsored by hilarious  Let's Panic About Babies site, where they asked parents about an embarrassing parenting moment... There was the cheery night after Sarah spent her first two days of life in the hospital gazing around beatifically before she came home and promptly got hungry as hell while my milk still hadn't come in. Of course I nursed her (though no more than every two hours as per the helpful schedule sheet provided by the hospital) so she couldn't POSSIBLY be hungry with all that delicious colostrum, but for some reason she still screamed like a banshee for hours on end. Ben and I were psychotic with anxiety and sleep deprivation. In yet another attempt to cure this baby of its mysterious caterwauling, Ben decided to change her again. And when the wet baby wipe hit her butt at 2 a.m... well, as we described it later, she bobcatted (actually it was a puma we were thinking of, sort of like this ). Now the embarrassing part: in...

National Blog Posting Month just started and I'm already a day behind. Whatever. Saturday was Halloween. Weirdest weather ever -- about 90 degrees with a 90-mph breeze. Becky (dressed as a yummy hot dog) got scared after only a short while, so we repaired back to the home of a neighbor who hosts a really nice pre-trick-or-treating party every year. We chatted with other adults who had stayed behind to guard the wine while their spouses took the kids around. Then it was Sunday with an extra hour of sleep -- YES-S-S-S! Did I let that stop me from also taking an afternoon nap instead of going grocery shopping? HELL no! Then we had leftover pizza with our good friends in Natick (our daughters are best buds from Hebrew school) and discussed Sociopaths We Have Known. And there have been a few.

We gather here today in memory of the departed innocents -- the kiwi and strawberries who gave their lives and were shamelessly mutilated and had their corpses displayed in vulgar fashion atop a burial mound made of Cool Whip. We will now pour cheap brandy over the whole mess and use the candles to set it on fire in the Hindu funereal tradition. As an added bonus, recently widowed Hindu women who make this dish may wish to participate more fully by committing sati . I myself might feel the urge after seeing my guests' faces after serving this vat of gooey white wonder.

Have you seen those commercials for twin recliners that also have cupholders , coolers and reading lights? We always joke that if they just came with a Foley catheter attachment, the lazy slob would never have to get up. Well, this guy did it one better -- a motorized recliner for zipping over to the local bar for a beer or nine. Except he got arrested for drunk driving. * * * A few weeks ago, we were tripping and sliding over all the acorns in our yard (apparently there's a bumper crop of them this year), and foolishly I told the kids within earshot of Ben that Native Americans used to somehow grind them up and make acorn flour. This sent Ben hustling to the Internets, where he actually found a website explaining at length just how to go about doing this . And he gathered a bunch of acorns. A-a-a-and... he made acorn flour. I didn't think this was possible, but it had an even higher ratio of required labor to outcome quality than the Indian cutlet fiasco. In a nutshell ...

...or maybe just letting her decide if there should be a plug or not. Terrific NY Times piece by Timothy Egan discussing the notion that hey, maybe we can talk about reducing the country's end-of-life care expenses without veering immediately into OMG-plug-pulling-Kevorkian-death-panels-black-helicopters paranoia and political cynicism. As Egan says, "how do we reform a system that lavishes most of its benefits on a cure for the 'disease' of aging" when many studies as well as common sense show that most people want to die at home, yet Medicare will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for endless hospital procedures and tests but won't pay for non-hospice home caregivers. And then I read about a guy who was basically lynched by a bunch of hillbillies in Kentucky . Not because he was black (he wasn't), but because he was... brace yourself... a FED! (a census worker, to be specific). And we know this was an issue in motivation for the murder because they...

It's Twitteleh ! ...and another plug for Justin's tweets .

A nother rectilinear loaf, but this time it's unpolluted by other objects in the matrix -- it's pure, 100% Grade A horseshit. And yes, it IS possible to make liver look even more unappetizing than it really is. Thank God there's some comic relief from the big orange wood shavings and the little nuclear bombs made from radishes. Lost your appetite yet? Fortunately, even the Weight Watchers folks can't fuck up saltines and melba toast, or the plastic parsley. Better yet, steal the silver knife and trade it for a couple of pizzas.

Before we contemplate The Molds, please do check out James Likek's comprehensive and hilarious collection of Regrettable Foods . I particularly enjoy Meat! Meat! Meat! Part 2 and Bran Plus for Minus People . There is apparently nothing you can't transform into a smooth, shiny, hideously unattractive foodstuff with a mold. Semispherical, rectilinear or any shape you care to imagine. Note the smooth and glistening semitransluscent Jello-O, which shows off the unidentifiable chunks lurking within. (*Urp* I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.) Or... the unidentifiable food-things could be arrayed decoratively on top, in the case of the calcified block of scrambled eggs. Very festive, those Christmas-themed slime worms. It makes you want to STAB IT WITH THEY STEELY KNIVES! Or silver cake server, maybe.

I have so many questions about the top image. Like, what is that barfy orange stuff held by Little Clam in back? And what's with the Magic 8-Ball in bondage? Oh, and what the hell is that mess nestling in the gaping maw of Big Clam? Seafood Garden Salad, you say? No... seafood is not found in a garden. Raw onions and peppers do not live side by side with creatures from the ocean; they much prefer dry land. And don't think this shotgun marriage is gonna work just because you're bringing them together in matrimony with Thousand Island dressing (ah, the barfy orange stuff 's identity is revealed). See, Thousand Island dressing has nothing to do with islands or the ocean; it's called that because of all the specks of chopped-up pickle you see in a matrix of ketchup and mayonnaise. But that's an abomination for a different day. Let's turn to the lower photo, where we see... hmmm... is it rancid moo-shi pork combined with mushrooms that are way past their expir...

Today begins a five-part feature inspired by Candyboots' Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974 -- an all-time classic that every living human should have bookmarked. My mother-in-law had a Weight Watchers cookbook in her house, published in around the same time. This collection doesn't have quite the level of unintentional humor and ghastliness of the 1974 versions; I could find only five that really merited highlighting, but anyway, here goes... Falafel was obviously still exotic back then -- in fact, people were obviously in the dark as to what it even ought to even look like (and as to the flavor, I dare not speculate). Scabby and scrofulous pita bread... and why are these falafel pieces so perfectly spherical? Did they use a melon baller? (Looks like they got it backwards; the falafel is supposed to be sort of lumpy and irregular, not the pita bread.) But the worst part is their disturbingly smooth, cracked and dry appearance. I hope to God that off-white goop in the ...

Last week we were doing our usual last-minute mulling on who we could invite for dinner. We settled on some people and Ben invited the guy, who tentatively accepted pending his social secretary's approval. Then we mulled over what to make. Ben suggested Indian food, so I told him where to find the cookbook. He found a recipe that sounded good and went off to buy the few ingredients we didn't have. I got home a bit after six and found things not quite as far along as I'd hoped, though fortunately (and I really mean FORTUNATELY as you'll soon see), our friends couldn't make it for dinner after all. The thing is, this recipe turned out to be one of the most time- and labor-intensive recipes I'd ever made. Which might have been OK if it had turned out sublimely, or even pretty tastily, but this... this mess was basically inedible. It was actually three recipes, which obviously accounted for the time factor: spiced meat (tasty enough in itself) and mint-coriander s...

Why am I still amazed or even surprised? Yes, Michelle Duggar has bagel #20 in her personal toaster; in another generation or two, there will be so many Duggars they will take over the world , which obviously has been the plan all along. Oh the humanity...

Excellent obit in TIME Photo gallery of Kennedy Package of stuff in the Boston Globe I admired him more than any other politician, living or dead (except Abe Lincoln and Ted's two brothers, maybe). He was really someone to admire: a liberal, a political pragmatist, a consensus builder, a highly effective legislator... and a man born to power and privilege who stood up for minorities, women, immigrants, gays and poor people. Over the years, he did more for civil rights than anyone in American history. As just one example, America would look very different today if not for his efforts to change immigration laws that favored Europeans. Many immigrants and children of immigrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia owe their presence in America to him -- a white male whose grandfather told him stories of "Help wanted -- no Irish need apply" signs around Boston in his youth ("Irish need not apply"). That grandfather, whose own grandparents were all immigrants who...

For some time up until last week, I was having a private contest with myself (private because it's tasteless even for me) as to who would die first, Ted Kennedy or Jerry Remy. As the world knows, Ted has brain cancer; Remy is a beloved sports broadcaster and former second basemen for the Red Sox who had lung cancer surgery over the winter, started working again in the spring (albeit about 20 pounds lighter), then went on leave with a mysterious infection that lasted months beyond when it should have either been cured or finished him off. He didn't admit to the cancer initially, so I figured the "infection" was actually extended chemo and circling the drain from the advancing disease. Turns out Remy is actually fine physically but has been suffering from a crippling depression . He appeared briefly during the Sox game a couple of days ago and was very upfront about everything. He looked healthy but his voice had a slight tremor from the ongoing depression, his nervou...

Christ almighty, this is fucked up in so many ways. By "this" I mean today's news that the Senate health-care negotiators have dropped the provision in the health-care reform bill that would have provided hospice counseling and other end-of-life advice . First of all... VOLUNTARY, okay?? Secondly, since when does counseling about hospice = euthanasia? Do Americans even know what hospice is? Apparently not. They're so fucking stupid that they believe these BLATANT LIES put out by right-wing nuts who don't believe the lies themselves but are deliberately and maliciously doing whatever they can to torpedo health care reform and, by extension, Obama himself. And these sheep don't bother to do some basic checking to see if such an outrageous thing might possibly be, oh I don't know, maybe a wee exaggeration? Or even a complete falsehood? Nope, they just believe what they're told by liars. Who are using this provision to play on stupid people's primitiv...

My stepmother got us tickets to see Paul McCartney at Fenway Park as a birthday present for me, knowing what a Beatlemaniac I was (and still am, I guess). I got there in a somewhat crabby mood because they wouldn't let me bring in my backpack (I had to pay $10 to check it), expecting to be appreciative but not impressed by the concert, but I was happily surprised. I expected a 67-year-old geezer phoning it in Vegas-style ("You've been a great audience -- thank you. I'm here all week... Please tip your waitstaff") but actually, he is a great performer and a showman to the core. A real hambone, to be sure, and he really can't pull off this cheeky aw-shucks crap at his age. Sometimes I was rolling my eyes, but eventually I was pulled in (even when he twice "offhandedly" remarked that at Beatles shows, they could never hear themselves play because of all the screaming girls, evoking a predictable response). And just once I got a tiny inkling of the feel...

Our drive to New Jersey on Friday was punctuated by frog-choking downpours, mostly on the Mass. Pike. On Sunday in New Jersey, there was another FCD, but fortunately it held off until everyone was back at Ben's brother's house having brunch. An hour earlier, and dozens of people would have been drenched, standing outside at the cemetery for the unveiling ceremony for Ben's aunt, who died last September just 22 days after being diagnosed with stomach and liver cancer. Unveilings are apparently a uniquely American Jewish custom. Traditionally, family members bury the deceased within 24 hours and sit shiva (mourn) for seven days (shiva means seven in Hebrew). Some think the unveiling evolved as another life-cycle occasion to bring together geopgraphically scattered members of an extended family. Or if you're more cynical, you might see it as a way of saying "It's been a year, let's move on." In any case, it was very moving for the adults and sort of so...

My daily commute consists of a 15-minute drive, during which I listen to WERS (highly recommended -- listen online if you're not in Boston); a 10-minute walk, during which I listen to my iPod on shuffle; and a 10-minute subway ride, during which I read a book. Today I was in one kind of mood when I got onto the train and a different kind when I got off; I'm not sure how to describe them, but the cause was the book I'm now reading, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer , who is my favorite living writer along with Michael Chabon. (If Kurt Vonnegut were still alive, that would make three, but now he has to compete with hundreds of great dead authors instead of a few living ones.) The book is difficult at times, even frustrating, but absolutely brilliant -- one of the few that makes we want to shove a copy into the hands of everyone I know. When I got to work, I immediately Googled "Dirty Laundry," which was a sort of underground c...

Along with the rapidly approaching obsolescence of newspapers and CDs, now I hear of the demise of music radio as the place to go for hearing the latest tunes. The Boston Globe did an article spurred by the closure of WBCN, which in the 60s and 70s was the epicenter of the rock scene around here. Now we have the online streaming-music struggle between Last.FM and Pandora . I had heard of Pandora but not LastFM so I quickly checked out both their websites. I quickly decided I preferred the look and feel of Pandora and proceeded to create my own "station." Great! Of course you have to be at a computer, but then I found you can get an iPhone app to listen to your station on the go. Even greater! So now the only remaining issues I have are (1) the car (since my 2004 model does not have an MP3 jack and iTrip sucks), and (2) what about lousy cell reception and the radio equivalent of dropped calls? Then again, radio reception isn't always perfect either; you sometimes have st...

I cracked up reading Amalah's review of kiddie books and had to leave her a comment listing my own faves: " Go Dog Go " -- love the utopian party-in-a-tree ending and the iconoclastic fuck-your-hats attitude interwoven throughout. " One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish " -- the best Seuss. I always hated "Cat in the Asshat" -- he's an egotistical jerk and I would NOT like to have a beer with him, which is a requirement for protagonists of books I read aloud to my preshus offspring. " Polka Bats and Octopus Slacks " -- works on so many levels, including mine. Drugs were probably involved in the creation of this book. " Kat Kong ," " Dogzilla " and anything else by Dav Pilkey (including the Captain Underpants series for the more sophisticated reader) " The Velveteen Rabbit " -- Never had it as a kid myself; I read it for the first time when I was in my 30s. SOB SOB SOB SOB OMFG SOB!! More powerful a...

As I wrote a while back, we switched to four-day-a-week home delivery of the Globe, which has worked out quite well -- it's really a treat now when I get to fondle an actual paper over coffee -- but the one thing for which I couldn't get my daily fix was the comics. The Globe happens to have the best and largest selection of comics I've ever seen. As of a year or two ago, they're nicely packaged (in print) in the "g" tabloid color magazine insert, which also has the arts and living sections. But on Monday through Wednesday, what's a girl to do? All the strips are on one website or another, but who wants to do that much clicking? The Globe's website, boston.com, has a link to a so-called comics page but it's obviously been completely neglected -- it has a few lame comics that don't even run in the paper. What I did was pony up $11 a year to gocomics.com to get a daily email with many of my favorite strips embedded -- just a gentle turn of th...

Am I missing something here? I just rediscovered the Globe Reader after they stuck an ad for it on today's paper. It's not new -- I remember checking it out a year or two ago -- but had forgotten about it until all this mess about the newspaper industry tanking. Here's the multimedia demo if you're curious. But here's the stupid: you can't download the Globe Reader unless you already subscribe to the print paper! WTF?! So... you're supposed to pay to have the paper delivered so you can kill trees and drop it unread into the recycling bucket just so you can get a decent online version? I'm very confused. The Globe is not saving any money on printing and delivery by doing this. The only thing I can think of it that the Globe Reader apparently serves up the content with no ads, which is great, but that freaks out the execs who can't get their head around making money from something other than advertising. Do they have some sort of senile fantasy that ...

We returned Monday from four days in Nantucket, and it was one of my top 5 vacations ever. I have to write it down so I'll remember it, but if it's too boring to read, just go to Mimi Smartypants' latest , which is even excellenter than usual. We left Friday morning for Hyannis and barely made the 11:00 ferry (who knew you STILL had to stand in line to get printed tickets when you had purchased them beforehand online?). The house that D1 and . rented in Sconset was absolutely beautiful -- a spacious living room with a strip of backyard and then the bluff dropping to the wide-open sea. We were in an adjacent guest cabin, while K, her 9-year-old daughter J, and D2 were in the main house as well (K, D, D2 and I all worked at the same place at various times). The kids loved battling the waves and then eating ice cream at Sconset Beach even though the water was pretty cold thanks to the worst June weather ever. Then we had a barbecue and cocktails in the front yard that evenin...

Funny coincidence the other night... out of the blue, Sarah asked me what tampons were (she had seen a tampon machine in a public restroom and it registered for the first tine, I guess). I'd talked about menstruation before, but we hadn't discussed a Lady's Way of Dealing With Aunt Flo. I described the reason for needing tampons and, warming up, began discussing the tampon's structure and function. I went into our bathroom to get one to dissect for her edification. Then just as I was reaching the high point of the story (pantomiming insertion fully clothed), there was a perfectly timed howl from elsewhere. Rolling my eyes I waited to see what Drama Queen was overreacting to now, when into the bathroom she rushed... dripping blood from her face, arms and hands. Yes, with her impeccable talent Becky had managed to give herself a whopping nosebleed by somehow bumping her nose with her own knee, and then dashing in, deus ex machina -like, to inadvertently illustrate my...

Another entertaining political career implosion for a politician who answered the siren call to Think With His Dink: Mark Sanford. Did I say Appalachian Trail? I meant Argentinian Trail! In the Andes! Of course for sheer hilarity plus chutzpah, nothing can beat Mr. Wide-Stance himself, Larry Craig. But even without the sex angle (that we know of at the moment), we can be entertained by career nosedives like Sarah Palin's inexplicable resignation. The best lines I've seen: " I-Quit-a-Rod " and this line from Maureen Dowd : "Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy." **** What day would be complete without the latest chunk of masonry falling from the edifice of journalism? The Washington post ombudsman acknowledged in his own paper that more errors are getting through because the paper has slashed their copy desk to the bone. And let's face it, it's only going to get worse. The only thing that the established news business (as opposed to amateur bloggers) ha...

I never heard of Clerihews until I came across the term in the Miss Conduct blog vv. The basic idea is that the first line is the name of a celebrity and the other three lines poke fun at that celebrity in some way. The rhyme scheme is A-A-B-B but there's no meter, so any number of syllables in any line is fine. Like every other red-blooded American, I have Michael Jackson on the brain, so this is what I came up with in about 10 minutes: Michael Jackson Died with his slacks on, Which is more than you can say for David Carradine, Who was hanging out with a dirty magazine. I entered it in Miss Conduct's contest (#24 if you click on the comments in the link above). It's gotta have a shot, right? Along the same lines, there was an NPR story yesterday about the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest . So I was inspired in the car to jot down my own entry, which came to me unbidden on a flaming pie : He knelt and laid a trembling hand on her shapely head, acutely aware of her ...

The Gannett Co., the country's largest newspaper chain (84 dailies including USA Today, plus 850 nondaily papers and 23 TV stations), is laying off 1,400 employees . The ongoing layoff count company-wide can be found on Gannettoid.com , which shows that most papers in the chain have had several round of layoffs in recent months. I have a friend who works at the Indianapolis Star (for the moment, anyway) and has hung on to her job so far, but her paper's union just voted down a 12 percent pay cut request from management by a vote of 97-9, because they knew perfectly well that such a concession would not avoid further big layoffs . Robert Phelps , an old New York Times hand, thinks the industry has some kind of future, once people realize the blogosphere has no quality control or original sourcing: What you have there now is almost an unedited cacophony, a Tower of Babel, with everybody saying what they want. They get they’re reporting from where? Because they read the newspaper...

Okay, WTF with this weather?? I was woken up on several occasions last night by the loudness of the rain pounding outside. And thunder, of course. I could hear because the windows were open a crack, but only a crack, because it's TOO COLD to open them all the way. In fucking July.This morning it was dark as twilight -- headlights were mandatory -- and it was pissing rain and thundering during my drive and walk. Good thing I wore Teva sandals because I was soaked below mid-calf even with a raincoat and umbrella. It's going to do this all day. Just like all day yesterday. And tomorrow. If these clouds don't get the hell gone by next Friday when we go to Nantucket, somebody's gonna pay. Meanwhile, the Globe is handling the meteorological crisis with a helpful explanation of how to build an ark . Despite everything, I dragged the kids to see The Nays last night (note the free downloads). I went to grade school with all those guys, but that's not why I like them -- th...

As I'm sure you know, diadromous fish travel between salt and fresh water. Among that diadromous group, anadromous fish live in the ocean mostly, and breed in fresh water, while catadromous fish live in fresh water, and breed in the ocean. Why is this relevant to anything at all, you may well ask. Because it applies to some fish we happen to own. They're not exactly diadromous in the strictest sense of alternating between salt water and fresh water -- more like alternating between brick and wallboard environments. Also they're not exactly alive. They actually comprise a sculpture made by John Buckley for my mother, who installed them on an exterior wall of her house in Oxford, England. Buckley is best known for the Headington Shark -- Headington is actually part of Oxford, and I could see the shark if I peered down a side street at the right moment on the coach from Heathrow Airport. When my stepfather sold the house a couple of years ago, my brother and I shipped a lot of...

An almost-perfect summer Saturday: Going to the dump (oddly satisfying) Scoring some books at the library, including some classics for Sarah ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Misty of Chincoteague"). Grocery shopping -- pleasurable because I had no kids with me, so I got to use the boop-boop scanner thingy MYSELF! Wheeee! A quick swim at the local pond, though the rumble of thunder caused the only imperfection to the day, because it meant everybody had to get out of the water and leave, which was disappointing for the kids but a good timing in terms of having enough time for... Chopping and marinating for that evening's barbecue featuring my former editor Peter, his wife and 7-year-old daughter, who became instant best friends with Becky, which was extra nice because Sarah usually monopolizes "new kids." And finally... eating steak and burgers, drinkin' Buds, talking, listening to music, watching the kids enjoy each other's company. Ther...

Tacky I know, but boy they're dropping like flies. We'd just gotten over the loss of Ed McMahon and David Carridine when yesterday was a twofer QCD (quality celebrity death, for the uninitiated): Farrah Fawcett and of course Michael Jackson, who will go down in history as one of the all-time greatest singer/dancers and also one of the most screwed-up humans ever to walk the earth. The poor guy never had a chance, what with being a mega-star from age 5, no education, surrounded all his life by phonies and users and way too much money... Doesn't excuse the hanky-panky with the boys, of course; at least he had to fork over a $20 million settlement after the kid made a positive ID of Jacko's thingy . No, the two things about Jackson that amaze me most are: #1 his ability to blow through more money per year than most Third World counties do in a decade, and #2 the twisted obsession with plastic surgery, apparently with the goal of becoming a 90-year-old woman toting two tons...

That would be the weather. Apparently we're on track to have this be the gloomiest month of June on record . I don't mind the constant cloud cover (which I actually like in the winter, when the sunlight is a slanting, squint-making mockery). It's this endless drizzle. Ultimatum to weather gods: stop constantly sprinkling on the toilet seat of my life! Wipe it up, zip and get the hell out of my stall! It's supposed to be summer, not Irish spring. Feh. Weather: sucky (see above). Home life: chaotic, more so than usual. Welcome to Zoo Dubrawvsky, which opened on Sunday, packed with laughter and love, joy, tears and extra beer, starring the four of us plus Ben's nephew's family, who are staying with us for a week while the floors are refinished on their new house they bought on Monday two hours after selling their old one. It's actually lots of fun because the girls -- our two, plus their three-year old Maya and their 11-month-old, who mostly sits and stares an...

I had to stop reading this at work because I tried to stifle a major laugh and now my office mate is convinced I'm channeling Charles Nelson Reilly. So have a look, even if you don't have kids. And speaking of great laughs, a moment of silence for another QCD: Ed McMahon , who just popped his clogs. * * * * So if it's a cost problem, it's easy: Get the people in a room who have the most and the most direct impact on cost, and do the deal. Do the deal. It's not that complicated. If it's an access question, people don't have access to health care, then figure out who they are, and give them access! Hello?! Am I missing something here? --RNC Chairman Michael Steele, guest hosting Bill Bennett's radio show , explaining the simplicity of health care reform, as published on Taegen Goddard's Political Wire today. Ben left a comment echoing something an old high school friend and I used to say, no doubt inspired by Monty Python: "World hunger... OK....

On some blog or other, I recently saw a new game where you Google the phrase "unfortunately [your name]" and see what you get. I tried it with both my real first name (the first set below) and then my blog nickname. Pretty funny. This would be a good exercise to give a creative writing class ("Students, construct a coherent and gripping 500-word narrative using six of your resulting phrases from Google. You have 30 minutes. Begin."). Try it! Unfortunately A. was sick for four days with a bug, but we still managed to juggle our days around all the vomiting... Unfortunately, A. cannot respond to requests for help with academic assignments. Unfortunately, A. took offense and refused to cooperate. Their hard work in Monrovia brought them great rewards but unfortunately A. contracted African fever there... Unfortunately, A., who has made a considerable effort to "glamorize" herself for the evening, angrily assumes that the glamorous but empty-headed Rita has sw...

There was a long period of time when Americans were filled with fear and loathing of anything that smacked even faintly of Communism. Writers and artists were blackballed, careers were made and ruined (or both, in McCarthy's case), spies were executed... then the Soviet Union collapsed and we could finally direct our national paranoia to something besides Communism. For a while it was terrorists, but just recently it's socialism, which is also evil, judging by the bullshit making the rounds, such as the Facebook poll asking "Do you think Obama is leading America down the road to Socialism?" The phrasing of the question obviously implies that socialism is a bad and scary thing. My opinion? I don't advocate a totally socialist system for our country. I'm all for preserving property rights (e.g., ownership of land, houses, crops, MP3 files, etc.). The problem is when you consider your money to be your exclusive property, and to what extent you're willing to a...

A few random bits of food for thought. As we know, the old business model of newspapers is no longer workable, but while pundits consider new revenue models, I think you also have to consider what sot of people will go into the field at a time like this. There will always be people who want to write; the question is, what other skills must they now have, and how will they earn a living wage? After all, it's not like the pay was so hot before. 4 steps to newspapers’ survival "The notion that government subsidies may be appropriate for the ailing newspaper industry — à la national health care — surfaced recently among faculty at Boston University’s College of Communications." The article is too brief, but raises an interesting idea about government subsidies as well as the suggestion that only local newspapers will survive as print products, which I think has merit. Will Amazon's Kindle Rescue Newspapers? "It's no secret that [ NYT publisher Arthur] Sulzberger...

Yes, it's been a while. But today... today I have found something so inspirational that I can't help but share it with the world: long-beaked echidnas , beautifully described in The New York Times as "plump, terrier-size creatures abristle with so many competing notes of crane, mole , pig, turtle, tribble, Babar and boot scrubber that if they didn’t exist, nobody would think to Photoshop them." AND! Did you know the males have a four-headed penis? Oo la la. *** Though it's been a while since her death, I must still mark the passing of Bea Arthur, who created the unforgettable character of Maude, a rather underappreciated sitcom, lost in the 70s shuffle of "All in the Family," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "M*A*S*H" et al. One reason the show was so good was the writing, tackling fraught social topics and taboos just as AITF had before it. Here's a tour de force one-woman episode where Maude sees her analyst . *** One of the funnies...