June 2011
17 posts
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villain & vilify
i’m commuting to work on my ducati superbike 1198 (bloodbath red) and between weaving in and out of minivans and doing endos for kids riding the school bus, it will probably get pretty difficult to say everything that i want to say about villain (“an evil dude”) and villify (“to deprecate or disparage”) and why neither word is related to the...
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hellion & hell
because i’m breaking my day long fast of the internet in observance of bloomsday, you know that what i am about to tell you has got to be as important as when abc news interrupted the view to inform me that they heard from the new york times who heard from “a friend close to the source” that a democratic exhibitionist from new york has probably decided to...
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the continuing adventures of george bernard shaw
[George Bernard] Shaw once came across one of his books in a secondhand shop, inscribed To ——— with esteem, George Bernard Shaw. He bought the book and returned it to ———, adding the line, With renewed esteem, George Bernard Shaw.
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source: ex libris by anne fadiman (1999)
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roleplaying with raynor
one of the very attractive people in my vast rolodex® of attractive people works as a guidance counselor for a local middle school. she called me on my motorola startac™cell phone the other day and asked if i would like to conduct a few mock job interviews for her students. because i am trying to overcome an irrational fear of tweens, i accepted her invitation and interviewed ten students for a...
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tokelauan words that don't have the letter f in...
there are many reasons to read this harrowing account of three teenage boys lost at sea for 51 days (their only provisions were moldy coconuts and a mason jar of vodka which they consumed almost immediately; they survived in the open ocean in a pontoon boat made for lake fishing; the location of their polynesian island is one of the most remote on the globe) but the biggest reason for reading the...
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on college reunions
if you’re an insufferable gossip-monger like me and get your jollies from discussing the latest romps of your former classmates to other former classmates, then you will enjoy ephraim eliot’s account of what happened to all his buddies in the harvard graduating class of 1780.
eliot spares nobody (even himself) and were i to identify with anyone from this list, it would be poor daniel...
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mystic & mystic, (connecticut)
i’ve been at submarine school for the last week in mystic, connecticut. while i can’t disclose the confidential information that i’ve been learning, i did happen upon a rather unexpected bit of disinformation: the town of mystic has nothing to do with mysticism.
as towns go, the per capita mysteriousness of mystic lies somewhere between...