As a postscript to this entry, I'll add another solecism from the Swedes that should have occurred to me before: "Dancing Queen" has the clunky lyric of "Night is young and the music's high ( Read more... )

One last quote from Innocents Abroad, with its modern counterpart from "Stuff White People Like".

( Innocents Abroad )

I recently read Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, which I highly recommend. It often felt like I was reading the template for all the humorous travel books I'd ever read.

Anyway, here are three quotes about art appreciation I could relate to. They make a nice counterpoint to all the Vasari quotes.

( Three quotes )

Thanks to a few years of living in New York, I can report the following findings ( Read more... )

I'm currently reading the original novel version of The Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle (same guy who wrote The Bridge on the River Kwai, incidentally ( Read more... )

I once read a claim that, when a language becomes a lingua franca, the price it must pay for its dominance is that the non-natives who come to speak it fluently will start to introduce "barbarisms" into it: awkward usages that jar in the ears of the natives, but sound logical enough to non-natives ( Read more... )

"A teenage mother is advised by her parents to put her illegitimate child up for adoption to avoid bringing shame on their small-town family -- but to what lengths will they go to get the child back when they discover the adoptive parents are vampires?"

(Inspired by reading the synopses of a hundred crappy new novels in a row.)

I've been meaning to post this photo of a shopfront (the Pier One Imports on Fifth Avenue) for some time now. Kendell took it on November 2nd, but the poster and display you see here were both present at least a week before Halloween.


( Read more... )

I woke up this morning with a bad fever and sore throat. These are exacerbated by the fact that I am a man, as this video shows.

Click to view

One of my Russian coworkers (among many, many others! New York is very Russian) is obsessed with collecting world music, and ephemera of the Soviet era. One of his subprojects is to collect unusual phonograph discs solely for their appearance, regardless of what kind of music they may have on them. He goes for strange colors, sizes, and other ( Read more... )