Coffee mugs
Posted: December 12, 2011 Filed under: Too Many | Tags: coffee mugs Leave a comment »I think I now have the answer to that age-old question, “Can you have too many coffee mugs?”
Faustian Thinking
Posted: December 10, 2011 Filed under: utterly unclassifiable Leave a comment »Off to see Gounod’s FAUST at the Cineplex/MetOpera — want to see if I can pick up any tips on selling my soul to the devil. It’s an expensive time of year…
Do-wacka Do-wacka Do
Posted: December 3, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: do-wacka do-wacka do Leave a comment »“Wish I had your good-luck charms, and you had the do-wacka do-wacka do.” (Roger Miller)
Many say that what went off the Tallahassee Bridge is the great musical mystery of our (okay, my) time, but I also wonder at times about the exact nature of the do-wacka do-wacka do.
Breaking the rules
Posted: June 21, 2011 Filed under: writing | Tags: intentional mistakes 1 Comment »In some disciplines, is a pleasure to watch those who really know what they are doing intentionally break the rules. I am referring primarily to the domain of language (grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, etc.), because that is the area where I know the rules the best.
The most succinct example I can remember seeing was a cover story about Jack Nicholson in Esquire magazine in the mid-1990s (I think it was Esquire), where the cover of the magazine featured only a photo of the face of Nicholson wearing his steely, slightly evil grin and the following caption:
Jack.
Clearly the period was unnecessary — even “wrong” — to a punctuation purist, but its presence represented a nice little joke between the headline writer and the reader who “got” it.
I am sure that similar exchanges happen among the cognoscenti of various forms of music, visual art and other pursuits in life where you really need to understand exactly what you are doing in order to pull off an effective intentional mistake.
From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t work so well in sports.
Computer Disasters #12
Posted: May 25, 2011 Filed under: computers Leave a comment »The worst feeling in the world is hitting the “Empty Trash” button when you thought there were two or three files in the bin, and to see a progress bar appear and a message that says, “Deleting first of 15,000 items,” and you know that you have somehow managed to move your entire Desktop to the Trash and that your computer is going to eat all of your folders and files and then swallow its own operating system for dessert.
Dumb-as-a-stump Department
Posted: May 2, 2011 Filed under: Overheard. Made me laugh. Leave a comment »Last night at the airport after we’d landed from St. Maarten, I stood at the carousel next to two young women with great bodies but very few brains and an already overloaded baggage cart, who were puzzling over where their checked luggage might be. One of them had been telling the other as they moved in next to me at the carousel that her suitcase always got lost and she was sure it would get lost again.
I had watched and overheard the inane chatter of these two (truly, truly inane. You can trust me on this) the week before, as they manoeuvred dozens of carry-on bags (each) onto our plane en route to the Caribbean—and it appeared they’d killed off even more brain cells in the seven days since I’d last seen them.
We were located to the left of the conveyor belt that brought the bags in from the plane outside, and the carousel was going counter-clockwise—which meant, of course, that while the luggage was out of our sight on the other side of the baggage-distribution apparatus, almost all of it was picked off by its owners. The carousel was therefore nearly empty of luggage when it came back into our line of view.
Now, five or ten minutes into the process, although plenty of bags were still coming up from the plane, the young women’s brows were increasingly furrowed. Finally one of them said, “I’m getting really worried about my stuff. I’ve noticed that none of the bags that comes out over there from the plane comes around to where we are. Do you supposed there’s a double spiral?”
The other agreed that they’d better go round and look. That was —to my disappointment—when I lost sight of them. I believe that these two young women are destined for lives of confusion unless someone quickly realizes that they are ideal muses for the writers of Dr. Who.
From the “Do what I say” dep’t
Posted: April 21, 2011 Filed under: lessons for young people | Tags: by-laws, street safety Leave a comment »What I just overheard a woman say to a girl about six or seven, as the two of them reached the sidewalk after successfully crossing Yonge St. in Toronto about half way between two stoplights: “That’s what’s called ‘jay-walking,’ and you shouldn’t do it.”
Too many, too few
Posted: February 15, 2011 Filed under: Too Few, Too Many 3 Comments »In this world there are too many spatulas and not enough ladles.
There are too many triple-A batteries and too few double-As.
What else?
On seeing my mother’s face in mine
Posted: February 5, 2011 Filed under: aging | Tags: aging, face, family, hands, resemblance 3 Comments »
When I began to get “older” I was occasionally alarmed to catch sight of my mother’s face looking back at me from the mirror, or her hands resting in my lap — or, worse yet, my grandmother’s face or hands. I saw these resemblances only as a sign that I was aging. But as of this year, I am the eldest person in my immediate family, and suddenly I kind of like the idea that I look and sound like the women who came before me. It is as though I am carrying around a special key that only I am able to use to unlock the past – and I do it so easily: with a facial expression, a way of saying something, or a laugh. The family resemblance has turned from something I resented into a precious heirloom.
