A pocket notebook sighting

[From Still of the Night (dir. Robert Benton, 1982). Click for a larger view.]

Okay, it’s a datebook. But there is a prescription pad, and the datebook’s owner is using one of its pages to write a note. Yet another movie moment in which a surface for writing fills the screen.

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All OCA notebook sightings (Pinboard)

Scheduled

The schedule for next year’s classes was out. What’d I get?

Fall: freshman comp, freshman comp, freshman comp.

Spring: freshman comp, freshman comp, freshman comp.

There was, really, nothing more left to teach. All the literature classes were gone. Maybe, I thought, it was time to retire.

This is the thirty-third teaching dream I’ve had since retiring in 2015. In only two of them has nothing gone wrong.

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All OCA teaching dream posts (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).]

Recently updated

A Dartmouth provost and AI: He’s resigned and left the university.

RhymeHamster

Jeremy Desmon, a bookwriter and lyricist for musical theater, has created a (free) online rhyming dictionary: RhymeHamster. I think it’s a worthy companion to such resources as Etymonline and Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

How good is RhymeHamster? I tried meh and rizz — they’re both in there, which I think is a sign that this dictionary is “with it.” (You can also find hep .) Elaine tried the Gilbert and Sullivanesque hypotenuse , and the dictionary obliged with 103 perfect rhymes of one, two, three, four, and five syllables.

And I had to try orange , which yielded 123 imperfect rhymes. For as the poet and novelist Gilbert Sorrentino reminds us, “Nothing is the thing that rhymes with orange.”

Thanks, Jeremy, for sharing your project.

[“With it”: I’m joking. “Nothing is”: a line from the poem “The Crown,” in The Orangery (1978).]

Zippy preps

[“Clean Palate.” Zippy, October 28, 2026. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Zippy , we learn that Zippy prepares all his meals in the sink. “Dishes are so 20th century!” he says.

See also Cosmo Kramer’s shower prep.

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All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Shoutout to our daughter Rachel, who introduced us to Dawn Platinum Powerwash Dish Spray, which makes dishwashing more fun. Way more fun than Seventh Generation. And dish spray makes it unnecessary to decide whether to say dish soap or dishwashing liquid .]

A Dartmouth provost and AI

From Inside Higher Ed, “Dartmouth Provost’s ‘AI Dependency’ Sparks Backlash”:

Some students and faculty are calling for the provost’s firing after he allegedly used generative AI to write professional articles. He’s admitted to using ChatGPT, but says it didn’t replace his own intellectual judgment or authorship.

The provost is one Santiago Schnell. Semafor found that Pangram identified a Washington Post opinion piece by Schnell as 100% AI-written. (Schnell disputes that.) Dartmouth’s student newspaper, The Dartmouth, found that Pangram identified 96% of nine professional articles by Schnell as “AI-written.”

I’d say that Schnell’s intellectual judgment went down the drain when he chose to have AI do the work of writing for him.

*

October 29: Inside Higher Ed reports that Schnell has resigned and left the university.

A before-and-after headline

[The New York Times, October 27, 2026.]

My son Ben noticed the ambiguity of the original headline — though given the current occupant’s affection for all things Russia, it would probably be safe to guess that sanctions were being discontinued, not imposed. And then before I could do anything with the first headline, Ben noticed that it had been emended.

Google/Blogger is listening

Over the past few months, I’ve posted to the Blogger Help Community about four problems:

~ the malfunctioning Newer Post link at the bottom of posts

~ a post missing from the sidebar’s monthly archive

~ the switch to a spindly font for typing comments

~ Blogger’s (apparent) default to Anonymous for comments

The fourth problem, as Blogger expert Arkadiusz Narowski explained, arises when Safari prevents cross-site tracking. That was on me. The other three problems are now fixed: the Newer Post link works, the limit for monthly posts has gone from 100 to 128 (a fittingly computer-y number, as in 128K), and the font for typing comments is once again substantial and readable.

If you look at Google’s Blogger blog, it’s reasonable to wonder whether the company is paying any attention to Blogger: the last post there is from May 2020. But these improvements suggest that, indeed, someone is paying attention.

Tad’s White House

In today’s Zippy, “Chew On This,” Zippy speaks to a giant bust of Abraham Lincoln:

“You wouldn't believe th’ White House! It looks like a Tad’s Steakhouse from 1962!”

N.B.: daily comic strips are prepared weeks ahead of time, which means that Zippy’s comparison of the White House to Tad’s Steakhouse predates Barack Obama’s comparison of the White House to a Saddamesque Cheesecake Factory.

A Times Square Tad’s appears in person (so to speak) in a previous strip. I put one panel and some background on Tad’s in this post: Zippy’s Tad’s.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

OOHFM watch

Yesterday the current occupant wrote or dictated 1,321 words about “this COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER, Bill Maher.” Laser-focused, as always. And out of his, &c.