WTF punctuation question

The above Google search led a seeker of wisdom and truth to this Orange Crate Art post, I thought the search itself was amusing enough to warrant posting.

AFK

The guy was loud. His signal traveled well beyond his immediate surroundings, broadcasting a long story of corporate missteps. He of course was blameless: “I was AFK for almost two years.”

AFK? I had to look it up. How about you?

Related reading
All “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

John Ashbery on change

John Keats (“Ode on a Grecian Urn”) and Wallace Stevens (“Sunday Morning”) lurk in broad daylight in these beautiful lines.

Bizspeak

“Leading-edge leveraging of your plain-English skill set will ensure that your actionable items synergize future-proof assets with your global-knowledge repository”: Bryan Garner offers a Bizspeak Blacklist.

A related post
Changing the language of business

FeedBurner, broken

You know that something is seriously wrong when even the usually dormant FeedBurner Status Blog acknowledges the problem: “We have been encountering difficulties with our stats production pipeline for data representing March 18th thru 20th. We are currently working to resolve the issue.”

The frequency of posting on the FeedBurner Status Blog tells you something about Google’s interest in this service: the last post before today’s appeared on September 21, 2012. And Google’s FeedBurner Help Group has long been a self-help group, minus a higher power: there’s no one from Google reading or posting. I think I will be looking for another service in the near future.

*

March 22: FeedBurner is working again. But you’d never know it from the FeedBurner Status Blog.

No diagram needed

“You know what I love about you? I never have to draw you a diagram.”

From the Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Empty Tin,” first aired March 8, 1958. Alan Neil (Warren Stevens) is speaking to Miriam Hocksley (Mary Shipp).

Other Masonic posts
Perry Mason and Gilbert and Sullivan : Perry Mason and John Keats : Perry Mason’s office : Separated at birth? : Streetside gum machines

“MODERN ART PAYS BIG MONEY”

[Popular Mechanics, August 1931. Click for a larger view.]

Google Books . . . a rabbit hole. Popular Mechanics . . . a rabbit hole . . . within a rabbit hole. I found this advertisement while looking for something . . . else.

[Repeat after me: “You can learn at home . . . in your spare time . . . the Federal way.”]

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Brown”

[Peanuts, March 20, 2013. First published March 23, 1966. Click for a larger view.]

Charles Monroe Schulz channels Thomas Stearns Eliot.

Overheard

Elaine and I were in our favorite Thai restaurant. In a nearby booth, a young family of four, everyone talking: a good sign. The mother turned to her high-chaired daughter, who held an index finger in the air. Mom extended an index finger too: “One! One! That’s how old you are!” And then she turned to her son, who might have been all of five, and asked, ever so tactfully, “Could you put your pen back in your journal, please?” It was time to pack up and go home.

The son reminded me of Ralphie in A Christmas Story and of the boy in this Vivian Maier photograph. A kid so bookish, or notebookish, at the age of five or so might have some difficult times ahead, but I have little doubt that he and his sister are in good hands. Fare forward, young family.

Related reading
All “overheard” posts (Pinboard)
Early Language and Literacy Development (Zero to Three)

Dropbox 2.0

Dropbox for Mac and Windows just hit version 2.0, with a nifty, new drop-down menu.

If you’d like to try Dropbox, this referral link will give each of us an extra 500 MB of free storage.