Recently updated

The Vinegar Flies Now with more flies.

Domestic comedy

[Elaine made a killer soup .]

“And you didn’t measure anything?”

“I measured two bunches of scallions and one onion.”

“That’s not measuring; that’s counting!”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[No leeks at the supermarket. So instead: potatoes, scallions, an onion, chicken stock, butter, milk, salt. Elaine added more details in the comments.]

Typewriters and handwriting

A headline, seen by chance: “Could handwriting be going the way of typewriters?” The writer is wondering, of course, if handwriting is moving toward extinction. But it’s just as possible to hear the question as suggesting the rediscovery of a neglected (and perhaps beautiful) means of self-expression and communication.

It is unlikely, though, that there will be newspaper articles about the last handwriting repairmen, or repairers.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting and typewriter posts (Pinboard)

Proustian

Oscar’s Day today is Proustian.

Robert Walser: winter

Robert Walser, The Tanners , trans. Susan Bernofsky (New York: New Directions, 2009).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Walser posts (Pinboard)

[Easy to miss its arrival yesterday. High: 56 °F. Low: 42 °F.]

Bukowski, Gavitsky

[“Slouching Toward Gavitsky,” Zippy, December 21, 2015.]

Dingburg’s Slouch Gavitsky channels Charles Bukowski. The poem in play is “The Shoelace.”

Related reading
All OCA liverwurst posts (Pinboard)
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)
Zippy and Bukowski

A 2016 calendar

[Nancy , December 10, 1955.]

There’s a new calendar from me, too, offered free of charge as a PDF (via Dropbox). It’s three months per page, in black and red Gill Sans Bold. I started making this kind of calendar in 2009, just to see if I could do it. (My inspiration was the Field Notes Calendar: I could not bring myself to spring for three or four of them.) Year by year, getting things right became easier. Now it’s a breeze.

The 2016 calendar contains the elusive “February 29.” Even with an extra day, the calendar comes in at only 34 KB. Stapler, hole punch, thumbtack, hammer, string, nail, wall not included.


[“End of the line, February! You’re through!”]

And while I’m thinking about the means by which I’m making this calendar available: if anyone can use a Dropbox referral code, this one’s mine. It brings extra free storage for any new user and for me.

Clutter, clutter, everywhere

From The New York Times, Paco Underhill on clutter, retail and domestic:

In supermarkets and big-box stores, the strategic placement of goods is essential in building incremental sales. The origins of the “stack it high and watch it fly” mentality come from the way goods were originally brought into big-box stores: via forklift. As a result, the aspirational spaces we all long for in our homes — clean, uncluttered, perhaps with a few white phalaenopsis orchids sprinkled around — are completely at odds with the stores we shop in.

He goes on to offer some good advice for “consumers” — which would be all of us.

[I have only a slight acquaintance with Underhill’s work. But I can recommend his 1999 book Why We Buy .]

Today’s sponsor

I’d like to thank today’s sponsor, redd . Redd, for all your tidying needs. Sort, arrange, neaten, and reclaim valuable space with redd. Use the special promo code KLUTTA and receive a pair of white gloves with your first order, absolutely free.

[After one too many podcasts. It was Diane Schirf who mentioned redd .]

The Vinegar Flies

Old-timey. Our son Ben is on banjo.

But wait, there's more: “Snake River Reel.”

*

December 23: And still more: “The Bees” and “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning.”

[To think that these two tykes grew up into the terrific adults they are.]